Dead Meat: The Complete Zombie Apocalypse Series
Date: 2021-12-31 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Horror; Apocalyptic; Zombies; Dystopia
Description: It all starts with a single dead person coming back to life. Within three days, the undead have taken over most of town. Despite heroic efforts and swift initiatives from the government, disaster keeps spiraling. Soon, the infection reaches the nation's borders, threatening to become a worldwide pandemic. Will this be the end of mankind? This is the end of the world - one day at a time.

Dead Meat: Day 1-9

Nick Clausen

Editor: Diana Cox

First Edition 2021

Copyright © 2021 Nick Clausen

Kindle Edition

The author asserts his moral rights to this work.

Please respect the hard work of the author.

CONTENT

Free Book

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Day 6

Day 7

Day 8

Day 9

About the author

What to read next

The zombie apocalypse starts today.

You get the first book for free.

Available only at
nickclausenbooks.com/free

“… such a great take on how to start the zombie apocalypse …”

★★★★★

“… leaves you craving for more and more …”

★★★★★

“I love this series …”

★★★★★

DAY 1

The following takes places on

Saturday, July 26

ONE

Thomas tries to block out the sounds. Tries to keep his head clear. To think straight. But it’s difficult. Jennie is complaining about the pain. Dan is sobbing. And from the other side of the door comes the relentless sounds of scraping nails and low moaning.

“It really hurts,” Jennie moans. “I think I need to go to the ER. Could you try calling them again, Thomas?”

“I tried calling a hundred times already,” Thomas mutters without looking up at her. “I keep telling you: there is no signal down here.”

The basement is stiflingly warm and stuffy. Cobwebs are hanging in threads from the ceiling. The room is crammed full of old furniture, cardboard boxes, worn-out books, and cast-off clothes. The windows are sitting high and are too narrow for a person to pass through—not even Dan is able to squeeze out. A few rays of dusty, orange sunlight are streaming through, reminding them of the scorching hot summer day outside. The heat wave is going on its third week.

In the middle of the room hangs a naked lightbulb. Thomas wonders how much light it will provide if they’re still here come nightfall.

Another low moan from the other side of the door.

Dan wipes his nose on his sleeve. “Do you … do you think we should put more stuff in front of the door, Thomas? That box doesn’t look very heavy.”

Why do I have to make every little decision? Thomas thinks. Who the hell named me captain? He bites back the anger and says in a moderately calm voice: “The box is heavy enough—it’s full of porcelain. I almost couldn’t drag it over there. She won’t be able to move it.”

“But—”

“But it doesn’t really matter,” Thomas interrupts, “since the door is locked and the key is on our side. She’s been out there for”—he checks his watch—“forty-five minutes now, and so far, she hasn’t tried to pick the lock. She hasn’t even grabbed the knob. I don’t think she has much brains left, so don’t worry about the door.”

Jennie gives off another groan of pain. “What the hell’s even happened to her?”

“She’s a fucking zombie, that’s what’s happened to her,” Thomas grunts. “Haven’t you ever seen a zombie movie? Dawn of the Dead? World War Z? Ring any bells?”

“Zombies aren’t real,” Jennie sneers. “And don’t talk to me like I’m stupid, just because I don’t watch the same nasty movies as you do.”

“Can’t believe you two are dating,” Dan mutters.

Thomas sends him a look, but can’t help but smile despite himself. He likes Dan. And Dan is right. In fact, Thomas and Jennie probably would have broken up this morning, if the day hadn’t turned to shit. Thomas had set his mind: He was going to tell her straight up that he didn’t want to go out with her anymore. That was the reason he agreed to go on the paper route with her in the first place. He didn’t know she had also talked Dan into coming along.

“Jesus, it’s still bleeding,” Jennie complains. “How can it still be bleeding? It’s just a scratch.”

Thomas looks over at her and sees her uncoiling the towel from around her arm. “What are you doing?” he says. “You need to keep it tight.”

She darts him a sour look. Her mascara has left dark traces down her cheeks. “So, you’re suddenly a doctor, are you?”

Thomas is very close to being fed up. He tries to find a way to get them out of this basement, tries to think, but he keeps getting interrupted. And the noises from the door are starting to get on his nerves. A drop of sweat rolls down his nose. He blows it away, thinking: Of all the ways I could have spent my Saturday …

“Hello?” Jennie says loudly, waving at him. “I’m talking to you.”

“What?” Thomas asks through gritted teeth.

“I don’t think this stupid towel is working. We need to find some bandages or something. There has to be a first aid kit around here somewhere. Check those shelves over there, Dan.” She drops the towel on the concrete floor and points.

Dan gets up.

“Sit down, Dan,” Thomas says. “There is no first aid kit. I already checked.”

Dan hesitates, unsure whom to obey.

Jennie rounds on Thomas. “And what if you missed it? You didn’t really look, did you? You’re not the one bleeding, after all, so why would you even give a fuck?”

Thomas is on his feet and strides to Jennie in three long paces. He bends down, grabs the towel and wraps it around her arm. “Put that thing back on,” he sneers.

Jennie begins to struggle. “Don’t! Let go of me!”

Thomas manages to tie a knot, tightening it fiercely. “There! That’s how tight it should be. Got it?”

Jennie gives off a cry and tries to pull her arm away, while taking a swing at him with the other hand. Thomas catches her wrist and is just about to twist it, when Dan shouts: “Stop it! Both of you! Stop!”

The struggle stops. For a moment, Thomas and Jennie just scowl at each other. Then Thomas turns to walk away—but then he notices something. “What the hell? What’s wrong with your skin?”

Jennie turns her back to him. “Mind your own business.”

“Jennie,” he says. “Show me your arm.”

Apparently, she picks up on something in his voice, because she turns back and holds out her arm hesitantly. “It’s still bleeding,” she mutters.

And it’s true: a thin stream of pink blood runs from the cut in Jennie’s forearm and drips to the floor. But the blood doesn’t concern Thomas—he’s looking at her skin. Jennie is tan all year round, as she regularly goes to tanning salons. But around the cut the color seems to be draining from the skin, leaving a pale, greyish hue.

“I hadn’t noticed till now,” she says uncertainly. “You think it could be … blood poisoning or something?”

“I don’t think blood poisoning sets in that fast. What did you say she cut you with?”

“A knife.”

“Are you sure?”

“Well, it all happened so quickly, I didn’t really get a chance to …”

“What kind of knife? Did you see it?”

“Yes. I mean, no. I didn’t see it, but I felt it. When she attacked me.”

“What did you feel, exactly?”

“Why? Does it matter?” Jennie shakes her head in annoyed confusion. “What’s wrong? Why are you both staring at me like that?”

Dan has joined them, and like Thomas, he looks at his sister with wide, knowing eyes. “I don’t think she had a knife,” he says stiffly. “Why would she use a knife? She’s a zombie. Zombies don’t use weapons.”

It’s so obvious, Thomas should have seen it earlier. But the situation is so surreal he didn’t give it a second thought.

“Tell us what happened, Jennie,” he says, and for the first time in a long time, his voice is soft, almost loving.

Jennie’s lip starts to quiver. “It happened just as we entered the living room. I … I heard her come from behind, so I spun around. She tried stabbing me, but she tripped over something … like, an ottoman, I think. And when she fell down, that’s when the knife cut me.”

“But you didn’t actually see the knife?” Thomas asks.

“No, but …”

“Her fingernails were long,” Dan whispers. “I noticed.”

Jennie looks at the cut on her arm. “All right, maybe it was her nail and not a knife. What difference does that make?”

What difference? Thomas thinks. What difference?

Jennie wasn’t lying; she really hasn’t watched any zombie flicks. If she had, she would have known right away what a cut from a fingernail means.

But Dan knows—Thomas can tell from the look of terror and disbelief on his face, as he turns his head and stares blankly at Thomas. It’s like an unspoken question passes between the boys in that moment. Two small words.

How long?

“What is it?” Jennie asks, audible fear in her voice now. “Why are you just staring at each other? Hello? Talk to me!”

TWO

The temperature in the basement steadily rises, as does the pain in Jennie’s arm—and not a minute passes without her telling them so. The skin on her forearm gradually changes color. It’s starting to take on a greenish tone.

Dan just sits by the wall, staring at nothing. Thomas can see his lips moving, like he’s silently talking to himself.

Thomas glances at Jennie, who keeps checking her phone for a signal. Of course she didn’t believe him when he explained to her how serious the situation is. That the infection will probably become fatal within a few hours. That she will most likely end up like the lady outside the door. Jennie kept stubbornly saying it was only blood poisoning and that she just needed to go to the hospital.

But Thomas knows her too well. He can tell she’s scared.

He hides his face in his sweaty palms. How did they end up here? Less than an hour ago they were in his car, driving down the road, sweating and listening to music.

They’re almost at the end of the route, only four stops left.

Dan is in the backseat next to the box of newspapers.

Jennie has tilted back her seat and put her feet up on the dashboard. “I can’t believe you bought a car without air-conditioning. Honestly! What’s the point in having a car if it doesn’t have air-con? We’re burning up!”

Thomas pretends not to hear her and concentrates on the GPS. They’re a few miles outside town. The house appears at the end of the long, dusty gravel road. He parks in the courtyard.

“It’s your turn, Dan,” Jennie says. “If she doesn’t come to the door, just go inside and put it on the table in the scullery. That’s what I usually do.”

Dan obediently leaves the car and trudges to the front door, a rolled-up newspaper in his hand.

Thomas turns down the radio slightly and looks sideways at Jennie. She’s wearing sunglasses, so he can’t see her eyes. Good. That’ll make it easier. He’s just about to say it. The words are on his lips.

“I don’t think it’s working out between us anymore.”

But he can’t get them out. He just can’t. The moment is not right.

Instead, he says: “Who lives here?”

“Some older lady,” she yawns. “She’s kind of weird. I think she suffers from dementia or something.”

“Does she live alone?”

“Yeah, can you believe it? I mean, who the hell wants to live out here in the middle of nowhere all by themselves?”

At that moment, Dan screams from inside the house.

Thomas and Jennie look at each other for a brief second. Then they each open their doors and jump out. They run to the front door.

As soon as Thomas enters the house, time seems to speed up tenfold. He briefly notices the weird décor: colorful stones and crystals everywhere, faces cut out of wood, a large bamboo flute, dried flowers dangling from strings in the ceiling. He also registers a bad smell. But there’s no time to think before the woman steps out a few feet in front of him.

Thomas has played a lot of Resident Evil and watched every episode of The Walking Dead—he knows what a zombie looks like. Her eyes are pale yet piercing, her mouth contorted into a snarl, the grimace made even more pronounced because of the missing piece of her lower lip. It looks like it might have been torn off, revealing the grey teeth and pink gums. Blood has run down her chin and stained the front of the dress, which once was white but now looks more like a butcher’s apron. Her long, silver hair hangs in a thin, whiplike braid.

She reaches out her arms and staggers towards him on boney, wobbly legs, while producing a low rumbling growl from deep down her throat.

Then, everything turns to chaos. Tipped over furniture, yells and screams, grabbing and pushing.

Jennie screaming: “She cut me! She cut me!”

Thomas tries to get to the front door, but is cut off, and suddenly they’re all cornered. A door behind them. Thomas yanks it open, revealing a dim staircase leading down to the basement. They have no other choice. They flee down into the darkness.

And now, here they are. In the dim, dusty heat. The zombie lady has followed them down the stairs and is now waiting on the other side of the door. Scraping and moaning, scraping and moaning.

Jennie gives off a tortured sound. She wipes her forehead. “Christ, I’m sweating buckets. I think I might have a fever. I really need to see a doctor.” She glances at the door. “Doesn’t she ever leave?”

Thomas just shakes his head.

“Well, she has to leave sometime,” Jennie persists. “Doesn’t she get sleepy or something?”

“Nope. She’ll keep at it until she rots.”

Jennie wrinkles her nose. “Don’t say stuff like that. The smell down here is bad enough.” She gets up and goes to the door. “Hello? Can you hear me? Could you please move away from the door? I need to get out. But please don’t try to hurt me, okay?”

The scraping noises grow louder, more eager. Like the zombie can sense Jennie standing right on the other side.

Thomas gets up. “Don’t open the door.”

Jennie rolls her eyes. “I’m not going to open the door as long as she’s out there. Do you think I’m a complete moron?”

“Actually, yeah, I do think that, since only a moron would try talking sense into a zombie.” He jabs himself with a finger in the temple. “She’s not a person anymore. She’s a walking corpse. How many times do I need to tell you? The only thing on her mind is fresh meat. She wants to—”

“Yeah, I know, she wants to eat us all alive,” Jennie sneers. “Right, whatever.” She goes back to the chair and slumps down. Then, she lights up. “Hey, what if we’re completely quiet?”

“You’re the only one still talking,” Thomas remarks as he sits back down.

Jennie pretends not to hear him. “Maybe she’ll forget about us if she can’t hear us. Maybe she’ll go back upstairs. You know, to look for someone else to … eat.”

The idea has actually crossed Thomas’s mind. “It depends on whether her senses are still working, or if she’s driven by instincts. Maybe she doesn’t need to hear us, maybe she can simply sense we’re here.” He looks at Dan. “What do you think?”

Dan blinks, obviously surprised to be asked for his opinion. “Well … I don’t know. I guess it’s worth a try.”

“Right,” Jennie says. “From now on, no one makes a sound.”

They all fall silent. All except for the zombie. It goes on scraping, moaning.

Tirelessly. Insatiable.

THREE

Half an hour passes by.

Dan looks briefly in a box of books before lying down on a blanket, curled up like a dog. Thomas is slumped over on his seat, almost nodding off despite the heat. His clothes are sticking damply to his skin, his mouth is dry. Both of the two narrow windows are open wide, but only a warm, lazy breeze seeps in.

Jennie is the first one to break the silence. “Right, it’s obviously not working,” she snaps. “She’s not going to leave.” She sighs. “I’m just … so … fucking … thirsty! Honestly, I’m going to die if I don’t get something to drink soon.”

We’re all going to die if we don’t get something to drink soon, Thomas thinks, wiping a dangling drop of sweat from his brow.

“Look,” Dan says, getting up. “I found this in one of the boxes.” He comes over, holding out an old photo album for the others to see.

“It must be her when she was young,” Jennie says, as Dan flips through the pages, pointing to a slim woman with long, blonde hair.

The photos tell a story of the woman going on a journey to somewhere warm and tropical. The locals are black.

“Where is it?” Jennie asks. “Africa or something?”

Dan slips out one of the photos and checks the backside. “Haiti, it says.”

The photos show a wedding. Not a traditional one in a church with a bride in a white dress. Instead, the woman is standing with her black husband under the open sky on a beach at sunset. All around them, the guests are dressed and painted in what seems to be the traditional local outfits.

“She married one of them,” Jennie says. “How sweet.”

Dan flips through the pages. Pictures of the woman and her husband in this house. A picture of the woman with a large, pregnant belly. A family photo: the woman, her husband, and a half-black boy. The woman’s hair grows silvery, her skin starts to wrinkle, and her son becomes a man. Him kissing a redhaired woman. The last of the photos shows a small, mulatto girl, smiling between her mom and dad.

As they reach the end of the album, the spell is broken, and Thomas gets to his feet. “Listen, I think I know how we can get out of here.”

Jennie gives off a tiny exclamation of excitement, and Dan straightens up.

“We can’t contact anyone outside. We can’t even hope for someone to come by. She lived alone out here, so it could be days before she has a visitor.”

“I thought of the mailman,” Dan interjects. “Don’t they usually come on the weekends too?”

“Maybe,” Thomas says. “But that wouldn’t make a difference. The mailbox is up by the road—I noticed it when we came. The mailman won’t come anywhere near the house.”

Dan bows his head.

Thomas nods towards the door. “It doesn’t seem like she … like it … is planning to give up anytime soon. Which means we need to find a way out ourselves, and the sooner, the better. If we just keep sitting here, we’ll lose strength. And Jennie’s arm …” He glances at her. “We need to get her to the hospital, so they can treat her.”

He avoids Dan’s eyes, yet he can hear the lie in his own voice. If zombie movies taught him anything, it’s that once you get bitten or scratched, the show’s over. There is no vaccine, no cure, no nothing. The victim can only wait for fever, coma, death.

And then: life once more.

“Sounds fine with me,” Jennie says, sounding a bit more optimistic. “But how do we do it? As soon as we open the door, she’ll come barging in.”

“That’s right, and I can’t think of a way to lure her away from the door. That’s why we need to let her in.”

Dan lets out a gasp. “We can’t!”

“There’s no other way. As far as I can tell, we have three options once we open the door. One: We can try and slip past her and get up the stairs. It’ll be difficult, though, since there’s three of us, and there isn’t a lot of room to move around. I think there’s a big risk not all three of us will make it out of here unharmed. Two: We can try and lure her into a trap. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy. If we can make her trip or throw a blanket over her head—just confuse her for a few seconds, that might be all we need to get past her.”

“That sounds dangerous,” Dan says. “We need to get pretty close to her if we’re going to trip her or throw something over her head.”

“I know. That’s why I’m partial to the third option.” Thomas gets up and makes his way through the basement. Against the wall in the corner leans a piece of rusty iron pipe. Thomas grabs it and weighs it in his grasp. It feels heavy and cold and assuring. He looks at Jennie and Dan. “The third option is fighting our way past her.”

Jennie raises her brow. “You’re not serious, are you? You want to hit her with that thing? That’s assault! And she’s old—what if you kill her?”

“That’s the idea,” Thomas says dryly.

Jennie stares at him in disbelief. “Are you insane?”

“She’s already dead,” Dan reminds his sister. “Killing her again would actually be kind. Like, an act of mercy. That’s what they always say in the movies, anyway.”

Jennie shakes her head. “You two need to get a grip. This is not a movie. And it’s not some crazy monster on the other side of that door. She might be sick or something, but she’s still just an old lady. Did you forget about the photos already? She has kids and grandkids and everything. We can’t just … kill her with a pipe!”

“We can,” Thomas says, but he doesn’t feel quite as convinced as he sounds. Because it’s going to be him doing the killing. Jennie is obviously out of the picture—she couldn’t hit the floor if she fell down, especially not with her wounded arm. And Dan isn’t strong enough. Thomas grips the pipe firmer. He used to play rounders when he was little, and he’s confident he can put the zombie to rest with one good swing—providing he doesn’t miss.

“You’ll only get one try,” Dan says darkly. “If you miss, she’ll get you instead.”

“I might have time for two, maybe three tries,” Thomas says. “Look.” He swings the pipe swiftly. It’s heavier than he expects, and it slips out of his grip, whooshes through the air and hits the wall with a bang.

Jennie screams. “Watch it! Are you out of your mind? You could have hit me!”

On the other site of the door, the zombie scratches more eagerly, apparently sensing the commotion.

Thomas picks up the pipe. His palms are reddish brown. “It was because of the rust,” he mutters. He gives it another go, more carefully this time. But he still has trouble swinging the pipe hard enough without losing his grip. It seems Dan is right. He’ll only get one shot.

“I vote for the second option,” Jennie says. “One of you guys get behind the door with the blanket, and as soon as she enters, you throw it over her head and push her down. When she falls, we all make a run for it.”

Thomas considers the idea. “What if one of us doesn’t make it out before she gets back up? Then that person would be seriously fucked.” He shakes his head. “No, I still think eliminating the threat is our best course of action.”

“Eliminating the threat,” Jennie repeats. “Just listen to yourself, would you? You think you’re some kind of soldier? You couldn’t even swing that thing without dropping it.”

“I told you, that was because of the rust. Now I’m prepared for it, it won’t happen again.”

“And what if it does? Then we’re all fucked!”

Thomas scoffs at her. He turns to Dan. “What do you think? We need a deciding vote.”

Dan doesn’t answer; he seems to be studying the place where the pipe hit the wall. Then, he says: “I vote for a fourth solution.” He points, revealing a hole in the wall.

Thomas comes closer. “What the hell? I thought it was a brick wall.”

“No, it’s something much more smoldery. Plaster, I think. And it’s not very thick, either. There seems to be another room on the other side!”

Thomas bends down and looks through the hole. It’s too dark to see anything, but an unpleasant smell seeps through.

“Phew,” he says, pulling away. “Something stinks really bad in there.”

“Who cares?” Jennie exclaims. “Just hurry up and break down that wall, will you?”

Thomas pushes Dan aside, raises the iron pipe and starts swinging.

FOUR

The wall proves surprisingly easy to break down. For every swing of the pipe, large, crumbling pieces come off. Soon the air is filled with white dust.

Thomas is panting and sweating, as he pulls back and swings, pulls back and swings. The putrid smell gets more and more poignant as the hole in the wall grows larger.

Within five minutes he has made an opening wide enough for them to pass through. He puts aside the pipe and just stands there for a moment, heaving for breath and feeling faint from the heat.

“Right,” Dan says, looking from Thomas to Jennie. “Who’s first?”

“Let me just catch my breath,” Thomas says. “Then I’ll go.”

Jennie gets up resolutely. “Sorry, but I’m getting out of here right now.” She manages two steps before she starts wobbling. It looks like her legs simply give way, and she stumbles into an old dresser.

Dan jumps forward to catch her. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah, sure,” she mumbles. “I just got a little dizzy, that’s all.”

Dan helps her to sit back down. Thomas studies her face closely. Her cheeks have turned feverish red, the sweat is beading on her forehead. The skin on her wounded arm has turned alarmingly dark.

It’s going a lot faster than I thought, Thomas thinks, swallowing a lump tasting like drywall. Really hope we find a way out through the next room … or Dan and I will soon have a much bigger problem on our hands.

He pushes the thought aside, turns to the hole in the wall. The stench is really bad now. He can also hear something buzzing in there. He holds his nose as he gets out his cell phone and activates the flashlight.

The next room has no windows. It seems larger than the one they’re in right now, but that might only be because it’s not stuffed with junk. The only pieces of furniture are an oblong dining table in the corner and in the center something which reminds him of a small altar. It’s only knee-high and covered in a red tablecloth. Around the altar, in a circle on the floor, are six wooden stools all facing the center. As though someone recently held a small round table conference.

“What’s in there?” Dan asks, coming closer. “Yuk, what’s that horrid smell?”

“I don’t know, but look!” Thomas points the light into the corner. A wooden ladder leads to a hatch in the ceiling. Thin beams of daylight are streaming through the cracks.

“It’s a way out!” Dan gasps.

“What’s in there?” Jennie asks from behind them.

Thomas steps in through the hole. He moves carefully along the wall until he reaches the ladder. He crawls up a few steps, so he can reach the hatch. He gives it a push, but it doesn’t give. He pushes harder and hears the clinging of metal.

“Goddamnit. It’s locked from the other side.”

Dan lets out a moan.

Thomas steps back down and notices a switch on the wall. He flips it. A big lightbulb turns on reluctantly.

A loud gasp from Dan makes Thomas turn around.

So that’s where the smell is coming from …

On each stool sits a small pile of furry mess. They are gutted animals: cats, rabbits, even a tiny dog. They have all been flayed and their skin nailed to the seats. The bared flesh is dark with rot, and an army of flies is buzzing around the feast. Blood has trickled down the legs of the stools and produced small puddles on the floor. Thomas looks around and notices strange symbols drawn on the walls with chalk. From the ceiling hangs a variety of objects in strings, such as large, black feathers, dried branches and thin bones.

“Holy shit,” Dan whispers. “She’s made some sort of crazy ritual down here.”

Thomas runs his forearm across his cheeks and realizes he’s sweating even more profusely now. The temperature is even higher in this room. The stench from the rotting animals has made its way into his sinuses—he can almost taste it.

“We gotta get out of here,” Jennie says, as she steps tentatively through the wall. “We need to … we need …” Her voice trails off, as her eyes go blank. “Dan … would you please …? I’m a little … dizzy …”

Dan tries to catch her, but this time she collapses, slipping through his arms and on to the floor, her eyes halfway open, her mouth still trying to speak.

“Jennie? Jennie!” Dan calls out her name and shakes her gently, but he doesn’t get any comprehensive respond from Jennie, so he looks up at Thomas. “She’s fainted.”

Thomas waves off a fly. “I could tell she was getting worse. I guess we’ll have to carry her when we—”

A bump from upstairs.

Both of them look up at the ceiling.

“Was that her?” Dan whispers. “The zombie lady, I mean.”

Thomas goes back to the hole in the wall, sticks his head through and listens for a moment. He can still hear the sound of scraping nails from the door. He turns to Dan. “It wasn’t her; she’s still by the door.”

“The door …” Jennie mutters without opening her eyes.

Another bump from above. The ceiling gives off a low creak.

Thomas and Dan stare at each other.

“Someone else is in the house,” Dan croaks.

FIVE

Thomas has been standing on the ladder with his ear pressed against the hatch for two minutes, when Dan no longer can take the silence.

“Do you hear anything?” he whispers.

Thomas steps back down onto the floor, shaking his head in mild confusion. “It doesn’t sound like a big person. The steps are very light. Perhaps it’s a child. But as far as I can tell, whoever is up there is just wandering about in circles.”

Dan bites his lip. “Do you think it’s a zombie?”

“That’s the million-dollar question, I guess,” Thomas says, shrugging.

“Should we try and call out for them?”

Thomas runs a hand through his hair, which is greasy from sweat and dust. “If it is a zombie, we don’t want to draw its attention.”

“But if it’s a living person, they might be able to open the hatch and let us out.”

“Zombie,” Jennie echoes in a faint mutter.

Thomas darts a glance at her. Although he has come to more or less hate her over the last few months, it still pains him to see her like this. Dan has taken the blanket from the other room, rolled it up and put it under her head. Her wounded arm is resting on her stomach. The sweat is pouring from her face, the eyes are rolling around beneath the lids. Her legs twitch now and then.

She’s going into a coma, Thomas thinks. Eventually, she’ll die. After that, it’s only a matter of time before she opens her eyes again. He shivers violently despite the stifling heat.

“I think we should call out,” Dan says, licking the sweat from his upper lip. “If it is a zombie, we can’t get out that way anyway. It makes no difference whether it knows we’re here or not.”

Thomas takes a deep breath. “You’re right. We might as well try.”

“Call for him, Thomas!” Jennie exclaims suddenly. “Just call for him!”

They both look at the sweating, fevered girl on the floor. It’s almost like she has been following the conversation, but it’s obvious to Thomas that she’s merely delirious.

Dan starts sniveling.

Thomas reaches out and squeezes his shoulder. “We can still get her to the hospital. As soon as we get out of here, we run straight to the car, and …”

Dan looks up at him, tears in his eyes. “I know the rules, you know.”

Thomas can’t think of anything else to say.

Jennie twitches again.

“Are we just supposed to … leave her?” Dan asks, blinking as a fly lands on his cheek. “If we get out of here, I mean.”

“I think we might have to. For now, anyway. Once we get a hold of the police, they’ll have to come and get her.”

“You think there’s still police?”

“Why shouldn’t there be?”

Dan shrugs. “Because the world is probably ending.”

Thomas’s mouth glides open. The thought hasn’t even crossed his mind. What if Dan is right? What if this is the zombie apocalypse? Even if they make it out of here, they just might meet a world where everything is falling apart, where the zombies are rapidly taking over and where the remaining survivors are struggling to keep alive. His tongue suddenly feels way too big and sticky.

What about Dad? Or Mom? Or Christian? Or all the guys from work? Are they walking around as zombies right now?

“We’d better not think about that right now,” he manages to say, shoving aside the images. “First we need to focus on getting out of this fucking basement.”

“All right, but …” Dan glances at his sister. “What if we can’t get the hatch open?”

Thomas catches his drift. “Then we’ll have to tie her up.”

Dan looks ill just thinking about it, but he nods bravely.

Thomas goes to the ladder and looks up at the hatch. Then, he calls out: “Hello? Can you hear us up there?”

They listen.

Jennie mutters something.

Thomas can hear the steps coming across the floor. They stop right above the hatch. A few seconds of dead silence follow.

“We’re down here!” Thomas yells. “In the basement! Right below you!”

They listen again. Another second or two passes by in silence.

Then, there’s the sounds of two muffled bumps. Thomas imagines how the person drops down on his knees. He prays that whoever is up there will answer him within the next second or two, or at least begin to work the lock.

But it’s a completely different sound that comes from the hatch.

The sound of scraping nails.

Thomas feels his heart sink. He turns his head to look at Dan.

The hopeful expression on Dan’s face slowly crumbles. “Oh, no,” he breathes. “It’s another zombie …”

SIX

Dan looks around. “What do you think happened here?”

Thomas tries not to look at the gutted animals. “Something really fucked up.”

“It almost looks like a sacrifice,” Dan goes on.

Thomas shrugs. He has almost gotten used to the stench and the flies constantly landing on him by now. “Maybe she was a witch or something.”

Dan approaches the table. It has a wide range of jars and pots, stones, crystals and wooden figurines. There’s a row of bird skulls and an old, thick book. Dan opens it and leafs through the pages.

“What does it say?” Thomas asks.

“I don’t know—it’s not written in Danish.”

“Is it English?”

“No, it’s not a language I’ve ever seen. But it has some pretty sick illustrations.”

Thomas tries to say something, but starts coughing instead. “Christ, I could really use a glass of water right now. My throat is dry as sand.”

“Check this out,” Dan mutters, still leafing through the book. “I think she used this when she did the ritual.”

Thomas goes to see. Dan stops at a page with a single, large drawing which resembles the lineup in the room. A lot of incomprehensible words are written around the illustration.

“What do you think was the point of the ritual?” Dan asks.

“No idea. I didn’t go to Hogwarts.”

Dan doesn’t seem to hear the joke. He just starts turning pages again.

Thomas goes to check on Jennie. She’s fallen still, and it’s almost like she’s just sleeping normally. But as he crouches down to feel her cheek, he finds it glowing hot. Her arm is dark and swollen, the skin abnormally distended and shiny. The infection obviously already reached the fingers, which are thick like sausages.

A memory comes to him. That night they met at the disco. He recalls the tinkling sensation in his stomach when Jennie slid her fingers in between his. He feels a deep stab of pain and sympathy.

Don’t think about that now.

He straightens up and takes a deep breath. Suddenly, he just wants to get out of here. Right now. “We need to choose one of the ways, Dan,” he says firmly. “I vote for the hatch. If it’s only a kid up there, it’ll be easier for us to get past it. Plus, if we break open the hatch, it’ll probably fall through. If we’re lucky, it’ll break its legs.”

Dan nods. “You’re right. Let’s try.”

“Maybe we need to look for something to use as a weapon …”

“How about this?” Dan takes something from the table which Thomas didn’t notice till now. It’s a huge knife, the blade black with dried-up blood.

“Holy shit! That’s the biggest knife I’ve ever seen.”

“I know, it was just lying here, next to the book. I think she used it to flay the animals.”

“Right, now we only need something to punch our way through the hatch. I guess this is our best option.” He picks up the iron pipe and goes to the ladder. He darts a look at Dan. “Would you keep an eye on your sister?”

Dan nods, his face solemn.

Thomas takes a few steps up the ladder and starts punching the pipe up into the hatch. It’s made of wood, and it’ll take quite some time to break through; his punches only leave small marks.

After a minute or so, he takes a break and rests his arm. From the other side of the hatch he can hear the scratching has grown faster and louder.

It’s helping me, he thinks and almost bursts into laughter. It’s trying to break through from the other side.

Dan has brought the book and is now sitting next to Jennie studying it.

“Dan?”

He looks up. “Yeah?”

“Maybe you shouldn’t … you know, be that close to her.”

Dan glances at his sister, then moves a few yards away.

SEVEN

Thomas has been banging away at the hatch for some minutes, when Dan speaks.

Thomas stops and looks down at him. “What’s that?”

“She’s written something in Danish,” he says, pointing to a place in the book. “It’s on the last few pages.”

“Huh,” Thomas says, not feeling particularly interested. Small chips have started coming off the hatch. He’s about halfway through, and he’s earned a short break, so he places the pipe under his arm and rests his hands. A couple of sore blisters have appeared on his palms.

“It’s very confusing,” Dan goes on, frowning. “But I think I figured out what the ritual was for. Listen to this ...” He starts reading aloud. “Seven lives are needed. Their blood must flow from them and find its way to the new veins where it once flowed warmly but now has turned cold. Once more it will flow with warmth and life …” Dan looks up at this point, nodding towards the table. “I think the animals were sacrifices. She killed them to bring something else to life.”

“But there’s only six of them,” Thomas points out. “Where is the seventh?”

Dan swallows audibly. “Get this. Farther down it says … Oh, my beloved darling. You most beautiful child. Your Little Good Angel is dead and gone, but your Big Good Angel can never die. It’s my fault. Take my blood so you can once again live.”

Silence falls over the basement, as Dan stops—except for the scratching noises from the hatch, and the ragged heaving of Jennie’s breath.

“So there was a child,” Thomas mutters. “And it died?”

“Yeah, I think so. Perhaps there was an accident. And then the woman used this ritual to bring the kid back to life. She needed seven sacrifices, and the seventh …”

“… was herself,” Thomas concludes. “Fuck me. It’s like something out of a horror movie.”

“The last thing she wrote was: Awaken, my dearest. I guess that was right before she did it.”

Thomas points to the hatch. “So that’s the child up there?”

“I think so, yeah.”

Thomas tries to process the information. “I guess that’s good news, then.”

Dan looks baffled. “How so?”

“Because this was where it started. It means the world hasn’t ended. Only this house.”

“But we don’t know if they have been outside the house.”

“If they had, why would they have returned? I think they’ve been trapped here until we came by. None of them were able to open a door or a window.”

Dan doesn’t exactly look thrilled. “So no one else but us knows about it. And if we die, there’ll be three more zombies in this house. So when the next poor guy shows up … they won’t know until it’s too late, and the zombies will get out.”

Thomas thinks for a moment. “You’re right. I guess it’s up to us. We can’t let them get away. We need to find a way to keep them here, until we can reach the police, and—”

He’s interrupted as Jennie suddenly gives off a loud, rasping gasp. She doesn’t open her eyes, but her face contorts into a painful grimace. The flies are crawling all over her.

“It won’t be long,” Thomas mutters. “We need to find something to tie her up with.”

He steps down from the ladder and goes to the first room to look. The best he can find is a piece of cord. Back in the other room he finds an old, rusty electric heater mounted to the wall.

“Help me move her, Dan.”

Together the boys gently drag Jennie across the floor. It’s easy, since she has suddenly gone completely limp and quiet again. Her skin is no longer particularly warm, either. Thomas figures she has slipped into a coma. He’s amazed at the speed of the infection.

He pulls the cord tightly to test its strength. It seems very strong, so he ties one end to the heater, making sure to do a few extra knots just to be sure.

This is where they always fuck up in the movies. Some fool doesn’t tie the rope properly, so the knot unties itself once the zombie wakes up and starts tugging.

Thomas ties the other end of the cord around Jennie’s ankle and makes it as tight as he can, with three strong knots.

Dan looks at his sister, a pained expression on his face. “How long do you think it’ll be?”

Thomas reaches out to feel her pulse. It’s very faint. “Not long,” he whispers. “We better keep our distance from this point on. Do you … uhm … want to say goodbye?”

Dan squeezes his lips firmly together. He kneels down in front of Jennie. Thomas doesn’t want to look, so he turns his back, but he can still hear Dan whisper.

“Jennie? I don’t know if you can hear me, but … I hope so. I’m really sorry this had to happen. I wish I could make it better. You … you were a good big sister to me. Most of the time, anyway.” He sniffs wetly. “And by the way … I was the one who hid your phone that time you couldn’t find it for three days. I did it because I was mad at you. I’m sorry.”

Dan gets to his feet and wipes his eyes with the sleeve of his T-shirt.

“I’m sorry, Dan. She didn’t deserve to die.”

Dan nods and walks to the table.

Thomas stays with Jennie for a moment, looking at her, feeling like he needs to say something, but unsure what. “I love you,” seems so tacky, so movie-like. Instead, he just whispers: “Bye, Jennie. Sorry we need to leave you like this.”

He’s just about to turn away, when he notices something different about her. He kneels down and puts a finger under her nose. No wind. Jennie isn’t breathing anymore. He turns his head and looks at Dan.

Dan stares back at him, shifting his weight from foot to foot. “Is she … is she dead?”

Thomas nods.

Dan breaks down into tears. He slumps to the floor and sobs into his palms. “Why is this happening? Why us? Couldn’t it have been someone else who had to take out those stupid papers?”

Thomas feels a hard lump in his throat. The whole thing is still too surreal to take in. It’s gone way too fast. He can’t believe Jennie is gone—not really. It starts spinning behind his eyes. A sharp headache is throbbing right underneath his temples. He has never been this thirsty in his life.

He goes and picks up the pipe and starts banging away at the hatch once more. Then, Dan calls out his name.

Thomas turns around. Dan is standing a few feet away, stiff as a board, pointing to Jennie.

Jennie is lying in the exact same position; she hasn’t moved an inch. But her eyes are open. They’re staring up into the ceiling.

They’re blank.

But alive.

EIGHT

Thomas bangs away faster and faster. He’s no longer worried about the zombie child waiting on the other side of the hatch. He doesn’t register the dust or the woodchips hitting his face and getting into his eyes. He doesn’t even feel the blisters burning on his hands. He just wants to get out of here before Jennie comes back to life.

Dan has gone to the farthest corner. He’s just standing there, staring across the room at his sister, who’s still lying there, not moving, eyes open wide.

Almost through ... almost through ...

The muscles in his arms are aching. Between the blows he can hear the zombie scratching eagerly right above him.

And then it happens.

A piece the size of a fist breaks off. Thomas lowers the pipe, panting, and stares up through the hole. For a moment, nothing happens.

Then a milky-white eye appears on the other side. The dead gaze fastens on Thomas, as he feels his skin contracting all over his back. The eye disappears, and instead a tiny, greyish hand comes through the hole. Judging from the remains of sky-blue nail polish, the hand once belonged to a girl. The hand grabs and flails eagerly in empty air.

“I think it’s her,” Thomas says. “The girl from the photo album.”

Dan doesn’t reply.

Thomas turns to look at him, and immediately sees what Dan sees.

Jennie is sitting up. If he didn’t know better, he could almost be tempted to think Jennie’s body might have fought off the infection, that she’s no longer ill.

But one good look at her face is enough to break that illusion. The seventeen-year-old girl who less than half an hour ago was Thomas’s annoying girlfriend, is dead. The creature now sitting there, glaring around with an empty expression, has nothing to do with Jennie. It looks like her, but behind the eyes is nothing human; only hunger.

The Jennie zombie bares its tiny, white teeth and growls from deep in its throat. It starts getting to its feet with cumbersome movements, like an overgrown toddler.

Something flies across Thomas’s brain at that moment. He has seen a lot of zombie movies. In some of them, the zombies run around like people on speed. They can sprint, jump and even climb fences. But in other movies, they are slow and wobbly and move around like sleepwalkers. Those movies have always been his favorites, because the zombies are a lot more terrifying when they move slowly.

Jennie obviously belongs to that category. It takes her half a minute to stand up. When she finally manages, she immediately reaches both arms out towards Thomas and takes two steps forward.

For a moment, Thomas is certain the cord won’t hold. It will simply snap and Jennie will walk right over to him, put her arms around his neck, like she used to do back when they were still in love, but this time it wouldn’t be to kiss him—instead, she would bury her fingernails in his neck and bite off his ear. He sees it all very clearly.

The cord holds.

The pull of it is almost enough to throw her off-balance. She stumbles and snarls. Regains her balance and tries for another step forward. The cord stops her once more. She tries again. And again. She doesn’t look down, not even for a second. She’s not at all concerned with finding out what is holding her back. Her eyes are only fixed on Thomas. Her first meal, waiting right there, a few yards in front of her. She steps forward again. Is stopped. Again. Stopped.

Thomas forces himself to regain focus, and he looks over at Dan, only to see a boy who has obviously left the situation mentally. His gaze is distant, his lips are trembling, and he is absentmindedly shaking his head.

“Dan? … Dan! … Dan!”

Dan turns his head and looks at Thomas, his eyes coming somewhat into focus again.

“I’m almost through the hatch now. As soon as it breaks, we need to be quick—so be ready, okay?”

Dan nods.

Thomas turns back to the hatch in the ceiling. The zombie girl’s arm is still groping around for anything to grab. He directs another blow at the hatch. The zombie girl’s fingers brush across the back of his hand.

“Fucking hell,” he hisses and pulls away. “She almost scratched me … Get away!” He hits the zombie across the hand, hard. It only makes her grope more vigorously.

“Thomas,” Dan says, his voice is weirdly dreamlike. “I think the heater is coming loose.”

Thomas turns his head. The cord around Jennie’s leg still looks in pretty fine shape. But the electric heater, which he tied it to, has come off the wall at one end. Now it’s dangling crookedly off the wall, threatening to come off entirely with every tug from Jennie’s leg.

Fuck, fuck, fuck! Why didn’t I think to check the stupid thing was securely attached to the wall?

Desperately, he turns to the hatch again, hitting it three time in a row, the woodwork rustling with every blow. The zombie girl grabs at the pipe, but catches Thomas’s wrist instead.

He shrieks and pulls his hand away, staring at it. No scratch marks. But it was a really close call.

Jennie lets out a moan behind him. She pulls more eagerly now. As though she can sense she’s almost free. The heater is hanging by one stubborn hinge now.

There is only one thing to do.

Thomas jumps down from the ladder and steps towards Jennie. “Turn away, Dan.”

“What are you gonna do?” Dan croaks.

“Turn away!”

Dan turns away.

Thomas tightens his grip on the pipe. He looks down, not wanting to face Jennie. Come on. You can do it. It’s not Jennie anymore. Don’t look at it. It’s not Jennie.

He counts to three. Then he steps forward and raises the pipe. Just as he swings it, his eyes lock with Jennie. It takes off some of the force of the blow. But he still hits his target with an audible slam.

Jennie stumbles sideways and falls to her knees. It doesn’t seem to bother her, though. She simply gets back up and resumes her tireless effort to get to him.

Don’t look at it!

But he can’t help it. He stares at Jennie’s face. It looks all wrong. Like her skull has been bent out of shape. Her cheekbone is pressed inwards, the skin under her eye is bulging, causing the eye to squeeze shut. Her mouth is contorted into a crooked snarl.

Holy shit … what did I do?

Thomas feels the nausea come rolling up into his throat. He drops the pipe with a loud clanging. He can’t hit her again. No way.

He squeezes his fingers into his temples. What do we do? What the fuck do we do?

He looks up at the hatch again, and an idea comes to mind. It’s crazy. But it just might work. And he’s pretty sure he can do it. After all, he didn’t know the zombie girl like he knew Jennie. He hasn’t even seen her face. It wouldn’t feel personal. He hopes.

“Dan,” he mutters. “Hand me the knife.”

As Dan goes to the table to get the knife, Thomas uses the pipe to reach the towel that Jennie had been using as a pillow before she died. She reaches for him hungrily, but he makes sure to keep a safe distance.

“I need your help,” he tells Dan. “I’ll catch her arm with this towel, so she can’t scratch us. Then you hold it while I cut.”

“Cut?” Dan asks, looking puzzled for a moment, but then he catches on, and his expression turns to horror. Still, he nods bravely.

Thomas goes to the hatch and uses the towel to catch the flailing arm. The zombie child starts struggling, but Thomas manages to wrap the hand tightly.

“Here,” he says over his shoulder. “Take it!”

Dan comes closer, reaches out hesitantly and grabs hold of the towel.

“Grip it firmly,” Thomas demands. When he feels sure Dan has a confident grip, he lets go, bends down and grabs the knife. Stepping back up on the ladder, he mutters: “Right. Right, here we go.”

He picks out a spot right below the elbow and puts the blade to the skin. He takes a breath. His stomach feels like it might turn itself inside out any moment. He tries not to think of the photos from the album.

Do it. Your own and Dan’s lives depend on it. Do it now!

Thomas closes his eyes and cuts. The blade sinks into the arm way too easily. It cuts through the dead meat like it is butter. He feels the cool liquid spurting out, drenching his hand and dripping onto his T-shirt. There is no audible reaction from the zombie child, and she doesn’t even try to pull back her arm. She just keeps struggling to get free of the towel so she can grab one of them.

Thomas cuts even deeper and feels the knife hit something hard. It’s the bone. He bites down hard and pushes with all his strength, wriggling the knife back and forth in a sawing motion. It doesn’t give, so he increases the pressure even further, grabbing the knife with both hands, leaning sideways, putting his whole body into the task.

“Come on, come on,” someone snarls, and Thomas realizes it’s him. His arms are shaking, his muscles are aching with the effort. The growling of the zombie child fills his ears.

Then, suddenly a loud crack as the bone gives. It’s more due to the pressure than the knife.

Thomas drops the knife and tumbles to the floor. Dan lets go of the towel and steps back. Thomas looks up, expecting to see a bloody stump where the arm used to be. But the arm is still there, still attached. Now it’s just dangling helplessly from the hole in the hatch. The fingers don’t seem able to open or close anymore. Dark red fluid is gushing from the cut and dripping to the floor.

“Right, that’s enough,” Thomas hears himself say, as he swallows several times in an effort to keep down the nausea. “Now she can’t scratch us.”

Thomas picks up the pipe, feeling more like a sleepwalker than a wakeful person, and starts banging away at the hatch once more. The zombie child is still growling and trying to grab him, but the broken arm is as useful as a garden hose with a rubber glove at the end.

Dan suddenly turns away and throws up on the floor.

Thomas darts a look at Jennie. He has almost—amazingly—forgotten about her while focusing on the zombie child. The last screw of the radiator is still holding. If they’re lucky, it will hold just long enough for them to get out.

Just as he turns his attention back to the hatch, the bloody arm disappears back up through the whole.

“No!” he shouts. “No, don’t you fucking do it! Don’t put your other arm down here! I fucking dare you!”

The thought of having to break the zombie child’s other arm is too much to bear.

But the arm doesn’t appear. Nothing appears. Instead, he can hear the zombie child getting to her feet. She walks away from the hatch.

Dan has finished puking and is wiping his mouth with his sleeve. “Where did she go?” he croaks.

“No idea.”

A new sound comes down through the hole now: it’s a whiny scratching noise. Like fingernails on glass. It takes Thomas a few seconds to figure out what the zombie child is doing.

“She went to the window,” he mumbles. “Maybe … maybe she saw something.” He turns and points. “Check the windows in the other room, Dan.”

Dan slips around Jennie, who reaches for him, and steps through the hole in the wall. Thomas holds his breath waiting. A few seconds pass. Then Dan shouts: “A car! Thomas, I can see a car! Someone’s coming!”

Thomas feels his heart leap.

At that exact moment, something happens which turns the situation upside down completely inside the steamy basement: The last screw gives way and the radiator comes loose.

NINE

The atmosphere in the car is a whole lot cooler than the air outside. And it’s not just the air conditioner.

“Could you at least put on a smile for when we see her?” Janjak asks, glancing over at Linda.

Linda pretends like she doesn’t hear him, keeping her gaze firmly on the gravel road and the house coming up ahead.

“I mean, there’s no reason for her to know we’ve been arguing.”

“It’s not arguing,” Linda mutters. “Not when you’re shouting at each other. That’s called fighting.”

Janjak sighs, running a hand across his forehead. His usual cocoa brown complexion has turned almost black thanks to the scorching summer sun. Linda hates how easily he tans; it just makes her look even paler.

“Okay, whatever,” he says. “I just don’t want her to worry.”

“I know you don’t.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Linda shakes her head.

“Huh?” he persists, looking from the road to her and back again, a note of annoyance coming back into his voice. “Don’t just clam up like that. Tell me what—”

“Fine!” Linda explodes. “You want to hear what I think? I think you’re way too protective of her.”

“Oh, that old song again …”

“Yes, that old song! You haven’t heard from her in what, a couple of hours? And you blow off our weekend together to come running for her.”

“It’s been more than a couple of hours,” he says. “And you didn’t have to come.”

“So I should just have stayed in the cabin all alone?”

“Look, she promised to call me yesterday but didn’t, and this morning I couldn’t reach her.”

“The signal is terrible out here, you know that.”

“But why didn’t my mother call, then?”

“She probably forgot. It’s not the point. The point is, you always put her first.”

Janjak throws out a hand. “Of course I do! She’s my daughter!”

“And I’m your wife. Once in a while, it’d be nice to be the one getting …” Linda cuts herself off as she realizes how pitiful she was about to sound.

She hates being in competition with the girl, hates having to fight for Janjak’s affection. And she hates herself for actually despising the girl sometimes.

“All right, look,” he says. “Let’s just put this off until later, okay? All I’m saying is, I don’t see the point in arguing when she’s around. It would be … huh.”

Linda looks over at him. “What?”

He nods ahead. “Someone’s here.”

Linda looks out the front window as they pull into the courtyard. Another car is parked on the gravel, and Janjak pulls up next to it.

“Who’s that?” Linda asks.

“I have no idea, never seen that car before.”

He turns off the engine, and Linda unbuckles.

“Hold on,” he says, putting a hand on her arm. He’s looking over at the house, frowning. “It might be better if you wait out here.”

“Why?” Linda asks.

“Just because. We don’t know who that car belongs to.”

Linda looks from the strange car to the house, noticing the front door is standing wide open. “You don’t … you don’t think it could be … like, a home robbery?”

“I don’t know. It’s probably nothing. Let me just check it out first, okay?”

Linda nods, noticing absently how completely her mood has turned in a matter of seconds. The way he’s suddenly acting protective of her has reminded her why she fell in love with him.

“Don’t you … don’t you think we should maybe … call someone?” she suggests.

“It’s probably nothing,” he repeats, offering her a brief smile. “Wouldn’t want to call the cops without a good reason. Let me just take a peek, okay? I’m sure it’s just friendly guests.”

Linda nods, even though she doesn’t feel like nodding.

Janjak opens the door, and suddenly she’s gripped by a strong sense of dread. It makes her reach out and grab him by the shirt.

“Janjak!”

He looks back in at her. “Yeah?”

She wants to say “be careful,” but that’s such a cliché movie line, so instead she resolves herself with saying: “I’m sorry.”

He smiles back at her, showing part of his big, white teeth. “Don’t be. I’ll be right back, okay?”

“Okay.”

He exists the car and closes the door behind him. He walks towards the house, taking his time, casually surveying the surroundings.

Then he disappears inside.

Linda stares after him.

The sense of dread returns, fills up her chest.

She can’t shake it.

Can’t shake the feeling that she’s just seen her husband alive for the last time.

TEN

“Hello?”

His voice quickly dies out in the silence of the house. He looks briefly around the scullery, finding nothing out of the ordinary. Nadia’s shoes are there, which means she’s probably in the house. Which should make him less worried.

“Nadia?” he calls out, stepping into the kitchen. “Sweetheart? You there?”

Still, no answer.

He walks through the kitchen and into the living room. “Mom?” he calls out. “You home?”

Weirdly, there’s still no answer.

Besides the bedroom, there’s only the upstairs. If his mom and Nadia are up there, they probably can’t hear him calling.

He’s about to head for the stairs, when he stops and looks across the living room. He didn’t notice it right away, because the room is already full of his mother’s weird stuff. But a lot of things have been tipped over, and furniture pushed around.

Janjak feels his stomach tighten.

It looks an awful lot like a fight or scuffle went down in here.

Oh, no … please don’t let anything have happened to my little girl …

Then he hears it. A sound from below.

Janjak looks down to the floor, as though trying to look through the carpet and the boards underneath.

There’s an old basement down there; he remembers playing down there as a young boy. But as far as Janjak knows, the basement has never been used for anything other than storing old stuff, and his mother scolded him badly for sneaking around down there.

There’s another sound from the basement; someone saying something in a strained voice. Janjak can’t make out the words, and he can’t recognize the voice, either.

What the hell is going on here?

He heads across the living room for the door to the stairs. Just as he’s about to open it, he notices the sound from another door a little farther away: the door to the bedroom.

Sounds like someone is scraping at the other side.

Janjak frowns. “Who’s in there?” he calls out.

No answer, but the scraping grows more eager.

He steps closer, stops, listens.

A low, guttural growl mixes in with the scraping of nails. The noises are coming from the lower part of the door. Whoever is on the other side isn’t very tall.

“Nadia?” he breathes. “I’m coming, honey.”

Janjak turns the handle.

And begins screaming.

ELEVEN

The person in front of him is his daughter. And at the same time, it isn’t. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that the person used to be his daughter.

One look into her eyes is enough to convince Janjak with absolute certainty that Nadia is no longer inhabiting the short, skinny body he knows so well.

She’s wearing her nightclothes and is barefoot. Her light brown skin has turned ashy grey, her beautiful, dark hair is hanging in ragged threads.

The lower part of her face is smeared with something dark which Janjak instinctively recognizes as blood. Like she’s been drinking a gallon of it and spilling most of it down herself.

But the most harrowing thing about her is the arm, which is both obviously broken and has also been torn almost clean off. A large, ragged gash above the elbow reveals the white bone underneath.

Nadia doesn’t seem too bothered by the injury, though, as she simply staggers right out into Janjak’s arms.

Part of him wants to recoil, wants to push her away, to run and get the hell out of here. But a deeper part, a part not concerned about his own survival, wants to hug her closely, to comfort her and call someone to help save her life.

She’s already dead! a thought screams to him as his daughter reaches out her still working arm, grabs his shirt and pulls herself into him.

For a moment, Janjak takes the gesture as a plea for comfort, and he instinctively puts his arms around her. Then he feels the sharp pain as she bites down hard on the skin right below his solar plexus, her tiny teeth cutting right through the shirt.

“Ouch!” he yelps and tries to push her back a little, which only serves to make her clamp down harder, tearing off a big piece of skin and T-shirt.

“Stop that, sweetheart!” he hears himself say, even as Nadia lunges forward, snarling and snapping her teeth like an angry dog.

He manages to hold her at arm’s length, but she pushes eagerly forward, forcing him to step backward. He steps on something round and his foot slips. He falls on his ass with a yelp of surprise. Nadia follows suit, stumbling down into his arms once more. This time, she’s even quicker to bite him, and she takes a bigger piece of skin off.

Janjak screams in pain and shoves her back again, but she squirms and he can’t get her off of him and she manages another bite, this time from his forearm.

“Stop, Nadia! Stop it!” his voice keeps repeating, even as his thoughts tell him that this is not Nadia, that this thing has got nothing to do with his beloved daughter, but somehow his brain can’t connect the fact fully.

He manages to push her off enough for him to turn around and crawl towards the kitchen. He looks back and sees her coming after him, groaning and snarling, fresh blood dripping from her lower lip, his blood.

He crawls right into the kitchen island, banging his head against it hard enough for his vision to go blurry; or maybe it’s from the blood loss, as the bite wounds on his arm and stomach are bleeding heavily now. As he looks down hazily, he sees the dark-red liquid pouring from him and coloring the tile floor.

He turns around and sits down on his butt, moving slowly like a sleepwalker, his thoughts turning sluggish as something akin to sleep is closing in. And as he sees the thing that once was his daughter come crawling at him on one arm like a crooked spider, he can only think: Why is this happening? What did I do to deserve it?

Then, gliding off into a freeing darkness, Janjak manages to actually reach out his arms, not to push her away, but to welcome her.

“It’s okay, sweetheart,” he croaks, not aware that the words are coming from himself. “Daddy’s here now.”

The last thing he sees as she crawls into his arms and pushes him down onto his back is the kitchen ceiling. And the last thing he hears is the sound of her eating away at him.

TWELVE

Once again, everything speeds up. Like fast-forwarding a movie.

Jennie staggers towards Thomas, dragging the heater noisily behind her.

Thomas is still standing on the second rung of the ladder. He turns just in time to see her, gives a yelp and jumps aside. Jennie’s outstretched hands only catch the ladder. Thomas runs behind the nearest stool, lifting it up and holding it out like a shield. A gutted rabbit still dangles from the seat.

Jennie comes at him, not paying the slightest notice to the stool, even as Thomas thrusts it at her, knocking her backwards. She just regains balance and tries again, snarling hungrily.

Thomas backs away, bumping into the table, turning in another direction. He doesn’t dare take his eyes off of Jennie, as they perform a bizarre dance: him backing up, her still dragging the heater on the cord. Thomas throws the stool at her face. She falls over backwards, but immediately tries to get back up. Thomas grabs the next stool, just as he notices Dan’s head peeking in through the hole in the wall.

“Watch out!” Thomas roars. “She’s free!”

His warning is redundant; Dan has eyes. In fact, he has very large eyes right now. They’re staring at the reanimated corpse of his older sister, now sensing his presence and turning around to come at him, her thin fingers reaching for him, her mouth gargling eagerly.

“For fuck’s sake, Dan! Get out of the way!”

This time, the warning is not redundant, as it snaps Dan out of his temporary trance. He disappears through the hole a second before Jennie bends over clumsily and tries to follow him.

Oh, shit! He’ll be trapped in there! There’s no room to move around her …

Thomas’s gaze falls on the heater still tied to Jennie’s leg. He jumps forward, grabs it and tugs hard.

Her leg jerks backwards, causing her to slide into a painful split. With a grunt she tries to crawl on, but Thomas pulls the heater again, dragging her a few feet away from the wall. Jennie flails her arms, clawing at the concrete floor, as though to pull herself forward.

Thomas tugs again, and the cord breaks, sending him tumbling backwards into a stool. Jennie, finally free of her anchor, crawls eagerly forward and slips through the hole in the wall.

“Oh, fuck … Dan! She’s coming for you!”

“I’m safe!” Dan’s voice calls back. “At least I think so …”

Thomas steps carefully to the hole and looks into the other room. Jennie has come to her feet and is making her way through the maze of old furniture and junk. She bumps into things, knocking stuff to the floor, but keeps steering determined towards the far corner, where a large dresser is standing. For a moment, Thomas figures Dan must have locked himself inside the dresser, but then he sees him on top of it. There’s little more than two feet between the dresser and the ceiling, but Dan has managed to squeeze himself into the tight space.

Jennie reaches the dresser and reaches up. The tips of her fingers are ten inches short of the top of the dresser.

“She … she can’t get to me …” Dan says, looking like he might laugh or cry any minute.

Then, there’s a loud, terrified scream from up above.

Thomas looks to the ceiling, then over at Dan. “I think our guests have met the zombie kid.”

THIRTEEN

“I need to go on,” Thomas tells Dan. “Are you gonna be okay?”

Jennie is still standing by the dresser, stretching her arms in the air, like a groupie trying to touch her idol on stage. She moans and steps a few inches from side to side, but makes no other effort to find a way to get to Dan.

“Do I have a choice?” Dan asks grimly. “It’s okay, just go. I’ll make it till you find help.”

“Right. If anything happens, just call out as loud as you can.”

“I will.”

Thomas darts one last look at Jennie. She’s completely absorbed with Dan and doesn’t seem like she’ll get tired of him anytime soon. Thomas is just about to turn around, when something comes to him. “Dan?” he says. “She’s not your sister anymore.”

Dan looks blankly at him from across the room. “I know.”

“It’s just … don’t get tempted to … you know … touch her or anything. Okay?”

Dan sends him a pale smile. “Don’t worry.”

“Right. I’ll be back soon. Hang tight.”

He runs to the ladder, steps up and stops for a moment to listen. Somewhere up there, he can hear footsteps running and a man’s voice shouting, but it seems to come from farther away, probably in another room. Now that the zombie child is no longer right above him, he doesn’t need to break down the hatch—he can simply reach his arm up through the hole and grope his way to the lock. He finds it, pulls it, and there’s a loud click. Finally, he can push open the hatch.

Thomas sticks his head up into a room which appears very bright to Thomas’s eyes, although there is only one window, and it’s covered by red drapes. It’s a bedroom with a single bed. More family photos on the walls. The door to the living room is open. He can’t see or hear anything from in there. In fact, the house has suddenly fallen completely silent.

He climbs up and closes the hatch behind him. As he strides to the door, something sharp jabs at his heel.

“Ouch, goddamnit!”

He lifts his foot and sees a piece of broken glass protruding from the sole of his sneaker. He carefully wrenches it free and throws it aside. He pulls off his shoe and checks the damage. Only a small cut in his heel. It’s bleeding a little, but nothing severe. As he pulls his shoe back on, he finally notices the broken glass strewn all over the wooden floor. There’s also something which might once have been flowers, but now have been trampled to a mush. Almost all of the pieces of glass are sticky with something dark, and he can make out small, dark footprints all over the room. He reconstructs to himself how there must have been a glass vase with flowers standing on the night table. The zombie child then knocked the glass vase to the floor, breaking it, and then proceeded to wander around in her restless search for something to eat, for what looks like several hours, maybe even days, stepping on the shards, ripping her feet to bloody shreds.

Good thing for her she can’t feel anything.

Thomas goes to the door and peers into the living room. It’s a chaotic mess like he remembers it, with tipped-over chairs and stuff knocked to the floor. He also smells something sweet and metallic.

Whoever came went and opened the door to the bedroom, letting the zombie kid out right into his own arms.

Thomas makes his way through the room, noticing the bloody footprints on the carpet. A sound reaches him, makes him stop dead in his tracks. It’s a wet smacking noise. Like a child eating Bolognese for the first time and making a mess of it.

It’s coming from the kitchen.

Thomas looks around for a weapon. He didn’t think to bring the pipe. Instead, he grabs a big, pink crystal rock from a shelf. It feels satisfyingly heavy in his hand, giving him the courage to go on towards the opening to the kitchen. A dreadful sight meets him.

In the middle of the kitchen, sprawled out on the vinyl floor, is a grown man. His skin is dark and he’s wearing shorts and a T-shirt. The colors of his clothes are hard to discern, as they’re completely soaked with blood.

His stomach is open. It reminds Thomas of something he saw in a medical documentary about open heart surgery. Something is hanging out of the side of the crater. It looks like a piece of raw sausage with the filling sucked out of it. The rest of the content of the poor man’s stomach is mercifully hidden from view by the girl who’s sitting on her knees, feasting away. With one hand, she digs eagerly into the man’s intestines, transporting them to her mouth and chewing loudly. The other arm, which is broken, hangs limply by her side.

Apparently, this one-armed system isn’t working fast enough to satisfy the girl’s appetite, because suddenly she bends over and simply buries her face in the guy’s stomach.

Thomas breathes firmly through his nose—which immediately proves a mistake, as it only intensifies the smell of blood and meat. He knows he needs to move on. That he’s still in a hurry. That the guy on the floor might only be minutes from waking up, and then he’ll have two zombies to deal with.

So, he slips through the kitchen as close to the wall as possible. His eyes are fixed on the girl, and that’s why he doesn’t notice the bottle of olive oil lying on the floor. He accidentally kicks it, and it rolls across the floor, hitting the table leg with a loud Clank!

Thomas freezes, raising the stone, ready to throw it at the zombie girl.

But she doesn’t react at all to the noise; not even a flinch. She just keeps eating.

Thomas breathes a sigh of relief. He hurries on. Makes it out of the kitchen and into a hallway. There are a couple of closed doors. At the end is the scullery. He reminds himself about the fact that he can’t know for sure if anyone else is in the house—living or dead. So, he keeps the crystal stone held high, ready to strike at anyone trying to surprise him.

He makes it through the hallway with no one doing so, and he finds the front door open wide. Before leaving the house, he throws himself at the scullery sink, turning on the faucet and drinking greedily in big, loud gulps until his belly feels like it’s ready to burst. Immediately, he feels better.

Then, he steps out of the house into the bright daylight. The sun is still up, but it has lost some of its power. He hasn’t got a watch, but he figures it’s got to be around dinnertime.

His own car is parked where he left it. The door to the driver’s side is open. Another car is parked next to it. It’s empty.

Thomas takes out his phone and tries to activate the screen, but nothing happens.

“Come on, you piece of shit.” He tries a few more times, before realizing the phone is dead. He must have spent all the juice trying to call 911 a hundred times down in the basement.

Dan left his phone at home by accident, and Jennie’s is probably still in her pocket.

Which means his only option is to drive for help. He runs to the car, gets in, slams the door and turns the key, which is still in the ignition.

Nothing but a dry Click!

The car is as dead as his phone. He notices the gas is on EMPTY.

You gotta be fucking kidding me. I forgot to turn off the engine when I heard Dan screaming.

Frustrated, he gets back out of the car and goes to the other one. He grabs the driver’s door, but finds it locked. He goes to check the back door and jumps backwards as a face appears inside the car.

FOURTEEN

“Holy shit!”

Thomas manages only by sheer effort of will not to turn around and bolt.

A woman is crouching on the floor of the backseat, obviously trying to make herself invisible and obviously not a zombie, as her face is full of emotions; terror, most of all, mixed with a healthy dose of shock. She points what looks like a nail file up at him.

“Stay away!” she yells, her voice trembling. “I’ve already called the police! They’re on their way!”

“Thank God,” Thomas sighs, holding up his hands. “I won’t hurt you. I’m just—”

“Get away from the car!” the woman demands, stabbing the air with her improvised weapon. “It was you! You killed him!”

“I had nothing to do with what happened here. I was just delivering the paper.”

The woman flicks her eyes, as though she doesn’t really understand what he’s saying. Her hair is red, her skin is pale and freckled. She’s older than him, perhaps in her mid-twenties, and somehow, she seems vaguely familiar.

Thomas suddenly remembers about the three—soon to be four—zombies in the house, and that he left the front door open wide. He hurries to close it. As he returns to the car, the woman is now sitting on the backseat. Her blue eyes follow him intently.

Then Thomas remembers where he has seen her before. In the photo album in the basement.

“You’re her daughter-in-law,” he says.

The woman rolls down the window an inch or so and squints out at him. “What’s that?”

“The woman who lived here. You’re her daughter-in-law, right?”

Her eyes are still suspicious. “Why do you say ‘lived’?”

“Because she’s dead. Like the man and the little girl, who—” Thomas interrupts himself abruptly, as he realizes what he’s saying.

But it’s too late. The woman’s face crumbles into tears.

You moron. That was her husband and her daughter.

“Uhm … I’m sorry,” he mutters stupidly.

The woman just sobs into her hands.

Thomas rubs his forehead and closes his eyes for a moment. It’s finally over. Almost, at least. Before long, the police will arrive, and they will be able to pacify the zombies. If only Dan can hold out a few more minutes …

“What is this?” the woman whispers in between her sobs. “What … what happened to them?”

“They’ve become zombies,” Thomas murmurs. “Like on TV.”

The woman looks up at him with wet eyes and an expression like she had forgotten about him being here. “What?”

“Your mother-in-law made some fucked up ritual in the basement. I think that’s how it started. Was she into witchcraft or some crazy shit like that?”

“Voodoo,” the woman whispers. “But that’s not … that can’t be …” She starts crying again. “Oh, Janjak …”

Thomas says nothing, and the woman cries for a minute. A honey bee buzzes by lazily. He listens for sirens but can’t hear anything in the quiet summer air.

“Did the police say when they’d be here?” he asks. “My friend is trapped still inside.”

The woman wipes her eyes and shakes her head. “I … I didn’t call the police.”

Thomas gapes at her. “What? Why the hell not?”

“I left my phone at home to recharge.”

“Goddamnit! Then why did you say …?” He moans. “Forget it. We need to go get help. My car is out of gas, so we’ll go in yours.”

He’s about to go to the driver’s side, when the woman says: “My husband took the key with him.”

Thomas stops and smacks himself on the forehead. “Of course he did. This just keeps getting better. How about your mother-in-law? She must have a car …” He looks around, but sees neither car nor garage.

“Esther doesn’t have a car.”

Thomas flails his arm. “Come on! You can’t live all the way out here without a fucking car! Christ! Right, you need to run to the highway. At least a couple of cars must come by every hour or so. You can stop one of them and ask them to call for help.”

The woman shakes her head firmly. “No!”

Thomas steps closer to the window, and she pulls back like a scared animal.

“Listen, I’ve cut my foot, so I can’t make it. My friend in there hasn’t had a sip of water since we came here several hours ago. I’m afraid he might faint or go into shock or something. And then my girlfriend will probably get him. She’s also—”

Something catches the woman’s gaze behind Thomas as he is speaking, and she turns her head and screams.

Thomas spins around, ready to fight, but he’s still alone in the courtyard, and the front door is still closed. But right next to it is a tall, narrow window. On the other side, the black guy is pressing his face against the glass, his eyes flickering empty in their sockets.

So, he’s woken up, too, Thomas thinks. That means Dan is now alone in the house with four zombies.

As though his thoughts have caused it, Dan’s voice suddenly screams: “Thomas! Thomaaaas! Heeeelp!”

FIFTEEN

There is terror in Dan’s voice, but to Thomas’s surprise, the scream isn’t coming from inside the house; it’s coming from behind it.

Thomas starts running, ignoring the pain from his wounded foot. He rounds the corner of the house, passes by a terrace, jumps across a flower bed. As he runs, he wonders how Dan has managed to exit the house. He stops on the lawn of the back garden and looks around.

“Dan?” he calls out. “Where are you?”

“Here!”

Thomas turns. The basement window is halfway hidden behind a couple of giant dandelions. Dan’s arm is waving frantically.

Thomas runs over and falls to his knees. As soon as he looks into the basement, he can tell that Jennie has either grown two feet taller or found something to stand on, because she’s suddenly able to look over the top of the closet, and her arms are grabbing greedily for Dan, who is squeezing himself up against the window. Jennie’s fingers grope at his shoes.

“She can almost reach me!” Dan cries. “Get me out of here, Thomas! Help me! Make her go away!”

“All right. Don’t worry, Dan, I’ll—”

“Help me! Get me out!”

Thomas studies the window. It’s about four inches too narrow for Dan to squeeze through. The wall around it is brick. Even if he was able to find a hammer and a chisel, it would take him forever to make the hole wider.

Instead, he looks around for something else to use. The woman had a large vegetable garden, and a few garden tools are lying around. Thomas jumps to his feet and goes to grab a rake.

“Help me, Thomas!” Dan cries and grabs him as he returns. “She’s got my foot!”

“Move aside,” Thomas says, forcing the rake past Dan. “And let go of my arm.”

Dan lets go and moves sideways slightly.

Jennie has got a hold of the laces of Dan’s left shoe and is tugging at them. Thomas places the head of the rake against her throat and pushes her backwards. She is forced to let go of Dan’s shoe. She growls, makes no attempt to remove the rake, only groping for Dan’s legs, but now they’re out of reach.

“She … she tipped over a box,” Dan says, breathing fast. “That’s what she’s standing on. I don’t … I don’t think she did it on purpose, it was just luck. Please get me out of here, Thomas.”

“I’m trying,” Thomas says, concentrating on the rake, as Jennie moves from side to side, trying to find a way to reach Dan. “But you’ll have to go the same way as I did: up through the hatch.”

Dan stares out at him. “What about the other zombie? The kid?”

“She’s somewhere in the house, and there are two more. But I don’t think any of them will be in the room with the hatch.”

Jennie jerks sideways, and the rake slips off her neck.

Dan screams as she tips forward, almost grabbing his foot by surprise.

Thomas pulls back the rake, plants it in Jennie’s chest this time, and pushes her back once more. “You need to go for it,” he hisses. “I can’t hold her forever.”

“O … okay.”

“On the count of three, I’ll shove her back so she falls down. You’ll have to jump down and get past her before she can get back up. You ready?”

Dan looks terrified, but Thomas can tell how he mans up. “I’m ready,” he whispers.

“One … two … three!” Thomas thrusts the rake as hard as he can.

Jennie is shoved backwards and falls over. She drags a box of old junk down with her.

“Now, Dan!”

Dan has already crawled to the edge of the closet. He jumps down, and Thomas hears him land on the concrete floor. He gives off a loud, short shriek of pain. Thomas feels his own heart turn to ice.

She got him …

A few seconds of commotion. Jennie snarls. Then Dan appears, making his way through the room towards the hole in the wall. He’s limping on one leg.

“Did she bite you?” Thomas yells.

Dan doesn’t hear him. He’s obviously focused on one thing only: getting out of the room.

Behind him, Jennie appears, as she gets to her feet.

“Hey!” Thomas shouts, banging the top of the closet with the rake. “Hey, Jennie! I’m right here! Look at me!”

Jennie doesn’t even seem to register his voice. She just staggers after Dan, who slips through the wall.

Thomas leaves the rake and gets to his feet. He runs along the outer wall, reaching the window with the red drapes. He knocks on the glass.

A moment later, the drapes are flung aside. Dan fumbles with the hasp. Behind him, the hatch is closed.

“Did she get you?” Thomas yells.

Dan shakes his head, not looking up, sweat pouring down his face. “No, it’s my ankle. I hurt it when I landed.”

Thomas feels a surge of deep relief. For a moment, he sees everything. How they’ll make it. Dan opens the window and climbs out. They shut the window and trap all four zombies in the house. Then they go to the woman in the car and bring her along as they walk up to the highway. They flag down the first passerby and hitch a ride to the police station. That’s how this nightmare will end.

Dan shouts from the other side of the glass: “How do I get this stupid thing open!?”

From the courtyard on the other side of the house comes a shrill scream. Thomas turns his head for a moment, thinking: That was her. I hope she didn’t open the front door.

At that moment, he sees a movement through the window. Behind Dan, the door to the room is pushed open. The small girl with the broken arm, now all covered in blood, comes staggering into the room.

Dan hasn’t noticed her. He’s struggling with the window hasp.

Thomas looks down. “It’s the old-fashioned kind. You have to hold it out and then push.”

Dan seems to sense something behind him. He turns around and screams. The girl is slowly making her way around the bed. Her pale, fishlike eyes are fixed on Dan.

“Come on!” Thomas shouts and slaps a hand on the glass. “Concentrate!”

Dan wrenches his eyes off the girl and turns his attention towards the window. This time, he does it right, and the window opens. Thomas pulls it and lifts it up all the way. “Get out! Quick!”

Dan throws himself out the window. The girl is only a few steps away when he lands on the grass. Thomas lets go of the window, and it slams shut. The girl presses her face up against the glass, instantly covering it in sticky red blood.

Thomas steps back. He can’t lock the window from this side, but the window is quite heavy, and the girl isn’t strong enough to push it open.

He gives off a sigh of relief. “I think we’re good. She can’t get out this way.”

He turns to look at Dan, who has crawled to a safe distance from the window. Now he’s sitting on the grass, looking around in disbelief. “I’m out … I’m out!”

“You all right?” Thomas asks. “Sure Jennie didn’t scratch you?”

Dan checks both his legs. Then he shakes his head. “I’m good. But my ankle—”

He is interrupted by a second scream from the courtyard.

SIXTEEN

Dan looks up at him in alarm. “Who’s that?”

Thomas wastes no time explaining. “Stay here. Keep an eye on the window.” He spins around and runs back around the house. As he gets to the courtyard, he stops. It takes him a moment to understand what’s going on and how it happened.

The dark man must have gotten the front door open somehow, because he’s making his way across the courtyard. The redheaded woman has left the car—probably in order to try and talk to her husband. If that was her reason, though, she seems to have gotten second thoughts, because she’s backing away from him, an expression of pure terror painted on her face, her eyes wide and her lips moving. The whispering words reach Thomas’s ears.

“It’s me, Janjak … It’s me, babe …”

Her late husband is staggering towards her, arms outstretched, eager at the sight of its first, easy meal almost within reach. The woman bumps into the hood of the car. Instead of stepping sideways, she just stops and stares.

“It’s me, Janjak … Don’t you recognize me?”

“He doesn’t understand you!” Thomas roars. “Get out of the fucking way!”

The woman only reacts by blinking fast twice. She doesn’t move and she doesn’t take her eyes off the zombie, which is only a few paces away now.

Thomas has no other choice. He runs straight at the zombie and hits it with a perfect shoulder tackle. The dark man tumbles over and rolls around in the gravel.

The woman is finally able to take her eyes off her husband and instead looks at Thomas like a sleepwalker who just woke up. “He was … he was …”

“That’s right, he was going to fucking eat you! Glad you finally caught on!” Thomas grabs her by the arm and pulls her to the passenger site. “Get in! Hurry! And lock the damn door.”

She follows his order with dreamy movements. Just as she manages to hit the lock, the zombie gets back on its feet. Most of its guts seem to have spilled out of the hole in its stomach as it went sprawling, and are now dragging behind it like a bunch of bloody ropes, the gravel sticking to them.

Thomas feels the nausea rising to his throat, but he manages to force it back down. He backs away from the car. The zombie reaches out its arms, moans, then steps in its own intestines, trips and falls onto the hood of the car.

Inside, the woman screams.

The zombie gracefully slides off the car and dives back down into the gravel.

That gives Thomas a few seconds to think.

Gotta get him back into the house somehow. Can’t risk him getting away.

He goes around the car and positions himself between the front door and the zombie struggling to get back up for the second time. As soon as it succeeds, it sees him and comes at him with a hungry growl.

Thomas backs up towards the house. The zombie follows along.

“That’s right,” he mutters. “Come on.”

His plan is simple. As soon as he’s back inside the house with the zombie, he’ll lure it out into the kitchen. There he can run around the table and get back out to the front door, closing it behind himself and trapping the zombie in the house.

They’re almost at the door now. “Come with me,” Thomas whispers. “There’s a good boy.”

From the car, the woman screams again. She also bangs the windows and waves frantically.

“What?” Thomas yells.

Then he picks up the sound of gravel crunching right behind him. He whirls around and is face to face with the old woman just as she lunges at him. Thomas catches her arms clumsily, stumbles backwards, slips in the gravel and almost falls down. Her nails are clawing the air right above his face. He narrowly avoids her mouth as she snaps at his chin. He regains his balance and shoves her backwards, causing her to fall over, just as another hand grabs his shoulder and someone hisses right into his ear. Thomas turns his head just in time to see the open mouth. Less than a split second before the dark man bites his neck open, Thomas throws himself to the side. But the zombie has a firm grip on his shirt, so it follows along, trips him and lands on top of him. Thomas kicks wildly to get it off, feeling the dark hands groping eagerly all over his shirt, trying to rip through the fabric, searching for the skin.

Thomas goes into blind panic. He kicks, punches and writhes uncontrollably. In a stroke of luck, he manages to throw off the black guy. He crawls backwards, panting, the zombie immediately crawling after, reaching for him.

A movement next to him. The woman is back on her feet. She’s bending down to grab him, mouth open wide, her frame blocking out the sun.

Thomas screams.

Then, the zombie lady is abruptly jerked backwards.

Thomas catches a glimpse of Dan tugging at the woman’s ponytail. He gives her another hard yank which sends her sprawling to the gravel.

Dan yells something, but all Thomas can hear is his own throbbing pulse. He gets up. Both zombies are also getting to their feet. Out from the doorway Thomas sees another figure coming. It’s the girl who finally found her way out of the house.

It’s too late, he thinks, his thoughts sounding oddly distant. There are too many. We can’t get them back in the house.

Dan is still shouting. Thomas looks at him, dazed. A word makes it through.

“… car! …”

Thomas staggers towards the car, Dan on his tail, jumping on one leg. The boys open the doors on either side and crawl in. Thomas hits the central locking.

The sound of the lock snapping somehow brings back Thomas’s hearing. His own wheezing breath, Dan’s gasping sobs, the growling of the zombies outside.

“Holy fuck,” Thomas mutters. “I really thought I was done.”

Dan looks at him. “Are you unharmed?”

Thomas lifts up his T-shirt. “You tell me.”

“I don’t see any scratches.”

“I guess I’ll live then.”

A thud, as the black man bumps against the window next to Thomas. The girl staggers to Dan’s side. The zombies start making futile attempts to push through the windows.

“Shouldn’t we get out of here?” Dan asks.

“We can’t. Car’s out of gas. And she doesn’t have a key.” He looks to the car with the redheaded woman, where the zombie lady is standing.

Dan gives off an exhausted noise. “You’re kidding me! So we’re still trapped?”

Thomas nods grimly. “Looks like it.”

SEVENTEEN

The clock in the car tells them it’s almost nine. Thomas can’t believe they’ve been here for nine whole hours.

The zombies are waiting patiently right outside. Snarling, snapping their teeth and groping the windows. Thomas tries not to look at them, but it’s hard, considering how their empty eyes seem to devour him alive.

At least the sun has disappeared behind the house, leaving the courtyard in a pleasantly cool shade. Yet the inside of the car is still warm, and Thomas is sweating.

Dan has pulled off his sock, revealing a swollen ankle.

“How’s it doing?” Thomas says, pointing.

“It’s sprained,” Dan mutters. “I did it once before, when I was skiing.”

“So you can’t walk?”

Dan shakes his head.

Thomas glances out at the nearest zombie. “I guess I’m the lucky one who gets to go for help, then.”

“You think that’s a good idea? Wouldn’t it be better to wait for someone to come along?”

“It could be days.”

Dan shrugs. “Someone’s got to be wondering where we are!”

“Who would that be? I haven’t spoken to my dad for months. And your parents are on holiday.”

“Yeah, but Mom will probably call me or Jennie tonight; she usually does.”

“And what then? I mean, when you don’t pick up? You figure she’ll go straight to the police?”

Dan hesitates. “Probably not. She’ll probably try to call us again tomorrow.”

“And when she does, and she still can’t reach you, then she just might call the police, and that’s great. Except the police have no idea where we are. If they come looking for us, they might find my car missing. And even if someone tells them about the paper route, this house was one of the last stops, which means they’ll have to make a lot of house calls before reaching this place.” Thomas shakes his head. “By that time we’ll be long dead from thirst. I’ve given it a lot of thought, and I don’t see any other way; I need to make a run for it.”

“I guess you’re right.” Dan squints his eyes. “I’m so thirsty. I feel dizzy. You sure you don’t have anything to drink?”

“Nah, I already told you—” Thomas suddenly lights up. “Holy shit, wait a minute … I just might …” He turns around and crawls to the backseat, checking the trunk. His heart leaps at the sight of the canned sodas. Out of the entire box, only three of them are missing. He grabs one and hands it to Dan. “Here you go. Sorry it’s not cold.”

Dan takes the can as though it is life itself. He opens it and drinks greedily.

Thomas grabs another three cans and crawls back over behind the wheel.

Dan burps and drops the empty can to the floor. “Another one,” he groans.

“I think you’d better pace yourself,” Thomas says, handing him another can nonetheless. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to drink too much too fast when you’ve been thirsting for …”

But Dan has already opened the can and is pouring the Coke down his throat. And Thomas can’t blame him. His own hands are shaking as he opens the can. He closes his eyes and lets the sweet, warm liquid flow down his throat. It prickles wonderfully. He sighs deeply. “That’s got to be the best Coke I’ve ever had.”

Dan burps wetly and laughs. Thomas can’t tell if the tears in Dan’s eyes are caused by relief or carbon dioxide.

“How many you got back there?”

“Almost an entire box.”

“That means we can survive for days. You don’t need to go out there anyway!”

Thomas becomes conscious of the zombies once again. Not that he ever forgot about them. But their moaning, hungry noises suddenly seize his attention. He looks out, past the black guy, over at the other car. There are about ten feet between the cars. He can’t see the woman inside, which means she’s probably lying down. The zombie woman is faithfully standing guard by the rear door.

“She’s probably thirsty,” Dan says, guessing what Thomas is thinking.

“I’ll try and call her.” He puts his hands to the window and shouts: “Hey!”

The red hair of the woman appears. She looks over at them.

Thomas holds up a can.

The woman shows him a large bottle of water.

He sends her a thumbs-up. “She’ll be all right. Good thing, ’cause I don’t really see how we would get a soda over there anyway.”

“Who is she?”

“She didn’t tell me her name, but she was married to that guy.” Thomas taps the window, and the black guy attempts to bite his finger, but manages only to drench the glass in saliva. “The old hack was her mother-in-law. Oh, and she’s not a witch, by the way. The old woman, I mean.”

“No?”

“Nope, she was into voodoo.”

Dan gazes out the front window, looking thoughtful. “Well, that makes sense.”

“What?”

“Voodoo originated in Haiti. We learned about it in school. That’s where the zombie myth came from. Did you know that?”

“I had no idea.”

“There have been several accounts of voodoo priests waking up dead people.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, I mean, it’s only rumors, of course. But the voodoo people believe something about the human soul being split in two. One part keeps the body alive, and the other one is our personality and thoughts and stuff like that. So, in theory, the body can live on, even if the other part of the soul dies. You’re just …” Dan searches for the right word.

“Braindead?” Thomas suggests.

“No, not quite. You’re a body completely without a brain. Without anything of that which made you a human.” Dan sips his Coke. “It can’t happen naturally; it requires someone to mess with the forces of nature.”

“Then why would they eat other people? And why do they contaminate others?”

Dan shrugs. “The teacher didn’t say anything about that.”

A moment of silence passes by. The boys are both looking out at the zombies.

“So, you think the ritual in the basement …?” Thomas mumbles. “And all that nonsense we found in the book …?”

Dan breathes deeply. “Well, I think the girl died. Perhaps she fell down the stairs or whatever. And then the woman tried to bring her back to life. In a way I guess you could say she succeeded.”

Thomas raises an eyebrow. “I don’t think this was quite what she was hoping for.”

EIGHTEEN

The night grows steadily dimmer. The time wears on at a painfully slow rate. Thomas slips in and out of a light doze.

“What do we do if they suddenly give up?”

Thomas opens his eyes and looks at Dan. He’s on his fifth Coke. He already had to pee once, and managed to fill one of the empty cans. It’s now in the trunk.

“What do you mean?”

“If they just decide to walk off? To find someone else to eat?”

Thomas looks out at the zombies. The man and the girl are still right outside, and the old woman is still by the other car. It’s difficult to see clearly, due to the drool and dirt and blood smeared all over the windows, turning the zombies into vague figures in the twilight.

“I don’t think they’ll quit anytime soon. Not as long as we’re here.”

“No, but what if?” Dan persists. “I mean, we don’t know for sure they won’t get tired of trying to get in here. And if they walk away, won’t we have to …?”

Thomas nods. “You’re right, we can’t let them get away. It could mean the end of the world if they—” He grinds his teeth as a sharp pain suddenly jabs the sole of his foot. “Goddamnit!”

“What is it?”

“My foot,” Thomas groans, pulling off his shoe. “I stepped on a shard of glass in the bedroom. It went right through the bottom of my shoe.”

He hasn’t really thought about it, but the puncture wound on his heal has been throbbing for at least the past hour. He pulls up his leg, looks under the foot, and finds a bloody stain on the sock the size of a big coin. He carefully pries off the sock to reveal a tiny, V-shaped wound.

“I think you need to clean it,” Dan remarks.

“There’s a first aid kit in the trunk. Grab it for me, will you?”

Dan climbs to the back of the car—Thomas notices how the zombie girl follows along on the outside of the car—and comes back with the kit. He opens it and goes through the content.

“I can only find these,” he says, handing Thomas a packet of wet wipes. “It says they’re disinfectant.”

Thomas bites open the packet and pulls out the wipe. He carefully pats the wound, grinding his teeth as it starts to burn. “Goddamnit …”

“Does it hurt badly?” Dan asks. “Maybe the piece of glass is still in there?”

Thomas hadn’t considered that possibility. He reaches up and turns on the small light in the ceiling. He gently opens the wound using two fingers, causing it to begin bleeding once more. “I don’t see anything in there. I don’t think there’s any glass.”

“Right. You want a Band-Aid? There’s also gauze.”

“A Band-Aid’s fine.”

Thomas covers the wound with the Band-Aid and puts his sock back on. His heel is throbbing warmly. He tries to ignore it and turns off the light again.

They sit for a little while in silence. Of course, the zombies make sure there isn’t any real silence. Thomas leans back his head and closes his eyes.

“You still want to go get help?” Dan asks quietly.

“Yeah.”

“Sure you can run with that foot?”

“I’ll be all right. It’s not that far.”

“The town is miles away.”

“I only need to get to the nearest neighbor. Or perhaps I’ll meet a late-night car.”

Dan looks out at the zombie girl who’s snarling back at him. “They’ll probably follow you.”

“I’m counting on it. But they don’t move very fast. I just need to keep ahead of them.”

“And what then, when you find someone who can help? What about the zombies?”

Thomas shrugs. “I’ll call the police. They’ll have to deal with them.”

“You think they’ll get what’s going on?”

“I have no idea. That’s a problem I’ll have to deal with if it comes to that.” He runs his palm across his forehead. “Damn, I’m still sweating.”

“That’s weird,” Dan says. “I’m actually freezing.”

Thomas notices he has put on his sweater. “Grab me another Coke, will you?”

Dan has fetched the whole box which is now standing between his feet. He reaches down and grabs a can which he gives to Thomas. Thomas opens it and drinks three big gulps.

Dan looks to the other car. “What did you say happened to the keys for her car?”

Thomas burps. “She said he’s got them.” He nods towards the black guy.

Dan bites his lip. “Maybe we can get it.”

“How would we do that? You feel like reaching out and going through his pockets?” He drinks again and notices Dan staring at him. “What?”

“You’re really sweating. Are you feeling all right?”

“Sure, I’m just a little hot.” A bead of sweat drips from his nose.

Dan reaches over and touches his cheek. “You’re burning up.”

Thomas realizes Dan is right. His skin feels like it’s on fire. His whole body is soaked with sweat. “My system is probably just a little hyped after all the stress I’ve been through,” he mumbles. “I don’t think that’s any wonder.”

Dan doesn’t look convinced. “Thomas?” he asks quietly. “Could it be a fever?”

“Why would I have a fever?”

“You sure you didn’t get a scratch?”

“You checked my back.”

“Yeah, but … we didn’t check you everywhere. Are there any other places on your body that’s hurting?”

Thomas scans his body. “Nope. Just my foot, but that’s from the glass, and that can’t be … that can’t be …”

The words die out as an image appears in his mind.

The floor of the bedroom. Broken glass strewn all over. Glittering in the afternoon sunlight. Red from the blood of the girl, who has been walking around on them for hours.

The blood of the girl … the blood … Oh, no …

The truth finally sinks in.

NINETEEN

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!”

Thomas screams and bangs his fists onto the steering wheel, harder and harder, more and more uncontrollably, until his hands are starting to hurt.

Finally, he sinks back into the seat, panting. “Why didn’t I … think of it before? Goddamnit …”

“What … what is it?” Dan croaks, staring wide-eyed at Thomas.

“The shards of glass were covered in the blood of the girl. I’ve been infected.”

Several long seconds of silence pass by inside the car. Thomas closes his eyes. His foot is suddenly throbbing a lot worse than a minute ago. The pain is radiating all the way up to his knee. Perhaps it’s only his imagination, but all of a sudden, he can almost feel how the infection is making its way up his bloodstream. Headed for his organs. Headed for his brain.

“Can’t we … can’t we stop it?” Dan asks. “Maybe if we make a really tight bandage?”

Thomas shakes his head. “It’s too late. I can feel it. Even if we cut off my whole damn leg …” He sighs. “Why the fuck couldn’t I just have watched where I was going?”

More silence.

Thomas feels like he’s somehow full of emotions and completely empty at the same time. Random memories seem to pop up. His first bike. His parents’ divorce. The day he met Jennie.

Is this what it feels like when your life passes in front of you?

He can’t really grasp it. That his life is over. Only yesterday his greatest concern was breaking up with Jennie. Now she’s dead, and soon he’ll be too.

“It’s not fair,” he whispers. “I’m only eighteen, for fuck’s sake.”

He feels something on his arm, looks down and sees Dan’s hand resting there. Dan’s eyes are wet. “I’m really sorry, Thomas.”

Thomas starts to cry himself. The tears just burst out. He sobs over the wheel, letting out a scream now and then, cursing the world, but mostly he simply cries, as the long life he had imagined for himself crumbles and falls away.

As the sobbing subsides, Thomas begins to feel an unexpected calmness. He wipes his eyes and mutters: “Could you please tell my dad I’m sorry for what I said the last time I saw him?”

“I … I will,” Dan whispers. “Anyone else you want me to …?”

Thomas thinks. “My mom lives in Copenhagen. I haven’t talked with her for years. And I don’t really have any close friends.” He glances at Dan. “I guess you’re the closest one.”

Dan tries to muster a smile. Then, his expression turns somber again. “What now?”

Thomas straightens up. “I can’t run for help, that’s for sure. Judging from how fast it went with Jennie, I’m lucky if I have half an hour left. So I guess we got to figure something out quick.”

“Thomas,” Dan says, pointing. “Look …”

Thomas looks out his window. The black guy, who has been patiently standing right outside his door the whole time, is now making his way around the hood of the car with wobbling steps. He unwittingly shoves the girl aside as he joins her in trying to get through Dan’s window.

“Guess that’s our solution,” Thomas says. “They’re no longer interested in me.”

TWENTY

“Hold on,” Dan says. “You sure that’s a good idea?”

Thomas shrugs. “What have I got to lose?” He unlocks his door, opens it and steps out into the cool evening air. “Lock it again,” he says, slamming it shut.

Dan immediately reaches over and locks it.

Thomas just stands there for a moment, looking at the zombies. They, on the other hand, won’t even deign a glance at him. He turns to see the faint figure of the redheaded woman on the backseat of the other car. She has lain down with a jacket pulled over herself.

Thomas takes a step, and a lightning bolt shoots up his leg. He grunts in pain, stumbles and almost falls down. For a moment, he feels lightheaded, as the pain rolls through his leg in slow, intense waves.

Fuck me. Now I get why Jennie complained so much. Need to be careful. If I faint, it’s over.

Out here in the fresh air, he can really feel the fever. His skin is burning and freezing all at once. He’s standing on one leg waiting for the dizziness to subside.

Then, when it finally does, he jumps across the gravel to the woman’s car and knocks on the window.

She jumps up and stares out at him. “What are you doing? Have you lost your freaking mind?”

“They won’t hurt me,” Thomas says. “Listen, if I get you the key, can you drive the car?”

The woman seems too surprised to answer right away. The zombie woman comes staggering around the car. For one terrible second, Thomas is sure she’s coming for him. That he was wrong, that he’s not immune after all. He jumps back a few steps. But the zombie woman only pays attention to the woman inside the car.

The redheaded woman stares from the zombie to Thomas. “Why … why isn’t she attacking you?”

“That doesn’t matter right now. Can you drive the car?”

The woman looks down at his feet. “Why are you standing on one leg? What happened to your foot?”

Thomas sighs. “I’ve been contaminated, all right? That’s why they won’t eat me. I guess they can smell I’m already …” He doesn’t know how to finish the sentence.

The woman’s eyes are even bigger now. “But … but you …”

“I don’t have long, so could you please just answer my question? Do you … know how to … drive the car?”

The woman nods.

“Great. And do you happen to know where your husband keeps the key?”

The woman looks over at her husband. She says something inaudible.

“What’s that?”

“In his pants pocket, I think.”

Thomas turns around and jumps back to his own car. He supports himself on the hood as he jumps around to Dan’s side where the zombies are standing. Both of them are completely absorbed by Dan, who’s staring out with a frightened expression.

Thomas reaches out and nudges the black guy. He sways gently, but doesn’t react. Thomas sticks his hand in the guy’s pocket. Nothing. To reach the other pocket, he has to position himself behind the guy. He grabs the guy’s shirt for support. Still, the zombie doesn’t seem to notice him at all. Thomas plunges his hand into the pocket and feels metal. He draws out a key ring.

“Bingo!” He jumps back to the woman’s car and pushes the button to the central lock; nothing happens. “Why doesn’t it work?”

“I control it from in here,” she says.

“Well, then unlock it.”

The woman peers out at him, worried. “Are you contagious?”

The zombie woman bumps into the side of him in order to get closer to the window where the redhead is sitting. Thomas shoves her back hard with both hands, causing her to topple over in the gravel like an overgrown toddler.

“No,” he says, looking in at the woman. “It only infects via blood.”

The woman doesn’t look particularly appeased. “How do I know I won’t get contaminated if I touch the key? How did you get it?”

Thomas briefly explains about the broken glass in the bedroom. “Now, please open the door. I guarantee you won’t get infected.”

The woman considers for a few more seconds. The zombie woman has climbed back to her feet and approaches once more. Thomas pushes her over once more.

The redhead finally decides to trust him and unlocks the door. She opens it a few inches. Thomas hands her the key. She immediately slams the door again.

“Good,” Thomas says, grinding his teeth as a new avalanche of pain floats through his leg. “Now we just need to get Dan into your car.”

The woman has already climbed to the driver’s seat. She sticks the key in the ignition, turns on the engine and puts in drive.

“Wow, wow!” Thomas bangs hard on the windshield. “What do you think you’re doing?”

The woman glares out at him. “I’m going to get help, of course.”

“No, damnit! If you drive off, we risk the zombies following you. We can’t let them leave this place. Don’t you get it? We put the whole world at risk if they get to leave.”

The redhead looks like she’s churning over an internal conflict. After several seconds of thinking, she finally shuts off the engine. “What do we do then?”

“We need to get Dan …” Thomas sways, as a sudden fog clouds his vision, and he struggles to keep his balance.

“You okay?” The woman’s voice seems far away.

Thomas rubs his temple. “Yeah, I’m all right,” he manages to croak. “But we’d better hurry.” He takes a few deep breaths, forcing his head to clear up. “I’ll get Dan over here. Just be ready to open the door for him, okay?”

“He’s not infected, is he?”

No, he’s not infected, you stupid fucking bitch, Thomas thinks, feeling a raging fury. So don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll get out of this with your freckly ass in one piece!

He knows the rage is really because he’s afraid, and he understands the woman’s worries, so he says calmly: “No, he’s not infected.”

“All right,” the redhead nods. “I’ll be ready.”

Thomas skips back to his own car once again, now starting to feel surprisingly weak and tired. He feels like lying down, but he knows he probably won’t get up again if he does.

“Listen, Dan,” he says through the window. “You need to get into her car. I’ll help you. If you get out over here on my side, I’ll make sure none of them touch you.”

Dan doesn’t look like he approves very much of the plan, but makes no objections.

“You ready?” Thomas asks, spitting into the gravel, his saliva sour from fever.

Dan nods.

“Right, go!”

Dan climbs over the gearshift, hits the button, and the central lock snaps open.

The black guy and the girl have already begun to make their way around the car, as Dan opens the door and steps out onto the gravel. He stands on his good foot, and Thomas grabs him by the arm. Together, they jump awkwardly towards the woman’s car. Behind them, father and daughter lumber after.

The zombie woman apparently senses more accessible meat behind her, because she turns around and comes towards them. Dan instinctively draws back, but Thomas drags him along, reaching out his other arm and pushing the zombie hard backwards, feeling for a brief moment like a quarterback making his way through the defense.

Then, he accidentally puts weight on his wounded foot, and a flood of acid instantly eats its way from his heel all the way to his hip. He falls down with a hoarse cry.

“Thomas!” Dan screams.

“Around the car,” Thomas groans. “Get to the other side!” He’s only partially aware exactly what’s going on around him, as everything takes place behind a red veil of excruciating pain.

Dan skips around the car as fast as he can. The two zombies still on their feet stagger right past Thomas, and Thomas, without time to think, stretches out his leg and kicks the black guy’s ankle hard, causing him to stumble and fall over. But the girl continues, reaching the woman’s car just as Thomas hears the sound of a car door opening and then slamming shut again.

He made it, Thomas thinks, laying back his head, resting it on the cool gravel. Dan made it, and now I faint.

He drifts off to a pleasant darkness.

TWENTY-ONE

A voice from very far away calls to him.

Slowly, reluctantly, Thomas is drawn out of his daze. It feels like awaking from the deepest sleep. He opens his eyes, blinks, and into focus drifts a clear, dark sky full of stars.

“… Thomas …”

He wakes up a little further. Begins to remember. The pain is what brings him back completely.

He moans and sits up with an effort. His leg is one big blaze of fire. The foot has swollen to twice its size, and the sock seems about to burst. The skin on his ankle is deep blue.

Am I dead? Am I a zombie?

“Thomas! Over here!”

He turns his head. His sight flickers for a moment, then comes back into focus. The black guy is standing in front the car. From the side window, Dan’s pale face is staring out.

Thomas rubs his forehead. The skin is hot as lava. He feels the side of his neck. There is a weak pulse.

Guess I’m still alive.

He comes to his feet, using all of the strength left in his body, willing it to obey. He hobbles to the car, shoving aside the black guy and leaning heavily against the car door, rasping for breath, croaking: “Why … are you … still here?”

“We need to kill them, Thomas,” Dan says from the other side of the glass. “We can’t go before they’re dead.”

Thomas moans. “Just fucking run them over.”

“I already suggested that. But she says she can’t do it. And I don’t know how to drive.”

Says she can’t do it, Thomas thinks, bending down and darting the woman a burning look.

He skips to his own car. Every step is sending waves of pain up and down his leg. His head is swimming, his temples are throbbing. He opens the trunk and takes out the tire iron.

This is turning out to be a real zombie flick, he thinks, almost smiling to himself. In a real zombie flick they always use a tire iron or an axe.

He skips back to the other car. The zombie woman is closest to him, which means she’ll be the first to go. That’s only fair. After all, she started it all.

Thomas positions himself behind her, using a few seconds to secure his unsteady balance. The woman doesn’t even register him. From inside the car, Thomas notices Dan telling the redhead to look away.

That’s right, don’t look at me doing your dirty work. Wouldn’t want to cause you any distress, you stupid cunt.

Thomas pulls back the tire iron and bites down hard. He releases the swing with all his might. It connects perfect, the impact sending a jolt all the way up to his shoulder. The woman goes down sprawling, her skull visibly cracked open.

“Next, please,” Thomas mutters, a string of saliva dripping from his lower lip. “Please step up to the counter, sir.”

He hobbles round the car and repeats the procedure on the black guy. But this one doesn’t go down instantly like the old woman. He requires nothing short of four powerful blows. Even as he finally collapses, Thomas has to administer two more to keep him from getting back up. At last, the skull gives way at the temple, causing the tire iron to get stuck. Thomas twists it sideways, producing a sound both wet and crisp. As he pulls his weapon free, there are greyish lumps of brain matter stuck to the metal.

From inside the car, the redhead starts bawling loudly like a toddler. The sound brings Thomas a highly inappropriate feeling of joy.

Hope she’s watching. Hope she’s enjoying the show.

His breath is very shallow now, like his lungs almost can’t manage the effort anymore. “You’re the only one left,” he wheezes at the girl. “Last zombie standing.”

On the inside he feels something akin to excitement. Even though he’s dying, he’ll get to save the world first.

How many people in history can say that? How many can say they actually—

Thomas skips forward, and a new, flaming stab of pain rolls up through his leg. And this time, it doesn’t stop at the hip, but flows out to his entire body. The pain is too intense. It short-circuits him.

Thomas doesn’t scream. He merely gives off a sigh. And collapses.

TWENTY-TWO

Dan sees Thomas go down for the second time. This time he doesn’t think he’ll be able to call him back. It looked like a minor miracle when he woke up again the first time around.

The woman is sitting with her face in her palms, sobbing. Of course, she looked away as Thomas put down the zombie who just a few hours ago had been her husband. But the sound of the blows could be heard even inside the car.

“He didn’t get the girl,” Dan mutters.

The woman lifts her head and stares at him, her eyes wet and swollen. “What?”

“Thomas is out again. He didn’t manage to …” Dan points out the window at the girl who is still snarling at them hungrily.

The woman looks from the girl to Dan. “What … what do we do then?”

Dan breathes deeply through his nose. “I think we have to do it. With the car.”

The woman immediately shakes her head violently. “No, I can’t. I won’t. You can’t make me!”

“I know it’s tough, but we might be talking about the fate of the world. If we don’t—”

“I just lost my husband! And now you want me to run over Siva? Forget it!” She turns the key and starts the engine. Suddenly, she seems very adamant. “I’m going to the police now. They’ll have to handle it.”

“I lost my sister too,” Dan says quietly. “If we drive off now, we might lose more of our friends and family members. We might lose everything.”

The woman has put the car in gear, but now she hesitates, staring stiffly out the front window.

Dan can tell how she’s fighting an internal battle. “Was she your daughter?” he asks.

The woman shakes her head. “She was my husband’s. I … I guess I cared for her, but we didn’t get to build a very close relationship. Janjak was very protective of her, since her mother died a few years back.”

“What’s your name?”

The woman looks at him. There’s the hint of a smile at the corner of her mouth. “Linda.”

“She’s already dead, Linda,” Dan says softly. “It’s just some crazy disease keeping her body moving. You would only be giving her peace.”

Linda nods in resignation. “I’ll try. I can’t promise anything. But I’ll try.” She places her hands on the wheel, but makes no attempt to drive anywhere.

“You can back it up,” Dan says quietly. “If you do, I think she’ll walk in front of us.”

He’s not sure Linda has heard him, and he’s just about to repeat, when she suddenly slams the car in reverse and backs up several yards. The zombie girl, as Dan predicted, staggers out right in front of the car and follows them. She’s a pretty terrifying sight to behold in the sharp gleam of the headlights.

Linda turns them off.

“Good idea,” Dan mutters and fastens his seat belt.

Linda whispers something under her breath, too low for Dan to pick it up. Then she puts the car in first and steps on the gas. The tires spin violently, gravel is banging against the underside of the car as it lunges forward.

Dan senses the figure of the girl right before the front end of the car collides with her. He even feels the jolt all the way up his seat. The zombie girl is flung forwards and tumbles across the courtyard, rolling over several times. Linda—to Dan’s great surprise—doesn’t slow down, but keeps on the gas and hits the girl again. This time, the tiny body goes underneath the car. It feels to Dan like driving over a curve stone. He is jerked back and forth in his seat.

Then Linda hits the brakes. As the car comes to a halt, she’s still clutching the wheel and staring out the windshield. Her voice is stiff as she asks: “Is she dead?”

Dan turns to look back. He can make out the girl in the red gleam of the rear lights. She’s not moving.

“I think she is.”

Linda gives off a sound somewhere between a sigh and a sob. “Let’s get out of here …” She’s about to drive off.

“Wait,” Dan says. “There’s still Thomas.”

TWENTY-THREE

Linda really steps on the gas. The headlights follow the curvy country road. The car races through the summer night headed towards the town. Neither of them speak.

Dan can’t quite relax. Even though it’s actually over, it’s not really. He’s constantly listening for sounds from the trunk.

Was it a mistake?

His thoughts are oddly dissolute. Like he can’t really collect them. Perhaps it’s due to exhaustion. Perhaps hunger. Or shock. A single question keeps presenting itself, though.

Was it a mistake to bring him along?

He’s not sure. But what else could they have done? Run him over like they did the girl? He was still alive, for God’s sake. Dan heard the faint, rattling breath as he, with the help of Linda, lifted Thomas up into the trunk.

Linda breaks the silence. “Do you think they can save him?”

“I don’t know. It never works in the movies. There’s nothing the doctors can do, because there’s no vaccine.”

Linda throws a look into the rearview mirror. “What do we do if he … wakes up?”

Dan runs a hand through his hair. “I have no idea.”

They speed past the town limit and the first houses appear on each side of the road. Linda slows down as they reach the somewhat comforting light of the streetlamps. The streets seem only sparsely trafficked. At the first traffic light, Linda runs a red light.

“You’ll have to tell me the way,” she says. “I’m not from around here.”

Dan guides her through town. They reach the hospital.

“Pull over here,” he says, pointing. “This is the A&E.”

Linda parks, pulls the handbrake, but keeps the engine running. She looks at Dan. “I think it’s best if you explain it to them.”

Dan unbuckles and steps out of the car, avoiding stepping on his injured foot.

The glass doors of the building glide open, and a young man in scrubs comes out. “You can’t park here. It’s only for ambulances.”

“We have a seriously ill person,” Dan says, hobbling to the trunk.

The man looks down at his leg. “It just looks like a sprained ankle to me. You’ll have to get her to remove the car, so we—”

“It’s not me,” Dan interrupts and opens the trunk.

Thomas is lying there, in fetal position. His eyes are closed, his mouth open. A string of drool has run from his lower lip, and the skin is completely white. Thomas is obviously dead. And at the sight of him, Dan is struck be deep terror. Suddenly, he realizes how stupid it was to bring Thomas to the hospital, and just how dangerous the situation is.

What was I thinking?

The nurse shoves him aside. “Geez, what happened?” He reaches down to feel Thomas’s neck. “I can’t find a pulse. Don’t move him, I’ll get help.” He runs back in through the glass doors.

Dan just stands for a moment, paralyzed, thoughts darting back and forth inside his head. Thomas will wake up any moment. The doctors have no idea of the danger. If they bring him inside the hospital to try and resuscitate him—

His train of thought is abruptly interrupted when Thomas opens his eyes. But as the empty, milk-white balls turn to look at him, Dan can tell at once it’s no longer Thomas peering out of them. He utters a hiss and reaches up to grab him.

Dan acts out of instinct: he grabs the lid and slams it down. Thomas immediately starts scratching on the inside.

Dan skips round the car to Linda’s side, and she rolls down the window.

“What happened?” she asks.

Dan shakes his head. “It’s too late. He’s—”

The nurse comes running back out, bringing two colleagues and a gurney.

Dan steps out in front of them, his heart pounding, holding up his hands. “He’s dead! There’s nothing you can do!”

The nurse doesn’t pay any attention to him, he simply pushes him aside and grabs the handle to the trunk. “How do you get this open?”

“Listen to me!” Dan yells, his voice pleading now. “We can’t … it’s dangerous … he’s no longer human!”

One the other nurses—a young Indian-looking woman—exclaims: “I can hear him in there! He’s regained consciousness.” She turns to seize Dan by the arm. “Open that trunk lid, right now!”

The male nurse is still struggling to open the lid, tugging at it hard. Dan is close to panic. He only sees one way out of the situation, so he screams: “Go, Linda! Drive!”

The engine roars and the car skids forward.

“No!” the nurse yells, letting go of Dan. “What the hell are you guys doing? Stop the car!”

Linda pulls out onto the road and guns it. Dan runs after the car as fast as he can with his aching ankle screaming to him for every step.

“Call the police!” one of the nurses calls from behind him.

Luckily, none of them take up the pursuit. Dan waves at the car, and the brake lights shine as Linda stops and backs it up.

Dan opens his door and throws himself inside. “Go,” he gasps.

Linda has already floored the pedal, and a moment later they once again speed through town. From the trunk Dan can hear fumbling, scratching and growling.

“Oh, no,” he whispers, rubbing his head with trembling hands. “Oh, no, oh, no …” He turns and looks back. “Can he get to us?”

“I don’t think so,” Linda says. “Unless he scratches his way through the seats.” She darts him a quick glance. “What now? And don’t tell me I have to run him over. I’m not doing that again.”

Dan tries to collect his thoughts. The shock of the nearly averted disaster slowly settles, and an idea comes to mind. “I think … I think I might know what to do. Do you smoke?”

“What? No.”

“Then pull over at the gas station coming up on the left.”

Linda glares at him. “Are you going in to get fucking cigarettes? Right now?”

“Just pull over, please,” Dan says, trying to shut out the sounds of Thomas from the trunk.

Linda pulls over and stops in front of the gas station.

“Wait here, it’ll only be a moment,” Dan says, getting out. His ankle is worse now, all swollen and throbbing. He can’t put his weight on it, so he skips into the store on one leg. He’s met by the smell of coffee and chocolate, but the store is empty.

The cashier comes out from a backroom. It’s a young, pimply teenager, around Thomas’s age. “Hey there,” he says absentmindedly, not even looking at Dan. “You paying for gas?”

“No, I just need a lighter.” Dan skips to the counter.

“Sure thing. We got ’em here.” The cashier points to a rack next to the counter.

Dan grabs one and also takes a packet of Kleenexes, putting both items on the counter.

“Forty-five kroner,” the cashier says.

Dan goes to his pockets and finds a fifty-kroner bill all crinkled up and damp from sweat. He was going to spend it on a cold soda on their way home from the paper route.

The cashier gives him the change. Dan grabs the lighter and the paper tissues, turns and skips towards the door.

“Hey, what happened to your foot?”

“Soccer practice,” Dan mutters over his shoulder right before hobbling out into the cool night air once again. He opens the door and jumps in.

Linda stares at the lighter. “You … you’re not thinking about …?”

“Drive out of the town,” Dan says tonelessly.

TWENTY-FOUR

They pull over at the first rest area they see.

Linda turns off the engine and looks at Dan. “For the record, I still think we should call the police.”

“They won’t believe us,” Dan tells her for the fourth time.

“We just need to explain to them what happened. If we tell them not to touch him—”

“It’s still too risky.”

“But we can—”

“No!” Dan interrupts, amazed at how stern he sounds. He goes on more softly: “We need to end this. It was too close a call before at the hospital.”

In the trunk, Thomas is rummaging around, growling and snarling.

“Sure there’s no better way of doing it?” Linda asks hoarsely.

“I can’t think of any. Can you?”

She bites her lip then shakes her head. “And you’re sure he won’t …?”

“I’m sure. He doesn’t feel pain anymore.”

“All right.”

“Do you have anything in here you want to keep? Better bring them, then.” Dan opens his door and steps out onto the asphalt. He takes a deep breath, filling his lungs with the cool, crisp air, smells the surrounding fields and listens to the silence.

Linda comes out of the car, carrying her jacket, purse and a pair of sunglasses. “Okay,” she mutters. “All clear.”

“Right. Step back then.” Dan opens the back door. He pulls open the packet of Kleenex and shoves them down between the seats one at a time. Thomas scratches and moans more eagerly from the trunk, as though he can sense Dan is close by.

“I’m so sorry,” Dan whispers as he tears up. “But I have to do it. I think you’d understand. And thank you for saving us, by the way.”

He flicks the lighter, looks at the flame for a moment, then he lights the tissues and shuts the door.

Linda has gone several yards away, and Dan skips over to her.

From inside the car comes a faint, flickering orange light. It quickly grows brighter. Soon the flames become visible. They eat the seat greedily, licking at the ceiling.

In a matter of minutes, the whole car is ablaze. Dark smoke begins to seep out of cracks in the doors. Dan can feel the heat even this far away.

He sits down heavily on the asphalt, resting his forehead on his knees. He’s never felt this tired before. The fatigue is coming from inside his bones. He has lived through the worst possible nightmare, and now all he wants is to—

“Dan!” Linda exclaims. “The trunk is open!”

Dan lifts his head. She’s right; the lid of the trunk has opened a few inches. A burning hand suddenly appears, followed by the rest of Thomas.

Dan stares in utter horror at the rear end of the burning car. Thomas’s hair and clothes are gone. Same goes with most of his skin. And yet, he stubbornly fights his way out of the trunk and slumps down to the ground. His movements are oddly stiff. The legs don’t seem to function properly. Instead of getting to his feet, he begins dragging his way towards them.

“Do something!” Linda yells and backs away. “Do something!”

Dan gets to his feet, unsure what to do or where to go.

Then, Thomas seems to lose his strength. He drags himself a few feet farther, but then he slows down. His groans and moans grow fainter, and with a final sigh, Thomas lies his head down on the asphalt and dies for the second time, the naked flesh still seething all over his body. He has left a broad trail of sticky blood all the way from the car. Dan can smell the burning flesh. He forces himself to look away, and instead he sees Linda.

She’s standing with her hand over her mouth, staring from Thomas’s burning corpse to Dan, her eyes wet from fear and tears. “It’s over now, right? Tell me it’s over.”

“It is,” Dan mutters. “It’s finally over.”

But just as he utters the words, a realization hits him like a lightning bolt.

Jennie! Oh, shit! How could I forget about her?

Linda says something, but Dan doesn’t even register it. He can only think of one thing.

The hatch. The hatch to the basement. I locked it. I know I did … didn’t I?

TWENTY-FIVE

Dennis looks up at the dark house looming under the starry night sky, and everything within him screams for him to turn his bike around and get out of here as fast as possible.

But he can’t.

Not until he finds the gris-gris.

He can’t remember having been this scared in his entire life.

At least not since last night.

All the gruesome things that went down right here, in Esther’s house, Dennis will never forget. And he’ll probably suffer from nightmares for the rest of his life. The bloody images are already haunting him, the dying screams echoing inside his skull.

And now he needs to go back inside.

Because he lost his most important possession, the one thing he can never lose no matter what; that’s what Mom instructed him, anyway.

To Dennis, the amulet is really not much else than what any person would see looking at it: a small leather pouch. Inside are a few tiny items which don’t hold any particular significance either: a feather, a piece of bone, a rock and a white marble.

To Mom, however, the gris-gris is a magical amulet protecting Dennis from harm as long as he wears it. When she made it for him several years back, she demanded he wore it on a string around his neck at all times.

When Dennis started going to school, she agreed—after he pleaded with her repeatedly—to let him keep it in his pocket so the other kids wouldn’t see it and make fun of him. There are already plenty of things about Dennis for his classmates to make fun of—like the fact that he’s slow-witted—and he certainly didn’t need another one.

Dennis has always been careful about not losing the gris-gris. He would take great pains in removing it from his pocket before his pants went to the laundry basket, and it would sit right beside his bed every night, so he was sure to see it first thing in the morning and remember to bring it.

He’s never lost it.

Not until yesterday.

On the worst day of his life.

He didn’t even notice until right after dinner.

Suddenly he felt something missing from his pocket, the tiny bulge always resting against his thigh. When he stuck his hand down there, he found nothing but a whole at the bottom.

The gris-gris must have slipped out without him even noticing. Not surprising that he didn’t notice, though, as he had plenty of other things on his mind at the moment.

Of course, he couldn’t tell Mom. Not on a regular day, and especially not after what they’d been through yesterday. He could feel she was also affected by it, even though she tried not to show it. In fact, she acted like it never happened, and she told Dennis to do the same, and to never mention anything to anybody about it. They would both go to jail if he did, she said, and Dennis believed her; he would never breath a word to anybody.

So, he just waited anxiously in his room for night to come. And as soon as Mom had stuck her head in and said good night, he climbed out the window, got his bike from the garage and rode the couple of miles down road to Esther’s place.

He was careful when he approached the driveway, looking for flashing lights or any other signs of police. But both the house and the driveway are completely dark.

And now he’s standing here, next to his bike, trying to convince himself to go inside the house. Something awful obviously went down here. The front door is standing wide open, inviting him.

The dark piles lying around the gravel are not so inviting, though. Dennis doesn’t want to look at them, but he can’t help it. And he can’t pretend like he doesn’t know what the piles are, either.

They’re dead people.

Real dead people.

The ones who stay dead.

Come to think of it, Dennis actually prefer this kind of dead people, even though they scare the life out of him. But at least they don’t get up and come for you.

Or do they? Maybe they will once I get closer …

The thought nails him even firmer to the spot, his legs refusing to move. He glances at the bike, considering calling the whole thing off.

But he can’t.

He knows that.

As much as he’s scared of the dead people and the house and what happened here, none of it can hurt him.

But Mom can.

And she will if she finds out he lost the gris-gris.

So, Dennis breathes deeply and forces himself to walk towards the front door. He doesn’t look at the dead people—but he can’t help but glance at them out the corner of his eye.

One of them is a man with dark skin, lying with his face turned towards the sky, his eyes closed and his mouth open.

The other is Esther; Dennis recognizes her all too well. After all, it’s only been around twenty-four hours since he last saw her. She’s still wearing the white dress, and her face is turned away from him, which Dennis is grateful for.

The last dead person, the one closest to the front door, is much smaller, and Dennis recognizes her too, without having to look closer.

It’s the girl.

Nadia.

Dennis feels like crying, and he manages to up the speed as he passes by the dead girl.

He reaches the front door and stops there, peering into the darkness of Esther’s scullery.

“He … hello?” he whispers, causing himself to jump.

There’s no answer.

The house is completely silent.

Which is good.

But also very scary.

Dennis steps inside, reaching for a light switch, but changing his mind at the last second. It’s not a good idea to turn on any lights. Someone passing by might see it from the road. Best to get by with the light of his cell phone.

He takes it out and activates the screen. It’s almost midnight. Dennis is usually sleeping tight by now.

He lights his way into the hallway, searching the floor for the gris-gris, stepping carefully so as to not bump into anything or make any kind of noise.

Once he reaches the living room, he finds it even more messed up than he remembers. Someone else has obviously been here since yesterday, and it looks like they’ve been fighting.

Dennis checks the floor all over. As the light falls on the dark spot from where Old Niels died, he feels a wrench in his gut and he hurries on.

The gris-gris isn’t in the living room, either. Dennis begins to suspect he might have dropped it outside the house.

But there’s one more room he needs the check.

The one he fears the most.

He turns slowly towards the door to the bedroom. It’s ajar. A pale gleam of moonlight shines out from inside, luring him closer.

Dennis slips across the floor, pushes the door open very gently and peeks inside the bedroom.

It’s empty except for the bed; just like he recalls it. The only thing different is the broken glass strewn all over the floor, and the dried-up blood prints glistening in the moonlight. The hatch to the basement is open.

He can’t see the gris-gris anywhere.

Maybe it’s under the bed?

He steps inside the room, careful about avoiding the shards of broken glass, as he makes his way towards the bed.

Just as he kneels down, lifts up the side of the sheet and looks under the bed, there’s a sound from below. It’s a bump. Dennis freezes. And then he sees a movement from the other side of the bed.

A hand comes up from the open hatch, groping at the air for a second, then clamping on to the floor as another hand appears.

Dennis stares at the hands as they turn into arms and then a golden-haired head with shoulders.

A girl a few years older than Dennis comes up from the basement, halfway climbing, halfway dragging herself, her movements slow and clumsy.

Even before she’s all the way up, she turns and stares directly at Dennis. The sight of her face makes him gasp for breath. The girl has obviously been very pretty very recently, but now she looks like something out of a nightmare. Her eyes are white and fishlike, bulging from their sockets, her mouth is open and drool is dripping from her bottom lip. And her skull seems to have been almost caved-in on one side, making her face crooked and reminding Dennis of that awful picture of a man screaming on a bridge he once saw in a museum.

The girl isn’t screaming, but she’s making a sound from deep down in her throat, a sound of hunger, as she begins to make her way towards Dennis, climbing like a crab on land.

Dennis is finally able to move. He pushes himself back and jumps to his feet, stumbling backwards, feeling the walls behind him as he squeezes into the corner.

The dead girl gets to her feet, too, looking like a toddler walking for the first time, unsteady and wobbly.

In a flash of sheer panic, Dennis realizes he’s literally cornered, the only thing between him and the girl being the bed. Then he notices the dead girl deciding to walk around the bed instead of simply crossing it, which would have left Dennis nowhere to run.

Now, he has the chance, and he grabs it.

He leaps onto the bed and down on the other side, then heads for the door. He forgets completely to look where he’s going, and his foot bangs into the open floor hatch, sending a flash of pain through his toes. He falls forward and rolls around on the floor, missing by sheer luck any of the broken glass.

There’s no time to whine about the pain, so he immediately jumps back up to see the girl coming right at him.

Dennis screams and jumps back, hitting the doorframe. The girl reaches out her hands, missing his face by mere inches as Dennis manages to back out into the living room.

He grabs the door out of pure instinct and slams it in the dead girl’s face. It only connects with a bang, sending her backwards, but not closing all the way.

Dennis jumps forward to push at it, but the girl manages to get one arm through the crack a split second before Dennis can close the door.

She flails her arm wildly, clawing blindly at him, missing his bare arm by less than an inch. Dennis yelps and backs away from the door. He turns around to run, only to stumble directly into the coffee table. He wheels sideways and trips over a tipped-over chair, landing between the table and the couch.

As he looks up, he sees the open door and the girl who comes staggering out from the bedroom. She’s lit up from behind by the sickening yellowish moonlight, and the scene is so terrifying it causes every muscle in Dennis’s body to cease working; he can only lie there and see her approach.

“Please don’t,” he whimpers as the girl maneuvers around the chair that tripped him. “Please get away from me …”

The girl pays no attention whatsoever to his pleading, but simply moves in closer, towering over him.

“No! No, please don’t!” Dennis begs, beginning to sob and scramble backwards, pushing into the couch, but there’s nowhere for him to go. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

He doesn’t even know what he’s sorry about—but, miraculously, it seems to work.

The girl suddenly stops.

She’s bent down halfway, her arms reached out to grab Dennis’s leg, when she simply ceases moving, like a robot who had its battery cut.

Dennis sobs and looks up at her, her empty dead eyes staring right past him as she sniffs the air once, almost like a bloodhound.

Then she gives off a groan, stands up straight, turns around and simply walks out of the living room, making her way through the furniture like a drunk person.

Dennis lies there and stares after her, completely nonplussed. He can hear her through the entire house as she heads for the front door.

Then, only silence.

Dennis listens to his pounding heart and his baited breath.

“What … what just happened?” he whispers, as though the empty room can give him an answer.

When none comes, he decides to get up and get away in case the girl changes her mind and comes back for him.

And as he makes to get to his feet, he suddenly feels it; the thing he was lying on.

It’s the gris-gris.

Dennis picks it up like it was made of crystal glass, holding it with both hands as he studies the leather pouch like for the first time.

Dennis puts the gris-gris in his pocket and leaves the house.

Outside, in the courtyard, there’s no sign of the girl. The other three dead people are still lying around exactly where they were when Dennis came.

He can’t help but take out the gris-gris and look at it once more.

Perhaps Mom was right after all. Perhaps it really does work as a protective amulet.

Then there’s a pair of headlights cutting through the night as Dennis sees a car coming up the driveway. His first thought is that it’s Mom who has found out he’s missing and has come looking for him.

But as the car comes closer, he can tell it’s not Mom’s car. He runs to his bike and pulls it across the gravel to the garage where he crouches down and peeks out.

The car comes into the courtyard, and Dennis sees to his utter horror the word written on the side of it. Even though Dennis is terrible at reading, he knows that word.

Police.

The car stops without turning off its engine or headlights, and two men step out.

“Holy hell,” one of them exclaims as he sees the dead people. “Call for backup!”

The other one runs back to the car as the first officer crouches down and begins examining Nadia—perhaps hoping she’s still alive.

Dennis uses the chance as the officers are both busy to drag his bike back out of the garage and out to the driveway. As soon as he’s a fair distance away, he jumps in the seat and begins pumping the pedals.

He doesn’t slow down even once on the entire way home. He does pause briefly every thirty seconds, though, to check that the gris-gris is still in his pocket.

DAY 2

The following takes places on

Sunday, July 27

ONE

Selina is awakened by a scream.

She sits bolt upright and looks around. She’s in her room. The sun is streaming in through the window, and the room is already too hot. It’s got to be at least 10:00 AM. For a moment, she feels utterly confused.

Did I sleep in?

Slowly, some of her memory returns. She’s not going to school today; it’s Sunday. She was out partying with her friends last night. They got pretty drunk. As though to confirm this, a throbbing headache takes root in her temples.

Was someone screaming just now? Or did I dream it?

Another scream answers her question. It comes from the garden. This time, she can tell it’s not a real scream, just a kid playing.

Selina lies back down with a heavy sigh.

Now it’s all coming back to her. It’s Louisa’s birthday. She’s having all the girls from her class over.

Perfect, Selina thinks, pulling the blanket over her face. Just what my hangover needed.

It soon gets too hot under the blanket. In fact, she’s already sweating. So, she gets up, squinting against the sunlight as she opens the window and lets the fresh, lukewarm air in. She leans against the windowpane and peers down into the garden. On the terrace are tables laid out with flags and balloons. Three girls are chasing each other around the lawn. They are the ones screaming.

Selina gazes out over the open fields. They stretch out endlessly under the blue dome of the summer sky. She’s still not really used to living out here. Just like she’s not used to Louisa or Ulla, either. Or rather, “Little Sister” and “Mom,” as Dad insists on her calling them. Like that’s ever going to happen.

Something catches her eye. It looks like a person is walking across one of the fields. It’s hard to tell for sure, though, with the sun blinding her, and the fact that she surprisingly remembered to take out her contact lenses before going to bed last night; it could simply be the wheat moving in the breeze.

A new wave of headache.

How did I even get home? That’s right, Jonas drove us. Oh, shit, did I kiss him? I think I did …

Selina lets out a moan and rubs her forehead. If she really did kiss Jonas goodbye, she might as well lie down and die right here and now. Krista is never going to stop teasing her as long as she lives, even if it was only a tiny peck on the lips as they said goodnight in the car.

Selina looks around for her cell. She can’t see her purse anywhere, so the phone is probably somewhere in her clothes, which are strewn about the floor. She starts going through it, careful as she bends down, so as to not provoke any further headache. She doesn’t find anything. She calls off the search for now and instead goes to the bathroom. She gulps down a couple of mouthfuls of water and removes the worst of the makeup. Then she sits down to pee, closing her eyes for a moment.

The window is open, and she can hear a car come rolling into the courtyard.

Probably more rug rats here for the party.

Two car doors opening and slamming. Steps in the gravel. The front door opening.

Her father’s voice: “Morning, Officers. What can I do for you?”

Selina freezes. Officers? What the fuck? The police are here!? She immediately feels guilty. Had Jonas been drinking when he drove them home last night? Were there any drugs in the car?

“Morning, sir,” a man’s voice says. “We’re from the local police.”

“I figured as much,” her dad says. “Is something wrong?”

Selina quickly finishes up and goes to the window. From up here, she can see her father and two uniformed police officers. One of them is older and has a grey beard. The other one is pretty young, maybe mid-twenties, and pretty handsome. The younger officer appears to be rather nervous, as he keeps darting glances around the courtyard.

“My name is Soren, and this is Allan,” the older officer says.

“Torben,” Selina’s dad says, shaking hands with the older officer. He also offers his hand to the younger officer, but he doesn’t notice it.

“Allan?” the older officer asks.

Allan turns his head, smiles apologetically and briefly shakes Dad’s hand, before going back to searching the surroundings with his eyes.

Why is he so paranoid?

“We’re looking for a young girl who went missing last night,” Soren explains, taking out a phone. “Her name is Jennie Nygaard. If I could ask you to take a look at her photo …”

Dad studies the screen for a moment, before shaking his head. “Sorry, I haven’t seen her. Is she from around here? My daughter and I just moved here last month, you see, so we don’t really know—”

He’s interrupted by a scream from the backyard. Soren raises his grey eyebrows, and Allan’s hand goes instinctively to his belt, even though Selina can’t see any gun there.

“We’re having a kid’s birthday party,” Dad explains. “That’s just the girls playing.”

“Could we have a word with you inside?” Soren asks.

“Sure, come on in. My wife is out shopping, but she’ll be back in ten minutes or so. Maybe she knows the girl.”

The officers follow Dad inside the house. Just before they disappear out of sight, Selina notices Allan throwing one last look over his shoulder. Then the front door closes.

Selina is so curious she has completely forgotten about her headache. She runs to her room, gets dressed and puts in new contacts. Just as she’s about to leave her room, see notices something outside the window.

It’s the figure in the field again. This time, she’s sure it really is a person, because they’re a lot closer. She can tell it’s a girl around Selina’s own age. She’s heading straight for the garden, where the kids are playing. Only a row of rosehips separates the lawn from the surrounding fields.

But something seems odd about the girl, Selina notices. She’s staggering along in a precarious fashion, almost like a sleepwalker. Her arms are outstretched in front of her, like she’s grabbing for something. Her hair is messy and covers most of her face.

Could that be the girl the police are looking for? I’d better tell the officers …

Selina runs downstairs.

TWO

On her way down the staircase, she’s met by a pack of girls laughing loudly.

“Heey!” one of them shouts. “Are you Louisa’s big sister?”

Selina doesn’t bother to answer, but rushes past them. She finds her dad with the officers in the kitchen.

Allan turns immediately as she steps into the room. His eyes are surprisingly dark and handsome, but also nervous, almost scared.

“Do you suspect something happened to the girl?” Dad asks. He’s pouring coffee and hasn’t noticed her.

“We can’t discuss the case,” Soren says, taking the mug with a grateful nod. “But you’ll hear about it in the media before the day is over, I can pretty much guarantee it.”

Selina suddenly feels awkward. Allan is still the only one to have noticed her presence, and he’s doing nothing but silently staring at her, which is making her uncomfortable. She clears her throat.

Dad turns around. “Good morning, missy. How’s the head?”

“It’s fine,” Selina mutters.

“This is my daughter, Selina.”

“Morning,” Soren mumbles through a sip of coffee as he eyes her thoughtfully. “How old are you, Selina?”

“Uhm … sixteen.”

“Do you happen to know Jennie Nygaard? She’s a year older than you.”

“I don’t know her, but I think—”

She’s interrupted as three girls come barging into the kitchen. Louisa is one of them. “Torben! Can I open my presents now? Hey, who’re these guys?”

“These are officers from the police,” Dad explains.

“Wow!” Louisa gasps, eyeing the men. “Are you like real policemen?”

“We sure are,” Soren says, smiling. “And how old are you, my girl?”

“Seven!” Louisa exclaims proudly, holding up the same number of fingers.

“Louisa!” One of the other girls pulls her sleeve. “Where’s your dog?”

“Yeah, you said we could see it,” the third girl chimes in.

Louisa’s expression turns sad. “It’s gone.”

“Louisa’s dog unfortunately ran away a few days ago,” Dad explains. “But we put up posters, and I’m sure someone will find it. Go show your friends your room, Louisa.”

The girls leave the kitchen and run upstairs.

“Please, sit down,” Dad says to the officers. “My wife will be here any minute.”

Soren sits down, but Allan walks past the table and instead stands in front of the window to the back garden, where the kids are still running around playing.

Selina takes a breath. “I think I might have seen the girl you’re looking for.”

Everyone’s attention turns to her at once. Even Allan turns away from the window to stare at her.

“I see,” Soren says evenly. “And when was that?”

“Right now. Just a minute ago. I saw—” At that moment, Selina sees something through the window.

The girl from the field comes crashing through the rosehips. The thorns are tugging at her clothes and leaving bloody scratches on her arms, yet the girl doesn’t seem to pay notice. She just stumbles out onto the lawn with stiff, staggering steps.

The face of the girl leaves Selina speechless. Her messy hair can’t hide the greenish hue dominating the skin nor the milky white eyes which belong to a dead fish rather than a teenage girl. The gaze is fixed on one of the girls who is standing with her back to the rosehips only a few yards away.

“Selina?” Dad asks, pulling her back. “What’s wrong?”

Selina lifts her arm and points.

Allan has already turned his head to look. “Shit!” he exclaims, spinning on his heel and running to the hallway.

“Allan!” Soren exclaims, getting up from the table. “What are you doing?”

But Allan doesn’t answer, and a second later the front door slams.

Selina is still pointing and staring at the window, unable to move or speak, trapped as though in a nightmare, everything suddenly moving painfully slow. She sees the girl who’s got to be Jennie Nygaard descend upon the girl; it looks most of all like a clumsy embrace, causing both of them to fall to the grass. For a few seconds, they scramble around.

Then the girl screams. This time, it’s a genuine scream. A scream of pain and fear.

“What the heck?” Dad says. “What’s she doing? Is that the girl you guys are—”

“Stay in here,” Soren commands, running through the living room and opening the terrace door.

Dad follows him.

Selina still can’t move. Events seem to speed up again, reaching an unnatural pace. She sees and hears everything from the window, which is ajar.

Jennie Nygaard is sitting astride the girl who is still screaming, now in very shrill, batlike tones. Jennie Nygaard throws back her head, and Selina sees the bloody chunk between her teeth. It disappears quickly out of sight, as the teenager gulps it down and promptly bends down for another bite.

What the fuck? She’s … she’s … biting her!

“Hey, you!” Soren calls as he comes running across the lawn. “Stop that right now!”

Jennie Nygaard doesn’t react the slightest to his call, but keeps doing what’s she doing.

“Hey!” Soren yells, grabbing her by the shoulder. “I told you to—”

Selina sees the officer freeze in place, his expression turning to utter horror. “What the hell are you doing? Stop! … Stop that!”

He shoves Jennie Nygaard aside, giving Selina a clear view of the girl on the grass. The sight makes her gasp. There’s a giant bloody crater in the neck of the girl. She’s no longer screaming.

“Allan!” Soren roars, kneeling down by the girl. “Allan, goddamnit! Where are you?”

Jennie Nygaard is laboriously making her way back to her feet, and the officer seems for a second to have forgotten about her completely. The lower part of her face is covered in blood. She makes a sound halfway between a gurgle and a growl, then turns towards Soren.

Suddenly, miraculously, Selina’s voice returns. “Watch out! Watch out behind you!”

THREE

The policeman reacts to Selina’s warning, but too late. Jennie Nygaard bends down and sinks her teeth into the back of his neck.

Soren roars with pain and throws her off. He touches the back of his neck, then stares with disbelief at his bloody fingers. Jennie Nygaard has fallen down once more, but that doesn’t stop her reaching for his leg and trying to bite his ankle.

The officer pulls back his leg. “Stay down! Stay down, I say!”

Jennie Nygaard isn’t listening; she’s crawling stubbornly forward, her nails digging into the grass, her mouth snapping. Soren makes a move which looks rehearsed: he quickly steps to the side, plants a knee in her back, twists both her arms back and slaps a pair of handcuffs on them.

At that moment, Allan comes running around the house. He has a gun in his hand.

“Tend to the girl!” Soren shouts. “I don’t think she has a pulse!”

Allan hesitates for a moment at the sight of Jennie Nygaard. Then, he drops down by the girl. “Holy shit! Her windpipe is totally gone … she’s already … oh, fuck me!” His free hand goes to his head.

Selina is once more unable to move, and that nasty feeling of being trapped in a dream has again taken hold of her. A single thought keeps repeating.

This can’t be happening. It just can’t.

“Jesus Christ, she’s completely out of it,” Soren snarls, trying to hold down Jennie Nygaard. She twists violently from side to side, bending her back in obtuse angles, making it look like her spine might snap any moment. She doesn’t seem to be in pain, though, as her main concern is still trying to bite Soren.

“Stop resisting!” he shouts at her. “Do you understand what I’m saying? Lie still!” He darts a look around and fixes on Allan. “What are you waiting for? Get them to send an ambulance!”

Allan takes out a walkie-talkie, his movements slow and hesitant.

“What’s going on?” it’s Dad’s voice, as he suddenly appears on the terrace.

Soren points at him. “Get the kids out of here. Take them inside.”

The remaining kids—whom Selina hasn’t even noticed till now—run to her dad crying, and he disappears inside with them.

“Central,” Allan says into the walkie. “We have an injured …” He stops. He’s staring at something outside of Selina’s view. Not until he takes a stumbling step sideways does she see it. The dead girl is now sitting up.

Selina’s first thought is that the girl wasn’t really dead after all. But then she sees her eyes, as the girl turns her head and glares hungrily at the officers.

This is a bad dream. It has to be. I’ll wake up any moment now …

But a part of her knows she’s not dreaming. A part of her understands that all of this is terribly real. A word is ringing somewhere at the back of her mind. That word is zombie. And that knowing part of her understands that zombies aren’t just something on television anymore.

The girl exclaims something which might have been a growl, had it not been for the torn-up throat, which only produces a gurgling rattle. She gets to her feet. Her white summer dress is completely covered in blood still oozing from the open hole in her neck. She reaches out her arms and staggers eagerly towards Allan, looking grotesquely like a little girl who wants her daddy.

Allan hesitates, shakes his head, staggers backwards.

“Allan!” Soren shouts, still struggling against the cuffed zombie. “What the hell are you doing? Help her, for Christ’s sake!”

Allan keeps stepping backwards. He drops the walkie on the grass. Instead, he raises the gun.

“Allan, goddamnit!” Soren roars. “What the hell are—”

The shot rings out over the garden, surprisingly loud. It stings in Selina’s ears, and the glass in front of her vibrates for a second. The girl’s head is thrown back, revealing a gaping hole right above her eye. She manages to take another step, then she collapses on the grass.

A few seconds of terrible silence.

The only thing Selina can hear is a shrill ringing in her ears, and Jennie Nygaard still growling and trying to get free. Selina notices absently how her dad comes rushing past behind her, herding a flock of kids.

Outside on the lawn, Allan is staring down at the dead girl. His mouth opens and closes a few times.

Soren stares at his partner. “You ... you shot her …”

Allan turns around to face Soren. He looks very ill. He mutters something Selina doesn’t catch. It sounds like: “… had to do it …”

Maybe because Soren is distracted, Jennie Nygaard finally manages to twist around just enough to plant her teeth in his thigh.

“Auv, goddamnit! Let go! Let go of me!” He sends a fist directly into her face, once, twice, three times. Jennie Nygaard ignores the punches and keeps gnawing away fiercely, ripping the pants and causing blood to spurt. Soren gets up and steps back. The zombie clamps down and is dragged a few steps before it finally loses its grip.

Soren limps backwards, clutching at his leg. “Bloody hell, she got me good …” He’s still bleeding from the wound on the back of his neck, the blood running down both sides of his neck like strings of red hair.

Jennie Nygaard still has her hands caught behind her back, which means she can’t get up. Instead, she wriggles after Soren like a giant worm. A piece of his pants leg is still lodged between her teeth.

Allan steps between them. He aims the gun at Jennie Nygaards’s head.

“No, Allan,” Soren begins.

He’s interrupted once more, as Allan pulls the trigger the second time. The shot is just as deafening as the first time.

Jennie Nygaard immediately ceases to move.

FOUR

The silence that follows is even louder than the two gunshots.

The first noise Selina registers is kids crying somewhere nearby. Then she hears something much closer: a gurgling sound coming from her own throat. She doubles over and throws up onto the floor. The sweet taste of Malibu brings her fleeting memories of last night.

Her stomach is quickly empty. It cramps up a few more times, and Selina spits into the puddle. Outside in the garden she can hear the officers shouting at each other.

“Have you gone completely insane?”

“They were zombies, goddamnit!”

“Give me the gun! Let go of it!”

Selina looks out to see them fighting over the gun.

Then her dad is by her side, pale-faced. Without a word, he grips her arm and pulls her towards the stairs.

“Dad, wait …”

But Dad doesn’t seem to hear her. He hauls her upstairs and into Louisa’s room, where a flock of scared girls—including Louisa—are standing or sitting around the floor, sobbing or staring in wide-eyed silence.

“We stay in here,” Dad says to no one in particular. “All of us. We’re safe in here.”

“What about Josefine?” one of the girls immediately asks.

Selina figures Josefine must be the girl splayed out on the grass down in the back garden with a bullet in her brain.

“She’s fine, Josefine is fine,” Dad lies and finally looks at Selina. “Stay in here with the girls. Comfort them if they get scared.” He strides back towards the door.

“Dad!” Selina says, following him. “You can’t go down there …”

“You’ll do as I say!” Dad shouts and spins around to point a finger in her face.

Selina steps back, amazed. Dad has never yelled at her before. She looks at him and realizes he’s trembling, his eyes flickering.

“I have no idea what’s going on down there,” he murmurs. “But it’s obvious they don’t have the situation under control, so I’m calling the police, and I’m also calling Ulla to tell her not to come home.” He pats his pockets. “My phone is downstairs. I’ll be back up as soon as I’ve made the calls.”

He leaves the room without further explanation, slamming the door and turning a key on the other side.

Selina turns to look at the scared girls, most of them staring back at her, unsure what to do or say. At that moment there’s a shout from the garden. Selina runs to the window. Looking down, she sees the policemen rolling around the grass, still struggling for the gun.

Soren wins the fight and gets to his feet, panting, holding the weapon. He points it at Allan as he limps backwards a few paces. “You’re … under … arrest …” he wheezes.

“You’ve been infected, Soren,” Allan says, sitting up, his shirt and hair all ruffled. “You’ll become—”

“Shut up!” Soren shouts. “And stay down!”

Allan holds up his hands. “Listen to me, goddamnit. We might still have a chance of stopping it!”

Soren doesn’t answer, but picks up the walkie. “Central,” he says.

“No!” Allan shouts. “Don’t call for backup! We can’t risk any more people getting infected!”

Soren steps a little farther away. “Yeah, we need an ambulance … one officer is wounded, two civilians are dead … We found what we assume to be the missing person … she’s dead.”

Someone pulls at Selina’s sleeve. She turns to see Louisa. Her lips are trembling. “Selina? Why is this happening on my birthday?”

“I don’t know,” Selina mutters, realizing how all of the girls are staring at her. She forces a smile. “There’s no need to be scared, we’re safe up here.”

“What about Josefine?” one of them asks.

Selina glances down onto the lawn and feels a cold shiver down her spine despite the heat. “I’m … I’m not sure about Josefine.”

Louisa leans forward to look, but Selina pushes her gently back. “Just take a seat, okay? It’ll be over soon.”

“I want Mommy,” Louisa says and starts crying.

“Your mom will be here in a minute,” Selina promises her.

But Louisa keeps crying, and it sets off a chain reaction. Soon all the girls are sobbing. Selina looks out the window again.

Allan is still sitting on the grass, his head in his palms, looking like he’s brooding over a serious problem. Soren has sat down on one of the lawn chairs. The gun is on the table next to him. He’s tending to the bite wound on his leg. The other wound, the one on his neck, is still trickling blood.

“Soren,” Allan says, suddenly lifting his head. “You need to listen to me. I’m not crazy.”

Soren sends him a brief look, but doesn’t say anything.

“You saw her yourself,” Allan goes on, gesturing towards the body of Josefine. “She was dead. I know you saw it. How do think she could just get up again?”

“Apparently, she wasn’t dead after all,” Soren growls. “Not until you shot her.”

“Yes, she was! She was dead as a doornail. I checked her pulse.”

No answer from Soren this time.

The girls’ sobbing is starting to get on Selina’s nerves. It’s making it hard to hear what the officers are saying. She turns and shushes the girls, but they hardly notice her.

“Hey,” she says. “Be quiet, all right? You need to stay quiet.”

The girls sniffle, and a few of them actually stop the waterworks.

Selina turns her attention to the open window once more.

“How about her, then?” Allan asks, pointing to Jennie Nygaard. “Did she look alive to you when she charged at you? She has been dead for at least twelve hours, and you know it!”

Soren glances at the corpse of Jennie Nygaard, but still doesn’t reply.

Allan goes on pleadingly: “This is a form of disease. It’s killing people fast and then bringing them back so they can attack other people and spread the infection. I knew it as soon as I saw the three bodies. I should have told you, but I knew you wouldn’t believe me until you saw it.” Allan hesitates for a moment. Selina can tell how he weighs his next words. “You’re already infected, Soren. I’m really sorry, but … there’s nothing we can do. And if you don’t call off that ambulance, you’ll spread the infection to a whole lot of other people.”

Soren scuffs. “This isn’t a movie, Allan.”

“No, it’s real. Do you really want the end of the world on your shoulders?”

Soren gingerly touches the wound on his neck and mutters something Selina almost can’t pick up. It sounds like: “… hurts like hell …”

Even from up here, Selina can tell how the skin around the wound is already starting to take on a greenish color; the same color Josefine’s skin had when she woke up again.

Selina’s stomach is doing somersaults. What Allan is saying is completely ludicrous—but for some reason, it also makes sense. If it works like in the movies, then Allan is right: It’s game over as soon as you get a scratch or get bitten. It’s only a matter of time before you’ll be walking around like a flesh-eating monster yourself.

Selina bites her lip. Tries hard to think. Is there anything she can do? She assumes it’s too late to help Soren. But can she in anyway prevent the ambulance from getting here? Or that Soren gets in it?

Not as long as he has the gun …

She looks down at the gun on the table. Soren is leaning back in the garden chair, moaning and closing his eyes for a moment, his forehead gleaming with sweat.

This is insane, Selina thinks. But I have to try …

FIVE

Selina closes the window and turns to the girls. “Listen up, girls. I need to leave the room for a minute. But you guys just stay here, all right? Nothing will happen.”

“You can’t leave,” Louisa remarks, wiping her nose on her sleeve. “Your dad locked the door.”

“I’ll climb out the window.”

The girls look at each other, then back at her.

“Isn’t that dangerous?” Louisa asks.

“Where are you going?” another one asks.

“When will you be back?” a third one asks.

Selina puts a finger to her lips. “You need to be quiet, remember? It’s very important you don’t say anything once I open the window. I’ll be back in less than five minutes. But I don’t want you to look out the window while I’m gone. You need to stay seated, okay? Do you understand?”

A few of the girls nod.

From the other side of the door, Selina can hear Dad’s voice talking on the phone. “Yes, two officers, and one of them has gone insane … no, Louisa is fine, just don’t come home right now, okay? … Listen, I keep telling you: I don’t know!”

Selina opens the window again. It opens all the way like a door. Dad has been wanting to put a child safety-thing on it, but luckily, he hasn’t gotten around to it.

By sitting on the windowsill, she can reach the drain pipe running down the wall. She swings out her legs, and for a moment feels dizzy. It’s probably due to the hangover, because she’s never been afraid of heights—in fact, she used to do quite a lot of tree-climbing when she was little.

“Selina,” Louisa whispers behind her.

Selina turns her head and shushes her.

“I just wanted to say be careful,” Louisa whispers. “I don’t want you to fall down and hurt yourself.”

Selina sends her a quick smile and whispers: “Don’t worry.” Then, she leans out and grabs a hold of the drain pipe. The metal is already hot from the sun. The pipe seems to be securely fastened to the wall and can easily carry her weight.

She looks down at the terrace one more time. Soren is still sitting with his eyes closed. Allan, who’s sitting on the grass, looks up at that exact moment and meets Selina’s eyes. He looks like he’s about to say something, but then thinks better of it. He then simply glances at his partner and back up at Selina. He nods discretely, once.

Selina slips out and begins climbing down the drain pipe. The metal gives off tiny sounds under her weight, but luckily, Soren is complaining about the pain, so he doesn’t notice.

“Bloody hell,” he moans, leaning forward on the chair. “I’m burning up here … when’s that ambulance coming?”

Selina keeps descending. She’s only about six feet above ground, when her sweaty palm slips on the pipe, producing a high screeching sound. Selina freezes.

Soren lifts his head. His eyes are hazy. “What was that?” he mutters and looks around.

“Soren!” Allan says loudly, drawing his attention. “Why won’t you listen? You need to call and cancel that ambulance …”

“You shut up, now. You’re under arrest, remember? You have the right to remain silent, so use that right.”

Selina slides down and lands on the terrace without another sound. Her heart is beating wildly as she sneaks towards Soren and the table where the gun is. She’s only five steps away.

“The future of the world might depend on it,” Allan goes on, keeping Soren’s focus away from Selina’s direction.

“I don’t want to hear anymore from you,” Soren says, blinking and wiping sweat off his brow. “Until help is here, you don’t open your mouth—you got that?”

Selina glances at Allan, and he glances back. Unfortunately, Soren looks at Allan at that moment, and he sees his partner’s eyes flicker.

“What are you looking at?” he mumbles and turns in his chair. He stares directly at Selina, and his eyes grow wide. “Hey! Will you get back in that house!” He reaches for the gun, but the movement seems uncoordinated, and his hand misses the table, almost causing him to tip off the chair.

Before he can go for it again, Selina jumps over and snatches the weapon.

“Stop that!” Soren shouts, grabbing her by the arm.

Selina almost drops the gun, as it’s a lot heavier than she anticipated, and she pulls to get free. “Let go of me!”

But Soren’s grip is firm. He gets to his feet and grabs her with his other hand, too. She can feel the heat radiating off him as he fumbles to take the gun away from her. She fights to keep him off, and suddenly, Allan is there, pulling the weapon out of her hand and turning it on Soren. “Let her go, man. And sit back down.”

Soren lets go of Selina, takes a wobbling step backwards and holds up his hands, blinking dully. “All right now. Take it easy, Allan.”

Selina steps away from the officers. She can tell Soren is in a really bad state now. In fact, he’s struggling to even keep upright. His eyes are watering, his voice is drooly. He’s a terrible sight with the dried-up blood all over his neck, and his skin appears ash grey in the sunlight.

“Put down that gun, Allan,” he mutters dreamily. “You don’t know what you’re … what you’re doing …”

“Sit down, Soren,” Allan says without lowering the gun. “You’ve got a bad fever.”

“Do I?” Soren asks in a wondering voice, running his hand across his forehead. He looks at it and finds it dripping with sweat. “Well, what do you know? I do have a fever …” Then his eyes turn to the sky and he faints.

SIX

Selina stares from the unconscious policeman on the terrace tiles to the armed policeman standing a few feet away. Allan is looking at his partner while breathing heavily through his nose.

“Are you … are you going to …?” Selina asks meekly.

Allan looks at her like he has for a moment forgotten all about her, then nods briefly. “Thank you for helping me. You’d better go inside now.”

“Are you … sure there’s absolutely no other way? Like, completely sure? The ambulance will probably be here in a minute, and if they can help him in some way …”

“They can’t,” the young officer says, shaking his head grimly, a drop of sweat falling from his chin. “There is nothing anyone can do. Once you’re bitten …” He nods towards the house. “Go inside, please.”

Soren gives off a noise. It’s halfway between a gasp and a cough. He twitches for a moment, but doesn’t open his eyes.

“He’s already slipping into a coma,” Allan mutters, gripping the gun with both hands and spreading his feet slightly. “Go now.”

Selina goes towards the terrace door.

Suddenly, her dad’s voice calls from upstairs: “Selina! What the hell are you doing?” She looks up to see him hanging out the window, disbelief and horror on his face. “Didn’t I tell you to stay up here?”

“But I had to—”

“Close that window!” Allan shouts. “I don’t want the children to see this …”

Dad looks at Soren and then at Allan. “Christ, I hope you’re not thinking about shooting him?”

“He’s already dead.”

“No, he’s not, I can hear him breathing all the way from up here! He’s only wounded. He needs medical attention. I’ve already called the police, they’re coming.”

“Dad, you don’t understand,” Selina begins.

“Selina, get inside the house!” Dad shouts.

“But he’s been—”

“Shut the fuck up, both of you!” Allan roars. He points a finger at Selina’s dad. “You, shut that window. And you …” He points at Selina. “Go inside—now!”

Dad obeys and closes the window, but only after sending Selina one last, meaningful look. Selina goes through the terrace door and closes it behind her. She doesn’t feel like looking out, but she can’t help it.

Allan is still poised above Soren with the gun. He looks up at the window on the first floor, as though to check no one is looking down. It’s only a second. But it’s enough. It happens very fast. Soren sits up abruptly and opens his eyes. His pupils are white, empty, dead, alive, hungry.

Selina screams.

Soren leans in and bites Allan’s ankle.

Allan gives a yell of pain. He aims the gun and shoots Soren through the head.

The shot rings through the house for the third time.

Soren dies for the second time.

Everything stops moving for several seconds.

Selina is staring out at the young officer through the glass of the terrace door. He bends down slowly to lift up his pant leg, revealing his ankle and a bloody bitemark. Then, he straightens up again, his expression completely blank. His eyes fall on Selina, but it’s more like he’s looking right through her.

Selina holds her breath as Allan raises the gun and places it under his chin.

No, Selina thinks, but she can’t move, can’t talk, can’t even take away her eyes.

Allan’s face has become a mixture of emotions. Selina prepares mentally for another loud bang.

But—it doesn’t come.

Allan lowers the gun again.

Selina blinks and finally starts breathing again. He can’t do it …

Then Allan does something else. Something completely unexpected. He spins on his heel and runs limpingly around the house.

What’s he doing? Where’s he going?

Selina runs through the living room and out into the kitchen.

Her dad comes running down the stairs, yelling: “Selina? Where are you? You come to me!”

Selina doesn’t answer. She goes to the kitchen window and peers out, just as Allan comes running into view. He jumps into the police car.

Dad comes into the kitchen behind her. “There you are! What were you thinking? Come here!” He grabs her shoulder.

Selina pulls free with a strong tug. “Let go, Dad! I need to see what he’ll do …” She stares out at Allan who starts the engine, revs it up, twists the wheel around and races out of the courtyard, leaving a cloud of dust.

“He … he ran away,” Selina whispers.

“Good thing,” Dad says. “Go and lock the front door, Selina. In case he comes back. I’ll call the police again, ask them what the hell is taking them so long!”

Selina goes to the front door, suddenly feeling very unreal, like she’s in a movie. She just stands there for a moment, staring at the knob. She sees everything unfold in her mind’s eye. Allan, driving on the highway. Allan, becoming more and more ill behind the wheel. Allan, arriving at the hospital. Allan, dying in the hall. Allan, receiving CPR from a doctor. And finally Allan, reawakening in a building full of people …

Right now, Selina is the only one aware of this danger. She’s the only one who can prevent this scenario from becoming real.

I have to stop him.

She doesn’t know what else to do, so she rips open the door and runs out across the courtyard. Down by the end of the gravel road she just sees the police car as it turns left onto the highway—headed for town.

SEVEN

Dan’s eyes are stinging, making it hard to see the road in front of him clearly. He forgot to change his contact lenses when he was at the house to get the scooter. Now his retinas have dried up.

Luckily, there isn’t really any traffic on the roads out here. The road slopes lazily through the open fields. On his left is a forest, and underneath the scooter’s tires, the asphalt is seething from heat. Dan is sweating.

In his backpack are a large bottle of water and two sandwiches. He made three of them back at the house, but he already gulped down one as he walked out to the garage. It’s all he had to eat for … for how long? He’s not sure what the time is, and there’s no clock on Jennie’s scooter, but judging from the position of the sun, it’s got to be around noon. Which means it’s been more than twenty-four hours since this whole thing started.

Dan blinks and tries to moisten his eyes. He feels like rubbing them, but he’s not comfortable with taking one hand off the handlebars, and there’s no time to make a rest stop—he already lost too much time. First by trying to talk Linda into going with him. He needed someone to drive him, but she didn’t budge, no matter what he said.

“Listen to me, Linda …”

“No, you listen. I’m done. You get that? I’ve lost my husband, for God’s sake!”

“But we need to find my sister. She might be—”

“I don’t care! I already did enough! I agreed to burn the car, didn’t I? I’m going to the police, and I’m telling them about everything that happened.”

“No, you can’t do that! They’ll just—”

“I don’t care! If your sister is still a … zombie, or whatever, then the police need to deal with it. That’s their job, not mine!”

At that moment, a car had pulled over onto the rest stop where they were standing next to the rubble of the still burning car. A man had jumped out and asked them if they were okay. Linda went to him and began explaining everything.

Dan made a quick decision and ran for it—as much as he could with his busted ankle. He was headed back towards town when a firetruck came screaming by, closely followed by a police car. Dan jumped into the ditch and hid until both had passed. Then he continued onwards.

He still can’t really believe he made the half mile back to town, but he did. Maybe it was the thought of Jennie keeping him going. If she got out of that basement, it would be his fault, since he was the one who forgot to lock the hatch. In that stuffy basement, Dan had fought for his own life. Now he was fighting for the future of the world.

He had limped through town as a new, hot day had broken, and the few cars on the roads this early didn’t even notice him. As he fought on, he considered his options. His parents were out of town, so they couldn’t help him. And it was also pointless to contact the police, as he was sure he couldn’t convince them about what was really going on. Besides, Linda had probably already told them the whole thing by now. They were most likely already headed out to the house where everything had started. And where Jennie might be waiting for them …

When Dan finally reached his home, he knew he had to go out there himself. So, he took Jennie’s scooter, and he—

A sound pulls Dan out of this train of thoughts. He looks to the side and sees a police car coming at him fast from an adjacent gravel road.

Dan yells out and squeezes the brake hard, causing the scooter to slide sideways and almost throw him off.

The police car veers to the side at the last second and narrowly avoids hitting him. But the driver doesn’t seem to pay any notice, because the car doesn’t slow down; it simply makes a sharp turn, the tires screaming against the hot asphalt, and then it races off in the direction towards town where Dan has just come from. Less than two hundred yards down the road, it slams on its brakes, turns sharply again, disappearing into the forest.

Holy shit, Dan thinks, feeling his heart under his chin. Wonder if that had anything to do with …

He doesn’t need to finish the thought, because he already knows the answer. He had a brief glimpse of the driver of the car—a young man in a police uniform—and the pale face with the wide eyes told Dan everything he needed to know about what the guy had seen.

He looks around and notices the mailbox by the side of the gravel road from which the police car came. Number 214. The house where it all began was number 216. This is the neighbor, then. And that means Jennie probably—

Dan sees the girl running up the gravel road. For one terrible second he takes it to be Jennie. The girl does look a little like his late sister; around same age, same height and build. The hair is a little shorter and darker, but that’s not readily apparent from this far away, and the only thing keeping Dan from twisting the gas handle and getting the heck out of Dodge is the way the girl moves. She’s way too fast and steady on her legs to be a zombie. And now she raises one arm and waves at him.

Dan pulls off the helmet.

The girl reaches him and slows down, panting. “Did you … did you see … where he went?”

“That way,” Dan says, pointing in the direction without taking his eyes off of the girl. “He drove into the forest.”

The girl places her hands on her knees, heaving for breath, sweat beading on her forehead. Dan scans her quickly for any signs of blood or wounds, but doesn’t see anything.

“What happened?” he asks.

“I need to borrow your scooter. I don’t have time to explain, but I need to follow that guy.”

“Why? Who was he?”

“I said, I don’t have time.” The girl grabs the handlebars.

“No!” Dan objects. “You can’t have it. I need it.”

“It’s very important!” the girl says earnestly. “You’d never believe me, but the future of the world might depend on it.”

Dan stares at her for a moment, as something falls into place. “I believe you,” he says. “I’ve seen them.”

The girl’s eyes grow big. “Oh, no … does that mean they already …?”

“No, I don’t think they’ve spread very far. As far as I know, it all began in the next house down the road from here. Only one of them escaped. It was—”

“Jennie Nygaard?” the girl interrupts.

Hearing his sister’s names forms a lump in Dan’s throat. He nods.

“She came to our house,” the girl says, talking fast. “She killed one of the kids, and the officer shot her, then … then he got bitten, and then he ran. That’s why I need to find him. I think I can talk him into his senses before he dies and infects anyone else.”

“So … Jennie is dead?” Dan asks hoarsely.

“Yes. The officer is the last one, at least from what I’ve seen. That’s why you need to lend me your scooter!”

Dan pulls his helmet back on. “Get on. I’ll drive.”

The girl looks at him with surprise for a second. Then, she jumps on and grabs him around the waist. Dan turns the scooter around and takes off down the road.

“Did Jennie bite anyone else?” he asks over his shoulder.

“Yes, another officer and a small girl. She was …” She doesn’t seem to want to finish the sentence.

“They both dead?” Dan asks.

“Yes.”

“How?”

“Allan shot them.”

“Is Allan the guy we’re after?”

“Yes.”

“Did he shoot them through their heads?”

“Yes.”

“How about Jennie?”

“Same.”

Dan feels his stomach tighten up thinking about Jennie being really dead. But at the same time, strangely, he also feels a fair amount of relief.

He slows down as they reach the place the police car turned into the forest. There’s a narrow forest road, and as they turn and head in between the trees, the air becomes slightly cooler and more pleasant. The girl tightens her grip around Dan. The feeling of her arms around him combined with the faint smell of her perfume gives Dan a brief flutter of butterflies in his stomach. Odd how his brain is even capable of registering something like that given the situation. Dan has always been shy around girls, and even though he’s almost fifteen, he still has never kissed a girl.

“Do you know where this road leads?” she asks him.

“No idea,” Dan replies. “I don’t live out here, I was just doing a paper route.”

“I just moved here, so I don’t know the area either. I’m Selina, by the way.”

“My name’s Dan.”

The road makes a sudden left turn and reveals the police car on the side of the road, its front up against a tree. Dan’s first impression is that the driver has intentionally parked the car in a weird, crooked way—but then he notices the crunched hood of the car and the white smoke rising up from it.

“He has crashed it,” Selina says, jumping off the scooter before it comes to a complete stop. “He might be dead.”

Dan wants to tell her to be careful as she approaches the police car, but there seems to be no need: Selina walks over to it gingerly, ready to run at any moment. Dan keeps his hand ready on the gas.

Selina peeks in through the open driver’s door, then shakes her head. “The airbag has blown, and it’s stained with blood, but he’s gone.”

Dan steps off the scooter, puts it on the jack and takes off the helmet. He throws a look around but sees no one in sight.

“Shut off the engine for a moment,” Selina says.

Dan turns the key, and silence descends over the forest. A couple of birds are singing carefreely and a bumblebee comes buzzing by. Besides that, nothing.

“You think he went on down the road?” Dan asks.

“That would make the most sense, I guess,” Selina says, looking around. “I don’t know how to track people—do you? Do you happen to be a Boy Scout or something?”

“Nah,” Dan says. “But I think it’s something about looking for broken twigs and stuff. That’s how they do it in the movies.”

Selina runs a hand through her hair. “I just don’t get why he would drive in here in the first place. I thought he was going to the hospital.”

“Maybe he’s not aware what he’s doing. If he lost a lot of blood, he might already be—”

A shrill scream interrupts Dan. It lasts for some seconds and echoes throughout the forest.

“Fuck,” Selina whispers, her eyes wide. “I don’t think that was him.”

Dan shakes his head. “No. It sounded like a woman.”

EIGHT

“Wake up, Dennis!”

Mom’s voice—urgent, almost agitated—pulls him from deep sleep with a violent jerk. He opens his eyes, then shuts them promptly again as Mom rips aside the curtains, causing the sunlight to stream in.

“What … what’s the matter, Mom?” Dennis croaks, rubbing his eyes.

“Did you see it?”

Dennis squints up at Mom towering in front of his bed, a blurry silhouette against the bright daylight.

Dennis is completely nonplussed. He was sound asleep just a second ago. He thought it was still nighttime, but apparently, it’s past noon. He normally never sleeps that long.

Then he remembers with a gasp what he did last night. It all comes back to him with a rush of panic. To make it all worse, Mom has somehow found out. She knows he lost the gris-gris and that he had to sneak back over to Esther’s place to get it. She knows all about what—

“Did you see it?” Mom demands again—obviously interpreting his reaction as an answer to her question. “Where is it?”

“I … I had it right … right here …” Dennis mutters, feeling immensely guilty as he looks around the bed for the gris-gris. Then he remembers it’s hanging around his neck, and he grabs it and holds it up for Mom to see. “Here! It’s right here! See? I didn’t lose it!”

His eyes are getting used to the light by now, and he can make out Mom’s expression. It’s one of annoyed confusion.

“No, not your amulet. The dagger! Have you seen the dagger?”

Dennis blinks and stares at Mom for several seconds as it dawns on him he has completely misunderstood the situation. He shakes his head slowly. “No, I haven’t. Not since … you know.”

“Damnit,” Mom spits, then looks around the room. “You sure? Could it be in here somewhere?”

Before Dennis has time to answer, Mom begins rummaging through the dirty clothes and his toys lying around the floor.

“Why would your dagger be in here, Mom?”

She doesn’t hear him. Seeing his mom like this—nearly frantic—is even more frightening to Dennis than the thought of her finding out about his nighttime venture. She’s usually calm and collected no matter what happens.

“Did you … did you lose your dagger?” Dennis asks.

Mom stops abruptly, straightens up and stares into empty space. For a terrible second, Dennis is sure he has insulted Mom with his question and that she’s about to punish him.

Then she whispers: “Of course. The car.” And she rushes out of the room.

“Mom?” Dennis calls after her, but she doesn’t answer.

He gets up and follows her through the house—not even worrying about getting dressed. She exits the house through the front door, leaving it open for Dennis to peer out into the bright sunlight.

He sees Mom march to the car parked in the courtyard. She opens all the doors and begins to search the car like the police do on the TV shows Dennis watches now and again when they are looking for weapons or drugs. Mom checks between the seats, under the mats and even in the glove compartment.

Dennis steps outside, the gravel is warm under his bare feet.

Finally, Mom pulls back out of the car and slams the door. “It’s not here,” she mutters through gritted teeth, her eyes searching the gravel around the car absentmindedly. “I’ve looked everywhere. It’s not here.”

Dennis builds up the courage to ask: “Did you lose the dagger, Mom?”

She snaps her head around to look at him, and Dennis pulls back reflexively. Mom looks like a bird of prey and Dennis feels like a mouse.

Then, her expression softens somewhat. “I did. I should have never put it in the pocket of my gown. It was sharp enough that it cut right through the thin fabric. It must have fallen out somewhere.” She looks toward the house. “I’ve looked everywhere. It’s not here.”

Dennis knows the dagger is very precious to Mom. She values it almost as much as her amulets and her books. It’s made purely from bronze and it’s very expensive. But that’s not the reason Mom holds it so dear. It was a gift she got from a man in a country far away, the man who taught Mom the things she can do.

Still, Mom reacting this way over losing the dagger seems excessive to Dennis. It was just a knife, after all. It held no magical powers.

He clears his throat. “Can’t you … can’t you just … get a new one, Mom?”

She sighs. “You don’t get it, Dennis. We need to find that dagger. It’s very, very important that we do.”

“Why?”

Mom looks at him for a long moment, like she’s trying to answer his question with her gaze alone. Dennis shrugs to show her that he still doesn’t get it.

Mom says in a low voice: “Because it’s evidence, Dennis. And if the police find it, they’ll know we were there.”

The gravity of the situation opens up to Dennis like the ground opening beneath him. “Oh, no,” he breathes.

Mom nods. “Exactly. We need to find that dagger, Dennis. Which means we need to go back to Esther’s place.”

Dennis shakes his head without even knowing it. The mere thought of going back over there after what happened last night is enough for his bladder to give way, and he accidentally lets out a few drops into his boxers before he manages to regain control and squeeze shut.

Luckily, Mom doesn’t notice. She’s staring at the car, thoughtfully. “We can’t just drive over there. It’ll be way too conspicuous.” She looks over at Dennis, biting her lip. “It needs to be you. You take your bike and ride over there. You—”

“What? No, Mom!”

“Yes. You need to—”

“I-I-I can’t! I can’t go over there again, Mom! Please don’t make me! Please don’t—”

“Listen to me, Dennis. It’ll be fine. You don’t need to go inside the house. I just want you to go and check if anybody is still there. If you see cars parked over there or anything else that suggests the house isn’t empty, you just come right back home again. Okay?”

NINE

They listen for a moment, in case there’s another scream. But there is not. The forest is once again dead silent.

“Which way did it come from?” Dan asks.

“This way, I think.” Selina begins running farther down the road, waving for Dan to follow her. “Leave the scooter, we can’t hear anything with the engine going.”

Dan leaves the scooter rather reluctantly. His ankle is still throbbing, but once he starts walking, he realizes to his amazement it actually feels a little better. Perhaps it’s not sprained after all; perhaps it just got twisted.

Still, he needs to hurry to keep up with Selina. She suddenly stops outside a driveway Dan almost didn’t notice. A small house is halfway hidden among the trees.

“It must have been here the scream came from,” Selina says, walking towards the house without a second thought.

Dan is for a moment struck by how determined and brave she is. In fact, she reminds him of Thomas. Had he been here, he would also have been the brave one, the one walking in front whenever there was danger.

Is the world full of brave people? Or am I just a coward?

Perhaps he’s simply the type to let someone else take charge, he reflects. And perhaps that’s why Thomas is dead and Dan is still alive. The brave die, and the cowardly live on.

He shakes off the thought and hurries on to catch up with Selina.

There’s a small gravel courtyard in front of the house. In the carport a tiny white car is parked.

Dan is just about to say something, when the front door of the house suddenly opens and a woman steps out holding a hunting rifle. “Who are you?” she shrieks. “What are you doing here? I already called the police!” As if to prove this statement, she shows them a cell phone.

Dan holds up his hands stupidly. “Uhm … we didn’t … eh …”

“We don’t want to cause you any harm,” Selina says. “We’re just looking for a young man who might have been here. Did you see him?”

The woman looks at them, assessing the situation. She’s around retirement age and wears a bandana around her head. Dan can’t see any hair, and combined with how thin the woman is, he guesses she might have recently undergone chemotherapy.

“It’s really important we find him,” Selina goes on. “He’s wounded and he needs help.”

The woman seems to decide to trust them, because she points the rifle into the ground and steps a little closer. She glances towards the carport and lowers her voice. “He ran into the workshop, so I locked the door behind him.”

Dan notices a small shack adjacent to the carport. The door is still closed, and there are no windows.

“Did he hurt you?” Dan asks, discretely scanning the woman’s bare arms for any visible scratch marks.

She shakes her head. She’s close enough now that Dan can smell peppermint on her breath. “He just ran right past me, like he didn’t even see me. He came out of nowhere, I thought I was going to have a heart attack when I saw him, his nose was all bloody and … and he was limping.” She shakes her head in disbelief and looks at them. “Goodness, what happened to him? I thought it looked like he was wearing a police uniform, so I thought he might have been … I don’t know, attacked by some criminals … that’s why I locked the door behind him.”

“He is a policeman,” Selina explains. “But he hasn’t been … uhm …” She glances at Dan for help.

“He crashed his car,” Dan says. “We came by the crash site and followed him here.”

“Yeah, and if we don’t help him, he’ll bleed to death,” Selina adds.

“I already called an ambulance,” the woman assures them, once again holding up the cell phone absentmindedly.

“They won’t make it all the way out here in time,” Selina says. “We need to get to him right now. Where’s the key?”

The woman hesitates, glancing from the shack to Selina. “I don’t know if it’s a good idea … I mean, he seemed very out of it … perhaps it’s better to leave him be until help arrives.”

“No, we have to help him!” Selina insists. “Please give us the key. I know him. His name is Allan. I’ll never forgive myself if he doesn’t make it …”

Dan is surprised at how convincing Selina sounds.

The woman still looks doubtful. Her hand goes to her pocket, but then stops. “If only Paul was here … he’d know what to do …”

A loud bang from the shack makes all three of them jump in unison. The woman raises the weapon and backs away.

“That was him,” Selina says. “He needs help. Give me the key …” This time, it’s not a question, and she doesn’t wait for an answer; instead, she steps to the woman and plunges her hand into the pocket.

“No, wait!” the woman says, but Selina already pulled the key out and is now headed for the shack.

“It’s probably best if you go inside the house,” Dan tells the woman.

She doesn’t seem to hear him, she’s still staring at Selina, who unlocks the door to the shack.

Dan steps a little closer, whispering: “Careful, Selina. Be ready to jump aside.”

Selina sends him a quick glance, nods, then pulls open the door. She lets out a gasp, but doesn’t move, simply stares into the shack.

“What is it?” the woman calls out. “Is he okay in there?”

Selina doesn’t answer.

Dan goes to her side, peering nervously inside. He thinks he’s mentally prepared for what awaits him, but the sight still shocks him.

Allan is no longer in the shack. Not all of him, anyway.

Dan swallows forcibly to keep down the nausea as the sweet, warm stench of blood rolls out at him. The shack is arranged like a small workshop, a bench and some tools. Dan hardly notices, though; he’s staring down. The concrete floor is more red than gray. Allan has lost what appears to be a gallon of blood. Way more than what could have been caused by the bitemark on his ankle or the nosebleed he had gotten from the airbag. In the middle of the pool, Dan sees the explanation. The lower part of Allan’s leg is still wearing the shoe. The saw is lying next to it.

“Oh, fuck,” Selina whispers, putting her hands in front of her mouth and nose. “He sawed it off …”

“Where is he?” the woman asks, joining them. But as soon as she gets a glimpse of the blood, she backs away, uttering a scream loud enough to pull Dan out of his trance.

He sees the bloody trail leading from the pool to the far end of the shack. A back door is standing wide open.

“He left that way,” he says, pointing.

“You think he’s still …?” Selina doesn’t need to finish the question.

Dan looks down at the blood once more, then shakes his head. “You don’t survive losing that much blood. And you don’t just walk away after cutting off your own …”

Behind them, the woman screams again. Dan looks back to see her sitting in the gravel, the weapon lying next to her. She’s clutching her head, screaming and crying.

She’s going into shock, he thinks faintly. And he can’t blame her. If he hadn’t been hardened by what he’d seen during the past twenty-four hours, he would probably sit down next to her and begin screaming himself.

“But perhaps he died for real,” Selina says. “Like, naturally, I mean. Perhaps the infection or whatever didn’t reach his vital organs. That’s why he did it: he tried to stop it.” She stares at Dan with an almost painful look of hope in her eyes. As though he’s the one to decide the fate of the policeman. “I mean, couldn’t that be? Couldn’t he have left the shack while he was still alive, and now he’s dead somewhere nearby? That would also explain why he hasn’t come back to attack us, right? Right?”

Dan shakes his head slowly. “I don’t know. Maybe. We need to find him to make sure. But we have to be very careful, in case he didn’t stop the infection in time.”

A movement behind the leg of Selina catches Dan’s eye, and he almost yells out in surprise. Then he realizes it’s only a cat, black as the night. It’s strolls over and rubs itself against Selina’s leg before it slips into the shack.

“No, Whiskers!” the woman exclaims, as she finally stops screaming. She gets to her feet and staggers towards the shack. “Don’t go in there! Come back here …”

The cat completely ignores her call and sniffs the blood pool curiously, before it licks at it. Dan feels the nausea returning.

The woman squeezes past them, enters the shack and bends down to scoop up the cat. “No, Whiskers, stop that!”

Whiskers is in no mood to get told off, so he gives off a hiss and strikes at the woman with his front paw, causing her to let go immediately. The cat lands on its feet, darts past them and disappears behind the house.

The woman steps back out of the shack, looks at her arm where Whiskers’s claws have left three thin scratches, and starts sobbing uncontrollably, sinking to the ground once more.

Selina looks at Dan. “Are you staying with her? I don’t think she should be alone. I’ll go look for Allan.”

Dan doesn’t like the thought of him staying here, and he likes even less the thought of Selina walking around the forest alone, looking for a person who might have turned into a zombie. Luckily, at that moment, he hears the sound of sirens.

“That’s the ambulance,” Dan says. “They’ll care for her.”

“All right, come with me, then.”

“Wait,” Dan says, pointing to the gun. “Do you know how to use that?”

“Not at all. But maybe we won’t need it.”

Dan hesitates for a moment longer. His gut tells him they just might need the gun. He doesn’t think the chances of finding Allan as a regular corpse are very good. And he really doesn’t care to enter the forest unarmed.

“Are you coming?” Selina asks, walking towards the trees.

Dan makes a decision. He goes into the shack, careful not to step in the blood, and looks at the tool rack. There are screwdrivers, a hammer, a crowbar, even a small axe.

Everything you need to kill zombies, Dan thinks, suppressing nervous laughter.

He reaches up and grabs the hammer. Then he goes back out.

Selina looks at the hammer in his hand. “Are you seriously going to use that?”

“If I have to,” Dan says, trying to sounds more confident than he feels.

TEN

For the second time in less than fourteen hours, Dennis is approaching the house which used to belong to Esther.

His legs are shaking a little as he pedals the bike up the long gravel driveway. The house appears up ahead, and Dennis immediately hears Mom’s voice: “As soon as you see the house, get off your bike and walk the rest of the way. That way you’ll be harder to see from the house, if anybody is still up there.”

Dennis stops and gets off the bike. He takes it to the side of the driveway and lays it down in the tall grass, taking a mental note of the place.

Then he walks on up the driveway. The courtyard comes into view more and more, and Dennis can’t see any cars. No police cars and no regular cars. Which is very surprising to him; he had expected the place would be buzzing with policemen, like a crime scene on television.

Maybe they already did all their investigations and left again?

The thought brings a glimmer of hope.

And as he gets closer still, he realizes the bodies are also gone—all of them. Which brings him even greater relief. The thought of seeing the dead people in bright daylight was quite horrible.

Luckily, though, he’ll be spared that. The police must have cleaned up everything.

Even the house looks empty. Of course, it’s hard to tell from a distance, but all the windows are shut and so is the front door.

The relief in Dennis grows with every step.

He reaches the courtyard and stops to look around. There’re marks and traces in the gravel from where the bodies were lying. He can also make out some dark stains, which is probably dried blood. It makes him shiver despite the baking heat. But a little blood is nothing compared to what he was expecting.

He recalls the next part of Mom’s instructions: “If there are no cars parked in the courtyard, make sure no one’s in the house. Don’t go inside, just check the windows.”

Dennis goes to look inside the scullery. It’s empty. He moves on to the kitchen. Empty as well. His courage rises still further. He then rounds the corner and goes to look into the living room—but just as he’s about to do so, something catches his eye.

Dennis turns his head and glares at the three police cars parked along the tree line flanking the side of Esther’s house.

He just stands there for several seconds, unable to move.

Then, when he’s finally able, he turns his head and looks into the living room.

Several people are walking around in there. Some in police uniforms, some in weird suits. They’re talking to each other, and—miraculously—none of them has noticed Dennis, who’s standing in clear sight.

He drops to his hands and knees; his heart feels like it explodes inside his chest. All he can think of is getting out of here, so he begins crawling frantically back towards the courtyard. Just as he rounds the corner and is about to jump up and run, the front door opens and two uniformed men come out.

Dennis throws himself back behind the corner of the house. He holds his breath and listens—the roaring of his pulse in his ears makes it difficult to hear, but he makes out one of the men saying: “… I’ll get it from the car …” And steps come this way.

Dennis freezes completely as he realizes the policeman will come around the corner any second.

There’s nowhere to hide.

The policeman will see him.

Dennis prepares himself mentally for the shock of seeing the policeman step out in front of him, when he realizes he’s staring right an open window. It’s just above ground and it’s dark inside.

Before he has time to think, Dennis climbs through the window.

ELEVEN

From behind the shack a narrow path runs into the woods where it’s quickly swallowed up by the greenness.

Dan looks down to see a trail of blood drops on the ground. “Looks like he followed the path,” he mutters.

“You want me to lead?” Selina asks.

“No,” Dan says quickly, surprising himself as he walks past her. “I’ll lead. I’m the one with the weapon.”

Perhaps I’m not a complete coward after all.

Selina sends him a faint smile, and Dan feels a jolt of excitement and pride. It’s a short-lived pleasure, though, and is soon replaced by fear, as they venture deeper into the forest. He clutches the hammer tightly, listens intently for any sounds, looks around for any movement. He keeps blinking to keep his eyes from watering. The only sounds come from birds singing, the only movements are branches bobbing in the high-noon breeze.

Dan keeps anticipating a one-legged zombie jumping out in front of them. The hammer begins to seem like a silly idea. He might as well be walking around with a bouquet of flowers. He would never be able to successfully defend himself from an attacking zombie at close hand; it just doesn’t work like in the movies. To take down a zombie with a hammer, you’d need several hard, precise hits to the head, and the zombie would still have plenty of time to attack you between blows, as it wouldn’t be deterred by pain or fear.

Why didn’t we take the rifle?

But he knows why. As long as none of them knows how to use the damn thing, it would probably be even less useful than the hammer; at least using the hammer doesn’t take any particular skills.

“The blood gets less and less,” Selina remarks, pulling Dan out of his head.

He looks down to see she’s right. Only a few, scattered blood stains are visible on the forest floor.

“Perhaps he found some way to close the wound,” Selina suggests with an unmistakable sound of hope in her voice.

“Yeah, perhaps,” Dan mutters, feeling still more convinced the trail of blood won’t lead them to anything living. He thinks it more likely the dwindling blood is a sign that the body from which it came is simply empty.

The only thing still giving him hope is the fact that the trail leads away from them. They have to be the closest humans around for at least a few miles, and that means the closest prey for a zombie. So why would it be walking away from them, if it really was a zombie?

Perhaps it picked up the scent of something better …

It feels like they have been walking forever, but it’s probably no more than ten minutes, when the forest suddenly ends. They step out into a ditch and find themselves right by the road again, a few hundred yards from where they turned into the forest road.

Dan looks in both directions, and his heart leaps when he sees the police officer walking by the side of the road a fair distance away in the shade from the trees. He’s facing away from them, headed towards town, and his gait is completely crooked, since one leg is notably shorter than the other.

“Oh, shit,” Selina gasps. “There he is!”

She’s about to run after the policeman, but Dan grabs her by the arm. “Wait. He’s no longer …” He doesn’t need to finish what he’s saying, because at that moment, the officer stops and turns around in an awkward movement.

Even at this distance, and despite his itchy eyes, Dan can make out the milky white stare of the zombie. The blood has been gushing from the broken nose and drawn what looks oddly like a bib on the front of the shirt.

That’s why it couldn’t smell us, Dan thinks dimly. Its nose is completely busted up.

But even though the nose might have been put out of play, the mouth seems to work just fine, as the zombie opens it wide, snarls at them and starts staggering towards them.

“It’s too late,” Dan hears himself say, as he begins backing up, dragging Selina along. She doesn’t need much persuasion, though she seems to have a hard time taking her eyes off of the dead policeman.

She finally manages to look briefly at Dan, her face pale now. “We need to … how do we do it?”

Dan holds up the hammer hesitantly, feeling anything but eager to use it on the zombie. “I don’t know if I can do it.”

“But we have to,” Selina pleads, looking from Dan to the zombie still coming towards them. “We can’t just let him … hey, look!” She points.

Dan looks past the zombie and sees the car coming. It’s a black BMW and it’s going way over the speed limit, the roar of the engine growing quickly louder.

The zombie seems to sense the potential meal coming quickly closer, because it turns around and wobbles out onto the road, headed straight for the car. In its eagerness, it slips on the amputated leg and falls down on its hands and knees.

What happens next takes place within a few seconds of time, yet Dan picks up every detail.

The police zombie struggles to get back up. The BMW is way too close to avoid it, and even though the driver locks the brakes, the car runs right over the zombie. The body is thrown around violently underneath the car like a wet sock in a tumble dryer, arms and legs flailing helplessly before it comes out behind the car, rolling round in a series of somersaults and finally coming to rest at the side of the road.

The car, which has made a long track of black rubber on the asphalt, comes to a stop not far from where Dan and Selina are standing. The engine is still going. Through the smoke from the burned tires Dan can make out the dumbstruck face of a young guy still clutching the steering wheel.

Dan is overwhelmed by a sense of exhilarated joy. It’s dead! He crushed it completely …

The zombie is lying dead, still where it landed.

The driver gets out of the car.

Selina lets out a gasp. “Jonas?”

The young guy doesn’t appear to hear her. He walks back towards the zombie.

“No, wait!” Dan calls out. “Don’t get too close!”

“Jonas!” Selina shouts, running after him. “Hey, Jonas!”

Jonas still doesn’t hear. It must be because of the shock. Or perhaps the rumbling of the BMW’s engine drowns out Selina’s voice. He walks up to the zombie and kneels down.

It’s okay, Dan tells himself, running after Selina as best he can on his hurting ankle. It’s dead. It has to be. It can’t hurt him.

But his thoughts are proven wrong in the very next second, as the zombie lifts its head—even from this far away, Dan can tell how the neck is twisted in a completely unnatural way—and grabs Jonas around the leg with a bloody hand.

Jonas, who is wearing shorts, lets out a yell of surprise and tries to pull back, dragging the zombie along. Most of the broken body seems to be put out of function as the bones are crushed. The free arm and both legs look like limp elastic bands, as Jonas jerks his leg back again and again in order to shake off the zombie. But the arm holding on to Jonas is still working fine, and the zombie isn’t intent on giving up without a fight.

Jonas trips and lands on his buttocks, kicking wildly at the zombie. “Let go of my leg, goddamnit!”

Selina comes to the rescue and starts kicking the zombie in the ribs. It doesn’t seem to have even the slightest effect, though, as the zombie just keeps on tugging at Jonas’s leg in its desperate attempt to reach it with its mouth.

“What the fuck are you doing, dude?!” Jonas shouts. “Stop that! Let go of me!”

Finally, one of his kicks connects, hitting the zombie squarely between the eyes. Its head is flung backwards, producing a crunching sound loud enough for Dan to hear over the rumbling of the engine.

A couple of uncontrolled twitches go through the body of the zombie, as the last circuits in the already damaged spine are cut. Then it lies down limply, as Allan dies for the second time in his life.

TWELVE

He comes into a dark stairwell, crouches down on the steps and turns to look back out the window.

Half a second later, a pair of legs wearing black pants and boots comes walking by, causing Dennis to jump. He stretches his neck and looks after the policeman, who strides to the nearest of the cars, opens the door, reaches inside and takes out a folder. He then closes the door again and walks back past the window—Dennis pulls back, even though the policeman isn’t looking down at him, but is focused on the folder in his hand.

As soon as the policeman is out of sight, Dennis lets out a long, trembling breath he didn’t even realize he was holding. Beads of sweat are prickling his back and forehead, and his entire body is trembling.

He looks up the stairs and sees the dark rectangle of door with light streaming in through the cracks. He can hear voices coming from up there. It must be the living room.

Dennis looks down and sees another door. This one is open. It leads to the basement. He can hear nothing from down there, so Dennis begins descending the dusty stairs carefully.

He reaches a room lit up by a single, naked lightbulb. It’s crammed full of old stuff and furniture. On two sides sit windows high up, leading out to the back garden—but they’re too narrow for Dennis to squeeze through, he can tell just by looking at them.

Instead he looks around the room for another door. There aren’t any. But there’s a hole in the wall which, judging from the pieces still lying on the floor, was made recently.

Dennis maneuvers through the stuff and over to the hole. And as soon as he looks into the adjacent room, he recognizes it and pulls back instinctively.

It’s where it all happened.

Dennis feels his heart pound away in his throat, which already feels dry from the warm, dusty air of the basement.

The room next to him is dark, but Dennis knows what’s in there; he doesn’t need the light to remember.

And even though he doesn’t want to, he can’t help but look in there. He has to.

And he sees it.

Lying right there, below the ladder leading up to the hatch in the ceiling.

Mom’s dagger. The handle shining orange. The blade sticky with dried-up blood. It must have fallen out the last time Mom climbed the ladder.

Dennis needs to go in there and get it.

But he can’t. His body won’t do it.

Go on, he tells himself. Go get it. You have to!

Finally, he manages to force his arms and legs to get moving. He ducks down and steps into the room, slipping across the floor, bending down and picking up the knife. It’s very cold and very heavy.

Then there’s a sound, and light comes down from above. Dennis peers up to see the hatch in the ceiling open up.

“All right, John, you come with me, please,” a voice says as a man steps into view. He’s looking and pointing at someone else up there. “We’ll get things ready for the forensics.”

Dennis spins around and bolts back to the hole in the wall, jumping through it and almost knocking over an old chair. He looks frantically for a place to hide just as a pair of legs appears from the open hatch behind him and begins descending the ladder.

There’s a tall cupboard beneath one of the windows, but Dennis knows from playing hide and seek that a cupboard is a way too obvious hiding place. Instead his gaze fall on a big, heavy chest squashed away in the corner. He quickly makes his way over there and opens the lid. The chest is empty except for dust.

“You guys take the next room,” the voice says. “Go over it again, make sure we didn’t miss anything important.”

Dennis climbs into the chest—his legs are shaking so much he almost can’t make them obey his will. He’s just about to crouch down when notices the key sticking out of the lock. He wriggles it, pulls it out and puts it in his pocket. Then he sits down and lowers the lid.

Once it closes, a complete darkness enrobes him. Dennis can feel it pressing against him from all angles, like black tar. He concentrates on breathing through his mouth and making no sound while he listens.

Within what feels like a couple of minutes, the police begin searching through the room outside. Dennis can hear them rummage through things while they talk together in low voices.

“Pretty nasty stuff, huh?”

“Definitely the worst I’ve ever seen. Like straight out of a movie.”

“The press will be all over this. You know they already got a hint of it? They called the chief this morning, begging him for an interview …”

The conversation goes on, but Dennis doesn’t register the words. He listens instead to the sounds telling him where the men are exactly. He can tell they’re making their way over here. His heart is already thumping away in his chest, but now it climbs up into his throat.

He realizes with a sinking feeling that they might open the chest to check inside it—and he’ll be found right away, clutching the bloody dagger.

He lifts a hand and feels the inside of the lock. There’s a tiny metal plate but no hole. Of course, the chest can’t be locked from the inside—why would it?

Instead, Dennis grasps the metal plate and pulls it down, holding the lid tightly shut. Then he waits and listens.

Suddenly—so suddenly that Dennis jumps—there’s a pull at the lid. Dennis holds it down as firmly as he can. The lid lifts a couple of millimeters, but that’s it.

“Huh,” a voice says right on the other side. “Was this thing locked before?”

“Nah, it should be open.”

Another tug at the lid, harder this time. Dennis holds on with all his might.

“Funny, I can’t get it open.”

“Probably rusty hinges. Never mind, though, nothing’s in there.”

“You sure?”

“Uh-huh. Just dust.”

Dennis can hear the man stand by the chest for another moment. Then he moves on and begins checking other things.

Dennis breathes out a long, quivering breath. But he doesn’t let go of the plate; he keeps holding on firmly while the men search the rest of the room.

THIRTEEN

Jonas immediately jumps to his feet and backs away from what used to be a young police officer not many hours ago but now only bears a faint resemblance to a person.

Everything went by so fast, that Selina almost didn’t have time to take it all in. She acted out of pure instinct when she started kicking Allan, and not until now, as the immediate danger has passed, does she realize how easily she could have been bitten. Had Allan let go of Jonas and instead turned to the side, she might not have been able to act quickly enough to get out of the way.

But that didn’t happen. The zombie didn’t let go of Jonas, and now she’s staring at the bloody scratch marks on his ankle.

“What the fuck, man,” Jonas wheezes, glaring from the dead officer to Selina. “I mean, what the fuck! What just happened?” He raises his hands halfway to his head, as though not sure where to put them. “He fucking attacked me … You saw it, he fucking attacked me! I didn’t mean to … I wasn’t trying to hurt him, I just … I had to … holy shit! What the fuck …”

“It’s okay,” Selina says, trying her best to sound reassuring. “You didn’t hurt him, I promise you. He was already …” For some reason, she can’t get that final word out.

Jonas stares at her, his eyes wild. “Was already what? What the fuck happened to him, Selina? His eyes, man, I tell you … they were all fucked up … and where is his fucking foot?” Jonas’s voice is rising in pitch. It’s clear to Selina he’s about to have a panic attack or maybe even faint.

She wants to tell him it’ll be all right, but she suddenly can’t speak. Maybe because she knows it will be a lie. Jonas won’t be all right. Not at all.

Dan steps closer. Selina notices he’s still holding the hammer.

Like he was ever going to use it, she thinks, feeling a sudden violent anger towards Dan, like it’s all his fault. What a great hero. Keeps out of harm’s way until it’s all over.

“Did you get …?” Dan asks, but shuts up as his eyes fall on Jonas’s leg.

Jonas doesn’t hear the question. He doesn’t even seem to register Dan’s presence. He grabs his hair and repeats over and over again: “What the fuck … what the fuck …”

“Oh, no,” Dan sighs, rubbing his forehead. “What now?”

Selina just shrugs. She can’t take any more in. Can’t deal with any more decisions. Can hardly think. Allan is dead, but he managed to scratch Jonas before he went. Now it all begins over again. Another innocent person will die. And this time, it’s someone she’s known for more than a few hours. Someone she was kissing only last night.

What is he even doing out here? Couldn’t he just have stayed home?

Selina feels like crying and screaming at the same time. It’s all she can do to keep herself together.

The sound of another car engine makes her turn and look down the road. A police car is coming this way very fast, no lights or sirens on.

“Shit,” Dan says behind her. “We need to get out of here, Selina.”

He goes to grab her by the arm, but she pulls free. “Let go of me,” she hisses.

“But … we need to hide,” he says. “If we get arrested then no one will be able to …” He glances at Jonas, who has sat down in the middle of the road, still mumbling to himself.

“Be able to what?” Selina snarls. “Kill Jonas?”

Dan swallows. “I just mean we’re the only ones who get how serious this is.”

The police car is getting closer, and now it actually does turn on the sirens.

Selina shakes her head, suddenly feeling very adamant. “I’m done running around playing soldiers. I’m going to tell them everything. They need to handle it.”

“They won’t believe you!” Dan pleads. “Not until it’s too late.”

“You don’t know that. Allan was a policeman and he understood it.”

“No, don’t …”

Selina turns away from him to wave at the police car.

Dan runs into the forest.

The police car stops and an officer jumps out. “Stop, police!” he shouts and runs after Dan.

Selina looks at the other officer, a woman, who steps out and comes over to her. She’s not holding her hand on her gun, like Selina has seen so many times in American movies, but she still looks very vigilant as she approaches slowly and scans the scene with her eyes.

“What happened here?” she asks, her gaze stopping at Selina. “You guys had an accident?”

“I guess you could say that,” Selina mutters and points to Allan.

The female officer hasn’t seen Allan yet, as he has been blocked from her view by Jonas’s car. But now, as she sees him, she runs to him and is just about to crouch down, then seemingly changes her mind. “Oh, God …” She points to Jonas and Selina. “You two, stay where you are!”

Selina nods. Jonas doesn’t seem to hear the command, but he’s obviously not going anywhere.

The officer pulls a radio from her belt and says with a voice slightly trembling: “I found the rest of Allan.”

The other officer comes back out of the forest, dragging Dan along. Dan doesn’t make any attempt to escape, he just stares resignedly at Selina. There’s a twig in his hair.

An ambulance arrives, and the paramedics check on Allan and quickly pronounce him dead before covering him with a blanket. Then they talk to Selina and Dan, checking them for any physical injuries. They exchange a word with the male officer, who then takes Selina and Dan to the police car and puts them in the backseat.

Through the window, Selina sees the paramedics tend to Jonas, who is still sitting on the asphalt.

The female officer gets into the car and looks back through the metal grid at them. “I’m taking you two to the station, where they’ll ask you further questions about what happened here.”

Her voice is calm now, and Selina notices she avoids the word “arrested.” Selina isn’t really sure if you even can get arrested when you’re only sixteen.

“How about Jonas?” she asks.

The officer looks at her. “The paramedics are taking a closer look at him. He seems to have gotten quite the scare.”

Again there’s a word the officer deftly avoids: “shock.” The officer turns the car around, and Selina looks out at Jonas’s face as they roll past. He’s looking at the paramedics, his eyes dazed.

What had he even been doing out here? He lives in the town. The only thing she can think of is that he might have come to visit her. Strangely, that thought almost makes her tear up, and she thinks about the stupid goodnight kiss in the car last night.

“It won’t be more than a couple of hours,” Dan whispers.

Selina glowers at him. “Before what?”

“Before he dies, of course. We need to explain to them how dangerous he is.”

Selina feels the anger contract in her chest. “Don’t you start again.”

The officer hears them and turns her head. “Please don’t speak to each other.”

Selina is more than happy to obey. She looks out at the fields gliding by. Out there everything is normal. The wheat is green and lush, the swallows are flying about playfully. No zombies in sight, no dying Jonas. All of that suddenly seems like a distant dream.

Dan pokes her thigh.

Selina sends him a burning look, which he apparently misses, because he hands her his phone. She takes it reluctantly and reads the message he has typed.

Promise me you’ll tell them what’s going to happen to him. We need to convince them. Or it all will have been for nothing. The future of the world is at stake.

Selina already knows it all. But for some strange reason, she doesn’t want to hear it anymore, doesn’t want the responsibility. She just gives Dan the phone back and looks away once more, feeling how he’s looking at her in silent amazement and desperation, but she doesn’t care, she just wants to look out at the fields.

Then he pokes her again, offering her the phone again. She shakes her head, but he keeps on trying to hand it to her. She folds her arms. He holds the phone in front of her face so she can’t help but read the new message. It’s very short.

Please … Jennie was my sister.

The words hit her like a punch in the gut. She finally looks at Dan and realizes he has tears in his eyes. And when she sees how tired and scared he looks, she feels terrible about how she has talked to him. Of course, she knew he had been through some stuff before they met up, but she had no idea he had lost a sister. Maybe he even watched her die.

Selena deletes his message and writes a new one.

How did it happen?

Dan takes back the phone and types for several minutes. When he hands her the phone once more, she reads a short summary of the last twenty-four hours of his life—and they sure haven’t been boring.

Selina feels the car slowing down. She looks up and sees they’ve reached town. The police station is just a few blocks away. She writes a short answer.

Sorry about your sister. Will tell them about Jonas. Here’s my number. Call me afterwards.

Dan puts the phone away just as they pull over by the station.

FOURTEEN

It’s not at all what she excepted. None of it. The police station, the officers, the questions. Everything is very unlike what she’s seen in movies. There are no cigarettes or lukewarm coffee cups or suspicious looks. No cramped rooms with one-way mirrors or grueling bright ceiling lights. The officers act like regular, friendly people. They believe what she says. There’s even a female psychologist who smiles at her and listens to her talk.

It all passes by in an odd sort of haze in front of Selina. It feels like she doesn’t really take part in it.

They offer her something to eat when she says she hasn’t really eaten anything since last night. A sandwich and a Coke appear in front of her. She fights down a few bites, mostly to please the officers.

She tells them everything—but she never mentions the word “zombies.” If she does, she knows they’ll never take her seriously. She makes sure though to emphasize several times the fact that Jonas is incurably contaminated with some strange virus which he got from Allan. Even as the words leave her mouth, she can hear how crazy it sounds, and the more she insists, the less believable it becomes.

Then her dad is suddenly there, and the sight of him makes her burst into tears. The situation reminds her of that time in the first grade where she fell down and broke her wrist and her dad came to pick her up at the hospital. He wasn’t angry with her back then, and he isn’t angry now, only worried, and that makes her cry even harder.

“You go home with your dad and get some rest,” one of the officers says. “We’ll call you if we need to ask you anything else. And if you feel like talking to someone, you have the number for the psychologist.”

Selina nods and wipes her eyes, feeling like a little girl. Dad puts an arm around her shoulders and leads her towards the door.

“Hold on,” Selina says and turns around. “What about Jonas?”

The officer smiles reassuringly. “Don’t worry about him.”

“But … what will happen to him?”

“We can’t say for sure until after the preliminary hearing. I suspect he might get a fine for speeding and he might face charges for manslaughter, but—”

“That’s not what I mean,” Selina says. “Will he be … cured?”

The officer comes to Selina and lowers his voice. “We talked about this, Selina. Jonas is fine. There is nothing wrong with him.”

“No, but there will be. He’s infected. If you don’t do anything …”

“Jonas is getting the medical attention he needs. The detention center has a doctor who tends to him.”

“Does … does the doctor take blood samples and stuff like that? So he can detect the virus in his blood?”

The officer smiles again. “I’m sure the doctor knows what he’s doing. Don’t think any more about Jonas. You can probably go and visit him tomorrow if you feel like it.”

“I would like to visit him now. Can I?”

The officer’s eyes flicker.

“Selina,” Dad says.

“He’s my friend,” Selina exclaims. “I just want to see how he’s doing.”

“Maybe tonight,” the officer says, his smile returning. “I’ll look into it and get back to you. All right?”

Selina looks at the officer, and in her head, she suddenly hears Dan’s voice: “They won’t believe you! Not until it’s too late …”

“All right,” Selina mutters.

“Come on, honey,” Dad says, and they walk out of the building together.

FIFTEEN

Selina is lying on her bed about to drift off when the phone suddenly vibrates next to her.

When she and her dad returned home earlier, Ulla was there to greet them with worried hugs. The dead bodies of Jennie Nygaard, Josefine and the policeman had all been removed, and the terrace had been washed clean, no trace of blood left. Ulla told them how the police had taken pictures and tests of everything before cleaning up.

Selina headed straight up to her room. She had never felt more exhausted. And yet she couldn’t sleep. Her thoughts kept creeping back to Jonas.

Now she sits bolt upright, groping for the phone, and almost drops it. It’s a number she doesn’t know. She answers.

“Hello?”

“Selina Peterson?”

“Yes?”

“This is David Mortensen from the police, we spoke earlier today.”

“Yes.”

“How are you holding up?”

“Fine.”

“That’s good to hear. I promised to contact you concerning Jonas Westholm, and …” A short hesitation. “Unfortunately, it seems like he has taken a turn for the worse. He’s been moved to the hospital.”

Selina feels a cold shiver down her spine and closes her eyes.

“The good news is that he didn’t have any traces of alcohol in his blood, so he’s no longer being detained, and I’m sure you could go visit him if you still—”

“Where is he?”

A short pause. “Room eight, fourth floor. As far as I understood, his mother is with him, so of course you need to check with her if Jonas is all right with having a visitor.”

“Right. Thank you.”

The policeman once again encourages her to talk with the psychologist, but Selina is only halfway listening. She just says “yes” and ends the conversation as quickly as possible.

Then, she runs downstairs. In the living room Louisa is watching a cartoon. Ulla is in the kitchen cooking dinner. She sends Selina a smile. “So, did you get some rest?”

“Kind of,” Selina mutters. “Where’s Dad?”

“In the backyard, I think. Could you tell him dinner’s ready in five?”

Selina steps into her shoes and leaves the house. Even though it’s almost seven o’clock, the air is still hot. The heat wave is meant to last at least two more weeks, if you are to believe the weather experts.

She finds her dad on the terrace, where he is busy scrubbing one of the chairs with a sponge. He’s working hectically, his T-shirt is all damp.

“Dad?”

He looks up in surprise, blinking. “Oh, hi, honey. I just noticed some … well, blood.” He wrings the sponge into a bucket of soapy water. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine,” Selina repeats herself. “That officer just called to tell me Jonas has been hospitalized.”

Dad wipes sweat from his forehead. “Really?”

“Yes, he’s taken a turn for the worse.” Exactly like I told you he would, she adds in her mind.

Dad stretches his back. “Look, honey, I know what you’re thinking. But please don’t believe everything you’ve seen in movies. This is not like that. The doctors will deal with whatever is wrong with Jonas, and I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

“I would still like to go see him.”

“Sure thing. I’ll take you there first thing tomorrow morning.”

“I would like to go now.”

“Right now? I think dinner is almost ready.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Well, I am.”

Selina crosses her arms.

Dad sighs. “Come on, Selina. You have to eat something.” He drops the sponge into the bucket and dries off his hands on his shorts. “Besides, the visiting hours at the hospital are probably over for today. We’ll go tomorrow right after breakfast, all right?” He puts a hand on her shoulder.

Selina looks up at him and thinks to herself: Tomorrow it’s too late. She forces a smile and says: “All right, Dad. Ulla said to tell you dinner’s ready in five.”

“Thank you, honey. I’ll be right there.”

Selina goes back around the house, her steps firm, and her mind determined. She knows what she must do. She finds her phone and searches for a number online. Instead of going to the front door, she darts one quick look over her shoulder to make sure Ulla can’t see her from the kitchen window, then she walks across the courtyard, putting the phone to her ear.

“You’ve reached Top-Taxi, and we’re happy to help,” a female voice says.

“Hello,” Selina says, as she walks out of the driveway. “I need a taxi as soon as possible …”

SIXTEEN

Just as she gets into the taxi, she gets a text from Dan.

I’m still with the police. Can’t go home until my parents come back. Of course they don’t believe me about the zombies. What about you?

Selina writes back: I got to go home a few hours ago.

The answer comes almost immediately: And Jonas? Did you hear from him? They just keep telling me he’s fine.

On my way into town to see him now. He’s in the hospital.

A few minutes pass before Dan writes back this time. Selina imagines how he’s considering his answer. He’s probably thinking about writing something like: I told you, or: You know what to do, or the worst possible one, the one Selina really doesn’t want to hear: You need to kill him.

But apparently Dan decides none of those are necessary, because when the text finally does come, it’s very short: Be careful.

The taxi arrives at the hospital two minutes later. Selina pays the driver and gets out. She looks up at the tall glass building, the evening sun flashing in the windows. She takes a deep breath and walks up to the entrance. The automated glass doors let her into the air-conditioned entrance hall. And as she walks towards the elevators, she realizes she has no idea what her plan is—other than to find Jonas, of course. But after that, well, she simply didn’t think about that until now.

If he really is infected, then he will die and come back just like Soren and Allan and Josefine did, and there will be no other choice than to kill him again. The thought alone makes her nauseous and makes her want to turn around.

And why not? She didn’t ask for any of this. She just wants to go back to her life of being a teenage girl whose biggest problem is that her best friend saw her kissing a guy last night and is bound to tease for it. In fact, Krista already texted her a bunch of times, but Selina hasn’t replied. And they’re going to Prague Monday morning! The whole class, as a summer school trip. She had almost completely forgotten about that. She needs to go home and pack. And she could do so. Just pretend like this whole thing is over and go to Prague with her friends.

But if she does that, she might have the end of the world on her conscience—although she can hardly fathom that thought. A thing like this simply doesn’t happen in real life. The fate of the earth can’t be resting upon one person’s shoulders.

But the fact of the matter is that she and Dan right now are the only two people who know what’s most likely going to happen to Jonas, and seeing as Dan is still being kept at the police station, she’s the only one with the power to do something about it.

An old lady with a bouquet of flowers is waiting by the nearest elevator. As it opens, she steps inside, turns and sees Selina. “You going up too?” she asks, smiling.

Selina nods and steps inside.

“What floor?”

Selina looks at the old lady. “Sorry, what?”

“What floor are you going to, dear?”

“Uhm … fourth.”

The lady pushes the button and the doors close. With a feeling of absolute unreality, Selina feels the elevator start moving.

“My husband had an operation on his heart,” the lady says. “He just woke up, and the procedure went fine.”

“I’m … happy to hear that,” Selina says, managing a polite smile.

“Who are you here to visit?”

“A friend.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“He … was in an accident.”

“I’m sorry,” the old lady says, real regret in her voice. “Young people simply aren’t careful enough behind the wheel.”

Thankfully, Selina doesn’t have to come up with an answer, because the elevator stops and the doors open.

“I hope your friend feels better,” the lady smiles as Selina steps out.

“Thank you,” she mutters back, right before the doors close again.

Then, she’s alone in a long hallway. Room eight, she thinks and makes her legs start moving, even though they aren’t exactly keen on it. The numbers on the doors glide by and she reaches number eight way too quickly. It’s closed. She stares at the knob. The door feels like an unbreachable barrier. She has no idea what’s waiting on the other side.

Selina closes her eyes. She’s nauseous. Or maybe it’s hunger.

She reaches for the knob and opens the door.

SEVENTEEN

The room is stuffy and dim, since the windows are closed and the blinds are pulled shut.

In the bed lies Jonas. He’s on his back, eyes closed, mouth slightly open. His face is red and swollen, his forehead wet from sweat, and his breath comes in tiny, wet thrusts. One leg is protruding from under the blanket. A neat bandage is wrapped around Jonas’s skin at the place where Allan scratched him. The skin surrounding the bandage is fiery red.

Selina just stands there for a moment, searching for the courage to step closer, when a totally unexpected voice says: “Hi?”

Selina jumps and spins around, staring at the woman sitting on a chair in the corner with a magazine. She’s around Ulla’s age with the first signs of grey in her bangs.

“Oh, I’m … I’m so sorry,” Selina mutters, swallowing in an effort to force her heart back down her throat. “I didn’t see you.”

“That’s okay,” the woman says, getting up and offering Selina her hand. “I’m not sure we’ve met. I’m Pennie, Jonas’s mom. Are you Selina?”

“Ehm, yes, I am,” Selina says with surprise, shaking the woman’s hand. “How did you …?”

Pennie nods towards the bed. “Jonas told me you were there when the accident happened. You were the one he was going to see, weren’t you?”

“Uhm, I … to be honest, I’m not sure.”

“I think so. It was something about you forgetting your purse in his car.”

“Oh, right!”

Pennie smiles. “He wanted to give it back to you. I still think it’s in his car, actually. You can get it back tomorrow if you swing by.”

Selina nods and rubs her arm. “Thank you. Listen, is it okay for me to be here?”

“Of course, dear! The doctor said nothing about no visitors. He just told me to let Jonas sleep off the fever.”

Selina looks at Jonas and steps a little closer. She can feel the heat coming of him, it’s almost like vapor rising from his skin. It’s surprisingly painful to see him like this. She has naively been telling herself all the way out here that Jonas was just an acquaintance, someone she happened to give a casual kiss last night, and nothing more. But hearing Jonas’s mom tell her that he had come to give her back her purse once he realized she had forgotten about it, somehow changed the way she now looks at him. She might have only known him for a couple of months, since that night Krista introduced them to each other, and although she had an inkling right from the beginning that Jonas had a crush on her, she didn’t really find him to be her type, so she has been ignoring his attempts at getting closer.

Until last night.

“Are you his girlfriend?” Jonas’s mom asks, as though she read Selina’s mind.

“Uhm, no,” she mutters. “We’re just friends.”

“Hmm,” Pennie just says, a tiny, knowing smile at the corner of her mouth.

Selina clears her throat and quickly changes the subject. “Why does he have a fever? I mean, what caused it?”

“The doctor said it’s probably just from the shock. But he might also have some mild infection, because of the wounds on his leg, so they’re running some tests just to be sure, and they put him on antibiotics.”

“Did they say anything about when they’ll have the results of the tests?”

Pennie squeezes her arm. “Don’t worry about him, dear. He’ll soon be on his feet again. My Jonas is a strong boy. He’s always been.”

Selina struggles to smile back. “I’m just … scared for him.”

“There’s no need to be. The doctor said nothing serious is wrong with him.”

“What about the scratch marks?”

“They’ve been disinfected, and …” Pennie frowns as she looks down at her son’s leg. “Goodness, he’s really turning red.” She walks around the bed and puts her hand on Jonas’s leg. “My God, he’s burning up. I felt him just ten minutes ago and he was fine.”

Jonas gives off a grunt. It sounds like his breathing is becoming more and more troubled. Selina feels her heart beat faster, as she looks at Pennie, who just stares at her son’s face.

“Do you think we ought to call someone?” Selina asks finally.

Pennie nods without taking her eyes off her son. “Will you stay here with him?”

“Sure.”

Jonas’s mom leaves the room, leaving the door ajar.

Selina goes to the bed and carefully lifts up the bandage. The scratches are scarlet, oozing and swollen. The skin around them has taken on a sickly greenish hue. Selina lets out a whimper of despair. She has kept a small secret hope up until this point that Jonas perhaps was not infected after all. That hope dies in this moment.

Then Jonas suddenly begins twitching all over. It looks like tiny cramps going through his limbs. His neck is bent violently backwards, causing him almost to lift himself into a bridge, his clenched teeth are bared in a silent sneer and the veins pop out on both sides of his throat like thick cords. Still, he doesn’t wake up, and Selina realizes he’s way beyond waking.

She backs away, both hands in front of her mouth. No, no, no! Not now! Not already …

EIGHTEEN

Do something!

Selina has been standing there, staring at the bed, for what feels like an eternity spanning a few seconds, when the thought comes through. Jonas’s tremors have almost passed, and he has once again sunk back down onto his back.

“Jonas?” she croaks. “Can you hear me?”

No reaction whatsoever.

She tries shaking him gently. Not as much as a flicker of an eyelid. His breathing is a lot more shallow now. He looks like someone in a coma.

It’s a matter of minutes …

Selina goes to the door to lock it but finds no lock. She looks around the room for something to bar the door with, but finds nothing heavy enough.

Need to get him out of here.

But how? She can’t lift Jonas, and he’s not able to walk on his own. Then, she sees it. Parked in the corner is a wheelchair. Selina grabs it and rolls it to the side of the bed. She pulls the blanket off Jonas and starts maneuvering his legs out of the side of the bed. It’s not easy, and it requires all her strength, but she manages to get him into the wheelchair.

Suddenly, she hears voices from the hallway.

“… burning hot. I’ve never felt anything like it.”

“I’ll take a look at him.”

Selina thinks fast. She pushes the wheelchair with Jonas out into the bathroom and closes the door behind her half a second before Pennie and a doctor enter the room.

“What the heck?” Jonas’s mom exclaims. “Where is he?”

Selina stares at the bathroom door, her heart pounding. What was she thinking? She’s trapped. Any moment one of them will open the door and find her. Then, out of nowhere, an idea occurs to her. Before she can think about it, she flushes the toilet and goes to open the door.

Pennie and an elderly male doctor are standing by the bed, both of them turning as they hear her. Selina makes sure to close the door quickly behind herself.

“There you are!” Pennie says, her eyes wide. “Where’s Jonas?”

Selina looks at the empty bed, trying to conjure up a look of surprise, but feeling absolutely transparent. “I … don’t know. I was just in the bathroom for two minutes.”

“He probably felt better and went for a stroll,” the doctor suggests.

“Or he’s wandered off in a delirious state!” Pennie exclaims, turning to Selina. “Why didn’t you keep an eye on him like you promised?”

Selina shrinks. “Sorry … I really needed to pee.”

“I want him found—right now!” Pennie demands, looking at the doctor again. “He’s definitely not well, and I can’t bear to think what might happen if he’s wandering about all confused …”

The two of them leave the room. Selina stays behind unnoticed. She waits for a couple of seconds, then goes to the bathroom, pushes Jonas back out and checks the hallway to make sure the coast is clear. It is.

Selina rolls Jonas down to the elevator, trotting fast and looking in every direction. She can’t believe she’s really doing this. It’s like her body is acting on its own. She almost feels dizzy.

An old man comes out from a room just as Selina passes it, and she almost gives off a scream. But the man is a patient and looks very fragile. He hardly looks up as he shuffles past her.

Selina rolls on, reaches the elevator and pounds the button. The doors open right away. It’s empty. She rolls Jonas inside and stares at the row of buttons. Where will she take him? What is the plan? She hadn’t really expected to come this far. If she brings him out of the hospital, they’ll soon attract attention. And where would she go? No, she can’t leave the building. She just needs to find somewhere without any people.

She pushes the lower most button. The doors close and the elevator takes them down through the building.

Selina wipes sweat from her eye and looks at Jonas. His chin is resting on his chest. He’s still breathing, but very faintly so.

The elevator stops and the doors open.

The basement hallway is empty in both directions. Against the wall is standing a row of unused beds and wheelchairs. Selina pushes Jonas aimlessly down the hallway. She passes a door and stops to check it. It’s a broom closet. She tries the next one. That one’s locked. The third door is the lucky one: it’s a tiny room with a lot of shelves filled up with all kinds of tools. And the door has an inside lock.

Selina pushes Jonas inside and checks one last time that no one is around to see her—there isn’t—and then she closes the door and locks it. As her fingers turn the lock, she gets a moment of strange clarity.

She realizes without a shadow of a doubt that the next time her fingers will touch this lock, those fingers will have done something absolutely horrible, something she’ll probably never forgive herself for.

And even if Selina lives to be a hundred, the next few minutes will be the worst minutes of her life.

NINETEEN

She spends ten minutes preparing herself. She knows it’s exactly ten minutes, because she keeps checking her watch. As though that would somehow help her. Like she’s hoping time will suddenly jump ahead an hour and all of this will be in the past.

It doesn’t work like that, of course. She needs to go through with it. She needs to act.

Jonas’s breathing has become less and less audible until the point where she’s not sure whether it’s still there. He hasn’t moved at all. He’s obviously far away, like in a coma maybe.

Still, she decides to pull out her shoelaces and use them to tie his wrists to the wheelchair. Just in case.

Her gaze has reluctantly started scanning the shelves. They’re full of tools and equipment. Full of possibilities. Like fate decided to put her in exactly this room.

There are hammers, crowbars, screwdrivers, even a saw, not to mention a wide variety of electrical instruments. She can make this like something out of a movie. She can make it exactly as dramatic as she wants.

But Selina doesn’t want it to be dramatic. She just wants to get it done as easy and painless as possible. She decides on a box cutter on the lowest shelf.

Her legs shake as she goes to take it. She fumbles a little with it before she manages to push out the blade. It’s brand new and very sharp. She glances at Jonas’s wrists. She might even be able to make it look like suicide. If she gets it done quickly and makes sure to be far away from the hospital once they find Jonas, they’ll probably think that he—

Selina bursts abruptly into tears. What is she thinking? It’s Jonas. She’s going to kill him. And she’s worried about what will happen to herself. How selfish can a person be?

“I’m so sorry,” she whispers, sniffing, as she steps carefully closer. “I’m sorry, Jonas. But I have to do it.”

She reaches out her hand—the one not holding the knife—and strokes his cheek. It’s no longer warm. In fact, it’s pretty cold.

“It was nice of you to bring the purse. I wish you hadn’t, though.”

She almost begins crying again, and she pulls back her hand. She doesn’t know what else to say. A prayer? That doesn’t seem right. She’s not religious and she doubts Jonas is.

Do it then.

She gingerly turns Jonas’s palm so it faces the ceiling, exposing the thin blue veins in his wrist—it’s not easy because of the laces, but she manages.

He’s already dead, she tells herself and closes her eyes. He’s already dead. He’s already dead.

The sentence becomes a monotone chant in her head. She focuses on it hard, shutting out all other thoughts. She needs to open her eyes in order to see what she’s doing. Her hand shakes so much she can barely steer the point of the knife, and she has to grip it with both hands to get it to land on the soft skin of Jonas’s wrist. The blade pushes the skin down a few millimeters.

All right, just a slight push and then pull down.

Selina stares at the knife, but it doesn’t move. Her arms are trembling violently. Her body is fighting back. It won’t obey.

Come on. He’s already dead. He’s already dead!

But the mantra doesn’t work anymore. The thought of Jonas’s blood about to burst out of his wrist is too much. She can’t do it. She can’t kill him. Not like this. Not with his sleeping face right in front of her.

She removes the knife, drops it on the floor and lets out a small scream of despair. She grabs her hair and looks up into the ceiling. She feels like vomiting. The temperature in the cramped room swings between frosty and stifling hot. Everything spins around. Selina realizes she’s about to faint. In a few seconds she will—

Then a noise cuts through.

Selina stares at Jonas. He’s still sitting in the same posture. But his neck is doing tiny twitches. His breath is audible again, although very faint and raspy.

It’s happening!

Selina is gripped by panic. She turns to the shelves, goes through them frantically, searching for something, anything she can use, just not something that will make it bloody. She pushes stuff to the floor, it’s all either for cutting, stabbing or bludgeoning, and she can’t do any of those things to Jonas, she just can’t, but she—

Then she sees it. The solution. It’s been right in front of her the whole time. She just dismissed it. It’s a plastic bag full of nuts and bolts.

She grabs it and empties it on the floor. Then she goes to Jonas, gets behind him and—before she has time to think—resolutely pulls the bag over his head and tightens it firmly.

Jonas’s breathing quickly becomes even more strained. The bag is expanding and contracting in small, rapid thrusts, the inside soon fogged up and the plastic starts to cling to his hair. Strong tremors go through his body.

“Sorry!” Selina tells him and starts bawling loudly. “I’m sorry, Jonas, I’m sorry!”

She grips the bag as firmly as she can, pulling it shut around his neck with all her strength. She cries and apologizes and strangles. She doesn’t know for how long. Maybe a minute. Maybe three. But suddenly, finally, Jonas is no longer twitching, and he’s no longer breathing.

Selina sobs and keeps clutching the bag tightly. She needs to be absolutely sure, so she counts to a hundred. When she’s positive that it’s done, that Jonas is really dead, she lets go of the bag and staggers away until she hits the wall. Her legs give way and she slumps to the floor. She begins crying again, but this time she also cries from relief.

It’s over. You did it. You saved the world.

The thought bears little comfort.

TWENTY

Dennis realizes he’s drifted off and sits up abruptly, banging his head against a ceiling.

“Ouch!”

He looks around but sees nothing but darkness. For a couple of minutes, he has no idea where he is.

Then he remembers. The chest. In the basement. At Esther’s place.

The fear immediately comes rushing back. The police were right outside! Dennis was listening to them for what felt like hours. Then, at some point, they must have left, because Dennis remembers listening to the silence and beginning to feel sleepy.

He listens intently, but he can’t hear anything.

What time is it? He has no idea, no way of finding out. It could be nighttime.

Dennis decides to open the lid and check.

He lifts it very carefully—only an inch—and peers out. The basement looks like he remembers. The daylight coming in through the windows has turned orange. It must be late evening. Dennis can feel hunger gnawing in his stomach; he hasn’t eaten anything all day. Mom must be very worried for him by now.

He opens the lid all the way and steps out. Then he sees the dagger and picks it up. He can’t put it in his pocket—it’s too big and also too sharp, he would risk cutting himself.

A noise makes him spin around. He stares at the hole in the wall. Right on the other side, his back turned toward Dennis, is a man in a white suit. He’s bent over the table, busy doing something.

Dennis holds his breath as he begins backing away. He has to peel his eyes off the man to make sure he doesn’t bump into anything.

He reaches the stairs and begins walking up them one step at a time, praying that none of them will make any noise.

The guy from the other room mutters something, and Dennis stops dead. But apparently, the man was just talking to himself, because nothing else happens.

Dennis reaches the window he came in through. It’s still open. Dennis pushes it open farther and looks outside. There are no signs of the police cars. Only a single, white van is parked there now.

Dennis climbs out the window, very careful not to make any sounds. The grass is wet from dew and the air is pleasantly chill. Dennis gets up and looks around, making sure no one is there.

Then he slips over to the corner of the house and peers out into the courtyard. Also empty.

Okay. You just need to make it past the courtyard. Then you’re out of here.

Walking across the courtyard would be very stupid—he would be plainly visible from all the windows at the front of the house. And he has no idea if anybody else is in there.

So, Dennis instead runs over to the carport and makes his way behind it, coming out at the far end of the courtyard. From here, once he runs out the driveway, he will be visible for a brief second from the house, but he will be a fair distance away, and besides there’s no other way.

Dennis peers around the corner, looking up at the house. The front door is open, but no one’s there.

He takes a deep breath, then steps out and begins running.

He’s only taken three steps when someone shouts from behind: “Hey, you! Stop!”

Dennis is so surprised, he actually stops and looks back. A man in a white suit—Dennis can’t tell if it’s the same guy from the basement—is standing off to the side, holding a cup of coffee and a cigarette. He wasn’t visible from Dennis’s viewpoint until now, because he was standing behind Esther’s drying rack, where a white sheet is hanging.

The man begins walking toward Dennis. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

Dennis spins around and bolts out the driveway.

“No, stop! Come back here! This is a crime scene!”

Dennis runs as fast as he’s ever run in his life. His legs are pumping up and down, his arms flailing at his sides, his lungs are heaving for breath and his vision is going blurry with exertion.

He reaches the place where he left the bike and jumps out into the ditch, almost landing atop the bike, pulling it up onto the driveway and flinging himself onto it.

He then pedals away like a madman. He keeps looking back, expecting to see the guy come running after him.

He doesn’t.

Dennis keeps looking though, even after he reaches the highway. He rides his bike home as fast as he can, the dagger still clutched in his hand.

Ten minutes later, as he reaches the house, he can barely feel his legs anymore. The front door opens, and Mom comes running out.

Dennis stops the bike and gets off. His knees buckle, and if Mom hadn’t caught him, he would have collapsed. She takes the dagger from him, then hugs him.

Mom never hugs him, and Dennis breathes in the scent of her as she whispers into his hair: “Thank heaven!”

Dennis wants to tell her everything. About the police and where he found the dagger and how he had to hide all day in the dusty old chest and the man in the white suit who saw him.

But Dennis can’t say anything. Instead, he simply begins to cry. And for once, Mom doesn’t scold him for it. She just holds him like she hasn’t done since Dennis was very little.

TWENTY-ONE

Something vibrates somewhere close by.

Selina sniffs and takes a few deep breaths. It’s probably her dad. But she can’t talk with him right now. She can’t talk with anyone. Yet she pulls out her phone.

It’s Dan.

Selina answers and says hoarsely: “I did it.”

A bated breath on the other end. Then: “How?”

“I strangled him with a plastic bag.” Selina can’t really understand the words coming out of her mouth. It has to be someone else speaking. Another Selina in another reality. A reality where that Selina just killed another Jonas.

“You sure he’s dead?” Dan asks gingerly.

“I’m sure.”

“So he didn’t turn before you did it? I mean, he was still alive?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” Dan lets out a long sigh of relief. “Good job.”

Good job, Selina’s mind echoes. Like she passed a test in school.

“Did you ... get any scratches? I mean, I imagine he must have struggled. I think he could have infected you even though he wasn’t dead yet.”

“I didn’t get any scratches.”

“Was anyone else near him? You think anyone could have touched him?”

“There are no others.”

“We just need to make sure that—”

“Listen to me, Dan. Jonas didn’t infect anyone else. He was already halfway in a coma when I came to the hospital.” She looks at Jonas while she talks. His head, which is still in the bag, has slumped to the side. Luckily, she can’t see his face from this angle.

Dan is quiet for some time. “Okay,” he mutters. “I guess it’s over then.”

“It is.”

Selina is about to disconnect, when Dan goes on: “I just got this … I don’t know, it keeps bothering me. I feel like we overlooked something.”

Selina sighs. “Like what?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’m just paranoid, but … I’ve been here before, you know. Where we thought everything was over. And then I remembered my sister …” Dan interrupts himself.

“I think you’re just paranoid.”

“Maybe you’re right. How about you? How are you feeling?”

“How do you think I’m feeling?”

“Terrible.”

“Bingo.”

“I’m sure the police will understand. I don’t think you’ll go to jail or anything.”

“Dan, I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Sure, I understand.”

More silence.

“Bye,” Selina says.

“Bye,” Dan says.

Selina puts the phone back in her pocket. She slowly gets to her feet. Makes sure not to look at Jonas as she passes by him. But as she stops by the door, she can’t help but look back one last time.

Now she can see his face. His eyes are closed. The bag is full of moisture, and the droplets are clinging to his face like tears. His mouth is open.

Selina squeezes her lips together. She can’t leave him like this, she just can’t. Tied down and like an animal. She goes back and is just about to untie the laces, but then hesitates.

No. This is always how it happens in the movies. That final, stupid mistake.

She doesn’t believe Jonas will reawaken. She’s sure he really is dead. But she still can’t bring herself to untie him. Her instincts tell her not to.

At least the bag, then. Just so he doesn’t get found like this.

Selina carefully grips one corner of the bag with two fingers and lifts it up. It sticks a little to his head, so for a brief second his face is hidden from view. When the bag comes off and she can once again see his eyes, they are open.

Selina freezes in the middle of the movement. She’s too shocked to react; she just stares dumbly into Jonas’s irises, which are no longer blue, but milky white, as her exhausted brain struggles to understand what she sees.

She has no time to pull back when Jonas opens his mouth with a primal grunt, lunges forward and bites down over her fingers.

At first, Selina’s scream is pure surprise. But as Jonas bites down even harder and she hears the bones in her fingers splinter, the scream changes to one of pain.

TWENTY-TWO

Dan puts down his phone and lies back down onto his bed.

It’s over. It’s finally over. This time, it’s for real.

He sighs deeply. It’s just past nine o’clock, and he has now officially been awake for thirty-seven hours. That’s a whole workweek. And it feels like it, too. His eyes are stinging, his muscles aching with exhaustion.

He has been through more these past two days than most soldiers go through on an entire tour to Iraq. That’s what the psychologist told him, anyway.

But now it’s over.

But then why can’t he believe that?

Something bothers him. A small thing he overlooked. He’s been over the events again and again in his mind. Played the film back and forth. He just can’t see what detail escapes him.

Perhaps there’s nothing there. Perhaps his brain is still just running in overdrive. He’d probably better get some sleep. There’s nothing more he can do now anyway.

He turns over and shuts his eyes.

From the living room he can hear the television. The sound can’t quite drown out his mother’s crying or his dad trying to console her. Dad has been in here every fifteen minutes or so since they got home. As though to make sure Dan doesn’t suddenly disappear. Their only remaining child.

Dan feels a lump forming in his throat at the thought of Jennie. She was the hardest part telling their parents about. Seeing their faces crumble as they received the news just made everything worse—more real, somehow. The possibility of all this being a dream fell away when Dan saw his parents burst into tears. Nightmares don’t affect other people.

He still can’t grasp it. He can’t imagine a world without Jennie. How could he? He has never seen a world without her. She’s been here since before Dan was born. And now she’s lying on a table somewhere.

He pushes that image out of his mind. It doesn’t exactly help him to fall asleep.

Wonder what the doctors will say once they examine the many corpses? What will they even find? If the zombies were animated by some voodoo magic, will there even be a virus in the bodies? On the other hand, if there’s no virus, then how were they able to contaminate others?

The answers will surely come within the next days. Once everything returns back to normal. Smart people will get on television and explain it all. How it could have happened, what went down and how it was all stopped in the last second.

Will people ever know how close the world came to ending? Will Dan be recognized as one of the people responsible for stopping it? Will some people even come to see him as a hero?

He sure doesn’t feel like one. A hero would probably have saved the world and his sister.

His eyes tear up once again, but Dan is too tired to cry; he simply doesn’t have the strength, and finally, his thoughts begin to drift further away as sleep comes sweeping like a freeing darkness, pulling him down deeper and deeper.

Dan sleeps as the evening grows dimmer outside his window. He doesn’t notice how the door to his room is opened a few times, as his dad’s face, eyes all red and puffy, peeks in and then disappears again.

Dan doesn’t dream. His sleep is too deep for that.

But an image nonetheless makes its way into his consciousness. Now, as his brain finally relaxes, the memories are loosened up and that thing that kept bugging him gradually floats to the surface and materializes.

It’s a cat. A black cat.

“Whiskers,” Dan breathes, not waking up, but turning his head jerkily from side to side. “It was the cat …”

A part of Dan’s subconscious recognizes the message, and it tries waking up Dan, but his body is simply too exhausted to obey. Instead, he slips further down, his muscles relaxing, and his sleep turns calm again.

TWENTY-THREE

Paul is jerked awake abruptly. He blinks and looks around in the darkness. It takes him a few seconds to remember where he is and what woke him up. Did someone call his name? Or was that just a dream?

“Paul …”

The voice is Irene’s. She’s lying next to him, her blanket halfway on the floor, her skin glistening with sweat. She’s frowning and turning her head. “Paul, watch out …”

“Irene,” he croaks. “You’re dreaming, sweetheart.”

His wife doesn’t wake up, but keeps whispering incoherently in her sleep. He reaches over and shakes her gently. Still, she doesn’t awaken. Her skin is flaming hot. Could it be a fever?

Paul sits up with a sigh. It’s stifling hot in the bedroom, even though the window is open all the way. The summer sure is merciless this year. But this night feels even hotter than the many previous ones. Paul gets the silly notion that it’s Irene giving off heat and raising the temperature in the room even further. Ridiculous, of course.

“Please, watch out, Paul,” she whimpers.

He sits up and looks over at her nightstand. The pills are right next to a glass of water, but he remembers her taking them before they went to sleep, so it can’t be the chemo bothering her. They’ve had many sleepless nights since she started the second round of treatment, but fever has never been one of the things tormenting her. He reaches over and takes the glass.

“Irene, drink some water, you’ll feel better.”

He tries putting the glass to her lip, but she thrusts her head sideways, hitting the glass with her chin and causing him to spill most of the water over her neck and chest.

“Ah, goddamnit,” he moans.

To his astonishment, though, the splashing water doesn’t wake up his wife.

He notices her hand, lying restlessly on her stomach. It’s swollen like a rubber glove full of air, the fingers thick as hot dogs, and—doesn’t the skin look weird? It’s hard to tell in the darkness, and Paul isn’t wearing his glasses, but he’s pretty sure Irene’s hand is greenish.

His eyes fall on the Band-Aid a few inches above her wrist.

What did she say happened? Whiskers scratched her, I think.

That stupid cat. Paul has never trusted it. Had it been up to him, that cat would have been put down a long time ago. He would even have been happy to do it himself, using his old hunting rifle. But Irene loved that arrogant little beast, so …

He recalls her complaining about the scratch marks itching before they went to bed. She cleaned it thoroughly using hydrogen peroxide, like she used to do back when the kids were small and would fall and scrape their knees. So the scratch marks couldn’t have been infected—could they? Maybe some resistant bacteria got in when Whiskers scratched her. God only knows what that nasty animal might have had its claws in. A dead bird, probably.

The Band-Aid seems to be bulging a little. Paul grabs her twitching arm and pulls off the Band-Aid carefully. He lets out a gasp as he looks at what is no longer a harmless scratch, but a throbbing, oozing boil.

“Bloody hell,” he snarls, jumping out of bed. “Wake up, Irene! We gotta get you to the ER!”

“No, Paul,” she whispers, and for a moment he thinks she’s awake, but when he looks at her face, her eyes are still closed. Her demeanor is calmer now, like she’s falling into a deeper sleep. “Watch out, Paul,” is the last thing she says, before falling silent.

He stands there, looking at her for a moment. He’s not sure why, but he’s struck by a sense of grief. The thought of everything she’s been through this past year. First it was the cancer, and now this traumatic experience with the policeman sawing off his own leg right outside in their shack. The thought that Irene had to see that … It took the police most of the evening to get everything cleaned up, after they had taken pictures and done tests and whatnot. Paul is not sure he’ll ever be able to go in to the shack again without thinking about that.

And now this … some infection in her hand which probably got a hold of her because her immune system is already weakened by the cancer treatment.

Paul turns and strides into the living room, looking for his phone. But he can’t find it anywhere. Then he remembers he brought it into the bedroom. He usually never does that, but he wanted to be sure he heard it in case the police called them.

He walks back through the house, brooding. The thought of going to the ER in the middle of the night doesn’t exactly make him ecstatic, but he doesn’t want to take any risks concerning Irene’s health, so they have to—

He stops abruptly as he almost bumps into Irene, who is standing in the open bedroom door, her eyes closed, her body swaying uncertainly.

“Irene?” he asks. “I think you’re sleepwalking, dear. Come back to bed, all right? You need to sit down.”

He takes her by the shoulders. As their skin touch, he’s surprised to feel how cold she is. The heat has completely left her body within a few minutes.

Then, just as he’s about to turn her around, Irene opens her eyes wide, and Paul can immediately tell there’s nothing left in those eyes of that woman whom he’s known and loved for most of his life. He just has time to think one last amazed thought: She’s dead.

Then Irene lunges at him.

DAY 3

The following takes places on

Monday, July 28

ONE

William puts on the headphones as soon as the doors to the elevator close.

He’s strictly speaking not allowed to hear music at work, but come on—how else is he supposed to make it through his shift? Besides, the basement is usually empty, except for the other porters, but none of them will tell on him. Well, maybe Thorsten, that old, grumpy bastard.

William turns up the volume as the tunes of Custard Pie fill his ears. The doors open and he pushes the stand down the deserted hallway, smiling to himself as he drums the rhythm on the stand. He’s in an awful good mood today, despite the fact that today is a Monday.

He spins the stand around on its wheels, causing him to overlook the jumping handle on the door as he passes it.

He’s had the job a couple of months now. It was only supposed to be a summer gig, but the pay is decent, so he might stick around a little while longer than planned. Also, he actually enjoys the work. Most of the time he’s left to his own, pushing stands and beds and wheelchairs back and forth, going up and down the elevators.

It might not be the coolest thing in the world—being twenty-four and still having no education. But he doesn’t want an education. His plan is to go to the States and get an apprenticeship with a tattoo artist, then come back and open his own parlor. He already visited Miami once, that’s where he got most of his right arm done.

He reaches the laundry and leaves the stand, grabbing an empty one on his way back. This time, as he passes the door with the jumping handle, he notices the movement out of the corner of his eye.

What the hell …?

He stops and stares at the handle. It’s not moving anymore. He decides he probably imagined it and is about to move on, when the handle jumps again.

William pulls off the headphones to listen. From the other side of the door he can hear scraping noises. Like someone is fumbling around a dark room trying to get out. As far as he knows it’s just an equipment locker.

His first thought is that some poor sick dude has strayed down here and locked himself inside by accident. Maybe one of the dementia patients.

“Hang on,” he calls out, pulling the key chain from his belt. “I’ll get you out.”

He sticks in the key and turns. He pushes the door open cautiously, not wanting to knock down whoever is on the other side. To his surprise, the lights are on in the room. A foul, metallic stench rolls out at him, the unmistakable smell of blood has filled the small room, mixed with something sour and salty; sweat and fever, William guesses.

But what he sees instantly causes him to forget about the smells.

At the center of the room is lying a guy his own age, dressed in a hospital gown and entangled in a tipped-over wheelchair. Both his wrists appear to be tied to the chair, making him unable to get to his feet. Instead, he twists and turns, apparently trying to get free. His head is turned away, and the floor around him is stained with blood.

“Holy fuck,” William whispers and is just about to step inside the room to help. Something terrible obviously went down in here. The guy didn’t just wander down here on his own; someone tied him up and tortured him.

But some deeper instinct holds William back. Perhaps it’s his brain recalling at the last second the jumping handle.

And then the girl steps out from behind the door.

A few years younger than him, she might once have been quite pretty, but now she’s a terrible sight. Her skin is greenish and her eyes have neither pupils nor irises. Most of the fingers on her right hand are missing, turned into a mess of knobby bones and black, dried-up blood. It’s almost as if the girl wants to show him her damaged hand, because she reaches it out at him, while showing a row of perfect white teeth in a hungry snarl and comes towards him.

William yells out and flings his fist at her. He doesn’t have time to think, he’s acting out of pure reflex from his boxing practice. His knuckles connect with the girl’s cheek, giving off a loud smack and sending her tumbling backwards.

She hits the guy in the wheelchair, but he doesn’t seem to notice. He just keeps struggling to get free, turning his head and growling at William, revealing a face as terrible as the girl’s, but with the added effect of a lot of dried blood around his mouth.

William’s brain adds up everything in a flash. The guy bit off the girl’s fingers. The blood on the floor is from her. She must have brought him here and tied him up for some reason, but got too close. Then, while bleeding profusely, she tried to unlock the door, but couldn’t do it because of her busted hand.

During those three endless seconds William spends rooted to the floor in the open door, the girl meticulously gets back up and starts staggering towards him, one cheek visibly marked by his punch, but she shows no sign of pain.

William reaches in, grabs the door, slams it shut, and turns the key. A second later, the girl starts once again fumbling with the handle.

William breathes rapidly and stares down the hallway in both directions, making sure he’s alone. There’s no trace of doubt in his mind as to what he just saw: the girl and the guy in the equipment room are zombies. He has played with the thought of what he would do in this situation a hundred times, and now he’s actually here. The most terrifying fantasy has come true.

The zombies are coming!

TWO

Even though it’s only eight o’clock, the sun is already up and doing its worst. The air conditioner is blasting away, and still the temperature inside the bus is too high. Mille is sweating.

She’s nevertheless looking forward to the trip. Just the fact that she gets away from home for a week, gets to see new things and experience new places. Of course, the heat wave has hit most of Europe, including Prague, so the awful warm weather won’t be any different, but still—

A paper airplane hits her chest.

“Hey!” she yells out and looks up.

No one really seems to hear her. Everyone is busy chatting, listening to music or messing with their phones.

“It was Mads,” Krista says, pointing. “I saw him throw it.”

Mille looks in the direction and sees the culprit four rows ahead. Mads sends her an air kiss. Mille flips him off. Mads laughs and signals for her to open the paper airplane.

Mille sighs but unfolds it. Mads has written a message in red.

Do you want to go out with me?

YES

YES

DOUBLE YES

(you may tick off more than one)

Mille can’t help but smile, but makes sure Mads doesn’t see. She finds a pen from her bag.

“What did he write?” Krista asks, leaning in.

“He’s just trying to be funny,” Mille says, adding another option to the list.

WOULD RATHER DIE FROM HERPES

She puts an X next to the line, crumbles up the paper and throws it back at Mads. The paper ball doesn’t quite reach him, so he scrambles to pick it up from the floor. He laughs out loud when he unfolds it and reads her answer.

“He’s coming on a little too hard,” Krista remarks.

“I don’t think he’s being serious.”

Krista raises her eyebrows. “Really? He’s been mad about you since freshman year.”

“What about Pernille?”

“He just dated her because he couldn’t get you.”

Mille glances over at Mads, who has turned around and is now talking with the boys sitting in front of him.

“Did Selina text you?” Krista asks, finding her phone. “She didn’t answer any of mine.”

“Nah, I haven’t heard from her. She’s probably ill.”

“That’s like the worst timing ever, falling ill today of all days! Hey, isn’t it somewhere out here she lives?”

Mille looks out at the fields gliding by. “I have no idea.”

“Yeah, I think it is. She moved with her dad recently, because he found a new wife, remember? I was there Saturday before we went out partying.” Krista’s eyes grow big. “Hey, did you hear? She made out with that electrician?”

“Who now?”

“Jonas Jorgensen.”

“Never heard of him.”

“Well, he’s a bit older and quite good looking.”

“Huh.” Mille honestly couldn’t care less about who Selina did or didn’t make out with. She’s got nothing against Selina, they’re just not that close, like Selina and Krista are. Also, Mille knows Krista is only sitting with her because Selina isn’t here.

“Of course, she pretended like it never happened,” Krista goes on, smiling wryly. “But I saw them, and I—”

She’s cut off as the bus abruptly makes a stop, causing everyone to be thrust forward in their seats and bags to fall to the floor. Her classmates let out indignant cries.

“What the fuck was that about?”

“Get a grip, man!”

“Is he drunk up there?”

“Why did we stop?”

The driver—a middle-aged, obese guy with greasy hair—honks the horn aggressively.

“What’s he doing?” Krista says, stretching her neck like everybody else. “Is someone blocking the way?”

Mille also tries to see, but she and Krista are sitting almost all the way in the back, so there’s no way of getting a glimpse of what’s going on up front. But they’ve stopped in the middle of a desolate highway, open fields to one side, a forest to the other, so Mille can’t really imagine who would be blocking the way. Except a dog, maybe. Or a deer, perhaps. It could have wandered out from the trees.

The she hears someone up front exclaim: “There’s a lady out there!”

Mille gets a glimpse of the driver getting up and pushing the button to open the door. He looks worried as he trudges down the steps and leaves the bus.

“Jeez, what happened to her?” someone calls out.

“She must’ve been in an accident,” someone else answers.

Mads has gotten up from his seat and walked halfway up through the bus. He’s peering out the front window. Then, suddenly, he shouts: “No, don’t go over there! Come back inside, man! That’s a fucking zombie!”

A few of the boys break into nervous laughter, not sure whether Mads is joking or not. And it would be typical of him to make a joke like that. But Mille can hear something in his voice which gives her the chills.

“What’s going on?” Krista asks again, grabbing Mille by the arm. “What’s happening up there?”

“I can’t see. I think—”

Something outside the window catches Mille’s eyes. She looks out to see an elderly man come staggering out of the forest. He’s dressed in his underwear, the pale, veiny legs visible. His wifebeater, which might once have been white, is now mostly brown due to the dried-up blood that seems to have spurted from the open crater in his neck. The man trudges resolutely across the road, headed for the bus.

He turns his head slightly up, and Mille sees his face, feeling a jolt of icy fear run through her body. The man’s eyes are empty and milky white. If Mads hadn’t just yelled out the word “zombie,” she might not have been able to find a fitting description for the person passing her window and steering for the front door of the bus.

One of the girls starts screaming up front. More of the students get up and start shoving each other to get to the front. Commotion ensues. The noise level rises. Confusion and fear start to set in.

Mille, once when she was very young, accidentally locked herself in her playhouse, and she panicked when she couldn’t get the door open. That same feeling of claustrophobia creeps over her once again in this moment, as she stares at her classmates tumbling over each other to get out of the bus and away from whatever is going on outside.

Got to get out of here. Right now.

No one came to help her back when she was trapped in the playhouse; she had to literally kick the door open. Surprisingly, the panic gave her strength, and she almost kicked it off the hinges.

No one is going to help her now, either, so she looks up and sees the emergency hammer. She tears it free of the holder and slams it against the window. The glass scatters but requires a few more hits before it loosens enough for Mille to push it out. Then, she drops the hammer and turns to Krista. “Come on, we have to go!”

Her voice almost drowns in the yells and the screams.

Krista doesn’t seem to hear her. She just sits in her seat, staring ahead. Mille briefly follows her gaze and sees the lady who has now made her way up into the bus. At first, Mille actually takes her for a man, since her head is completely bald, but the bloody night dress turns the picture around. The lady throws herself at the nearest student—Signe, as far as Mille can tell—who’s squeezing helplessly up against the window, screaming and trying to get away. Just as the lady sinks her teeth into the cheek of Signe, the man comes into the bus. He immediately bends down over Rasmus, who has fallen down in the aisle. He screams in pain as the man bites the back of his neck.

Then Mille can’t see anymore, as everything disappears into complete mayhem.

She grabs Krista by the arm and drags her along as she steps up onto her seat and leaps out the window. She lands on the steaming asphalt, breaking the fall with her hands. She turns to look up at Krista staring down at her.

“Come on! Jump!”

Krista makes a clumsy hop and Mille halfway catches her.

“We gotta go,” Mille says, pulling her along, but is surprised to feel Krista resist.

“We can’t,” she says, her eyes big and terrified. “What about the others?”

Mille looks up at the bus, the inside now turned into a living inferno, students screaming, desperately climbing over the seats, banging on the windows, spurts of blood staining the glass.

“We can’t do anything now,” Mille hears herself say, amazed at how firm her voice sounds. “We’ll only put ourselves in danger too.” She tightens her grip around Krista’s wrist and tugs her hard. After a few yards, Krista stops resisting and starts running along.

Behind them, the screams from their dying classmates grow only very slowly distant.

Mille pulls out her phone and dials those famous three numbers.

THREE

William just stands there for almost an entire minute, frozen to the spot in front of the locked door. His brain is racing away, trying to decide what to do, the music is still pumping from the headphones around his neck.

He’s most of all trying to discern the extent of the situation. If this really is the end of the world, why hasn’t everything turned to chaos? All seemed perfectly ordinary when he came to work less than an hour ago.

Perhaps it’s only just begun? Perhaps I’m one of the first to meet the undead?

William takes out his phone and checks Facebook and Twitter. There are no unusual posts, only the typical food and pet photos and people boasting about their boring lives. He also checks the news channels, both the Danish and the international. Nothing out of the ordinary there, either.

He glares at the door in front of him, the handle still jumping now and then whenever the zombie girl on the other side fumbles with it.

William looks up at the ceiling, imagining the many, many floors above him. How many patients are in the building right now? A couple of hundred? Maybe more. How many of them have arrived during the night? He didn’t hear anyone talking about a sudden increase in bite wounds when he came in, but then again, he didn’t really talk with anyone. Did he notice the place being extra busy? Not particularly, no.

But maybe I just wasn’t paying attention. Maybe I was like the guy in that British zombie comedy, just walking right past all the fucking zombies because I was too tired to notice!

The thought of the whole damn place turning into a slaughterhouse right this minute makes a cold shiver run down his spine. He feels a growing panic. He’s got to get out of here. Right now. But he hesitates.

Can’t just leave them like this. Someone might come down here and open the door.

He takes the marker from his shirt pocket and steps over to the door. Luckily, the door is white, so what he writes becomes clearly visible:

DANGER!

DON’T OPEN!

ZOMBIES!!!

Without really thinking about it, he draws a skull too. He’s always been good at drawing, and skulls are kind of his specialty, so it turns out quite vivid. Now the warning should be hard to miss.

He drops the pen and runs back towards the elevator. He hits the button to the ground floor. The door closes. William breathes deeply as the elevator goes up. He gets ready to sprint. He prepares himself mentally for whatever will meet him once the door opens.

The elevator stops. The door takes forever in opening.

When it finally does, William stares out into the hall. Everything is normal. People are coming and going. Calm music is playing over the loudspeakers. At the reception, two women are causally talking.

No blood. No screaming. No panic. And no zombies.

So far.

William walks towards the exit.

“Hey, where do you think you’re going?”

William stops and sees Janus, his colleague. He’s pushing an empty bed and sends him a knowing smile. “It’s not time for your smoking break yet.”

“I’m just … uhm …”

William blinks and has no idea what to say. Is it wise to tell anyone about the zombies in the basement? He risks creating panic if word gets out. On the other hand, he can’t just leave Janus hanging. He’s the one who taught William the job, and he really likes him.

“All right, listen,” he whispers, grabbing Janus by the arm. “You need to get out of here, right now. Something crazy is going down.”

Janus first grins, but then turns serious once he realizes William isn’t joking. “What are you talking about?”

“The whole building is in danger.”

Janus frowns. “You mean …?” He lowers his voice. “Terrorism? Is it a bomb?”

William makes sure no one is within earshot, then he breathes: “Some contagious disease. I don’t think the doctors know yet, but … they probably won’t be able to stop it. It’s deadly.”

“Look, man, I’m sure whatever it is, the doctors have it under control.”

William shakes his head firmly. “There are already two dead. I’ve seen them. Get out of here, man. I’m serious.” He darts one last urgent look at Janus, then he lets go and walks on briskly towards the exit. He’s still wearing work clothes, but the thought of going up to the changing room hasn’t even crossed his mind; he’s got his phone, car keys and cigarettes. That’s all he needs.

The revolving doors let him out into the sunshine. He looks around the parking lot. Everything seems normal.

So far.

He jogs to his car, unlocks it and gets in. He finds his phone and checks it again. Still no alarming news. Maybe the media does know about the threat, but has been ordered by the government not to say anything, so as to not spread a panic.

William just sits there for a moment and thinks. Now that he’s outside the hospital, he feels a little less trapped and slightly more calm. He considers who else to warn. He has a few friends in town, but no girlfriend. His only family is his mother, who lives in the Netherlands. And then there’s his uncle Holger, of course.

The thought of his mom in Amsterdam gives him an unpleasant idea. What if this thing didn’t begin here in Denmark, but someplace else? Perhaps most of Europe is right now under attack from the undead …

William calls up his mom.

“Well, hello, sweetie,” his mom answers in a bright tone of voice. “To what do I owe the honor this early in the day?”

“Uhm, hey, Mom. I just wanted to make sure everything was fine.”

“Of course it is. Why wouldn’t it be?”

William doesn’t really know what to tell her. He can hear voices in the background. His mom is probably at work.

“Did they say anything on the radio?” he asks.

“About what exactly?”

“I don’t know … something about a virus, maybe?”

“No, I didn’t hear anything like that. Is there a virus going around?”

“Yeah, uh … it’s just some sort of flu, I think.”

“And you got worried about your poor old mom?” She laughs heartedly. “You’re such a sweet boy. Don’t you worry, I’m just fine.”

William feels a bit more relieved. He chats briefly with his mom, then ends the conversation by saying his break is over.

He takes out the packet of cigarettes and shakes out a Kings, lights it up and inhales deeply. He rolls down the window and spends a minute or so brooding.

What does this mean? Why isn’t there any panic? Maybe it didn’t really start yet. Maybe it can even still be stopped …?

He looks towards the building and drags thoughtfully on his smoke. What if the two zombies in the basement are the only ones so far? What if there’s still time to—

His thoughts are interrupted by the sudden blaring of a siren close by. William turns his head to see the gate of the A&E open, and an ambulance comes out, lights blinking and sirens blaring. Then another one. And another one. And another one.

William feels the goose bumps appear at the base of his neck and then slowly spread out over his entire body. The sight of the ambulances erases the last of his doubt. The catastrophe is real. It has begun.

He puts out the cigarette and calls up Holger. It only rings once before his uncle picks up.

“Well, good morning, Will.”

“Hey, Holger,” William says. “Listen, I need your help.”

“Sure thing! What can I do you for?”

“Do you still have your place?”

Complete silence on the other end.

“Hello, Holger? You still there?”

“Uh-huh,” Holger says, but with a completely new tone of voice. “I still have it, all right. But I don’t use it anymore. How come you ask?”

William shuts his eyes. “I think it’s best if I meet you there. Now. Right away.”

He can hear Holger hold his breath for a long moment. “Okay,” he finally says, as William opens his eyes again. “But why—”

A movement to the side. A figure comes rushing at the car. William screams.

FOUR

“Mille! Wait up!” Krista grabs her by the arm and forces her to stop. “Look! Someone got out …”

Mille really doesn’t want to look back, but she does so anyway. They’ve run for what feels like half an hour, yet they’ve only managed to put a couple hundred yards between them and the bus. It gives Mille the sense of being in one of those bad dreams where you run and run and never move.

The bus seems to be alive in the wavy rays of heat coming off the road. At first, she can’t see what Krista sees. Then, she notices the figure coming towards them. It could be Mads. Mille doesn’t like the way he walks, uncertain and wobbly. Either Mads is badly hurt, or—

Or he’s already dead.

“Isn’t it Mads?” Krista asks, squinting her eyes. “I think he’s seen us, Mille. He’s coming this way.”

“Come on,” Mille mutters, pulling at her friend. “We’ve got to go.”

But Krista pulls back. “We can’t just leave him!”

“The ambulance is on its way. I already called—”

“Look, he’s waving!”

Mille sees Mads lifting one arm and moving it from side to side.

He’s still alive.

Krista starts running back. Mille follows her hesitantly. Mads meets them halfway, holding his left arm tightly against his body. His T-shirt is stained with blood all the way down one side.

“You … you all right?” Krista asks, even though the answer is obvious.

Mads stops to catch his breath, swaying, and Krista grabs hold of him.

“It … it bit me …” Mads whispers, and Mille can’t help but see the gaping hole in his T-shirt. “It bit everyone … what the … hell … happened?” Mads seems confused, his eyes glazed and distant.

“I think you should sit down,” Krista says as she starts to sniffle. “The ambulance will be here in a minute. Mille already called it.”

“Mille?” Mads repeats dreamily as Krista clumsily helps him sit down by the side of the road. He looks up and focuses for a brief moment on Mille. The smile gliding over his face stings Mille right in the heart. “Hi,” he says, sounding pleasantly surprised. Before she can think to answer, he closes his eyes and collapses.

“Mads?” Krista sobs, shaking him gently. “Mads?”

“It bit us all,” Mads repeats in a hoarse whisper, not opening his eyes.

Krista shakes her head. “I think he’s unconscious. Oh, no, he’s bleeding so much … what should we do, Mille? How do you make it stop?”

Mille doesn’t answer. She’s not hearing Krista at all. Something else has caught her attention. Over by the bus, another figure has appeared. It’s a girl, maybe Renée, judging from the yellow top. She runs stumbling right out onto the wheat field while looking back constantly. Another person emerges from the bus. It’s the old guy, the one Mille saw through the window. His scrawny, blood-covered frame is very recognizable, even from this far away. He staggers after Renée who gives a shriek and runs faster once she sees him.

Mille feels her heart beating in her throat. Somewhere, Krista says her name. Mille just stares at Renée, who luckily is increasing the distance from her pursuer—right up until she stumbles and falls over.

The old guy speeds up, like a predator sensing prey, reaching out his thin arms eagerly as he trudges through the knee-high wheat. Renée just manages to get back up, when the zombie grabs her hair and pulls her back down.

Thankfully, Mille can’t see what happens next, as both figures disappear into the golden wheat. But she hears Renée’s scream.

Krista also hears, because she turns to look back. “What was that? Someone else made it out?”

“No,” Mille says.

The sound of a car horn makes her spin around. For a moment, she hopes it’s the ambulance, but it’s not. A silvery station wagon is approaching them and slows down. A middle-aged Arab sticks his head out the window and asks in broken Danish: “Accident happen? He hurt?”

“Yes!” Krista says. “You need to take him to the hospital …”

“Hold on,” Mille begins, but Krista has already started hauling Mads to his feet, and the Arab parks the car and comes running out to help.

At that moment, Mille sees the next person come out of the bus. It’s a boy—Tommy, as far as she can tell. But he’s not fleeing, like Renée did. He’s just standing still, swaying for a moment. Then he turns his head around and looks directly towards her. He starts staggering this way.

“… Mille! …”

Behind him, two others emerge—a girl and a boy. The girl stumbles, and the boy tramples right over her, not minding her at all. Then another one comes out. And another one after that. Soon, her classmates are all around the bus, all of them moving in the same, sleepwalker-like manner. At first, they seem to just drift around, but then, one by one they apparently catch a scent, turn in this direction and begin walking.

“… Mille! …”

Tommy, who’s in front, is already halfway there. Mille can now tell he’s been bitten in the throat, and some of the tendons must have been severed, because his head is bopping sideways. The blood has gushed down his shirt. His eyes are strangely white, almost like someone rolling their eyes upwards, and now Mille can also make out the sound he’s making: a rattling, sticky growl.

“Mille, for God’s sake!” Krista grabs her hard by the shoulder. “Come on, will you? We’ve got to—” She cuts herself off abruptly, as she sees half of the class coming trudging at them. “Oh, my God …” she breathes. “They’re … they’re not … we have to … we have to help them …”

Suddenly, Mille can act again. She pulls Krista towards the car, where Mads is already lying in the backseat. She shoves Krista inside and slams the door, herself getting in the passenger seat. The Arab has also noticed the oncoming army of dead college students and is just standing there, outside the open driver’s side door.

“Hey, come on!” Mille shouts. “Get us out of here!”

She honks the horn, and the sound pulls the man out of his stupor. He gets in and fumbles to get the seat belt on.

Mille looks out and sees Tommy—who’s dangerously close now—speed up, as he seems to sense his chances for something to eat getting slimmer.

“Just go!” Mille screams.

The Arab forgets about the belt and guns it. He turns the car around in a wild arc, causing them all to be thrown sideways, the tires giving off a short, high-pitched screech against the hot asphalt—not nearly as impressive as tires do in the movies. Tommy’s outstretched fingers almost graze the sideview mirror where Mille is sitting, but then they’re speeding down the road, leaving him with the smell of burned rubber.

Mille sighs and leans back her head.

The driver keeps checking the rearview mirror while muttering to himself in Arabic.

“The paramedics will help them, right?” Krista sobs from the backseat. “They’ll be here any minute now, and then they’ll help them all, won’t they, Mille? Won’t they?”

“Yeah,” Mille murmurs. “Sure they will.”

Her thoughts are going around and around and can’t seem to find a reasonable place to land. Only twenty minutes ago she was reading an immature love letter from Mads. Now her entire class is turned into living dead, and Mads is dying on the backseat. Will he make it? Will they get him to the hospital in time?

Mille turns and looks at him. Krista has placed his head in her lap and is stroking his damp hair. His face is fiery red and oddly swollen. He looks like he’s in pain and he’s breathing rapidly.

It’s only a matter of minutes.

“I think he’ll make it,” Krista sobs, looking pleadingly at Mille. “He’ll make it, right? He’ll wake up in just a moment, won’t he?”

“Yes,” Mille whispers, her throat closing in on itself. One way or another …

FIVE

William drops the phone, jumps into the air and scrambles halfway across the gear shift, before he realizes the person outside the car is Janus.

“Jesus Christ, dude …”

His colleague tries to open the door, then looks in at William. “Unlock it, will you?”

“Other side,” William says, hitting the central lock. As Janus walks around the car, William picks his phone up off the floor. “Holger? … No, nothing happened. I’ll call you back, okay?”

He disconnects just as Janus gets in. William locks all the doors again immediately.

“I was just in the A&E,” Janus says, his voice tight. “I’ve never seen anything like it. All four cars were sent out at once. Something about a school bus that was attacked …” Janus glares at him. “What the hell is going on, Will?”

William takes a deep breath, then says it. “Zombies.”

“Zombies?” Janus raises his eyebrows. “Stop fucking around, I’m really not in the mood for—”

“I’m not. It’s fucking zombies, man. Go to the basement and see for yourself if you don’t believe me.”

Janus shakes his head slowly. “But … that doesn’t make any sense. I mean, how the hell …?” He moans and runs his hands through his hair.

“I know it’s completely mental. My head is just as fucked up as yours right now. I only found out like ten minutes ago.”

“You think it’s got something to do with that patient that went missing last night?”

“What patient?”

“You mean you didn’t hear? The whole place was upside down this morning when I got in. Some dude our age had been admitted for blood poisoning or something, and he just suddenly disappeared, like he had literally just got up and left. That’s what they think happened, anyway.”

William bites his lip, thinking about the zombie tied to the wheelchair. “That could have something to do with it, yeah.”

Janus is quiet for a moment, then looks demandingly at William. “Is it like Walking Dead? Will everything collapse?”

“I don’t know, man. Honestly. I just called my mom; she lives in the Netherlands. Nothing is going on down there—not as far as she knows, anyway. But maybe that means it hasn’t really broken out yet.”

Janus leans his head back and closes his eyes. “Fuck! This can’t be happening. What the hell are we going to do? I need to call Sofie … and my dad … and the rest of my family, and my friends, and—”

“Hold on,” William says as Janus goes for his phone. “We need to consider things first.”

“What do you mean? What’s there to consider? We just need to get the hell away from here, as far as possible! We’ve got to go to an island or something. Isn’t that how Dawn of the Dead ends?”

“Yeah, and how many people you figure saw that movie?”

“Who cares about how many people saw it?”

“I do! Because the islands are going to be flooded by people as soon as everyone begins to realize what’s going down. And if just one of them brings the contagion out there, we would be trapped. Besides, food and resources would quickly become an issue. And how would we even get out there? I don’t have a boat, and—”

“All right, I get it! Bad idea. What’s your plan, then?”

“My uncle lives a few miles outside town. He has a safe place, like, survival-style, with power and water and food and the whole shebang. I just called him, and I’m going to meet him now.”

Janus frowns. “Why would he have a place like that? Did he know this was going to happen?”

“He used to suffer from paranoia. Like, for real. He was institutionalized and everything. He would talk about aliens coming to Earth one day to wipe us all out and stuff like that. So, he built this impressive underground safety room, big enough for someone to easily live in for years.”

Janus doesn’t exactly look impressed. “So that’s your plan? Living underground with a crazy uncle for years to come?”

“He’s not crazy anymore, he’s on medication now. He’s been fine for many years now. But yeah, that’s my plan for now. If you have a better one, I welcome you to try it, man. I’m simply offering you to come with me if you want.”

Janus seems to mull it over. His gaze drifts across the parking lot, where everything looks completely normal. He bursts into joyless laughter. “Come on, this isn’t really happening, dude.”

“If you need proof, it’s right in there.” William nods towards the building. “But I’m going now. You coming?” He turns the key and starts the engine. The radio, which as always is tuned in on a rock station, begins playing.

“What about Sofie?” Janus asks. “Can I bring her?”

William bites his lip. “All right, but only her. I think four people is the limit—at least if we’re going to have to stay for a while.”

“Great, I’ll call her. You mind turning that down a bit?”

William turns down the music, and Janus makes the call. William drives slowly out of the parking lot, scanning the surroundings. None of the people he sees look ill or injured.

Yet.

SIX

As they cross the town limit a few minutes later, Mads has gone quiet.

“I think he’s better now,” Krista sniffles.

Mille turns to look at him. His expression is no longer contorted in pain, and his face is less swollen. However, almost all blood seems to have left him, because he has taken on an unhealthy greyish hue.

“Where hospital?” the Arab asks. “I don’t know town.”

“Take a left here,” Mille says, pointing.

The Arab stops at the red light.

“No, go!” Mille demands. “Just go!”

“Light red,” the man says.

“Yes, but this is an emergency!” She scans the dashboard and hits the button for the hazard flashers. “Go now!”

The Arab rolls out into the intersection. The oncoming cars slow down as they notice, and the Arab makes a left turn.

“Oh, no!” Krista exclaims. “Mille? I think he stopped breathing …”

Mille turns. Mads’s chest isn’t rising or falling anymore. His cheeks have sunk into his face and his whole body seems lax. The skin is even more grey now than only a moment ago. In fact, it appears to have turned slightly green, too.

It’s happening.

“Pull over,” Mille hears herself says.

The Arab looks at her uncertainly. “Hospital here?”

“No. Just pull over.”

“We’ve got to help him, Mille,” Krista whines. “How do you do it …?” She bends over, and for a crazy second Mille thinks she’s attempting to kiss him back to life, like Snow White in the fairy tale. Then Krista starts blowing into his mouth.

“Stop that, Krista,” Mille says, unbuckling her seat belt.

“I think it helps,” Krista cries and blows helplessly into Mads’s mouth.

The car has stopped.

“Krista, stop that! Get out of the car!” Mille opens her door and jumps out. She runs around the car and is just about to open the back door, when her gaze falls on Mads’s face through the window. At that exact moment, he opens his eyes.

It’s no longer Mads’s warm, friendly, hazel eyes with that stupidly charming glare. It’s no longer anybody’s eyes. They’re blank, white, dead.

What happens next plays out in slow motion.

Krista bends down once again to blow into Mads’s mouth, but then gives off a noise of surprise and says: “My gosh, it worked!”

Those are the last discernable words out of Krista.

Mads sits up abruptly and sinks his teeth into her chin. Krista screams and tries to push him off, but he’s clamping on like a Rottweiler and buries his fingers in her hair, pulling her down farther. Then he makes a violent tug with his head, ripping off most of the skin from Krista’s chin. The lower lip tears in two, exposing the teeth in a gruesome smile. The blood gushes out and Krista screams shrilly in pain. It only takes Mads a few seconds to gobble down the chunk of skin, then he shoots up again, this time biting into the soft tissue of Krista’s throat, turning her scream into a croak.

Mille doesn’t see any more than that. She doesn’t hear anything either; not her own drumming pulse, not the Arab’s panicked yells, not even the blaring of the car horns as she staggers backwards out into the road. She simply turns her eyes to the sky and faints.

SEVEN

“Fuck, why doesn’t she answer?” Janus lowers the phone and looks in at the supermarket as they pass by.

William stops at the red light and looks at him. “She at work?”

“Yeah. Do you mind pulling over?”

William puffs out his cheeks. “I don’t know, man. I don’t think it’s a good idea. Time’s running.”

“Five minutes, tops.”

“All right. But you go in alone, I’ll stay here in the car.”

“Fair enough. You mind turning that off?” He nods at the radio.

“Why? I already turned it down.”

“It’s distracting.”

“I find it calming.” Still, William turns it off, interrupting Axl Rose who is singing about a lovely place with green grass and pretty girls.

The lights shift and William is just about to go, when a silvery station wagon cuts out in front of him. Its hazard flashers are on, so William hits the brake.

“What do you think happened there?” Janus asks, following the station wagon with his eyes as it passes by in front of them.

William gets a glimpse of a Middle eastern man behind the wheel and a teenage girl on the passenger seat. “No idea,” he mutters. “But I guess they’re headed for the hospital.”

He makes a U-turn and is just about to pull into the parking lot of the supermarket, when he notices the station wagon stopping abruptly a little farther ahead. The passenger door is opened, and the girl comes out. She runs to the opposite back door, then stops dead, as though she sees something terrible inside the car.

“What are you waiting for, man?” Janus asks.

William realizes he has stopped in the middle of the road. “Something is going on over there,” he mutters and points.

Through the back window of the station wagon, he sees the driver turning his head and yelling something. Two figures on the backseat seem to be wrestling.

The girl is still standing there, one hand to her mouth, and now she starts walking backwards, right out into the road, her legs looking wobbly. An oncoming car honks at her, but she doesn’t even flinch; she just collapses, as though the horn blew her over.

“Fuck!” Janus exclaims. “What happened to her?”

William is pretty sure he knows what’s going on inside the station wagon, and he also knows the girl on the asphalt only has a few minutes—maybe seconds to live—before someone runs her over. He pulls over, yanks the hand brake and jumps out. He runs to the girl, just as the Arab guy comes tumbling out of the car and opens the back door. He yells something which sounds like: “Stop that! Stop that!” and reaches in with both arms, but pulls them quickly back out with a roar of pain, clutching his right hand, where two of the fingers are clearly missing.

William reaches the car and looks inside. The sight is even more awful than he anticipated—no wonder the girl fainted. Everything is drenched in blood. Most of it seems to come from the girl, who’s lying splayed out on her back, arms and legs twitching. Her throat looks like chopped tomatoes and she’s either dead or a few seconds away from dead. Above her sits a young guy in a bloody T-shirt with his face buried in the crater that is the girl’s throat.

Apparently sensing new prey, the zombie turns its eyes up, fixing them on William. They look exactly as dead and inhuman as the eyes of the girl William met in the basement of the hospital. The guy’s face is shiny red from fresh blood.

William grabs the door and slams it. But one of the girl’s legs gets in the way, preventing the door from closing all the way. William is not about to begin shuffling her around, so he abandons the effort and steps back, looking around for the Arab guy, who’s nowhere in sight. Instead, he sees Janus, who’s come to pick up the girl and is now bringing her around the station wagon.

“She hurt?” William asks. “You see any bite marks on her?”

“No, I think she’s fine,” Janus says. “Let’s get her to the car.”

“What the hell’s going on?” someone shouts, and William darts a brief look around to see another car pulling over, the driver sticking his bald head out of the window and staring in amazement at the scene.

“Get out of here!” William shouts at him, just as the zombie boy comes tumbling out of the car. Behind him, inside the car, the girl sits up.

“Holy shit!” the bald guy shouts and speeds off.

Finally someone with a rational response, William thinks, turning around to run after Janus, who has reached William’s car. William opens the door, and they help each other place the girl on the backseat.

“Oh, fuck!” Janus exclaims, alarm in his voice.

William spins around expecting to find both zombies coming at them. Instead, he sees them staggering towards the entrance of the supermarket. Apparently, they’ve sensed a much larger selection of prey, and the glass doors open to invite them in.

“Sofie!” Janus roars and grabs William. “Come on, we’ve got to help her!”

William pulls free. “No, it’s too dangerous!”

“Too dangerous?!” Janus glares at him, aghast. “Sofie is fucking in there!”

“And in two minutes the whole building will be crawling with zombies! You saw how quickly the girl woke up.”

“You fucking coward,” Janus sneers and runs towards the entrance.

“I’ll wait for you!” William calls after him. “But only two minutes!”

Janus doesn’t answer, he just runs into the supermarket.

EIGHT

The air is cooler inside the store, and pop music is playing over the speakers. Luckily, not many people seem to have gone shopping this Monday morning.

By the register is a young, pimply kid scanning an older lady’s groceries. Only a few yards away from them is the zombie girl. She’s eagerly trying to get to them, but is held back by a metal bar.

“You can’t get in that way,” the cashier says sleepily, not even bothering to look up at the girl. “You’ll need to go through the store.”

The girl just keeps shoving to get past the obstacle, and her efforts cause her to tip over, producing half a somersault over the metal bar.

“Hey, what the hell …?” the cashier exclaims.

“Look out!” Janus yells.

Both the cashier and the old lady are now staring in silent amazement at the tumbled over girl who’s getting clumsily back up on her feet and is starting to growl.

“Get away!” Janus shouts. “She’s dangerous!”

“Oh, fuck me,” the cashier exclaims as he gets a look at the girl’s face and apparently recognizes the danger. Without a second glance, he turns on his heels and sprints off down the store.

The old lady, on the other hand, is still just standing there, frozen to the spot, holding her purse, mouth open.

“Run away!” Janus warns her once again, and she looks as though she tries to oblige him, at least her feet shuffle a few inches backwards, but the sight of the bloody girl has paralyzed her. Janus can’t do anything but look as the zombie lunges at her, quickly wrestling her to the ground.

His stomach churns and he forces himself to look away, to focus on what he came for. He turns and runs down through the store. Somewhere down the back is a muffled scream.

Janus checks every aisle, looking out both for Sofie and the zombie boy, but he only meets a few early shoppers with puzzled looks on their faces. One of them is a young, blonde mom with her two young boys.

“What’s going on?” she asks Janus as he passes by them, reaching out in a protective manner for her sons. “Who was that screaming just before?”

“Get out of the building,” Janus just tells her and moves on. “Sofie? Sofie, it’s me! Where are you?”

He reaches the end of the store and stops by the dairy cabinets. Still, no trace of Sofie.

Maybe she’s out back …

He’s headed for the door to the employee’s area, when suddenly, Sofie appears from behind a meat dish. She’s wearing gloves and blows away a strand of hair.

“Sofie!”

“Janus?” she smiles as she sees him. “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be at work?”

Janus goes to her and sighs with relief. “You’re all right …”

“Of course I am.” She frowns. “Is something wrong? Listen, did you hear someone yell out just a minute ago? I was listening to my iPod, so I’m not sure, but—”

Janus can tell Sofie sees something behind him, because her expression changes from mild confusion to utter terror in half a second. Then she opens her mouth and screams.

Janus darts a look over his shoulder just as a bloody hand grabs him. The boy has crept up on him completely noiselessly. Janus attempts a sideway reflex jump, but the kid has too firm of a grip on his shirt. He pulls Janus back and sinks his teeth into Janus’s shoulder blade. The pain is intense. Janus screams and swings at the attacker, connecting with his elbow right under the chin, sending him sprawling.

“Fuck!” he hisses, hunching over in pain.

Sofie comes closer, her eyes large and terrified. “Oh my God … are you … are you all right, babe?”

“Get away!” Janus yells, trying to reach the spot where the boy bit him. To his dread he feels the warm blood already soaking the back of his T-shirt. “Fuck!” he repeats, his voice breaking, glaring at Sofie with a pleading look. “Get out of here, Sofie! Get as far away as you can! You got it? Just run!”

But Sofie never runs anywhere. She tries, though, managing a few, tentative steps backwards while she stares at Janus with a perfect mixture of fright and amazement. Then, the girl steps out from one of the aisles, throwing herself at Sofie and wrestling her to the floor. It happens so fast Janus only has time to blink once. Then he gives off a roar and is about to lunge forward when a couple of hands grab his ankles, causing him to fall flat on his stomach, knocking his lungs clean out of air. The boy pulls Janus’s left leg closer and bites down hard on the bared shin. The pain is even worse this time.

Then, Janus blacks out. He’s screaming but not aware of it. He rips his leg free, losing a large chunk of skin, but no longer feeling the pain. He gets to his feet and begins kicking the boy violently in the face, harder and harder, then he’s stomping, driving his heel down with all his force, over and over, hammering the boy’s head into the vinyl floor until he hears a distinct crunching sound and the boy stops scrambling.

Janus heaves for breath and turns around, suddenly only able to move in slow motion. He sees Sofie lying there, the girl crouching over her. He sees that it’s too late. The floor has already turned red, and the girl is visibly losing interest in Sofie, standing up and sniffing the air greedily, sensing still-alive prey nearby.

Janus just stands there, panting, his mind completely blank, as the girl turns around and growls at him, her face and neck and upper chest all covered in Sofie’s blood.

And as the zombie comes at him, Janus still doesn’t move.

NINE

William stays by the car for what feels like a very long time, but in reality is probably only a few minutes.

He keeps looking in every direction, making sure no one is sneaking up on him. He’s ready to go at any moment, fighting the urge to throw himself in the car and get the hell out of Dodge. He also keeps an eye on the entrance to the supermarket and the girl on the backseat, who’s still unconscious.

“Come on, dude,” he whispers.

He could really use a Kings right now, but he doesn’t want to slack his attention even for a second, in case Janus and Sofie come running out, a mob of zombies at their heels.

From inside the car, Dave Grohl is singing about aviation lessons, and William is not aware that he’s humming along tonelessly. One half of him feels like a coward for letting Janus go in there all by himself. The other half, though, feels like he made the right choice by not leaving the car.

The traffic goes by at a normal, lazy pace. Several of the drivers dart him concerned looks, and one of them—an obese lady—pulls over and rolls down her window. “Hi there! You need help?”

“No, thank you,” William murmurs, realizing how on edge he must look, pacing back and forth, looking all paranoid. He tries to manage a confident smile at the lady, which feels more like an odd grimace. “I’m just waiting for a friend.”

The woman nods, not looking particularly convinced, but seems to accept his explanation.

At that moment, the doors to the supermarket open up, and for a second, William imagines Janus coming out of the store, carrying Sofie in his arms like a superhero. And he’s right: It is Janus coming out. But he’s not carrying Sofie, and he doesn’t look at all like a superhero. In fact, he’s walking in a very weird and unsteady way, his head tilting back and forth like on a toddler who just learned to walk.

William stares at his friend and colleague, at the white hospital shirt which is no longer white, but red from blood.

Maybe he just fell, a single, stupid thought yells out in William’s mind, desperately wanting to cling on to the hope that Janus might be okay. Maybe it’s not even his own blood.

But it’s nonsense, of course. And the last grain of hope is brushed aside when Janus turns to reveal his left side, where both his T-shirt and skin are reduced to bloody shreds. Underneath can be seen a gaping hole with a couple of ivory colored ribs protruding from the red flesh.

There are also the eyes—Janus’s eyes aren’t human anymore, not by any means; they’re milky white, cloudy and dead. And they’re fixing right on William, as Janus starts to stagger in his direction.

“My goodness!” a voice exclaims from behind William, pulling him out of his trance. “Poor guy, what happened to him?”

The heavyset woman has pulled the hand brake and is now fumbling to get her seat belt open.

“No!” William says, going to her car. “You get away from here! He’s dangerous.”

The woman eyes him like he just spoke Chinese. “What are you talking about? He’s bleeding! He’s obviously—”

“He’s a fucking zombie!” William shouts, shoving the door shut as the woman opens it and tries to get out. She stares at him, blinking in surprise. “Unless you want to get eaten alive, I suggest you get the hell out of here—right now!”

William turns his back to the woman and runs to his own car, not looking bad to check if she got the message. If she didn’t, it’s on her. He’s not going to play hero for the sake of some dense middle-aged hag.

William throws himself behind the wheel, just as he catches a glimpse of Janus out of the corner of his eye. His friend has crossed the parking lot and almost reached the street. Exactly what he’s aiming for is hard to judge, because he keeps changing direction, as though the passing cars all tempt him and he can’t decide which one to go for.

Like a kid in a candy store.

William pulls the car into first gear and checks the traffic before turning out onto the road. He notices the doors to the supermarket open once more, and he forgets everything else for a moment, as he stares at the group of undeads who come staggering out into the parking lot.

He knows the girl who died on the backseat of the station wagon. And Sofie, even though half her face is missing. The others are unfamiliar to him. There’s an old lady, her bloody handbag miraculously still dangling from her shoulder; a younger woman dragging one chewed-up leg behind her; a pimply teenager whose clothing reveals that he used to work in the store; and two small boys, whom William feels genuinely sick just looking at.

His gut clenches up as the zombies spread out into all directions. If he’d still had a frail hope that the catastrophe could be somehow stopped, it dies in this moment.

He jerks the wheel and pulls out into the lane, causing the car coming up behind him to slam on its brakes and honk its horn. William barely notices. His eye catches Janus, who’s walking right out onto the road. A yellow van swerves to avoid him, but it’s too late. There’s a loud bang, and Janus is thrown several yards, tumbling round and round like a rag doll.

“Fucking hell,” William whimpers as he guns it and heads down the road. He doesn’t want to look in the rear mirror, but he can’t help it.

He sees the traffic jamming up around the accident.

He sees the zombies all headed for the concerned drivers getting out of their cars to stare at the poor young man who just got run over.

And he sees Janus, who laboriously gets up without any signs of pain or discomfort and attacks the driver of the van, who has come rushing to help him.

TEN

William keeps darting glances at the girl on the backseat, even though she makes no sounds and doesn’t move. As far as he can tell, she wasn’t hurt before she passed out—but she was in a car with a zombie, so William can’t be sure she’s not infected.

Perhaps I ought to check her for any scratches … or simply kick her out …

He looks again at her in the mirror, but the mere thought of undressing her while she’s unconscious makes him feel dirty. And to put her out on the sidewalk and just leave her to whoever finds her, dead or alive … well, he’s not willing to go that far just yet. So, he has no choice but to wait until she wakes up.

He arrives at a new intersection, stopping at the red light. Next to him, in the other lane, a city bus is also waiting. William glances up and sees an elderly lady staring blankly out the window.

She has no idea what’s going down. As far as she knows, it’s just a regular fucking Monday.

The thought makes him shiver. A woman in runner’s clothes comes jogging by, a yellow Lab running next to her on a leash. The sight of the dog produces a jolt in William’s stomach.

“Oh, fuck! How could I forget him?”

The thought of Ozzy alone in the apartment makes his heart race. He looks up at the light, still red, as his thoughts start churning faster and faster. If he makes a right here, he could reach the apartment in a couple of minutes. But that will bring him back towards the hospital.

He squeezes the wheel, breathing heavy through his nose. He can’t leave his buddy, but he can’t risk his own life, either.

In the movies, zombies usually aren’t interested in dogs—and besides, the front door is locked, which means Ozzy probably isn’t in any immediate danger. He’s got food and water enough for tomorrow evening. But maybe William won’t get a chance to go get him before then. Maybe the town will be shut down completely within hours. This could be his last chance.

You can’t do it, a rational thought urges him. You can’t risk your life for a dog.

He would do it for you without blinking, says another—and a lot less rational—thought.

William bites down hard. The light switches to yellow just as another song begins on the radio. It’s Iron Man.

William glares at it, muttering: “If that’s not a sign, I don’t know what is …”

And when the light turns green in the next second, William waits for the bus to go forward, clearing the way for him to turn right. But the bus only moves a few feet before the driver stops and hits the horn.

William stretches his neck to see what’s going on in front of the bus. He gets a glimpse of a middle-aged man trudging out into the road. His skin has the unmistakable greenish hue, and from a crater in his belly dangles what looks like threads of oversized spaghetti. The man’s shorts, which once were probably beige, are now soaked with blood and have traveled down to his knees, revealing his undies and causing him to walk in an almost comical, duck-like fashion, small steps, bopping from side to side. He stops in front of the bus and reaches up his hands, leaving bloody stains on the front shield. He morbidly reminds William of a giant baby who wants his parent to lift him up.

The bus driver gets out.

“No, no, no!” William slams the horn and fumbles for the button to roll down the window. “No, stay away from him! He’s—”

But it’s too late. The zombie has already lunged at the driver and wrestled him to the ground.

A car suddenly honks impatiently behind William, the driver probably annoyed at the unexplained hold in traffic, completely unaware of what’s going on in front of the bus. Another driver from the opposite side has stopped his car and comes rushing to help. He grabs the zombie to drag him away from the driver, but only manages to get himself bitten at the wrist.

As William stares at the scene, his head is suddenly drained of all thought. He can only sit there and glare in dumb amazement and horror. He realizes just how fast this thing will spread. How soon everything will turn to chaos. He had somehow naively figured that zombies had by now become a known phenomenon; that regular people would recognize the danger, that they had watched at least a few fucking episodes of Walking Dead. Afterall, it only took him a split second to react when he faced the girl in the basement of the hospital. But apparently, not all modern people.

Maybe it’s a cultural thing, William muses as he still just sits there, staring at more cars stopping. Maybe, if this had been happening in the United States, it would have been different. But most modern Danes, with their down-to-earth, no-nonsense take on life, don’t seem to acknowledge the undead when they see them.

The car behind him honks again, jerking William awake. The intersection has almost been blocked now, and in a matter of seconds, he will be caught in a jam. So, William decides to give a fuck about traffic laws and floors the gas pedal, racing forward, then twisting the wheel to the right. The shorts-wearing zombie has lost interest in the bus driver and is now getting up to go after the unlucky Samaritan who’s standing there, clutching his bleeding wrist.

William sees the shot, and before he has time to think about it, he jerks the wheel and catches the zombie with the corner of the front bumper, sending it flying across the sidewalk.

William doesn’t slow down, but races out of the intersection and down the street, his heart thumping in his chest and a sudden burst of energy bubbles up through his throat.

“Fuck you, you piece of shit!” he yells at the rear mirror. “The living finally scores a point!”

William turns up the radio and Ozzy Osbourne.

ELEVEN

When he drives into the parking lot in front of his block three minutes later, the adrenaline has run its course, Iron Man has caused death and destruction, and William has turned down the music.

He cruises around the lot a few times as he peers out, checking every direction, before stopping by the door to his stairway. No zombies in sight, only a couple of kids playing at the playground on the lawn next to the parking lot.

William pulls the hand brake but leaves the engine running and unbuckles the seat belt. He just sits there for a moment, considering. The girl on the backseat hasn’t stirred the slightest; she’s still just breathing calmly.

Right, you can do this. It’s only three floors. You’ll be gone less than two minutes.

He takes a deep breath. Then he turns the key and pulls it from the ignition. Silence descends immediately as the engine dies. Only the happy cries from the boys and the distant background noise of the town can be heard.

William gets out and jogs to the door. Upon entering the empty stairway, he stops and listens for a second, then he begins the climb three steps at a time. Panting and heart thumping, he stops in front of the door to his apartment.

He rattles the key and says in a low voice: “It’s me.” Then, he unlocks the door.

Ozzy, who was sitting perched right on the other side, licks his hand in a happy greeting. Had the German shepherd not heard the keys and William’s voice, the welcome would have been quite different. William has been training Ozzy with a retired police dog handler.

“We gotta hurry,” he says, squeezing past the dog in the narrow hallway. “We’re going for a ride.”

Those last four words cause Ozzy to become even more excited, and he immediately jumps up to snag his leash from the nail next to the door. William goes to the kitchen and grabs the bag of dog food. He looks at the fridge, feeling his stomach rumble. It’s almost noon, and breakfast feels like a very long time ago.

He puts down the bag and throws together a couple of sandwiches. He also grabs four canned beers and stuffs everything in a plastic bag. He brings it and the dog food back out to the hallway, where Ozzy is sitting with his leash in his mouth, tail wagging.

“Good boy,” William says, taking the leash from him. “Let’s go.”

Ozzy slips out onto the landing, and William locks the door behind them. They hurry downstairs and out into the sunshine and the merciless heat. The parking lot is still empty, the boys are still playing, the girl is still sleeping on the backseat.

William throws the bag of dogfood into the trunk. “Now you, buddy. Up!”

The German shepherd jumps up and sits down.

“Good boy,” William says. He’s just about to close the trunk, when something catches his eye. From the other side of the playground a lone figure comes walking across the lawn. Even this far away William can see the outstretched arms and the head which is bopping from side to side. A woman, judging from the hair. And she’s headed straight for the boys.

“Oh, fuck me …” William runs across the parking lot. “Hey! You guys!”

The boys, who are in the business of throwing handfuls of sand up the slide, turn quickly and look at him guiltily, both of them instinctively hiding their hands behind their backs. They can’t be more than eight, maybe nine years of age.

“We weren’t doing anything,” one of them blurts out.

William stops in front of them and points to the zombie. “You see that woman over there? She’s a zombie.”

One of the boys gasp out loud. “Wow, that’s crazy! A real zombie!”

“You’ve got to get home right away, all right?” William goes on, talking fast. “Right this minute. Tell your parents to lock the doors and turn on the news. You got that?”

The boys stare from him to the woman, who’s already reached the playground and now staggers into the sandpit. The soft ground doesn’t seem to make it easier for her to walk, but she steers adamantly towards the boys.

William is just about to shout at them to get them moving, but luckily, the boys already seem to have caught on, as they’re backing away.

“Go!” William tells them. “Get out of here! Run!”

One of the boys turns and runs towards the apartments. The other sends William an uncertain look. “But … my parents aren’t at home,” he says, his voice shaky.

“Then go home with your friend! Hurry!”

The zombie woman is wobbling her way past the sand, closing in, less than ten yards away now. She snarls and opens her fingers in an eager gesture. Most of the back of her neck is missing, and her hair has been almost pulled from the skull.

The boy finally turns to run, but smashes directly into the swing set, giving off a cry and falling down.

William, who already turned to run himself, stops abruptly. “Fucking hell …” He sprints over to the boy, grabs him by the arm and tries to pull him to his legs, but the boy is hazy after the collision, so William ends up dragging him along through the sand.

The zombie woman snarls even louder, upping her speed, like she’s sensing the opportunity. She’s gaining on them. William can’t drag the boy fast enough, and there’s no time to pick him up. Instead, he shouts pointlessly at the woman. “Stay the fuck away!”

The zombie bends over to grab the boy’s sprawling legs, misses and takes another few steps, misses again, narrowly, almost losing balance but stays on her feet, going for a third try. William gives one last hard tug at the boy’s arm, hoping to get him out of reach of the zombie—but he loses his grip, and they both fall down.

For one long, terrifying moment, William realizes there’s only one outcome left. The boy can’t make it up in time. The zombie is already bending down, grabbing his foot. The boy screams as her mouth descends upon his bare leg.

Then, everything speeds up, as something big and brown comes flying in from the side, hitting the woman and knocking her sideways.

William glares dumbly at Ozzy, who’s sunk his teeth deep into the lower arm of the zombie, ripping and tearing at it like he’s trying to pop it right out of the socket. The woman barely seems to notice the dog, she simply tries to get back to the boy, still clutching his shoe in one hand, but now she’s being dragged the opposite direction in a series of violent tugs from Ozzy.

Holy shit, he’s stronger than me, William thinks in amazement, still not able to act.

The boy, who’s begun bawling, gets up and makes a clumsy one-shoed run for the apartments. William jumps to his feet and runs to the car, glancing back at Ozzy who’s still holding onto the zombie.

When he reaches the open trunk, he sticks two fingers in his mouth and gives a short, loud whistle. “Release, Ozzy! Heel!”

The dog immediately lets go of the woman’s torn-up arm and sprints to him.

“Up!” William says. Ozzy obeys and jumps into the trunk, even though he keeps darting eager glances back at the zombie woman, who’s taken up pursuit. “Good boy,” William says, slamming the trunk.

He rushes to the driver’s door and throws himself behind the wheel. From the trunk, Ozzy has started whimpering uneasily, as he stares out at the woman approaching the car.

“It’s okay,” William says, turning the key. “Calm down, Ozzy, we’re leaving.” He’s mostly talking to calm down himself. His whole body is trembling from adrenaline, cold sweat is running down his back, like a junkie doing a cold turkey. He slams the car into gear and guns it.

As they leave the parking lot, he sees the zombie in the rearview mirror, following the car another few yards. Then, she slows down, apparently losing interest, before turning away and heading towards the apartments, obviously sensing more accessible prey.

“Hope she can’t get the front doors open,” William mutters to himself, wiping a flood of sweat from his forehead.

He thinks about the boys and how surprisingly fast they got the message. As soon as he said the word “zombie,” they knew exactly how dangerous the woman was. The term obviously wasn’t new to them; they’d probably blown out several zombie brains playing computer games.

Long live the youth, William thinks, reaching into the bag for a beer. They just might have a chance of surviving this …

TWELVE

Thorsten curses to himself in a low voice as he glares up at the red numbers of the elevator slowly counting down.

Goddamned punks. You just can’t count on young people nowadays …

Thorsten is only three years from retirement—actually, he’s too old to still be working as a porter, but he’s been taking good care of himself, minding his back and not overworking himself, so he’s still feeling in pretty good shape.

Still, it pisses him off to have to run double speed because two of the younger porters decide to just leave in the middle of a very busy day.

Normally, Thorsten never would work in the basement, but someone needs to do the work left by the two deserters. At least until they get hold of a replacement.

If those punks don’t get the slip for this, I’ll make sure they at least get a talking to they’ll never forget.

The elevator stops and the doors slide open, revealing the basement, and Thorsten strides down the hall. He’s worked at this place for ages, and he knows the building better than his own home, so he doesn’t need to—

Thorsten stops abruptly as he notices the writing on the door. It’s done with black marker in a quick handwriting.

“What the hell is this now?”

He steps closer, frowning. It’s got to be a joke. Some kid must have snuck down here … except for the fact that the text is placed too high for a child to have done it. Could it be someone from personnel, then? Who on earth would do such a thing? The young porters might not be the most well adjusted, but Thorsten still has a hard time imagining one of them doing this.

The handle suddenly jumps twice, causing Thorsten to jerk backwards. He didn’t expect anybody to be in the room. He grabs for his keys, but then hesitates.

Either it’s a distasteful joke, and someone is waiting to surprise him—or it could be something more serious. Perhaps someone got locked in against their will.

“Hello?” he asks loudly. “Who’s in there?”

No answer from the room, except for another jerk of the handle.

“I’m going to unlock the door now!” he calls out. “But I’m not in the mood for any surprises, you got that?”

Still, no answer.

Thorsten puts in the key and turns it. He pushes down the handle and opens the door.

The girl immediately steps forward. Thorsten lets out a gasp and steps back. He had mentally prepared himself for a surprise, maybe even an unpleasant one, but not this. The stench comes rolling at him like an avalanche, causing him to gasp for breath.

Thorsten has seen a lot of sick and wounded people in his life, but this girl takes the prize. Something is obviously very wrong with her, and yet she’s still, amazingly, able to walk. She comes at him in a staggering pace, reaching out her arms, and Thorsten notices the missing fingers, probably torn off in some sort of accident.

He backs up and instinctively reaches out to grab her hands, catching her by the wrists and trying to hold her back—he wants to help her, but he doesn’t want her to come any closer.

“It’s all right, take it easy now,” he says in the most calming voice he can muster. “We’ll get you help. We just—”

He’s interrupted as the girl’s head jerks forward and bites down hard on his wrist.

“Ouch, goddamnit!” Thorsten roars and pulls back his hand. The girl immediately goes for the other one, so he lets go and steps back farther. “You stop that, you hear me?” The girl doesn’t seem to hear him at all; she’s only interested in taking another bite, so Thorsten takes yet another step back and meets the wall, clutching his bleeding wrist. “Now you listen to me. You need to lie down and …”

That’s all he has time to say before the girl lunges at him. This time, he’s somewhat ready for it and manages to avoid her snapping teeth. Instead, he shoves her backwards, causing her almost to tumble over.

He stares from his throbbing wrist to the girl. What the hell is wrong with her? Must be rabies or something …

He decides to abandon any attempt to help out the girl and instead go get help. He jogs back towards the elevator, squeezing hard on the wrist, trying to stop the blood, which finds its way out through his fingers in thin trickles, leaving a bloody trail down the hall.

The elevator has gone back up, so Thorsten hits the button. He hears steps behind him and turns around.

The girl has followed him, her arms outstretched, as though longing to hug him. Thorsten never had any kids himself, but he used to be married to a woman who had a teenage daughter—Camilla was her name—and Thorsten developed a pretty good relationship with his stepdaughter. Thorsten and the woman separated, and it’s been almost four years since he’s seen Camilla, but for one fleeting glimpse, he sees her face on the sick girl in front of him, and it makes him hesitate.

Jesus Christ, that’s someone’s daughter …

The eyes of the girl are so unlike anything he’s ever seen—if he didn’t know any better, judging from the eyes alone, he would have thought the girl was already dead. Except she’s clearly not, coming at him eagerly, looking an awful lot like Camilla.

“You … you stay away from me,” he croaks, trying to make it sound like a demand, yet it comes out a plea.

The girl doesn’t pay any attention either way. She’s only a few steps away, when the doors finally open behind him, and Thorsten is able to move again. He steps inside and hits the button for the ground floor. Then, he backs towards the back wall, staring at the girl who’s about to enter the elevator, as the doors begin to close.

“Stop!” he shouts, suddenly finding his voice again. “You stay there! You hear me?”

The doors close less than half a second too late. The girl is in. Thorsten begins shouting.

As the elevator reaches the entrance hall less than one minute later, Thorsten is dead.

The girl, whose name was once Selina, is busy eating his liver. Sensing new, living prey, she turns her head, licking the dark brown blood from her lips.

In front of her, just about to step inside the elevator, stands a young man with a cup of coffee and a look of stunned terror on his face, frozen to the spot. He became a father for the first time just this morning, and he only came down here to get the coffee. Now, he’s headed back up to the maternity ward to be with his wife and their newly born. He never gets to see any of them again, though.

Three minutes later, the entrance hall has turned to chaos.

THIRTEEN

Finn is sweating profusely under the scorching high noon sun and his lower back is starting to complain. But he’s almost done trimming the hedge, so he pushes on.

A movement makes him turn his head to see his wife crossing the lawn carrying a beer can and a shallow dish. “Cool refreshments for my gardener,” she says, handing him the beer.

“Thanks, hon,” he groans, wiping the sweat from his brow. “You want me to drink it out of that?”

“This is not for you,” she tells him, putting the dish down in the shade of the hedge. Finn notices it’s full of water. “It’s for the poor hedgehogs. They suffer terribly in this heat, I’m sure.”

“They’re not the only ones,” Finn mutters, opening the can and gulping down half of it. He’s become a little too skilled at drinking beer after his retirement last year. It’s just such a wonderful pastime—whenever the garden doesn’t demand his attention—but the damned things are starting to show up around his waist and gut.

“I don’t get why you don’t just wait till sundown,” Lone says. “This is no weather to be working in.”

“Thought I’d finish before it got too bad. Overestimated myself, I guess. But I’m almost done now, so—”

A loud, shattering bang from the other side of the hedge is followed by the sound of glass. Finn instantly knows the source of the noise and stretches his neck in order to see the neighbor’s greenhouse. Probably Olsen’s grandchildren at play. Finn has often had to throw back their soccer ball when they’ve accidentally kicked it over the hedge.

But he can see neither kids nor ball anywhere. Instead, he sees a man wobbling along the side of the greenhouse, apparently struggling to stay on his feet. He’s Middle Eastern or maybe Arabic.

“What’s going on over there?” Lone asks, as she’s not tall enough to peer over the hedge.

Finn’s first thought is that the man has been breaking in at Olsen’s—he certainly looks like someone out on shady business, the way he keeps darting nervous glances in all directions. He probably ran into the greenhouse by accident.

“Go inside,” Finn tells his wife and grabs the rake.

“What’s going on, Finn?” she demands.

The answer to her question comes barging through the hedge at that exact moment. The Arab stumbles and falls onto the lawn.

Lone gives off a shriek of surprise, and Finn steps quickly forward, holding the rake ready. “Whaddya think you’re doing?” he asks loudly. “Whaddya doing on my property, huh?”

The man looks up, bewildered, blinking and focusing on Finn. And when Finn looks back at him, he sees the man’s face properly for the first time, and he feels an unexpected pang of sympathy. The guy is obviously scared out of his wits; his golden skin is pale and sweaty. He mutters something in Arabic and holds up one hand.

“Christ,” Finn groans when he sees the missing fingers in the bloody mess.

“God Almighty,” Lone whispers behind him. “Finn, he’s really hurt!”

“Call an ambulance,” Finn says, dropping the rake, as Lone turns to run back to the house. “Here, let me help you …” He kneels and tries to pull the man to his feet, careful not to touch the wounded hand. The man clings to Finn and keeps jabbering incomprehensibly.

He’s going into shock.

Finn has seen worse things when he served in the military during the Balkans, and that’s probably what enables him to think clearly in this situation.

“We gotta get you inside, away from the sun,” he says, not sure whether the man understands him, but still he wants to reassure him with a calming voice, so he goes on: “The ambulance is on its way. We’ll clean the wound in the meantime. You’ll be fine.”

Finn supports the man across the lawn. It’s heavy work, since the guy can barely stay on his feet, and Finn has to almost carry him.

I’ll feel this in my back tomorrow, he thinks to himself and grinds his teeth.

FOURTEEN

Dan sits bolt upright in bed. Sweat is pouring from him, the air is stiflingly warm, and for a terrifying moment, he’s sure he’s back in the basement of the old lady’s house.

Then, he blinks and comes to. He’s in his room. The heat is from the sunlight streaming in through the window. He’s not in danger. There are no more zombies.

Dan sighs and wipes the sweat from his eyes, swings his leg out over the side of the bed and gets up. His stomach feels like a big, empty hole, and his body is sore in several places—especially around the ankle.

He’s instantly reminded of Jennie and Thomas, and it feels like his insides take a dive into a very deep well. He staggers out into the bathroom, gushes cold water on his face and drinks greedily until his throat hurts.

He glares at himself in the mirror for a moment. The sight isn’t exactly a cheery one; he might have survived the zombies, but he sure looks like one anyway: pale, weak and dark half-circles under his eyes.

A cat. I dreamt about a cat.

The thought leaps through his head apropos of nothing. He’s not sure why, but somehow, he gets the sense his mind is pointing to something important. He’s still too groggy to think clearly, though, so he shoves the feeling aside and goes to the kitchen.

His mom is sitting at the dining table, staring blankly out into the back garden, her eyes red from crying. His grandma is making coffee. “Oh, hi, Dan,” she says, shuffling over to embrace him. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”

Dan smiles weakly and glances at his mom. “Where’s Dad?”

“He just went for a drive,” his grandma says, turning rather abruptly away from him to concentrate on the coffee. “He had to … take care of something.”

“Your father is at the mortician,” his mom says without moving, her voice completely emotionless. “He’s picking out a coffin for Jennie.”

Dan sees the pill bottle on the table next to his mom. She suffered a breakdown from stress a few years back, and the doctor gave her anxiety drugs. Even though she’s better nowadays, she still keeps the pills and takes one whenever she feels stressed out. Dan remembers all too clearly how drowsy she gets from the drugs, and it makes him sad to see her like this. Not so much the fact that she’s drugged, but how she can’t seem to handle difficult situations anymore.

Grandma brings the coffee. “You must be starving, Dan. You want me to make you something? How about oatmeal porridge? I know you love oatmeal porridge.”

“I’m not really hungry,” Dan mutters and sits down next to his mom.

From the living room he can see the television is on without sound, showing some stupid afternoon show. Outside, in the garden, the sun is shining like it’s been doing for the past weeks. From the looks of it, everything seems normal. Except nothing is normal today.

“Mom,” Dan says cautiously. “I’m sorry about what happened … I really tried to help her.”

“It’s not your fault,” his mom says, still not looking at him, still the dead voice. “It’s nobody’s fault.”

Dan squeezes his lips together. He had hoped she would say something which could alleviate his guilt just a little. He knows logically that Jennie’s death wasn’t his fault, and yet he still feels like it was.

They sit for a while in silence. His grandma brings him a big bowl of porridge, and when Dan smells the food, he suddenly becomes extremely hungry and wolfs down the entire serving.

Afterwards, with his stomach full, he feels a little better. He wants to say something else to his mom, but decides not to. It won’t do any good as long as she’s like this. Instead, he gets up and goes to the living room. He’s about to throw himself on the couch, when he notices what’s happening on the television.

It’s a news report—live, apparently—and they’re sending from somewhere in this town. Dan recognizes the hospital where he passed by himself just a few hours ago. Now, police cars are parked all over the place, and officers with dogs and guns dressed in riot gear are running into the building. The picture moves as the cameraman steps closer, and Dan catches a glimpse of something through the glass doors which makes his stomach clench up.

Inside the entrance hall, a chaotic scene is playing out. A lot of people seem to be fighting with the police, and wounded persons are lying everywhere on the floor. A figure staggers by, glancing out through the glass for a brief second, and Dan recognizes her.

“Selina!” he breathes, his mouth opening wide.

They go back to the studio where a reporter with a very grave expression is talking under the headlines: Breaking! Bloody riots at local hospital!

“How … how can it …? I don’t get it … she killed him … she said she killed him …”

“What’s that, Dan?” his grandma asks from someplace very far away.

The pieces fall into place with dull, heavy thuds in Dan’s mind.

Jonas wasn’t properly dead. That’s the only explanation. Or maybe … maybe Selina got a scratch she hadn’t noticed.

Either way, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that the catastrophe Dan was sure they had successfully avoided, is now unfolding in front of his eyes.

The reporter touches his ear like someone is talking in his earpiece. Dan looks around for the remote, finds it and unmutes.

“… that no more than a few hours ago, a similar attack went down just miles outside the same town. Our intel is still sparse, but apparently, the target was a school bus, and an elderly couple is said to have been involved. We’re trying as we speak to find out more …”

“Elderly couple,” Dan whispers. “Outside town …”

More pieces clamber into place. Something from his dream. Something about a cat.

The cat! … Holy hell, it was the cat! It stepped in the blood and then it scratched the lady … She got infected, just like Thomas did from the broken glass …

And suddenly, the picture is completed, and Dan sees everything clearly. How the disaster is not averted, how, in fact, it’s been growing while he slept, expanding into catastrophic proportions, and now it’s probably too late to stop. Unless the police are quick and effective. But do they even know what they’re fighting? And do they have the resources?

“What’s this now?” His grandma is standing next to him. “My goodness! That’s not here in town, is it?”

The picture has changed back to the scene by the hospital.

“Listen, Grandma,” Dan says, turning to face her. “We need to leave town, right now. It’s not over. What happened to Jennie is happening to many others. It’s only a matter of time before the entire town …”

“Easy, Dan, calm down.”

“… will be taken over! It’s not safe to be here. We need to …”

“Take a deep breath, Dan. You’re not making sense.”

Dan turns and runs to the kitchen. “Mom!”

His mom looks at him sleepily. “What?”

“You need to listen to me. We’re in danger here. We need to leave, right now.”

An expression of mild irritation passes over his mom’s face, but she doesn’t reply, simply turns her head to stare out into the garden again.

“Mom!” Dan shouts and grabs her shoulders. “Will you listen to me, please!”

His mom shrugs him off with a grumpy groan. She looks like she’s about to say something, but then her face crumbles up and she starts to cry.

Dan steps back. “I’m sorry, Mom, I didn’t mean to …”

His grandma places a hand on his shoulder. “Leave your mom be, Dan. She’s already struggling.”

Dan’s ears pick up a sound which he at first takes to come from the television: the sound of sirens. But the sound intensifies, and Dan runs to the kitchen window facing the driveway.

An ambulance comes into sight, stopping by the curb. Two paramedics wearing yellow vests jump out and run into number 18.

FIFTEEN

“What the heck is taking them so long?”

Lone is pacing back and forth across the kitchen as she keeps darting glances out the windows.

“Take a seat,” Finn mutters. “Or at least stop moving about. They’ll be here as soon as they can.”

He’s sitting on a chair in the kitchen, keeping an eye on the Arab, who’s lying on the couch in the living room. The injured hand is resting on his chest, wrapped in a fairly decent bandage which Finn was able to make thanks to the first aid kit still open on the coffee table. Next to it is a glass of water which Finn attempted—unsuccessfully—to get the guy to drink. He just thrusted his head back and forth and kept mumbling deliriously.

“At least he settled down now,” Lone says, an unmistakable tone of relief in her voice. “I guess that’s a good sign, right?”

“I would think so,” Finn says, emptying the third can of beer before getting to his feet.

“What are you doing?” Lone asks at once.

“I’m just going to check on him.” Finn walks into the living room. As soon as he gets close to the couch, he senses the smell of something sour. It could just be sweat, but it reminds him of fever.

He looks down at the Arab’s wet face and can tell right away that his condition has actually taken a turn for the worse. While it’s true he’s not thrashing about anymore, and has stopped muttering incoherently, his brown skin has taken on a greyish hue which Finn finds very alarming.

“God damnit,” he groans, kneeling down.

“Is something wrong?” Lone calls from the kitchen.

Finn ignores her and takes a closer look at the bandage. It’s dark red from dried up blood, but the skin right next to it has turned almost green.

Blood poisoning. But how the hell could it have come on so fast? Poor guy must have been infected before he cut himself on the glass.

Finn stares at the bandage and recalls the sight of the wounded hand. The stump where the fingers had been was bloody and all torn up. Not exactly an injury you would attribute to the clean cut of broken glass. In fact, the hand looked more like the guy had stuck it in a blender.

Maybe something bit him … maybe he got into a fight with a big dog.

If that’s the case, what’s happening to the guy could be rabies or something similarly aggressive. Finn puts his palm on the Arab’s forehead, feeling to his surprise how cold the skin is.

Huh! The fever must have broken.

Normally, Finn would take that as a good sign; however, in this case, he’s pretty sure it’s quite the opposite. The Arab’s body seems to be giving up the fight against whatever is attacking it. His breathing has turned short and shallow.

If they’re not here within minutes, he’ll go into cardiac arrest.

Finn closes his eyes and breathes heavily for a moment. What a day this has turned out to be. Not half an hour ago he was out in the garden trimming hedges, his only worry was the ache in his back. Now he’s sitting with a dying man.

Lone calls from the kitchen: “They’re here! Finn, they’re here!”

Finn notices the sirens. He gets to his feet and goes to the kitchen. He sees the ambulance come to a halt and two paramedics jump out.

“Go and see to him,” he says, starting for the entrance hall. He opens the front door just as the paramedics come running. “It’s in here! Hurry up, he’s not doing very well. In the living room!”

The two men squeeze past him without any questions and head for the living room.

“Finn!” Lone calls from the living room, her voice shrill. “Finn, come look at this!”

Finn strides back into the room, almost bumping into the paramedics, who have stopped dead in the doorway. When he sees what they’re seeing, he too stops abruptly.

Lone is standing next to the couch. The Arab is sitting bolt upright, his mouth slowly opens and closes, a stream of drool running from his lower lip. But Finn only sees the man’s eyes. They’re wide open, staring at nothing, and both pupil and iris are completely gone. Looking at the guy, Finn is reminded of those fish that live deep down near the bottom of the ocean, their eyes blind from living in eternal darkness.

Lone is the first one to speak. “I … I think he …”

She’s interrupted as the Arab suddenly moves with striking speed. He twists to the side, reaches out his arms, grabs Lone’s blouse, pulls her down, opens his mouth and bites down hard on the side of her neck.

Lone screams shrilly, more surprise than pain, and the paramedics jump back to life.

Finn, however, finds himself utterly unable to move. It’s like someone pulled the plug on his old body, and he can only stand there and watch everything that happens in front of him through a veil of shock.

The living room turns into a tangle of flailing arms and snapping teeth. The paramedics manage in a joined effort to wrench the Arab free of Lone, but he comes away with a massive chunk from her neck, and the blood immediately starts gushing. A second later the Arab has instead clamped down on one of the paramedics’ shoulder, causing him to yell out and stumble over his own feet, reaching out and grabbing hold of the other paramedic in an effort not to fall down, but only managing to pull his colleague down with him.

The noises only come through to Finn in a muffled drone. The shouts of the paramedics, Lone’s screaming, the animal-like growl of the Arab, the crash of the coffee table being flipped on its side as the paramedics scramble frantically to hold down the Arab while simultaneously not being bitten—which proves impossible, as both of them quickly suffer bloody wounds as the Arab’s teeth tear through their uniforms.

Lone is the last person standing, but only for a few seconds, as she tries in vain to stop the blood from pouring out of her neck, her tiny, shaking hands getting soiled in no time. Her eyes sweep the room, distant and dreamy, and for a moment they connect with Finn’s. Later, he will swear that he saw her smile; that his beloved wife of almost fifty years summoned her last effort of will to send him one last smile. Then, she collapses and disappears from view behind the couch.

Finn blinks hazily and turns his gaze back to the Arab, who’s now on top of one of the paramedics, the poor guy screaming and fighting to get him off, while the other paramedic is rolling around the floor, clutching his jaw, which is missing most of the skin. The Arab is the only one who hasn’t slowed down; he’s still biting at everything within reach, desperate like a predator who has gone hungry for weeks.

So, this is how it ends, Finn thinks very soberly. Part of his brain is trying to convince him it’s all just a bad dream, but the more rational part knows better. It knows Lone is dead and he himself will be joining her on the way to heaven in only a few moments, as soon as the Arab loses interest in the already dead-or-very-close-to-it paramedics and turns to see Finn just standing there. He ought to run, of course, but his body is still completely unresponsive, and besides—what would be the point? Lone is gone, so he might as well go too. He only hopes it’ll be over quick and not—

“Finn!”

Someone shouts his name very close by. Finn turns his head to see a boy he knows. It’s Dan, the boy from across the street. Dan stares at him with eyes large and scared—but also, surprisingly, somehow determined.

“Come … with … me,” Dan says, the words finding their way to Finn’s ears as distant echoes. “We … gotta … get … out … of here …”

Dan pulls him by the arm, hard, and Finn is surprised to find himself moving along. His eyes are reluctant to obey, though, and his neck turns to get one last glimpse of Lone.

Just as Dan drags him out of the living room, Finn actually sees part of his wife: her hand is sticking out from behind the couch. The skin is greenish. The fingers twitch a few times. Lone is waking up again.

SIXTEEN

Dan hauls Finn out the front door and only lets go of him once he’s sure the old guy will stay on his feet and not collapse.

“Finn?” he says, attempting to catch the swimmy, grey eyes. “Where’s the key?”

Finn blinks dazedly. “The key …?”

“Yeah, the key to the house. Do you have it? Where is it?”

The words don’t really seem to resonate, and Dan is about to abandon his effort, when Finn suddenly goes to the pockets of his shorts. “I don’t … have it on me,” he murmurs. “It’s probably hanging on the nail.”

“What nail?” Dan demands. “Where’s the nail, Finn?”

“In the front hall.”

“Right. Stay here for a moment, okay?”

Dan steps back into the house and looks around. From the living room the screams and bangs have died out—instead he hears the unmistakable sound of someone chewing noisily and wetly on something. Dan doesn’t have to look in order to guess who won the fight. In a matter of minutes, there’ll be three new zombies in the house. That’s why he needs to lock the front door …

His eyes catch the nail in the wall next to the coat stand, and he grabs the key, slips out into the baking sunshine once more, slams the door and locks it.

“Right,” he says to Finn, who’s still standing there, an expression of not-quite-sure-what’s-happening on his face. “They can’t get out.”

“Get out?” Finn repeats in a murmur. “But Lone … Lone is in there …”

The emotion flickering across Finn’s face as he turns to look at the house sends a jolt of empathy through Dan’s heart. The experience of losing a loved one is still all too familiar to Dan, and he sees Jennie’s face before him. He forcefully pushes the image aside—and is surprised to find he can actually do it. “Come with me, Finn,” he says gently. “There’s nothing more you can do for her.”

“But … but I …”

Dan takes hold of his arm and leads him down the garden path. Finn struggles weakly for a moment, then follows along. They cross the street and are met in the driveway by Dan’s grandma, her eyes wide. “Where did you go, Dan? Why would you run out the door like that?”

“Help me out here,” Dan says, avoiding the questions. “He’s unharmed, but I think he’s in shock.”

Grandma takes Finn’s other arm, her eyes ping-ponging between Finn, Dan and the house across the street. “What happened over there, Dan? Where are the paramedics?”

“They … they are still in the house,” Dan mutters, helping Finn inside.

“But why aren’t they helping Finn? And who was that screaming just a minute ago? We heard it all the way over here. I was afraid you—”

Dan suddenly stops listening. Something has struck him with the force of a brick to the back of the head.

The garden door!

“I need to fix something, Grandma,” he says, letting go of Finn and stepping back outside. “I’ll be back in a second!”

“No, Dan! You stay here!”

Dan runs out the driveway. He doesn’t pause to check for any traffic and is almost hit by a station wagon. It honks its horn at him. The window rolls down, and his dad sticks out his head. “What the hell are you doing, Dan? Why are you running around out here?”

“Dad! … I … it’s …” Dan has no idea how to explain the situation in a short amount of time. He looks to Finn and Lone’s house, and at that moment, he sees Lone, as she comes staggering around the corner of the house. Her head is bobbing around on her shoulders, due to the fact that the tendons in her neck have been severed, and still-shiny blood has drenched her flowery summer shirt.

Too late … she already found the way out …

“Come on, let’s get inside,” his dad says. He hasn’t seen Lone yet, and he rolls the car into the driveway before Dan can say any more. Dan follows the car, not taking his eyes off Lone, who is headed this way.

The car’s engine shuts off, and Dad gets out. He sees Lone. “Oh, hi, Lone! We’re not really—” He interrupts himself as he gets a closer look at the neighbor. “What the hell …?”

Dan finally gets his tongue working. “Watch out, Dad! She’s turned into a zombie!”

Dad looks briefly at Dan, then back at Lone, looking as though he’s not really sure what to believe. Some sort of instinct seems to be telling him Lone is dangerous, while another, rational part of his brain can see she’s obviously hurt and wants to help her.

Dan has told the police about the zombies, has explained it all to the shrink and to his parents, has been going over the events of the past couple of days what seems like a thousand times—yet none of them believed him, and Dan couldn’t very well blame them. His dad, though, was the only one who actually seemed to consider the legitimacy of what Dan was saying—although he didn’t say it outright. But right now, his dad seems to reconsider if maybe the horrible creatures Dan has described might have been real—and that one of them might be headed for them right now.

Dan doesn’t wait for his dad to decide, but runs over and grabs his wrist. “Come on, Dad! We need to get inside! She’s dangerous! She wants to eat us!”

“Eat us?” his dad repeats. “Honestly, Dan …”

But he never finishes the sentence, because now Lone has crossed the street and is coming up the driveway, and she’s close enough for Dad to see that something is completely off—her always warm and friendly old-lady eyes are now empty, white balls rolling around blindly in their sockets, yet somehow still seeing.

Dad shoves Dan towards the door. “Hurry up, get inside.”

Dan runs to the door, just as Finn pops back outside. Dan’s grandma is trying to pull him back, but Finn has already seen his dead wife, and his expression turns blank as he mutters: “Lone?”

Dan pushes him back as he tries to go to her.

“No, get inside! Grandma, help me get him back inside!”

His grandma is already tugging at Finn, but he’s surprisingly strong for an old guy, and for a second all three of them are caught in a deadly stalemate right on the doorstep, Finn repeating his wife’s name. “Lone … Lone, I’m right here … I’m right here, Lone … I’ll help you …”

Dan is gripped by panic. “Get in, get in!” He shoves Finn in the chest hard enough to cause him to stumble backwards and would have fallen on his ass, if Dan’s grandma hadn’t been there to catch him.

“Dan, she’s coming!” his dad calls from behind him.

Dan turns to see Lone lunge at his dad.

“Dad, no!”

His dad catches Lone’s wrists a split-second before her long nails can scratch his face. He forces her arms back, but Lone in response flings her head forward, snapping wildly at his face and throat, her tiny teeth clapping just inches away from Dad’s skin. Surprisingly, his dad doesn’t seem to panic, but holds on to Lone firmly, keeping her at a safe distance. Dan just stares at his dad for a second, amazed and impressed.

“Get inside, now, damnit!” Dad roars over his shoulder. “And get that door closed!”

Grandma is still struggling to hold back Finn. Dan hesitates a moment longer, staring indecisively back and forth. He can’t just leave his dad out here, but he can’t really do anything to help him either.

Then he sees the paramedics—it’s a wonder he hasn’t seen them before now, really, since one of them is already halfway up the driveway. Dad is still wrestling with Lone, still shouting for them to get in and close the door, and he hasn’t noticed the newcomers.

“Watch out, Dad! Behind you!”

Just as Dan shouts, his dad shoves Lone away hard. She tumbles over and slams her head into the pavement with a sickening thud. She blinks, groans and flails her arms, trying to get back up, but seemingly unable to, as her brain just took a hit hard enough to knock a living person unconscious.

The quickest of the paramedics steps forward and plants his teeth right in Dad’s shoulder. He roars out in pain. The sound is mixed with Dan’s anguished scream. Then Dan’s body takes over. He jumps right into the action, grabs hold of the paramedic’s blood-stained shirt and yanks him backwards just as he’s about to bite down on Dad’s shoulder a second time. The zombie has caught hold of Dad’s shirt in return and holds on tightly, not intending on being dragged away from its first meal. But the short break gives Dad a second to react, and he doesn’t waste time; he turns halfway around, almost tearing his shirt, and starts bashing the zombie with both hands. A clenched fist right between its eyes causes it to let go and stagger backwards—but the other paramedic has now joined the fun and goes directly for Dan’s dad, who pulls back, clutching his shoulder, a look of terror on his face.

Everything slows down for a heartbeat, and Dan sees everything like from very far away. He sees paramedic number two lunge at Dad, who no longer has the strength to fight back. He sees the zombie sink its teeth in his neck, the blood spurting out, Dad screaming in pain.

And things might have played out just like that—had it not been for Lone, who at that exact moment, in an effort to get back up, rolls clumsily to the side. The paramedic doesn’t see her, trips over her legs and falls down face-first. Dan hears a couple of sharp snaps, and when the zombie a moment later cranes its neck back to look up at them, most of its teeth rattle out onto the pavement.

Paramedic number two is a bit more capable, as it manages to step past Lone, who’s still struggling to get up, and now the paramedic is blocking Dan and his dad from the doorway.

Dad sneers, holding a hand to his shoulder. His shirt has been torn, but Dan can’t see any blood—at least not yet. Maybe, just maybe, his dad was lucky enough that the zombie’s teeth didn’t break the skin. But with the amount of luck Dan has had lately, he doesn’t get his hopes up. And bleeding or not, his dad is obviously in pain.

“You stay back!” he shouts, kicking out at the paramedic. The zombie doesn’t seem to heed the warning; in fact, it sees the kicking leg more as an invitation and grabs at it eagerly, missing it by inches.

Dan and his dad back up farther, coming closer together. Soon they’ll be caught in the carport with nowhere to go. Then it happens again: Dan reacts before he knows it. He pulls sideways, away from his dad, and runs in an arc past the paramedic, headed for the street. The zombie turns and follows him.

“Dan! What are you doing?”

“I’ll lure them away from the house! Get inside!”

“You’re coming with us!”

“I’ll draw them down the street, then I’ll come back!” Dad is about to say something else, but Dan cuts him off: “It’s okay, Dad, I can outrun them! Just please go inside the house!”

Dan doesn’t wait for an answer. He runs out the driveway, passing the toothless paramedic and Lone, who both have gotten back up. As he reaches the street, Dan looks back up to see his dad run inside the house, shoving Finn back and out of sight, and Dan feels a jolt of relief.

The paramedic without teeth and Lone come staggering at Dan, but the other one is headed for the front door. Dad sticks out his head and darts one last look in Dan’s direction, their eyes catching each other, but there’s no time to say anything, and his dad slams the door right in the face of the zombie, who immediately starts clawing at the woodwork.

Dan turns and jogs down the sidewalk. His plan is to draw the zombies down the street, just far enough for him to run back. As he looks over his shoulder to make sure the zombies are following him, his foot catches a crack in the pavement and he tumbles over, just managing to break his fall in the last second, resulting in a bad bruise on his palm.

A loud scream from down the street makes him forget the pain immediately. He looks up and sees the Arab from Finn and Lone’s house attacking a woman on a bicycle. He turns his head and looks back. The paramedic is still in pursuit, but Lone has lost interest and is instead headed across the street where one of the neighbors—John, a big fat man wearing no shirt—has popped out to see what the noise is about.

Dan wants to yell out to warn him, but his voice doesn’t seem to work, and besides, he’s got his own problems. The paramedic is just a few yards away now, eagerly picking up speed and reaching out to grab Dan. Dan scrambles to get to his feet, when suddenly he hears the angry roar of an engine. The car swerves right in front of Dan, crashing into the paramedic with a loud bang, sending the body flying through a hedge. The car comes to a halt halfway up the sidewalk. The front door is pushed open, and a young guy with tattoos all the way up his arm stares out at him. “You been bit?”

Dan just glares dumbly at the question. From the trunk of the car a big German shepherd is barking furiously.

“Have you been bit?” the driver shouts.

“N… no,” Dan manages.

“Then get in!”

And he doesn’t really seem to have a choice. At that moment, John cries out as Lone attacks him, and on the other side of the hedge, the paramedic has gotten back up, wobbling uncertainly on a pair of thigh bones obviously shattered, but nonetheless headed stubbornly back out towards Dan.

“Come on, goddamnit!” the guy in the car shouts. “If you don’t get in, I’ll go without you!”

Dan gets to his feet and staggers around the back of the car. He darts a glance down the street and sees the Arab getting up from the woman, who’s already dead and has lost her appeal, as the man heads for the nearest driveway, drawn by the scent of fresh, living meat.

Then Dan opens the car door and gets in.

The guy has already put it in reverse and now backs down from the sidewalk. He stops in the middle of the street, blocking the nonexistent traffic.

“Buckle up,” he says through gritted teeth. “Seems like he didn’t get the message the first time.”

The dog in the trunk has stopped barking, but is now panting and whining impatiently, as though it knows what’s going to happen.

Dan, however, is a little slower in catching up. Only when he sees the paramedic come barging through the hedge does he guess the driver’s plan, and he quickly grabs the seat belt and fastens it.

The driver floors the accelerator just as the zombie wobbles onto the street. The sound of the collision is even louder from inside the car, and this time the zombie is thrown under the tires. Dan feels the bumps in the seat, and they remind him of the little girl he and Linda ran over in the courtyard of the old lady’s house.

“Sorry about that,” the driver says as he speeds down the street. “I know that was gross, but I’d like to take out a few of them if possible. You know, weed out the herd a little.”

“It’s all right,” Dan mutters, and, before he can think, adds: “It’s not the first zombie I’ve run over.”

He notices the guy sending him a look. Then he smiles.

SEVENTEEN

“My name’s William and the dog is called Ozzy.”

“I’m Dan.”

William points a thumb over his shoulder. “I don’t know her name, but she’ll probably tell us once she wakes up.”

Dan turns his head to see the girl lying in the backseat, surprised that he didn’t notice her before. “Is she asleep?” he asks.

“Unconscious.”

“Did she …?”

“Don’t worry, she’s clean,” William says, immediately guessing the question. “I picked her up shortly before I found you.” He makes a right turn, coming out into the main street, where the traffic looks pretty normal for a Monday afternoon.

“Thank you for picking me up,” Dan mutters. “But I’d like to go back home now.”

William looks at him briefly. “You mean back from where you just came? Didn’t you notice the zombies attacking everyone?”

“Yeah, but … I need to get back. My mom and dad—”

“I’m sure your mom and dad will be fine without you for now,” William says, not slowing down. “As long as they don’t open the front door, of course.”

“I’d still like to go back,” Dan says, shifting his weight uneasily in the seat.

“Listen, Dan, you’re a lot safer with me right now. I’m going to—”

“Drive me back!”

Dan surprises himself by almost shouting.

The girl on the backseat grunts, but doesn’t wake up.

William pulls over and stops the car. “Fine, get out then.”

“I … I can’t walk home from here,” Dan says, looking out nervously.

“I’m not going back,” William says. “It’s way too dangerous. That street is crawling with zombies by now. For every minute we spend here in town, we increase the risk of getting eaten.”

Dan looks hesitantly from William to the street outside. No zombies in sight right now, but that might change any moment.

“My uncle has a safe place just outside town,” William goes on, his voice softer now. “There’s a spot open, if you want to come. Personally, I think it’s a hell of an offer, but of course you’re free to get out and walk back home.”

Dan’s phone rings in his pocket. He finds it and looks at the display. “It’s … it’s my dad.”

“Before you answer it, please tell me if you’re coming or not? ’Cause I’m about to go.”

“Could you wait just one minute?” Dan pleads. “I’ll just make sure they’re okay.”

William pushes his tongue into his cheek and scans the street. “One minute,” he says.

Dan answers the call. “Dad?”

“Dan, where are you?”

“I’m in a car. A guy picked me up.”

“You all right? Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine, Dad. How about you?”

Dad gives off a sigh of relief. “Good, that’s great to hear. We’re also fine. Finn has calmed down now that he can’t see Lone anymore.”

“What about your shoulder?”

“Don’t worry about me.”

“But Dad,” Dan says, lowering his voice. “Did you … did you get …?”

He can’t get the question out, but he can tell from the silence his dad guesses it.

“It hurts a little, but I don’t think the skin is broken.”

Dan feels a glimmer of hope. “So, no blood?”

“No, but I’ll probably get a bruise.”

“I think that’s okay. As long as you’re not bleeding.”

Dan senses William sending him a sharp look.

“Perhaps,” Dad mutters. “Guess I’ll just have to wait and see, because I won’t be going to the ER anytime soon … the street is riddled with them.”

“Make sure you close all the windows,” Dan says, feeling a drop of sweat making its way down his back. “Don’t give them any chance to get inside.”

“I already checked all the windows.” Dad is quiet for a moment, then he says: “I’m sorry we didn’t believe you, Dan.”

“That’s all right. I get it, Dad.” But he still feels a great amount of relief, despite the circumstances. It feels like a great burden has been lifted from him; as if it isn’t only the zombies his dad is acknowledging, but also the fact that Dan had no fault in what happened to Jennie.

William clears his throat and points to his wrist.

“Listen, Dad, I don’t think I’ll be able to come home right now,” Dan says.

“Who picked you up? Was it someone you know?”

“No.” Dan turns discretely away from William. “He … he says he knows a safe place outside town.”

A couple of seconds before his dad replies: “Does he strike you as someone you can trust?”

“Yes,” Dan says without really considering the question.

“Then go with him, Dan.”

“But are you guys—”

“Don’t worry about us. It’s way too dangerous for you to come back right now. The whole street has turned into chaos. I can see it from the living room window. Some of the neighbors have come out to try and help, and they … oh, Christ …” Dad is quiet for another moment, and Dan thinks he can hear a distant scream. “Don’t come home yet, Dan,” Dad says, even more firmly. “We need to wait till it’s safe.”

“All right,” Dan mutters.

“What’s it gonna be?” William asks.

Dan glances at him. “I’m coming with you,” he says.

William doesn’t waste any time, but immediately slams the accelerator and pulls back out into traffic.

“I need to go, Dan,” Dad says. “Your grandma needs help with Finn, he’s become restless again. Call me once you get to the place, okay?”

“I will.”

“Right. Talk to you soon, son.”

Dan disconnects and puts the phone away.

William turns left at an intersection and speeds up. “Your old man sounds like a reasonable guy.”

“Could you hear what he said?” Dan asks, feeling a little awkward.

“Yeah.” William sends him a brief smile before looking out into the street again. “This part of town looks okay. At least for now.”

“It only just started,” Dan mutters, almost to himself.

William looks at him again. “You don’t seem like you had the best day.”

“I didn’t.”

“What happened? You said something about running over a zombie?”

“It’s a long story.”

William sneers at him. “Dude, cut out those movie lines and tell me what happened. We’ve got plenty of time.”

Dan breathes in a couple of times, then he begins talking. “I wasn’t the one driving, but I was in the passenger seat. It was a little girl. We had to do it. She was—”

“Sorry, shut up for a moment,” William interrupts, turning up the radio, which Dan only now realizes has been on at very low volume the whole time.

“… latest reports from local police indicates some sort of terrorist attack, possibly involving biological weapons. Our current intel puts the number of wounded at thirty people, but many more are …”

“Goddamnit,” William murmurs, turning down the radio again. “Biological weapons? They have no idea what’s going on.”

“They’ll find out soon enough,” Dan says quietly. When he senses William looking at him, he goes on: “I saw how it began. I tried to stop it.”

William is trying to look simultaneously at the road and Dan, as Dan begins to tell his story. He lays it out as briefly and concisely as he can. How he, Jennie and Thomas arrived at the old lady’s house. How they discovered she had tried to resurrect her dead grandchild, inadvertently creating the first zombie who then killed her and her son second. He also tells the story of how he and Linda escaped the house, and how he later would go chasing a zombie cop with a girl named Selina.

“Last I heard from her, she had killed Jonas at the hospital,” he closes. “And I thought this time it was really over.” He sighs heavily, shaking his head. “Something must have gone wrong, because I saw her in a news report from the hospital … as a zombie. They also said something about a bus outside town that got attacked by an elderly couple. I’ll bet you it was the old woman, the one who lived in the woods. She got infected from her cat after it stepped in the officer’s blood.”

William is quiet for a while after Dan stops talking. They’re almost out of town now, and the traffic is sparse.

“It all makes sense,” William finally says. “It all began here. Right here, right in the middle of fucking Denmark, and not even in Copenhagen, oh no, it began all the way out here in our tiny shithole of a town. Right here!” He stabs the steering wheel with a finger, as if to emphasize his point. “What are the fucking odds, man? Of all the places …”

“I know.”

“And it’s only here,” William goes on. “Right? Isn’t that what you’re telling me?”

“As far as I know.”

“Yeah, it has to be. Since it started with that voodoo-shit. Holy crap, I always imagined it would be some kind of top-secret military project with genetically modified super soldiers or, or maybe a radioactive release or some shit—didn’t you think so? I mean, that’s always how it goes in the movies.”

“I … I didn’t really think about it,” Dan mutters.

“You seriously never contemplated how the apocalypse would go down?” Williams asks, giving him a critical look. “Come on, everybody has!”

“How about you?” Dan asks, conveniently switching the subject. “When did you find out?”

“I was at the hospital right before it went crazy.”

“You were?”

“Yeah, man. I work there—or worked, now that the world is ending. You thought these were my regular clothes?”

Dan hadn’t really noticed it before, but William is wearing what looks like the white shirt and pants that hospital staff usually wear.

“I think I saw that girl you mentioned,” William goes on. “Selina.”

Dan stares at him. “You did?”

William nods and swallows something, but doesn’t say anymore. Dan eyes him for a moment, surprised to see his driver hesitate for the first time. William strikes him as the type of person with tons of confidence; the suntanned skin, tattoos and the latest haircut.

“I think it’s your turn to tell your story,” Dan says, just as they cross the town border and continue out onto the open road stretching far ahead between the open fields.

EIGHTEEN

She’s floating somewhere between wakefulness and unconsciousness. Unpleasant images keep flickering by. Mads sitting up, his eyes all wrong. Krista screaming her heart out as Mads bites down on her chin. The sound of the skin ripping.

“Krista!” she tries to shout, but the word won’t come out. She tries instead to call for help, but that doesn’t work, either. When she turns to look down the street, all the cars are suddenly gone. Instead, an army of living dead comes marching at her.

Mille screams and opens her eyes. The scream catches in her throat, only producing a hoarse whimper. She stares around bewildered, blinking the stinging sweat from her eyes and trying to comprehend what she’s seeing.

She’s lying on the backseat of a car, but not the same as before. Krista isn’t here, and neither is Mads nor the Arab. Instead she can hear unfamiliar voices talking together.

“… in a way it’s my fault; I guess I should have called the police instead of just bailing.”

“They probably wouldn’t have believed you anyway.”

“No, and I thought it was too late anyway. You know, that it had begun in other places, too.”

“It had. At that time the bus must have already been attacked.”

“Yeah, and you know I wrote a warning on the door, but I guess someone must’ve opened it anyway …”

Mille sits up with a strained groan. Her head is spinning, and a stinging pain is throbbing just behind her forehead. Something sniffs the back of her head, and she spins around with a whine of surprise to see a large dog look curiously at her.

“Oh, hey! You’re awake.”

She turns around again. A boy is in the passenger seat and guy a little older than her is behind the wheel. They’re both looking back at her.

“Who are you?” Mille murmurs, rubbing her forehead.

“I’m William and this is Dan. I picked you up back in town—you remember?”

Mille moans. “I don’t know ... I remember Krista, she … oh, no … what happened to her? What happened to Krista?”

The guy behind the wheel sends her an apologetic look in the mirror. “If you’re talking about the girl who was with you in the car—I’m sorry, but she’s dead.”

Mille lowers her head and feels like crying. She’s not sure whether it’s mostly due to grief or shock or confusion, as all of them fight inside her. “My head’s all … did I pass out?”

“Yeah.”

“And where are we going?” She looks out at the fields gliding by.

“We’re going to my uncle’s place, where we’ll be safe for now.”

Mille’s brain is slowly clearing up, and her memory starts throwing up fragments from what she thought was only bad dreams. Her classmates screaming inside the bus, Mads dying on the backseat of the car, Krista trying helplessly to perform CPR on him … it all spins into an awful cocktail, faster and faster.

“Are you all right?” the boy in the passenger seat asks, eyeing her closely. “You’re turning pale.”

“I … I think I’m going to throw up,” Mille croaks.

“Hold on,” William says, hitting the breaks. “Keep it in just a second longer.”

Mille feels the sick come rolling up her throat, and she swallows it convulsively back down. As soon as the car comes to a stop, she opens the door, tumbles out on the burning asphalt and pukes into the dried-out grass of the roadside. It’s been a few hours since she ate, so only a handful of oatmeal comes up. She spits and wipes her mouth with her sleeve. She straightens up and looks around. Except for a few farms in the distance, the area is completely desolate.

When she turns to the car, both boys have gotten out and are now looking at her with something Mille at first interprets as concern.

“I’m okay,” she assures them. “I feel better now.”

She goes to get back in, but William steps carefully in front of her. “Hold on,” he says. “Are you, uhm … are you sure you feel better?”

“Sure,” Mille says. “I mean, it’s the worst day of my life, but other than that, I’m fine. I won’t throw up in your car, I promise.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about,” he says, finding a packet of cigarettes from his pocket. Mille notices he’s dressed in what looks like a hospital staff uniform. “Do you have any wounds?”

Mille looks down and shakes her head. “No.”

“No tiny scratches or anything?”

“No, I tell you!” She’s starting to feel annoyed, mostly because she’s afraid. Afraid because part of her already knows what he’s driving at. “I think I’d notice if I was bitten.”

“You don’t need to get bitten,” Dan says in a grave voice, stepping slightly forward. He can’t be more than fourteen, although his face looks twenty-five. He’s obviously tired, ragged and scared, all at once. “You don’t even need to have been in direct contact with one of them. If you cut yourself on anything with their blood on … I’ve seen it happen.”

Mille breathes deeply, making an effort to get her emotions under control, although everything is firing inside of her. She looks down again. Her clothes are a little messed up—probably from when she collapsed in the middle of the road—but she can’t see any blood. She shrugs. “Look, I don’t know what you want from me. You want me to strip down so you can check me?”

“I thought you’d prefer doing it yourself,” William says, without the faintest smile. “We’ll look away.”

Mille gapes at him. “You can’t be serious. Do you know what I’ve been through today? I have … I have been almost … almost …” Her body is shaking so violently that her throat closes up. Rage and sorrow are choking her and she blinks furiously to keep back the tears as she glowers at William. “Who the hell … do you think … you are?”

He doesn’t answer.

She steps towards the car, expecting for them to grab her and hold her back, but they simply step aside and let her pass. Mille goes to open the car door, but the lock snaps shut.

She turns and stares at William who has the key in his hand. He lights his cigarette in an infuriatingly nonchalant way, as though he’s Bruce Willis in some stupid action movie.

“Drive me home!” she demands. “Drive me back into town!”

“I think you’ll regret that if I do,” he says calmly blowing out smoke. “But if you really want it, I’ll drive you back. I just can’t let you inside my car before you’ve checked yourself. It’s nothing personal, really, but I saw you inside the car with a zombie, and I have no way of knowing what happened to you.”

Mille takes in air to scream at William, when Dan suddenly steps forward and takes hold of her arm.

“I’ve seen it happen twice before,” he says, fixing her eyes with his. “My friend died because he stepped on a piece of broken glass, and an elderly lady got scratched by a cat that had stepped in infected blood. I’m sorry, but I can’t risk it happening again.”

Mille is struck by the amount of pain she sees in his large, blue eyes, and suddenly it feels like she’s imploding. The rage seeps out in a long, shivering breath. She shrugs. “Look, I really don’t think I have any scratches. Honestly. I don’t feel pain anywhere.”

“We just need to be completely sure,” William says, spitting.

Mille checks herself for any scratch wounds. She doesn’t strip down, but she rolls up her sleeves and pulls out her shirt and shorts. The boys watch her silently.

“There,” she says. “All done.”

William looks down. “What about under your feet?”

Mille takes off her sandals and checks the soles of her feet. “Nothing.”

“Can I check the back of your neck, please?” Dan asks carefully, and Mille pulls her hair aside, letting him check her skin. “It looks fine,” he says.

“Congratulations!” William says, smiling at her in a way Mille finds both really annoying and annoyingly charming, as he drops the cigarette on the asphalt and steps on it. “You’ve made it through round one.”

NINETEEN

“This is it,” William announces as he sees Holger’s place coming up ahead.

The house is lying atop a small hill a couple hundred yards off the road, making it visible from far away, a single windmill right next to it, whirling lazily in the hot summer air. William slows down the car and turns onto the gravel road winding its way up to the house.

“Does your uncle know we’re coming?” Dan asks.

“Sure, I spoke with him on the phone earlier,” William says, darting a glance in the rearview mirror. “Speaking of, don’t you have anybody to call? Like your parents, perhaps?”

To his surprise Mille just shakes her head, not even looking at him.

“Really? Is there no one who needs to know where you are? Or maybe someone you’d like to warn about what’s going to happen?”

“No,” Mille says, still glancing out of the window. “All of my friends died on that bus.”

William can still picture the scene, even though Mille only described it briefly and with very little detail. She’s obviously traumatized, and it’s no wonder.

“Then how about your fami—”

“I don’t have a family,” she cuts him off, a sudden fierceness in her voice.

“Okay,” William says, sending Dan a look.

Dan returns the look and shakes his head discretely, as though to say: “Stop digging.”

William changes the subject. “Right, there’s a few things you need to know about my uncle. He’s been battling some mental stuff, but he’s on medication now, so he’s perfectly functional. He might seem a little suspicious, but don’t take it personal, he’s just like that with people he doesn’t know. And he doesn’t like being touched, so don’t shake his hand or anything like that.” He looks at Mille in the mirror; she’s looking back at him with an expression of growing skepticism. “Now, it’s his place, so if he doesn’t want you there for some reason, I’ll have to take you back to town. But I don’t think it’ll be a problem.”

“Is this really the best place to be?” Mille asks. “At a mentally ill person’s house, far away from anyone else?”

“Wait until you see the place,” William says. “I think you’ll understand once you do.”

They reach the courtyard, and William brings the car to a halt. Seen from the outside, Holger’s house looks like any other house you’d expect to find out here; there’s a garage and an outside boiler-room beside the residential building.

Holger comes walking around the garage, eyeing the car suspiciously. It’s been a few years since William saw his uncle. Holger gained a couple of pounds and his hairline has receded a bit farther back—other than that, he looks like William remembers him, dressed in way too warm cargo pants and a worn shirt with rolled-up sleeves. His round face is glistening with sweat, and his hands are black from dirt and oil.

“Is that him?” Dan asks.

“That’s him,” William says, adding quickly as Dan unbuckles: “I think it’s better I talk to him first.”

Ozzy whines from the trunk, impatient to go say hello to Holger, whom he apparently recognizes even though he only saw him once.

William opens the door and steps out into the warm afternoon air. “Hey, Holger. Long time no see.”

Holger stops a few yards distance from the car, and William notices a tiny shovel in his hand. “Hello, William,” he says with a bated smile. The tiny eyes seem even more squinted because of Holger’s heavy forehead, but they’re also alert, and right now they’re darting back and forth between William and the car. “Who’s that you’ve brought?”

“Just a couple of friends. I think I might have promised them a spot here at your place.”

Holger’s gaze stops ping-ponging and fastens on William. “Is it because of what they’re saying on the radio?”

William nods.

Holger breathes deeply through his nose and exhales heavily. He looks somehow both scared and relieved at the same time, and William gets why. Holger has been living for twenty years with paranoia, the last ten a little less bad due to the medication, and yet William knows his uncle never really let go of his nagging suspicion that the world would one day soon come to an end, and that belief has made him isolated and a cast-out. Even William’s mom, Holger’s own sister, has had a hard time dealing with her brother, and William still suspects it was part of the reason why she moved to Holland after William left home.

William himself is probably the closest family member Holger has left, quite simply because William is the only one who never judged him for his paranoid thoughts, and today William feels particularly grateful that’s the case.

“How bad is it?” Holger asks, his voice grave.

“Pretty bad. I think it might be the end of society as we know it, but … maybe the authorities can still stop it.”

“The authorities,” Holger sneers, showing his tiny teeth in a humorless grin. “They’re probably the ones who started it.”

“Nope,” William says, and when Holger looks surprised, he adds: “You’ll get the story later.”

Holger eyes him. “So, is it … zombies?”

“Yeah.”

“Are they acting like in the movies?”

“As far as I can tell.”

Holger nods slowly. “I thought it sounded like zombies from what they’re saying on the radio. Of course they didn’t use that word. And I wasn’t really paying attention, ’cause I’ve been busy harvesting vegetables.” He holds up the shovel, as though to prove what he’s saying. “I got to it right after you called me. It’s a lucky time of year, you know, ’cause there’ll be lots to eat the coming months. We can store the potatoes and the onions for weeks, and that way we’ll get fresh vitamins every day. As long as we just—”

“Holger,” William says, holding up a hand. “That’s all great, it really is. But let’s wait and see, all right? Maybe it doesn’t need to go that far. For now, we’ll just have to take one day at a time. That sound fair?”

Holger studies him for a moment, as though he just said something rather crazy. Then, he nods. “All right. But I already prepared everything.”

“Awesome. I’m really happy you’re willing to help out.” He gestures towards the car. “So, is it cool with you if Dan and Mille stay too?” He quickly adds: “They might be going back home soon, depending on how things unfold.”

Holger looks to the car, then back to William. “Are they trustworthy?” he asks, lowering his voice.

“To be honest, I don’t know them very well. But they’ve both been in contact with the zombies, so they might have—”

“They been in contact with them?” Holger exclaims, stepping backwards.

“Easy, Holger!” William says, realizing his mistake. “I’ve checked them for any wounds or scratches. All three of us. We’re all clean, I promise.”

Holger looks like he seriously considers turning on his heel and sprinting out of the courtyard, but he forces himself to stay. “If we let them in and one of them becomes sick …”

“Then we’ll throw them back out,” William says immediately. “We all agree on that. And same goes for me, of course.” Holger lifts his eyebrows, and William goes on: “I didn’t touch any zombies, I’m just saying.”

Holger takes a few deep breaths, scratches his neck and glances at the car. Two white butterflies whirl across the courtyard in a carefree dance, and William is reminded how surreal the situation is. It might look like an ordinary summer’s day, but nothing might ever be ordinary again.

“All right,” Holger finally mutters. “They can stay for now.”

“Thank you, Holger,” William smiles.

“Shall we go inside?” Holger suggests, nodding towards the house. “I could really use something to drink.”

TWENTY

They enter what seems at first glance like a pretty normal home. But Dan already notices the subtle signs in the hallway. The front door, for instance, is reinforced on the inside with a heavy iron grid and has three large sliding latches. He looks up and sees a camera in the ceiling, staring down at them.

Holger kicks off his shoes in the corner before going into the kitchen. “You guys just wait in the living room,” he calls back.

Dan and Mille both look to William, and he waves them discretely into the adjacent room. Ozzy follows close to William while sniffing the air curiously.

The living room is pretty big, but it seems smaller due to all the stuff taking up every available surface. Shelves, chairs, windowsills, the couch, even the floor is crammed with all kinds of stuff, not to mention the dining table in the middle of the room, which is covered in book piles and cardboard boxes reaching almost to the ceiling. Holger has collected all kinds of things, tools, accessories, electronic devices, and objects Dan can’t even identify. There are also quite a few plates and cups strewn about, and flies are buzzing in the air. It smells like it’s been weeks since a window was opened. Holger is pretty obviously a bachelor.

But there are no apparent signs that Holger’s home should be the zombie-proof fortification William hinted at. The only form of protection Dan can see is the metal grids barring the windows and making him feel like he’s in prison. Oh, and more cameras in the ceiling.

He begins to seriously consider if he made a mistake going with William. Maybe he should have taken the chance when William offered to drop him off.

“Sorry for the mess,” Holger calls from the kitchen. “Try to find a place to sit down. Just don’t break anything.”

William clears a couple of chairs and offers Mille one of them. Dan moves a tower of books off the couch’s armrest and sits down.

Holger brings in a large pitcher of red lemonade and takes a glass from a cupboard which he fills and chucks down in one go. He burps and pours himself another glass before sitting down at the corner of the coffee table.

“You know, I always knew this day would come,” he mutters into the glass before taking another big swig—the sight of the lemonade has suddenly reminded Dan how thirsty he is, but Holger doesn’t seem intent on offering any of his guests something to drink. “It was only a matter of time.”

“Yeah, you were right all along,” William says, getting up. He takes three glasses from the cupboard and hands them to Dan and Mille, before he takes the pitcher from Holger, who barely seems to notice.

“Now I guess they wish they’d listened,” he says, staring into the floor.

William pours lemonade for the three of them, and Dan immediately gulps down the sweet, synthetic-tasting liquid. Then he licks his lips and stares longingly at the pitcher, which William hands back to Holger, who pours himself a third helping.

“Cheers,” William says, raising his glass, looking around at them with a pale smile. “To the end of the world.”

“Cheers,” Holger mutters, as though not really listening.

Dan glances at Mille, who has found her phone and is checking something on it. She sips her glass but doesn’t seem to like the taste. Ozzy is slinking around sniffing the surroundings.

“Well,” William says, going to the window. It’s not easy getting a clear view, because the curtain is hanging down on one side, and the other is blocked by more books. “This is like the beginning of a disaster movie. Four people and a dog hobbled together in a fight for survival. Now all we need is the zombies.”

Dan can tell William is trying to make a joke out of it, but he doesn’t really feel like laughing.

“Excuse me,” Mille says. William turns to her, and Dan can see how Mille strains to talk calmly. “I’m glad you helped me. I think you saved my life.”

“I think so too,” William says, neither shame nor pride in his voice.

“But,” Mille goes on, “I really don’t see how we’re anymore safe out here than at our own homes. Is it just because we’re outside town or what? Because if the whole world is going to end, like you say it is, then the zombies will probably come out here too at some point. And if I had to choose, I think I’d rather be somewhere I know.”

“It’s not just because we’re outside town,” William says, finding his cigarettes. “Okay if I smoke in here, Holger?”

“Please don’t. It’s unhealthy.”

“I know,” William sighs, putting the pack back into his pocket. “But why stop now?”

“Then how are we more protected out here?” Mille exclaims, throwing out her arms. “As far as I can tell, this is just a regular house with barred windows.” She glances at Holger. “No offense. It’s nice of you to … let us stay here.” Those last words sound like they don’t want to come out.

Holger avoids her gaze and says nothing.

William empties his glass, wipes his mouth and gets up. “What do you say we show them the place, Holger?”

Holger looks around at them uncertainly, then he nods and gets to his feet. “Follow me. We’ll take the entrance in the bedroom.”

“The entrance?” Mille repeats, but since neither William nor Holger replies, she looks to Dan. Dan simply shrugs, gets up and follows them into the next room.

Holger’s bedroom is dimly lit and smells even more stuffy than the living room. His bedsheets visibly need a changing, and dark blinds keeps out most of the daylight. Dan notices the bed is placed at an odd angle, and he realizes why as Holger kneels down and pulls aside an old, worn-down rug, revealing a hatch in the wooden floor. He opens it and reaches down to pull up a flashlight.

“Follow me,” he says, placing the flashlight in his belt. Then, he climbs down a ladder fastened to the inside of the hole in the floor.

“Ozzy, stay,” William says, following his uncle. The German shepherd sits down and watches his owner disappear out of sight.

Dan glances at Mille, who’s staring at the hole with a highly skeptical look.

“Is that like a hidden basement or what?” she whispers.

“I have no idea,” Dan admits. “Do you want to go first?”

Mille steps back and waves him forward.

Dan takes a deep breath before he sits down and climbs down the rusty steps. The descent is longer than he anticipated, maybe twelve feet before he finally feels solid ground underfoot. He turns and is blinded by the flashlight.

“Where’s the girl?” Holger’s voice asks.

Dan is too stunned to answer right away. He looks around to see not a basement but a long, narrow corridor stretching as far as the light reaches. The ground is dirt, but the walls are made of planks and wooden boards. The ceiling is just high enough for Holger and Dan to be standing upright, but William has to crane his neck slightly.

“Holy shit,” Dan whispers.

William sends him one of his crooked smiles. “Wait till you see what’s at the end.” He looks up through the hole. “You coming, Mille?”

No answer, but after a short while the steps creak, and Mille comes climbing down very carefully. She looks around, appearing just as surprised as Dan. “What is this place?” she asks, stroking her arm.

“That’s a good question,” William says, looking at his uncle. “What do you call it, Holger?”

Holger shakes his head. “I don’t call it anything.”

“Well, let’s name it … Fort Holger!”

Holger bares his baby teeth in a silent grin. Then, he turns and paces down through the corridor, bringing the flashlight and causing the rest of them to follow along quickly so as to not be left in the dark.

The corridor goes on for what feels like a hundred yards with no turns or forks. Finally they reach a door with no visible lock but only a small panel of numbered buttons. Holger glances briefly over his shoulder before typing the code. The lock beeps and the door can be opened.

Holger steps through it, and an automated light turns on on the other side.

“You first,” William says smiling and stepping aside. “I’ve seen it before. Mind the step.”

Dan squeezes past him, steps down a single step onto a vinyl floor and sees a surprisingly large room. He stops in the doorway and stares around at what looks most of all like a pretty regular apartment. If it hadn’t been for the lack of windows and the big, heavy wooden beams supporting the ceiling, Dan would never have guessed they were still underground.

There’s a kitchen area with a stove and two large refrigerators, a dining area with a table big enough for four people, an old couch with a flat screen TV and a bookcase stuffed with books, and a home office with three laptops. The shelves in the kitchen are stuffed with cans and jars and something that looks like dried herbs and fruits.

But this is where the similarities to a normal home end.

Next to the dining table is what looks to Dan like a mini hospital, complete with a full array of surgical instruments, pill bottles and even an operating table hinged to the wall. On the opposite end of the room are two large metal cabinets with heavy padlocks, clearly marked with the next: FIREARMS, KNIVES & MACHETTES, EXPLOSIVES.

Holger has gone to the office area and activated one of the laptops. The screen shows eight live feeds from around the property, both inside and out—and the purpose of all the cameras suddenly becomes clear to Dan.

“This is insane,” he mutters as Mille steps past him, glaring around in stunned silence.

The fact that Holger built a big underground room is impressive enough. It must have taken him years—not to mention the structural knowledge and skills it would take—but that he also turned it into a seemingly perfect survival place with everything you would need to outlast a minor nuclear war …

“You haven’t seen it all yet,” William says, putting a hand on his shoulder, pointing to a door Dan didn’t notice until now. “Come on, I’ll show you the other rooms …”

TWENTY-ONE

Finn is staring blankly at the plate in front of him. The lasagna has gone cold but still it smells good. He just doesn’t have any appetite. That’s an understatement, really; appetite is no longer a feeling Finn understands. Food is an unknown concept to him.

The only thing still present in him is the thought of Lone. That she’s walking around out there right now with all the other lost souls. So many people dead all at once; it’s unfathomable. And yet, Finn really doesn’t care about all the rest of them. He has no relatives, no kids or siblings, so why would other people’s fate matter to him? All he cares about—all he ever really cared about—is Lone. And Lone is dead.

“Try to eat something, Finn.”

The voice causes him to lift his head and blink sleepily. Henrik is looking at him with an expression of warm concern.

“You’ll feel better if you eat,” the neighbor says, pointing to the plate.

Finn lets his eyes wander around the table. He has actually forgotten where he is and who else is present. There’s Trine, of course, Henrik’s wife. And Trine’s mother—Finn can’t recall her name, he’s not even sure she told him. Trine’s mom, who’s around Finn’s own age, is eating her lasagna neatly using both knife and fork, while trying to look as though everything is normal. Still she can’t help but dart a look towards the windows every time there’s a screech of fingernails scraping the outside of the glass. The windows are carefully blocked off with towels and blankets in the hope that those outside would stop trying to get in once they couldn’t see them anymore.

But they didn’t stop. Apparently, they don’t need to see them to know they are there. They can probably smell them. Like sharks, who can pick up on the smell of a single drop of blood at a distance of several miles. Finn saw that once in a documentary.

There’s also another reason why Henrik and his mother-in-law took great care to seal off every window in the house. They didn’t say it, but Finn knows it’s because they don’t want him to see—

“Finn?”

Henrik’s voice pulls him back once again.

“How’re you feeling? Have the pills started working?”

“The pills?” Finn repeats.

“I gave you a couple of Trine’s sedatives, remember?”

“Oh, right,” Finn mutters. “Yeah, I—I think they’re doing the job.”

“That’s good. I still think you should get some food, though.”

Finn picks up the fork and looks at it like it’s some sort of advanced piece of equipment he never operated before. He scoops up some lasagna and transports it to his mouth, chews it, swallows.

Henrik smiles at him. Then he goes on eating.

It’s warm and stuffy in the living room, since they can’t air out and because the evening sun is still baking away outside. He should have been sitting at the terrace right now, a cold beer in his hand and Lone by his side while she did her crosswords.

Finn forces down another bite and looks at Trine. She is the only one present who looks like Finn feels. Her eyes are red and distant, her lasagna untouched. She prods it with her fork now and then, only to put it down again.

“You too, honey,” Henrik says. “Try to—”

“Mind your own business,” Trine sneers, not looking up.

Henrik sighs. “I know it’s a terrible situation, but … I’m sure Dan is fine, and he’ll come home.”

Trine shakes her head slowly. “He’s not. You told him yourself to stay away.”

“Only because it’s not safe around here right now. You can hear them outside, can’t you?” Henrik gestures towards the window. “Would you really want Dan to come home while they’re still out there?”

Trine lets out a long, trembling breath, and Finn can see her eyes turn moist. “I’ve lost my daughter,” she whispers, “and now you’ve sent off my son to die …”

“Honey, please,” Henrik says, reaching for her hand.

She draws it away hissing: “Don’t touch me.”

Henrik looks to his mother-in-law. “Kirsten, would you …?”

Kirsten nods, puts down her knife and fork and dabs her mouth with the napkin. “Listen to me,” she says, turning to her daughter. “Henrik did the right thing. I’m sure Dan is safe.”

“How would you know?” Trine asks as she begins stabbing the lasagna with her fork. “You don’t know the people he’s with.”

“As soon as the police get this under control, we’ll go and get Dan,” Kirsten goes on.

“We can’t,” Trine says, raising her voice. “’Cause we don’t know where he is! And he’s not answering his phone … do you think that’s a good sign, huh, Mom? Or do you think he might be dead somewhere, just like Jennie, just like my girl … my girl … my little girl … oh God …” Trine bursts into tears, and Henrik and Kirsten get up in unison.

“Let me take her,” Kirsten says, glancing at Finn. “Maybe he could use some sleep.”

Henrik nods and turns to Finn, while Kirsten helps her daughter to the couch.

“Would you like a nap, Finn?” Henrik asks.

Finn agrees without really thinking. Henrik helps him to his feet. They leave the living room and the sound of Trine’s sobbing cries, and they go down the hallway to a room slightly cooler, even though the window here is also blocked by a blanket.

“Is this … is this Jennie’s room?” Finn asks absentmindedly, looking at the posters of singers.

“It was,” Henrik murmurs. “Until yesterday.”

“Until yesterday?” Finn parrots, not understanding.

“Jennie’s dead, Finn.”

“Oh, right.”

“Come on, lie down.”

Finn lies down on the neatly made bed, folding his hands on his stomach. He stares up to the ceiling, where Jennie did a collage of photos of her and her friends having fun.

Henrik glances up at the pictures and swallows audibly. “Try to get some rest,” he says. “You just call me if you need anything, okay?”

“Okay. Thank you, Henrik.”

Henrik leaves the room, closing the door almost all the way.

Finn just lies there for a while, studying the photos without really seeing them. His eyelids are growing heavy when someone suddenly scrapes on the window.

Finn sits up and looks at the blanket. He can make out a low figure on the other side, hands groping the glass and the person uttering a low, almost pained moaning.

Could that be her?

Finn’s breathing automatically speeds up a notch. The silhouette could very well be Lone—but then again, what would the odds be? Henrik said earlier there must already be hundreds of them out there, so it could be anyone outside the window. Perhaps another one of the residents of the street. Perhaps a total stranger.

Perhaps … Lone.

Finn gets up and steps carefully closer. The tuneless groans from the figure grow slightly louder, the hands start fumbling more eagerly, as though the person feels him approaching.

The blanket is attached all the way around with tacks. Finn picks one of them out and gently moves the blanket a little aside, allowing him to peek out.

A strong dropping sensation in his lower belly almost makes him stagger.

Lone’s face is staring at him through the glass. Her mouth is open, and there’s dried blood on her chin and down her throat. Her glasses are gone, and her hair is messy and lumpy with more dried blood. The eyes aren’t the grey, loving eyes he remembers, but dull and white, empty and without a trace of anything human.

Or—are they? Are her eyes really completely empty?

The more Finn stares into Lone’s face, the more he begins to sense a remnant of her old self. She, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to recognize him, as she just keeps running her hands over the glass and growling at him.

But maybe … maybe that’s her way of communicating? Maybe she can’t talk or move normally anymore, but who’s to say she’s not still in there? After all, how else would she have found him, if she wasn’t at least partly herself still? Maybe she could even be cured!

She shouldn’t be out there with all the rest of them.

The thought awakens a new feeling in Finn: fear. If he just leaves Lone own her own, who knows what might happen to her? She could be run over by a car or shot by the police. He can’t risk that. He can’t risk losing her for good.

So, Finn begins picking out more tacks. The blanket falls to the floor, exposing the view completely and letting the evening light pour into the room. Finn doesn’t notice, though; he just stares at his wife, who has by now greased up most of the window with her hands.

“Lone,” he whispers, placing a hand on the glass.

She eagerly tries to kiss his palm, and it causes Finn to tear up.

“I knew you were still in there somewhere,” he says, choking up. His hand goes for the hasp. A tiny voice at the back of his head shouts to him, telling him he’s making a big mistake, that Lone can’t be saved, that she’s dangerous and wants to hurt him.

But Finn can’t believe that voice. He can only believe what he sees, and knows Lone’s eyes seem even more human than just a moment ago, as though simply seeing him has cured her a little. If he lets her inside the room, she’ll probably become completely herself once more.

“I’ll help you, dear,” he whispers hoarsely, as the tears pour down his cheeks. “I can’t live without you, you know that.”

His hand unlocks the hasp.

No! the voice shouts.

“Yes,” Finn croaks, smiling as he opens the window.

TWENTY-TWO

Mille pulls her legs up and wraps her arms around her knees. She’s sitting in the window looking out over Holger’s back garden, where the last of the sunlight is coloring the grass orange.

It’s almost eleven o’clock, and even though this has by far been the longest day of her life, she barely feels tired. Her body is exhausted, of course, but her eyes don’t feel like closing.

She can still taste curry from the stew Holger served. To her surprise she found herself ravenous and she cleaned off her plate in no time. After all, she hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast that morning.

Her brain is still fighting to keep up. It feels like it can’t really update its software, like it doesn’t want to compute how everything has changed. She should have been in Prague right now, she and Krista should have been lying in bed next to each other in a hotel room with two other girls from the class. They should have been complaining about the long, warm bus ride and talking about what sights they were going to see tomorrow morning.

Instead, Krista is dead, just like Mads and the rest of the class. Same probably goes for most of everyone else she knows. And she herself is sitting here, in a guy’s house with two other strangers and a German shepherd, as they simply wait for the world to end.

She looks around at the others. Dan is huddled in one corner of the couch, sleeping with a thin blanket wrapped around him. William is sitting on a chair, elbows resting on his knees, staring at the television, where the sound is turned down to a whisper. He looks like a soccer fan intensely watching a game which he bet a lot of money on—except it isn’t soccer on the screen, but a news report. They keep showing footage from the air and video recordings from cell phones. A lot of it is censored, and the reporters warn again and again about “strong imagery.”

The dog is lying faithfully right next to William, halfway dozing, but raising its head now and then, as though constantly listening for something no one else can hear. Holger is the only one missing; he’s down in the bunker to prepare something or other—he has barely taken a rest since they came here.

Mille didn’t understand half of what William told them during the tour of the bunker. All the technical stuff about how the generator produces power from the windmill and the solar panels, how the rainwater is cleaned and filtered, and how the security systems work went right past her. All she knows is that Holger obviously thought of every tiny detail when he built this place, and that you could probably live down there for years.

But who would want that?

She gets an image of herself four years from now, pale and long hair, not having stepped outside the bunker for even a second, the only company has been her three involuntary roommates, the rest of the earth’s population dead and the zombies are the only ones wandering around.

What would she have to live for in a scenario like that? Survival, and nothing else. Mille gets the chills.

It probably won’t come to that. They still have time to stop it.

But the news reports don’t seem great. Mille has also checked social media on her phone now and then. At first, she mostly read grieving posts from the relatives of those who died on the bus, and other people offering their condolences. Then, other kinds of tweets began ticking in, like:

WTF is going on in this town?? Anybody know anything?

And more and more started replying and giving their two cents worth, even though none of them seemed to know what was really happening. Mille read creative guesses like terrorism or natural disasters. One guy even suggested the whole thing was a giant prank, put up by a television network.

But as the evening progressed, the tweets became more and more grave.

Why aren’t the police doing anything?

and

One of them just walked by my window!

and

Just drove by the library—serious, stay away from there, folks! Not a sight anybody needs to see!

Slowly people began catching on to the seriousness of the situation, even though many were still utterly confused. But more and more often, Mille would see the magic word.

Zombies.

People began posting videos from their phones, either filmed from their windows or cars. Some more gory than others. Mille didn’t feel like watching any of them. A video from a press release also went viral, where a spokesman of the police told people to remain indoors and avoid physical contact with anybody until further notice.

“They’re declaring a state of emergency,” William mutters.

Mille looks at the television and sees the prime minister talking to the camera with a very grave expression, her lips quivering slightly.

“The whole town is being shut off,” William says. “About damn time.”

Dan stirs from the couch, and the dog lifts its head.

“How many dead?” Mille asks.

“They aren’t giving any numbers anymore,” William replies, not taking his eyes from the screen, which is now showing a live feed from a helicopter somewhere over town. Three figures are staggering down the street, empty cars are left everywhere, and even from this distance and in the dying daylight, Mille can make out several dark bulges on the asphalt. “It must be in the hundreds, maybe even thousands by now,” William goes on.

“So, Holger’s calculations will prove true,” Dan says, rubbing his eyes, then gesturing to the whiteboard on the wall, where Holger drew a graph and wrote a lot of numbers. “Tomorrow evening, there will be no one alive in the town.”

“Not if they get their act together and send in the military, like I’ve been trying to tell them,” William says, obviously frustrated. He’s been calling the police several times, trying to convey to them the scope of the situation. Mille can’t blame whoever was on the other end of the line—probably some young on-duty cop—for having a hard time believing it.

“I promised to call my dad by now,” Dan murmurs and finds his phone. “Oh, shoot, it’s out of power. Does Holger have a charger, William?”

“Check the bedroom.”

Dan gets up and goes to the bedroom.

William finds his own phone. “I’d probably better call my mom too. How about you, you’re not going to—” He stops as he apparently remembers something, then he just shakes his head. “Sorry, none of my business.” He gets up and goes to the kitchen. A moment later, Mille can hear him talking to his mom.

Mille checks her phone and the seven unanswered calls. Most of them are from private numbers, and she’s pretty sure it’s the police who have been trying to get to her to make sure she is okay, like they probably did with everyone aboard the bus whom they couldn’t find right away.

But there’s also a single call from a number she knows. A single call she didn’t expect at all.

Helle, the display says.

Forty-five minutes ago. Mille saw the call coming, but she just stared at the silent phone. She didn’t try calling back, and Helle hasn’t tried calling again.

Mille didn’t pick up, because she had no idea what to say. What do you say after three years?

Suddenly, she wants to call back, but the thought immediately makes her uncomfortable. There are too many questions. How will the voice sound? Like she remembers or completely changed? Older? Weaker? More loving? Maybe even concerned?

Mille is just not sure she would know how to handle it. Yet her finger moves closer to the Call button, hovering there for several seconds.

Then she sees something out of the corner of her eye and turns her head. Far away over the field, she can make out a wobbling figure in the twilight. No, not one—two. No, three. More and more are appearing. There are over twenty in total, and still more are coming.

Her throat constricts and it’s suddenly difficult to breathe.

The living dead aren’t walking in any particular formation, they don’t even seem to be walking together. But they’re all nonetheless headed in the same direction. They’re all aiming directly for Holger’s house on top of the hill.

At that moment, Dan comes back into the room. “I found a charger,” he says, but his expression changes once he sees Mille’s face. “What is it?” he asks in alarm.

Before she can answer, there’s a loud bang from the bedroom, and Dan whirls around. William’s dog comes barging in from the kitchen, barking at the noise.

But it’s only Holger, who slammed open the hatch in the floor, and now comes tumbling into the living room, his expression wild.

“Shut up, Ozzy!” William commands, as he joins them from the kitchen, phone pressed to his chest. “What’s going on, Holger?”

Holger looks like he wants to run someplace but can’t decide where that place is, so he ends up just standing there. “I saw them,” he pants. “I saw them on the screens. They’re coming.”

The words leave a chill silence in the living room.

“How … how many?” William croaks.

“Many,” Mille says, surprised to hear her own voice. All three of them turn to look at her. She points out the window.

William is instantly by her side. “Oh, fuck me,” he mutters and steps back. He looks from Mille to Dan and then to Holger. There’s a special glow in his eyes—it could be fear, yet to Mille it looks almost like wild excitement—as he says: “Here we go …”

DAY 4

The following takes places on

Tuesday, July 29

ONE

“Bet you never imagined this would be part of your enlistment, huh?”

Oskar laughs, showing the gap between his front teeth, his freckled face glowing pale in the twilight.

Martin tries to smile back, but the grimace turns into a stifled yawn. For some reason, he always yawns when he’s nervous. Of course, it could also have something to do with the fact that it’s 1:00 AM.

“Still tired?” Oskar asks, handing him the thermos.

“No, thank you,” Martin says, wrinkling his nose. “I don’t know how you can drink coffee in the middle of the night.”

Despite the hour, the sky above them is only dark blue and the air is still warm and humid—and their uniforms don’t exactly make it any cooler. It’s the first time Martin is wearing full gear outside of training; they even told them to bring helmets. The gun is very heavy, too. And it’s full of live rounds. He sure hopes he won’t have to fire it.

“You kiddin’? I can always drink coffee,” Oskar says, proving his statement by downing a large gulp, followed by an exaggerated: “Aaaah!” Then he looks around the nearly dark, empty highway, nodding. “Yeah, it’s like I always say: nothing’s good for your soul like being on zombie patrol.”

Martin can’t help but smile. “You’re a true poet. I can’t believe you’re taking this so lightheartedly.”

“What, am I supposed to cry about it?”

“No, but didn’t you see the sarge’s face? I’ve never seen him so serious. And we’re not even supposed to be on active duty all alone like this; we’re conscripts!”

“They’re short on men, that’s all. Soon as the reinforcements from Copenhagen get here, they’ll send us back home. I’m sure we won’t even get to see the sunrise.”

“They said we might need to be here until this thing is under control.”

“Which I’m sure it will be in a matter of hours.”

Martin pushes back his helmet and looks at Oskar, who’s only two years older than him but always acts like he could be his father. “What makes you so confident they’ll get it under control? I mean, it’s zombies! Those things aren’t even supposed to exist outside of movies and video games.”

“I know, I know,” Oskar says, nodding. “And in the movies, the world always ends, right?”

“In most of the ones I’ve watched, anyway.”

“But this isn’t a movie, Martin. It’s real life, in case you hadn’t noticed. We know about zombies, okay? People have seen the same movies you have. I’m sure even one or two of those dusty old politicians have seen a zombie flick back in their teens. That’s why they’re acting so fast. That’s why they’re already sending in us: they know to take it seriously.”

Martin nods, feeling somewhat reassured. It makes sense, after all.

Yet he can’t really shake the feeling of being trapped in a movie with no guaranteed happy ending. He discretely gazes up and down the highway, but neither sees nor hears anyone approaching.

Not yet, at least.

Stop that, he tells himself. You’re just scaring yourself. There are hundreds of posts all around the area, and they told us most of them won’t see any action at all; we are simply precautions.

Then again, wouldn’t that be exactly the right thing to tell them, whether it was true or not? Simply to keep everyone from panicking?

“How do you think it started?” he asks, deflecting from his paranoid thoughts.

Oskar kicks a pebble, which goes flying into the bushes next to the road. “Probably some nasty experiment in a lab somewhere. Isn’t that always how it goes? A secret branch of the government trying to create super-soldiers from corpses or whatever.”

“Yeah, but—the Danish government? I mean, we’re more concerned about windmills and electric cars and stuff like that. Wouldn’t super-soldiers be more like something Russia would be doing?”

Oskar shrugs. “You may be right. But who said it started here?”

“They didn’t say anything at the briefing about the problem being anywhere else.”

“No, but they may not be aware of it yet. If shit is going down somewhere else in Europe, in some obscure country like, I don’t know, Kazakhstan or wherever, their government may be trying to cover it up.”

“I was thinking it could also be terrorists.”

Oskar looks at him. “Terrorists? Like, a biological weapon?”

“Yeah. Wouldn’t that be the perfect way to attack your enemy? Release some crazy string of altered virus which kills people, then turns them into zombies?”

Oskar nods slowly. “I like the way you think, dude. You could become a great screenwriter, you know. Who do you think did it then? The Taliban?”

“I have no idea. Could be anyone.”

“More likely the Chinese,” Oskar muses.

“The Chinese? Why would the Chinese attack Europe?”

“Probably some diplomatic crisis or whatever. Or maybe because we don’t buy enough of their cheap shit anymore. It could be a form of extreme negotiation.”

Martin eyes him for a moment. “You didn’t take economics in school, did you? I really don’t think killing your customers is great for business.”

Oskar is about to answer, when they both notice the headlights and turn in unison. A car is approaching from town.

“Holy shit,” Martin says, clutching his rifle. “Someone’s coming!”

“Relax, it’s probably someone from division coming to check on us.”

But Martin can tell from the headlights it’s a civilian car approaching. It moves fast and is soon close enough for them to tell it’s a Ford.

“It’s not from division,” Martin says. “What do we do?”

“We do as we were told,” Oskar says, putting on his serious face as he steps out in the middle of the road. “Just follow my lead.”

Martin positions himself next to Oskar. The highway is narrow enough for the two of them to effectively block it—even though the jeep is already parked across the road behind them.

Whoever is driving the Ford is really gunning it, and although the car is less than a hundred yards away, it has barely slowed down.

Martin glances at Oskar. “What … what do we do if they don’t stop?”

“They will,” Oskar says, stepping forward and raising one arm.

And luckily, the Ford does finally slow down and comes to a halt right in front of them. Martin squints against the headlights.

“Turn off the lights!” Oskar shouts. “And stay within the vehicle!”

Martin feels a great sense of relief at seeing Oskar take control of the situation. For all his bravado, Oskar is able to act with surprising authority when he needs to.

The headlights turn off, but the engine stays on. Martin can see a couple of faces through the windshield: a young man with glasses—who’s driving—and a young, blonde woman in the passenger seat.

Oskar strides towards the car, the rifle at his side in an almost-casual way. He stops next to the driver’s side, and the window is rolled down.

“Hey, buddy. We need to get out of town,” the man tells Oskar, smiling somewhat nervously. “Could you let us pass?”

“I’m afraid not,” Oskar says, looking in at the driver and his passenger. “No one is allowed to go in or out of town right now.”

“Oh, fuck!” the guy says, tapping the wheel in frustration. “It’s just that … you see … we really need to go. We’re going to see my fiancée’s dad, he’s in the hospital, and we just got a call that he’s taken a turn for the worse.”

“I’m very sorry to hear that,” Oskar says, his tone cool and professional. “But you’ll need to wait to go see him—only until the situation is under control.”

“How long will that be?” the girl asks, leaning towards the open window.

Martin can’t quite make out her face from here, but he recognizes her voice.

Is that …? Could it really be …?

“Hard to say,” Oskar says. “You’ll just need to keep an eye on the news. Please turn the car around and head back for town.” He steps back and gestures towards the tiny gravel rest stop at the side of the road.

Instead of turning the car around, the driver unbuckles and gets out. “Listen,” he says, smiling that nervous smile at Oskar. “My name is Peter. Peter Lindholm. I work at the bank here in town—you probably know me, don’t you?”

“I’m afraid not,” Oskar says. “And I need you to get back in the car.”

The guy reaches out his hand, and Oskar steps back.

Peter—who evidently only meant to shake hands—bursts into shrill laughter. “Calm down, buddy! I’m not contagious. I just want to talk, that’s all.”

“We don’t have anything to talk about,” Oskar says, raising his rifle slightly. “And I’m not your buddy, buddy. So please, get back in the car and head back to town.”

“It could be days before the curfew is lifted,” Peter goes on. “By that time, my father-in-law could be dead!”

“I can’t help you with that.”

“But we’re not sick,” Peter says, throwing out his arms and nodding towards the car. “We haven’t even been into contact with any of the contaminated. You can check us if you want.”

“I’m not going to check you. And even if you aren’t sick, you’re still not allowed to leave town. You’re not even allowed to linger here.”

Peter scuffs. “Of course I am! I can linger wherever I want. It’s still a free country, isn’t it? This isn’t private property—it’s a highway.”

“And who owns the highway?” Oskar says, suddenly raising his voice. “The government. And who do you figure I represent? Now, I’m not going to tell you again: get the fuck back inside that car and get out of here!”

Martin—who has been trying to get a closer look at the girl—realizes Oskar is about to lose his cool. He might even do something stupid if the guy keeps pushing.

“Listen—” Peter begins.

The passenger door opens, and the girl steps out. “Martin?” she says, disbelief in her voice. “God, is that really you?”

Martin manages a smile. “Hi, Dorte. I thought that was you.”

Dorte is dressed in sweatpants and a tiny top, which might very well have been the clothes she was sleeping in when they got the call from the hospital and decided to leave in a hurry. Her skin is perfectly tan from the summer sun, and her blonde hair is loosely held back in a ponytail. She looks even more stunning than he remembers.

“What are the odds?” she smiles, as she comes to hug him.

Martin doesn’t know what to do, so he simply stands there, feeling awkward in his uniform as Dorte puts her arms around him. The smell of her hair almost makes him dizzy with déjà-vu; she’s wearing the same perfume she used back then.

“You’ve grown taller,” she says, eyeing him.

“Nah, it’s probably just the boots,” he says, looking down shyly. “But your hair has gotten longer.”

“I know,” she says touching the ponytail. “I like it like this.”

“Me too. Look, I thought you moved to Aarhus to study medicine?”

“I did. I graduated last year.”

“Wow, that’s cool. So why are you back here?”

“I came home to see my family for the holidays.”

“Oh.”

“Excuse me,” Oskar says, staring menacingly at Martin. “I hate to break up your little reunion there, but these people need to get back to town. And you shouldn’t be touching her.”

“It’s okay, Oskar,” Martin says. “I know Dorte. We used to be neighbors when we were kids.”

Oskar obviously can’t help but give Dorte a once-over with his eyes. Then, he looks at Martin again. “That’s lovely, but it doesn’t change anything. They need to go back.”

“My dad’s sick from cancer,” Dorte says, apparently talking to Oskar, but looking at Martin. “It could be a matter of hours.”

“I’m so sorry to hear that,” Martin says. And he really is. He remembers Dorte’s father well; a tall, broad guy with a booming voice. He can hardly imagine him on his deathbed.

“Could you please just let us pass?” she asks, looking at Martin pleadingly, tears forming in her eyes now. “This will probably be my last chance to see him. I really don’t want him to die alone.”

“Can’t you just FaceTime him?” Oskar suggests.

Peter—who has been keeping quiet since Dorte got out of the car—now turns on Oskar with a horrified look. “How insensitive are you?”

Oskar is about to approach Peter, when Martin—still staring into Dorte’s eyes—hears himself say: “I’m sure we can make an exception.”

“The fuck we can!” Oskar bursts out.

“You both wait here a minute,” Martin says, looking from Dorte to her fiancé. “Don’t move, okay? We’ll just talk it over.”

He gestures for Oskar to follow him back to the jeep, and Oskar only hesitantly obliges; his eyes are constantly going back to Peter, as though he expects him to make a run for it.

“Have you lost your fucking mind?” Oskar hisses, the smell of coffee on his breath. “This is a matter of national security—fuck that, global security! And you want to breach the border just because your ex-girlfriend shows up and looks at you with teary eyes?”

“She’s not my ex,” Martin says, keeping his voice low. “We were just friends.”

“All the sadder,” Oskar scuffs.

“I know her, okay? She’s a good person. Her dad is, too. And she lost her mom to suicide when she was very young. You really think she would fake her dad being terminally ill just to get out of town?”

“People will do anything to save their lives.”

“They’re obviously not sick, either of them. So even if they just wanted to get out of town, they wouldn’t bring the virus with them.”

“Symptoms can take up to an hour to show themselves, if it’s from a minor scratch,” Oskar says, reiterating the words from last night’s briefing.

“All right, then we check them. Ask them to strip down and show us their skin. If either of them have any fresh scratches, we send them back. Will that work for you?”

Oskar shakes his head. “Why are we even discussing this? This isn’t our call.” He makes to head back over to Peter and Dorte, but Martin grabs him by the arm, feeling a sudden rush of anger.

“It is our call. I don’t see anyone else around, do you?”

Oskar blinks at him. “Let go of me, man.”

Martin lets go, but doesn’t take his eyes from Oskar’s. “It’s on me, okay? If anything happens, I’ll take the fall. But I’m telling you: she’s not lying. I trust her.”

“No, you’re in love with her,” Oskar mutters. “That’s the exact opposite of trust.” Before Martin can answer, he goes on: “But fuck that, if you want the world on your conscience, I’m not going to fight you.”

Martin takes a deep breath. “Good. Let’s go check them, then.”

To his surprise, Oskar shakes his head. “We won’t find anything. They’re not contaminated. Look at them. They’re way too calm. If one of them got bitten or scratched, they would be panicking.”

Martin looks over at the couple. They’re standing close to each other, talking. Dorte is rubbing her bare arms. Peter puts his arm around her waist, trying to console her.

“Then why did you—”

“Because I don’t trust him. He’s a sleazebag. Didn’t you hear him? He works in a bank. You can’t trust anyone who works in a bank. I bet you he’s hiding something.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. But you should check the trunk.”

“Come on, man. There’s no—”

“That’s the deal,” Oskar cuts him off. “If you check the trunk and they aren’t hiding something, then I’ll look the other way as they pass.”

Martin throws out his arms. “What would they be hiding?”

“The fuck should I know? A zombie, maybe.” He stares at Peter, who takes off his glasses and wipes them on his T-shirt. “I’m telling you: he’s hiding something.”

Martin shakes his head. “Fine, if that’s what it takes.”

“Just be ready, okay?” Oskar gives him a meaningful look. “When you open it.”

Martin tries to smile. “You’re paranoid.”

“Paranoid people tend to live longer,” Oskar says, no humor in his voice.

Martin goes back over to the couple. “Okay, listen.”

They both look at him hopefully.

“We’re going to let you pass …”

“Thank you!” Dorte exclaims.

“Thank God,” Peter sighs.

“If,” Martin goes on, “you let us check the trunk of the car.”

Dorte’s smile fades somewhat.

Peter’s relief turns to suspicion. “Why? You think we’re hiding something?”

“We don’t know; that’s why we need to check.”

Peter looks to Dorte. “I thought you said he would trust you.”

The words ignite something in Martin’s stomach. He can’t help but feel good at the thought of Dorte trusting him to trust her—even after all these years. Even though they never became more than friends, Martin has always felt a special connection to her, and what Peter just said confirms that Dorte has always felt the same way.

Dorte looks at him, and her smile returns. “There’s nothing in the trunk, Martin. I promise you; we’re not hiding anything.”

“I believe you,” Martin says, smiling back at her. “But my partner is kind of … paranoid.” He sends Oskar a glance, but Oskar apparently doesn’t hear him; he just stares at Peter. “We agreed to let you pass on that one condition; that you let us see the trunk of the car.”

Dorte looks at him for a moment, then she looks at Peter and shrugs. “Okay, fine. Open the trunk, hon.”

Peter shakes his head as though reluctant to oblige, but he still goes around to the back of the car. Martin follows him, the rifle feeling heavy at his side.

“This is really not cool,” Peter says, low enough that only Martin hears him. “We’re wasting time. Dorte’s dad could be dead when we get there.”

“All the more reason to hurry up and show me that trunk,” Martin says.

Peter shakes his head again, then grabs the trunk and opens it.

Martin realizes just how tense he had gotten as he sees the empty trunk. His shoulders sink down an inch.

“See anything, Martin?” Oskar calls.

“No, it’s empty.”

“Just like we told you,” Peter adds. “Can we please go now?”

“Sure, you—”

“Backseat!” Oskar calls out.

Martin looks over at him.

“Check the backseat.”

“Come on!” Peter exclaims.

Martin goes and looks in through the window in the back door. A bunch of clothes are thrown on the seats. “Nothing,” he calls to Oskar. “Just some clothes.”

“Satisfied?” Peter says, eyeing him with a sour look. “Or you want to check the undercarriage too?”

“No, that’s fine,” Martin says. “You can go now.”

“Thank you.” He immediately heads for the driver’s side door. “Let’s go, hon!”

“I’ll move the jeep,” Oskar says.

Dorte makes her way around the car, passing Martin on the way. She stops briefly and smiles at him. “Thank you, Martin. I won’t forget it.” She squeezes his arm; even through his sleeve, the touch makes him jittery.

“Sure. Say hi to your dad from me.”

“I will.”

They look at each other for a brief second, then the connection is lost as she heads for the passenger side door. Martin suddenly feels a sting of panic at the thought of her leaving. He might never see her again. He feels like he needs to say something, anything, just to keep her a moment longer.

“How’s Rikke doing?” Martin asks, just as Oskar starts up the jeep.

Dorte looks back and smiles. “She’s fine; she’s with Dad.”

“She is? I thought you said your dad was alone.”

She frowns. “No, I don’t think I did.”

“Oh. Okay. Well, I’ll see you around.”

“See you, Martin.”

He steps back as Peter turns the headlights back on; they’re almost redundant now, as the morning has grown lighter in the few minutes since they arrived.

Oskar moves the jeep out of the way, and Peter drives forward.

Martin looks in through the side window at Dorte. He is hoping for one last smile, but Dorte doesn’t look out at him, she just stares straight ahead. Instead, another pair of eyes meet his, as a pale face peeks out from under the pile of clothes on the backseat.

It’s only a split-second.

But Martin recognizes Rikke’s face.

Then Peter floors it and races past the jeep, headed out the highway at full speed.

Martin just stands there, glaring after them, thoughts going back and forth in his mind, as Oskar backs the jeep out into the middle of the road once more and shuts off the engine.

He jumps out, slams the door and says, as he walks over to Martin: “I could have sworn that guy was hiding something. Maybe I was wrong after all. I just still have the feeling that … Hey, Martin? What’s up?”

Martin doesn’t answer. He barely hears Oskar. All he hears is a rapid replay of recently spoken lines.

“I thought you said your dad was alone.”

“No, I don’t think I did.”

“Check the backseat.”

“Nothing. Just some clothes.”

“I promise you; we’re not hiding anything.”

“I believe you.”

“You’re in love with her. That’s the exact opposite of trust.”

Oskar snaps his fingers in front of Martin’s face.

“Hey! She’s gone now. You can stop staring.”

Martin blinks and comes to. The car is just a couple of tiny red lights in the horizon now.

“What’s up with you?” Oskar says, eyeing him.

“Nothing,” Martin manages to say, shaking his head. “Nothing, I’m fine.”

TWO

“How are you doing back there?”

Dorte turns in her seat to look at her sister, who’s sitting in the pile of clothes.

“You keep asking me that,” Rikke says, a trace of annoyance in her voice. “And I keep telling you, it’s the same.”

“Still no fever?”

“No.”

“Could you check with the thermometer again, please?”

Rikke rolls her eyes. “Yes, Doctor.” She puts away her phone and places the thermometer in her mouth, then crosses her arms and looks out the window at the freeway speeding by. Barely any cars are out at this time of the night, but for the occasional truck. The sky is already orange from the dawning day.

Dorte watches her sister with affection. Rikke is only sixteen and still very much a child in Dorte’s eyes. Yet she can tell she is only acting like this because she’s genuinely anxious.

The thermometer beeps.

“What’s it say?” Dorte asks.

Rikke takes it out and looks at the display. “Ninety-eight point eight—just like last time.”

“Those things aren’t very accurate anyway.”

“Come on, it’s like you want me to a fever!”

“Hey, your sister is only trying to help you,” Peter says, glancing at Rikke in the rearview mirror.

“I told you, he barely touched me,” Rikke says, holding out her arm. “See? It’s only a little reddish.”

Dorte studies the skin right above the elbow, where the two scratches run across Rikke’s arm. To Dorte, it actually looks a little more reddish than it did just twenty minutes ago. Apparently, Rikke notices the same, because she lowers her arm again and finds her phone.

“You’ll be okay,” Dorte tells her. “We caught it in time. And as soon as we get to the institute, I’ll give you a vaccine.”

“I’m not even sick,” Rikke says, less defiant now, but still not looking back at Dorte. “I feel fine.”

“That’s good. It means the virus didn’t reach your CNS yet.”

Rikke raises one eyebrow. “My what now?”

“Central nervous system.”

“Oh. Sorry, I don’t know the lingo.”

“How did it happen again?” Peter asks, suppressing a yawn.

Rikke already told them, and Dorte suspects Peter only asks to keep himself from falling asleep. She still can’t believe it; less than two hours ago, they were at Peter’s house, watching the latest updates on the news channel; they had just had a glass of wine and were ready to go to bed.

That’s when the doorbell began ringing insistently.

Outside stood Rikke, pale-faced, clutching her little white poodle to her chest.

“I don’t know,” Rikke says, shaking her head. “He came out of nowhere. This old guy. I tried to avoid him, but the front door jammed, so he grazed my arm with those nasty, long fingernails before I could make it inside again.”

Peter shakes his head. “I don’t get it. Why would you go out into the street when you knew the police had—”

“I had to let out Daisy so she could take a pee! What was I supposed to do? She can’t exactly use the toilet, can she? Besides, I was very careful. I only just stepped outside.”

“Not careful enough, it seems,” Peter mutters.

“Yeah, well, at least it’s not you who got scratched by one of those things, is it?” Rikke sneers.

“No, but it’s me driving around in the middle of the night, breaking the law!” Peter argues back.

“I’m very sorry to inconvenience you. You can just drop me off at the next exit.”

“Maybe I will if you keep up that tone of voice.”

“Okay, that’s enough!” Dorte interjects, just as Rikke is about to retort. “We’re all upset about the situation, no wonder. But we need to keep our heads straight. No more arguing, both of you. All right?”

Neither of them answers. Peter concentrates on the road, and Rikke is once more lost in her phone. They aren’t exactly pals at the best of times, let alone when being forced into a car together in the middle of the night.

“I’m just really not okay with this,” Peter murmurs. “The way we had to lie to those soldiers … I mean, there’s a damn good reason why they set up military roadblocks.”

“Sure there is,” Dorte nods. “It’s to keep the virus from spreading too fast.”

Peter takes his eyes off the road to look at her for a moment. “What do you mean, ‘too fast’? Obviously, they don’t want it to spread at all.”

Dorte shakes her head. “That’s not how it works. Remember what they said the last time there was a flu epidemic? They told people to keep good hand-hygiene, to not shake hands or hug and to not gather anywhere with more than a thousand people at a time.”

“Sure, I remember.”

“Well, all that wasn’t to stop the virus from spreading; it was just to slow it down.”

Peter scuffs. “Hon, I think you’re being paranoid. I know you work with these types of things, but still—”

“It’s not paranoia, Peter. It’s not even a secret. It’s really just standard protocol. You can’t stop viruses like these, not once they’re this far advanced.”

“Okay, so why slow it down? Why not just let it burn through and get it over with?”

“Because that would put a lot of pressure on the healthcare system. They want to spread it out over as much time as possible, so they’ll get a steady trickle of infected patients instead of a whole bunch all at once.”

“Hmm, makes sense, I guess.”

“It also bides them time to find a vaccine, if they haven’t already.”

Dorte senses Rikke leaning forward on the backseat. “You think they already have a vaccine? But they said on the news—”

“You can’t always count on what they say. Maybe they didn’t want the hospitals to be flooded with healthy people wanting to be vaccinated.”

There’s obvious relief on Rikke’s face.

“But … what if they haven’t made a vaccine then?”

“Don’t worry,” Dorte tells her. “Whatever you have, I’ll cure it.”

Rikke smiles bleakly, and Dorte returns the smile. But she also notices her sister has grown noticeably paler since she last looked at her. She is just about to ask her to take her temperature again, when Peter asks:

“Do I take this exit?”

Dorte checks. “Yes. Then left the next time. We’re almost there.”

“Won’t they call the authorities as soon you tell them what happened?” Rikke asks.

“We’re not telling anyone about you until I’ve given you the vaccine,” Dorte says. “Besides, no one will be there at this hour.”

“At the hospital? Aren’t there always people there?”

“We’re not going to the hospital. Straight ahead here, Peter.”

The red building comes up ahead; all the windows are dark and no other cars are parked here. By 7:00 AM, the place will be teeming with med students. That’s plenty of time; by then, Dorte will have found a vaccine for Rikke. Either that, or—

She pushes the thought hard aside and tells Peter: “Pull over here.”

Peter parks the car, and they get out.

Dorte slips an arm around Rikke without even thinking, and her sister scuffs.

“I can still walk, you know.”

But she doesn’t resist, and Dorte doesn’t take her arm away.

Dorte scans her ID card and types in the six-digit code. The door clicks, and she pulls it open. Peter follows them into the building as the automated lights come on, revealing a long, blue hallway.

“What is this place, exactly?” Rikke asks.

“My workplace,” Dorte says. “Come with me.”

THREE

“Where’s Peter?” Rikke asks.

“He went to get coffee,” Dorte says, opening a cabinet and going through the shelves. She brings a box of things to where Rikke is sitting, looking at her phone. “Do you ever give that thing a rest?”

Rikke sighs and puts the phone back in her pocket. “Everyone is sleeping anyway.” She yawns, then gazes around the lab. “So, what is it you do here?”

Dorte stops for a moment; seeing her sister here, sitting on a stool next to the shiny steel table and the rows of glass cabinets filled with medical equipment, gives her a sense of unreality. She has spent so many hours here, but her work has always been firmly separated from her family life.

“I do research and tests,” she says. “The others mostly work with animals, but I’m specializing in treatment of zoonotic viruses and bacteria infections in humans.”

“And what’s that?”

“That’s diseases you get from animals.”

Rikke snorts. “Well, if only it was an animal that scratched me.”

Dorte puts on the rubber gloves. “Zoonotic diseases can transfer from human to human, too.”

“Oh. So you’re saying this whole thing started out with an animal biting someone?”

“It’s more likely it got transferred via feces,” Dorte says, as she finds a syringe and tears off the paper.

“Yuk! So someone ate poop?”

“Not exactly. But someone probably got into contact with animal droppings. From a bat or maybe a bird. That’s how most of the great flu epidemics got started. Give me your arm, please.”

“You keep talking about the flu,” Rikke says. “Isn’t this something completely different? I mean, they’re saying on Facebook it’s zombies.”

This time, Dorte snorts. “That’s just people being scared.”

“Yeah, I thought so too, until … until I saw that guy. The old man who scratched me.” Rikke looks down at the two red lines on her arm, both now glowing a deep red, the skin pink around them. “He looked really … dead. I don’t know how else to put it. The way he moved … and his eyes. They were all, like … empty.”

Rikke shivers as Dorte rubs her skin with an antibacterial napkin.

“Hold still, please.”

“Yes, Doctor,” Rikke says, then: “Ouch!” as Dorte inserts the needle. Rikke’s eyes grow distant as she goes on: “That’s what made me freeze up, you know; his eyes. They reminded me of a dead fish. I just couldn’t believe those eyes had ever belonged to a human being.”

“Zombies aren’t real,” Dorte says softly. “There’s nothing supernatural going on. The infected people are simply suffering some paralytic stage in the disease, where they’ve lost control of speech and movement. You see the exact same thing happen with most cases of rabies. It looks scary, but it’s just a disease. And it can most likely be cured with a simple vaccine.”

She takes out the needle and puts a Band-Aid on Rikke’s arm.

“What was that they called it?” Rikke asks. “The rap-something-virus?”

“The Rhabdovirus. They’ve named it after the family of viruses also containing rabies. Which means it’s not just my theory, other experts agree.”

Rikke doesn’t look completely convinced. “So, if it’s just some kind of nasty disease, why aren’t people dying from it?”

“I’m sure they will, eventually. That last stage apparently lasts a little longer than it does with rabies, but a virus this aggressive will no doubt end up killing its host.”

“Oh,” Rikke says, smiling bleakly. “Well that’s nice to know.”

“Hey, I told you not to worry. You’re not going to get that far, trust me. Now, open wide.”

Rikke frowns and looks at the swab in Dorte’s hand. “What are you going to do?”

“I need a cell scrape from your throat.”

“Lovely.” Rikke opens her mouth. When Dorte is done, she asks: “So why are the sick people attacking others? That’s not normally something you do when you’re sick.”

“Actually, it’s very common with rabies for the patient to become aggressive. They will also try to bite you if they get the chance. Ever seen a picture of a rabid dog? All that foam around the mouth, that’s something the virus does to enhance its chances of infecting a new host. The virus is in the saliva, so the more saliva, the better.”

“Oh. That makes sense. Then why—ouch! What was that for?”

“I needed a strand of hair,” Dorte says, placing the hair she just plucked from Rikke’s head in a ziplock bag. “Supposedly, it hurts less if you aren’t expecting it.”

“Yeah, well, it hurts plenty, thank you very much.”

“Then you’re not going to like this one.”

“There’s more? How many tests are you going to run exactly?”

“Four. The more tests, the more accurate the picture will be. Now, I need you to lean forward and pull up your shirt.”

Rikke does as she’s told. Dorte uses another napkin to clean an area on Rikke’s lower back, then she swabs on the iodine.

“It’ll be over in twenty seconds,” she tells her. “It’s going to hurt a little. Try to hold still.”

Rikke gasps as Dorte pushes in the needle as gently as possible.

“Holy shit, that hurts,” she croaks. “What are you doing to me?”

“Taking a spinal sample. Don’t move, I’m almost done. There.”

Rikke lets out a long, trembling breath. “I’m not doing that again.”

“You won’t have to; I’ve got all I need now. I’ll just check your temperature one last time.” She places the thermometer in Rikke’s mouth as she sits up. “I think you should rest while I run the tests. There’s a couch in the dining area down the hallway; that’s where Peter is.”

“I’d rather stay here with you, then.”

“Come on now. It’ll do you could to get some sleep. And drink a glass of water first. And don’t talk with the thermometer in your mouth.”

Rikke sits quietly for a few seconds, until there’s a beeping.

Dorte takes the thermometer and reads the digits. “Well, you sure have a fever now: 103.2.”

“I can feel it,” Rikke admits, rubbing her cheek. “I feel dizzy.”

“It could be from the lumbar puncture I just did, but still, all the more reason to lie down. You need me to follow you?”

“I think I can manage.” Rikke slips down from the stool and heads for the door. She turns around and looks back. “Dorte? I’m really grateful you’re doing this.”

“Of course,” Dorte says, surprised at the sudden seriousness on Rikke’s face. “What are sisters for?”

“Yeah, well, I must be extremely lucky, having a sister who’s an expert on the very rare disease I just caught.”

Dorte smiles. “I guess it’s fate.”

Rikke shrugs. “I guess so.” She turns and leaves.

Dorte looks at the door as it closes behind her.

The lab suddenly seems awfully quiet. It’s almost like Rikke’s absence has given room for Dorte’s own thoughts to bubble to the surface. While her sister was here, Dorte felt confident. Now, left to herself, the fear comes creeping.

What if this isn’t like rabies? What if it’s unlike anything else medical science has ever come across?

It’s nonsense, of course. Every new pandemic disease in the history of mankind has fallen within the spectrum of an already identified family of viruses; there’s absolutely no reason to suspect this will be different.

Except it seems different.

Very different.

Like the sheer speed of the spread of the infection. Or the terrifying rate at which most infected reach the paralytic stage—they said on the news it could be as little as minutes, if the virus gained direct contact to any major veins.

What if I can’t find a vaccine in time?

Dorte realizes she’s afraid, and she forces herself to breathe deeply a few times. It alleviates some of the constriction in her chest. She needs to get on with it, needs to run the tests as soon as possible. But she’s scared of what they’ll show.

Stop thinking like that. Focus on the task at hand. Get moving. Time is ticking.

She begins working.

FOUR

Peter is awakened with a jerk as the door to the kitchen is opened.

“Whah?” he mutters, looking around in confusion, realizing he was sleeping upright in a chair, the cup of coffee still on the table in front of him.

Dorte is standing in the doorway, still wearing one rubber glove, a grave expression on her face.

“Hon,” he says, getting to his feet. “What time is it?”

Dorte doesn’t answer, so Peter looks to the clock on the wall: 3:15. His brain is almost working again, and he recalls where they are and what they’re doing here.

“Did you find out anything?” he asks, stretching.

“I’ve run all the tests,” Dorte says, her voice toneless. “Where is she?”

He nods towards the door to the dining area. “She’s sleeping on the couch in there.”

“You were supposed to look after her!”

“Sorry, I fell asleep. Is anything wrong? What did the tests show?”

Dorte walks right past him without answering.

“Hey,” he says, taking her arm. “Did you figure out what kind of virus it is?”

“It’s not a virus,” Dorte says, looking at him blankly.

“Okay, so what then—a bacterial infection?”

“Not that, either.”

Peter frowns. “Didn’t you say that was the two only possible—”

“I need to see her,” Dorte says, freeing herself of his grip.

“Dorte, wait.”

But Dorte has already reached the door and opened it.

The lights are low in the dining area, only the soda machine is casting a dim, blue glow, revealing a row of tables and chairs. And in the corner are a couple of couches, one of them taken up by Rikke, sleeping in a fetal position, curled up under a blanket.

Dorte goes over there and kneels down. “Rikke? You need to wake up now.”

Peter joins them. Even in the dim light he can tell Rikke looks considerably worse than the last time he saw her; her face is pale and she’s trembling. She’s also not responding to her sister’s voice.

“Rikke?” Dorte asks a little louder, nudging her gently. “Please wake up.”

Rikke doesn’t wake up.

“Rikke!” Dorte shakes her harder, causing Rikke’s head to bop back and forth. She lets out a moan, but still doesn’t wake up. Dorte feels her cheeks and forehead. “The fever is gone,” she mutters.

“Well, that’s good—isn’t it?”

“No. It means her body is no longer fighting back.”

Dorte gets up and steps back a few paces. She lowers her head, and only now does he realize she’s seconds away from crying. He has only seen her cry once or twice in the four years they’ve been together.

“Honey,” he says, “what’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” she says, her voice shaking. “I just don’t know. I ran the tests three times. I … I checked them over and over again. I’ve done it a million times, I know every pitfall, and I did the tests perfectly. But …” She looks at him, shaking her head. “There was nothing, Peter.”

“Nothing?”

“I’ve run a PCR reaction, I’ve checked for antibodies, I’ve even—”

“What do you mean, nothing? Were the tests—what’s the expression?—inconclusive?”

“They weren’t inconclusive—they were completely clean! I didn’t find anything, not in the blood, not in the spit or the skin, not even in the spinal fluid. It’s like I tested a perfectly healthy person with no infection whatsoever. But look at her! She’s clearly very ill.”

Dorte turns back to Rikke, breathing heavy now.

Peter glances briefly at Rikke, then back at Dorte, struggling to keep up. “Okay, so, we need help. We need someone else to—”

She rounds on him, eyes blazing. “There’s no one else! Don’t you get it? This is what I do every day, and I’m telling you, I couldn’t find a single trace of anything wrong with her!”

“But that’s not possible. The equipment must be broken, then.”

“I’ve checked the equipment—I’ve checked everything!”

“Well, can’t you just give her a vaccine anyway?”

Dorte’s shoulders drop, and she suddenly looks very tired. “I can’t vaccinate for something that isn’t there,” she whispers.

“Okay, so, if it’s not a real, like, testable disease, could it be something psychological then?”

“You mean psychosomatic,” Dorte mutters, “and no, that kind of illness wouldn’t be transferable like this one is.”

“Then what other kinds of diseases are there? Could it, I don’t know, could it be, like, a nerve agent, or something? Did someone release a toxic gas? Or maybe some sort of radiation?”

“Those would show up on at least some of the tests,” Dorte says, sounding defeated. “No matter what is wrong with her, it should show up in the tests.”

“Maybe not if it’s something completely new,” Peter says, not sure if he’s trying to convince Dorte or himself. “Maybe it’s a string of virus that hasn’t been discovered yet.”

“Even if it was, it would still be testable. That’s just how the human body works. There’s no way—”

Dorte suddenly stops talking, as her eyes fall on Rikke.

“She’s stopped shaking now,” Peter notices.

Dorte doesn’t answer. She steps forward and kneels down, examining her sister’s face closely. “Oh, my God! She’s not breathing!”

Peter gasps. “What?”

“Rikke? Rikke!” Dorte slaps her sister’s cheek repeatedly. Then, she checks for a pulse. She snaps her head around, looking at Peter, her eyes wide. “She’s in cardiac arrest! Get the defibrillator from the hallway—now!”

Peter stands there for another second, dumbstruck, and watches in silent awe at how his fiancée reacts in a way he’s never seen before. Her movements are brisk and without the slightest hesitation, as she rolls Rikke onto her back, tips back her head, parts her lips, squeezes shut her nostrils and begins blowing into her mouth.

“Go!” Dorte shouts between breaths, not looking back, but apparently sensing Peter nonetheless. “Get the defibrillator!”

Peter is able to move again, and he turns on his heel and runs back out into the hallway, looking in both directions, his eyes falling on a large, green box on the wall. He runs to it, rips open the glass door and pulls out what looks like a small, red suitcase. He brings it back to the cantina, where Dorte is now pumping away on Rikke’s chest.

“Here!” he says, handing the defibrillator to Dorte. “I don’t know how to use it!”

“You take over here, then,” Dorte says, grabbing the suitcase and moving aside. “Do as I did.”

Peter steps closer to Rikke, looking at her pale, expressionless face for a second, before folding his hands and placing them in the middle of her chest. He presses down tentatively.

“Harder!” Dorte demands, opening the suitcase and pulling out wires. “And faster!”

Peter presses harder and ups the speed, causing Rikke to almost bounce on the couch. He looks away for a brief instance, hoping to see Dorte ready to take over again, but she’s still working to get the defibrillator ready, and when he turns his attention back to Rikke, she’s staring up at him.

Her eyes, which were blue—just like Dorte’s—are now blank and milky white. They clearly belong to a dead person—although Peter has never seen one before, there’s no doubt in his mind—and his first thought is that Rikke’s eyelids somehow opened on their own.

Then, that assertion evaporates, as Rikke’s features change into a snarl, and she opens her mouth wide, revealing her white teeth.

“Holy—”

Peter never gets to finish what he was about to say, because Rikke shoots upright and clamps down on his right bicep, her jaws locking with the force of a baby crocodile, her teeth ripping right through his shirt and drilling into the skin.

Peter screams and pulls back. Rikke doesn’t let go, but is simply pulled along, like a police dog biting down on a criminal. Peter feels his muscles and tendons being ripped apart, and the pain is so intense. He instinctively puts his free hand on Rikke’s forehead, trying to force back her head, and for a second, it seems to work, as the grip on his arm is actually slackened; but that’s only because Rikke now has the perfect opportunity to instead bite down on his hand, and she doesn’t miss the chance.

Peter screams again, feeling the bones in his fingers crunch and the skin being pulled off, as Rikke thrashes her head. Weirdly, this time, there’s no pain, even though there’s plenty of blood; it spurts out of his hand like from holes in a garden hose, painting Rikke’s face in red.

Although things move very fast on the outside, Peter now sees everything happen from within like watching a movie turned down on super slow.

I’m infected now, he thinks with surprising clarity, as Rikke bites off his thumb. I’m already dead.

Then Rikke lunges for his throat, and Peter sees the bloody mouth approaching, before he’s pulled back at the last second. He stumbles to the floor, and someone drags him across the room, away from the couch, where Rikke immediately gets to her feet to take up pursuit. It proves difficult for her to walk, however; she looks like a toddler taking her first steps, and she almost falls down. Then, she seems to find some sort of rhythm and she comes staggering after him, following the bloody trail Peter has left across the floor.

Who’s dragging me? he thinks to himself, craning back his neck and looking up to see Dorte pulling him with both arms. Oh, he thinks, smiling faintly. It’s Dorte. God, I love her.

Dorte’s eyes dart from him to Rikke, and she says something, apparently addressed at him, but the words are nothing more than faint murmurs to Peter.

“I love you,” he tries to say, not sure if it comes out right, and Dorte doesn’t seem to hear him anyway.

She drags him through a doorway, then lets go of him and runs back to the door. Just before she slams it shut, Peter sees Rikke one last time, as she comes waddling towards them, her legs stiff, her arms stretched out eagerly, her top drenched in blood—his blood—and her mouth open in a silent growl.

Then Peter sees no more.

FIVE

Dorte used to suffer from really bad nightmares when she was a little girl—probably brought on by her mother’s sudden death.

It was usually about someone chasing her. Not a person, not even something visible, just an undefinable horror, something which would try to catch up with her and tear her apart limb from limb. In the dreams, Dorte would run for her life, but no matter how fast she ran, the bad thing always gained on her, until she would wake up, sweating, panting and crying. The only solace she could take was that as soon as she did wake up, the nightmare evaporated.

The nightmare she finds herself in now, however, is real.

It won’t evaporate.

She won’t wake up from it.

She runs down the hallway and into the utility room, grabbing things from the shelves almost by instinct. Then she runs back to the kitchen.

Peter is lying where she left him, unconscious in a still-growing pool of his own blood. His heart is still somehow pumping out blood through his chewed-up hand and ripped-open arm, but at a much slower rate now.

He’s seconds away from dying of blood loss.

Dorte throws herself down and goes to work, bandaging up his wounds.

From the door to the cantina comes regular bumps and moans, as Rikke is trying to get it open. There is no lock on the door, but luckily, it opens the other way, which means she probably won’t be able to get it open—unless she figures out how to simultaneously push down the handle and pull it backwards.

She was dead, a thought keeps repeating in her mind as she works on Peter. She was dead, I checked her pulse and her breathing. She was dead.

And yet, Rikke is clearly no longer dead. Not unless dead people have suddenly become able to walk.

Dorte has seen the postings on Facebook and Twitter. The ones Rikke also mentioned. But she brushed them all aside as silly teenage nonsense. Of course zombies aren’t real. Of course the situation can’t be compared to those nasty horror movies where corpses reanimate and rise to eat the living. That’s obviously not what’s going on. It’s simply some aggressive and completely explainable disease.

But she was dead.

Dorte finishes up the last bandage and looks at Peter. He still has some color left, and he’s still breathing. It looks like she got it in time.

A new bump from the door. Dorte tries to ignore it. She knows she is supposed to help Rikke. To treat her. That’s her duty as a doctor. But she also needs to not be contaminated herself.

She looks at her hands, all soiled in Peter’s blood, and she goes to wash them in the sink. She rinses them thoroughly with soap.

Then, she goes back to him and checks his pulse. Still there, but weak. His skin is noticeably paler, his forehead beaming with sweat.

He’s already broken a fever. The infection is eating away at him. My God, it’s fast …

Dorte knows there’s nothing she can do. She knows Peter will go the same way as Rikke did, and probably a lot faster. And it breaks her heart. Losing both your little sister and your fiancé at the same time seems like something which shouldn’t even happen to the worst people in the world.

She wants badly to just sit down and begin to cry.

She wants the nightmare to end.

Still, the logical part of her brain is working quietly in the background. It tells her she still has important things to do. And Dorte listens. She goes back out to the utility room and brings a pair of straps, the portable EEG and the small EKG, rolling the table into the kitchen and placing it next to Peter.

She checks his pulse again. Even weaker now. His skin is burning up. The fever is spiking. Soon, his body will give in.

Dorte speeds up her work, still shutting out the persistent bumps and groans from the door. She carefully drags Peter a few feet to the side, enabling her to tie his wrist and his ankle to the legs of the table using the straps. The table is heavy enough that she doubts he will be able to move it. Then, she hooks him up to the instruments, placing the headset of the EEG on his skull and opening his shirt to put the electrodes of the EKG on his chest.

She turns on the devices.

The electrocardiogram shows her what she already knew: Peter has a very irregular and weak heartbeat.

The electroencephalography tells her Peter is already deeply unconscious, as his brainwaves are almost exclusively in the theta state.

She looks at his face for a moment and feels a stab in her heart.

“I’m so sorry about this, hon,” she whispers. “But I need to know. Okay?”

Peter doesn’t reply. His skin is no longer wet from sweat. She feels his forehead and is surprised to find it very cool.

She looks to the instruments again. The heartbeat is almost entirely gone now. The brainwaves are sinking even deeper. Dorte is once again struck by how fast the disease is killing Peter. It obviously got to his CNS a lot faster than it did with Rikke.

Then, the EKG beeps shrilly.

Peter’s heart has given in. The pulse is flatlining.

Dorte squeezes her lips together. She feels a strong urge to jump in and start performing CPR. She tells herself it won’t work; it didn’t on Rikke. Yet her instincts are stronger than she thought, and it takes all her effort to hold back.

“I’m sorry, hon,” she croaks, tears starting to spill down her cheeks. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t help you.”

The EEG shows a modest pattern of brainwaves for a few more seconds. Then, they die out.

The heart monitor stops beeping. Silence descends. Except for Rikke’s bumping against the door.

Dorte stares at Peter’s face, holding her breath, and she realizes she’s repeating something in her mind over and over again.

Stay dead. Please, stay dead.

It goes against everything she has learned in her medical training, and she feels horrible on a human level, too. How can she wish for Peter to stay dead? What kind of person is she?

Twenty seconds pass by.

Then a minute.

Peter stays dead. The instruments stay silent.

Dorte has just begun to hope.

And then, it happens.

His eyelids twitch, then open.

She stares at him. Peter’s irises and pupils are gone; well, not completely, but they’re clouded over by a semi-transparent, milky-white color not unlike what you see with cataracts, except much more pronounced.

He lifts his head from off the floor and seemingly looks around the room. He doesn’t appear to actually see anything, though; it’s more like he’s using some other sense, like he’s trying to feel his surroundings.

Then, his face locks in the direction of Dorte, and his mouth contorts into an angry snarl. She draws back and Peter gets up—that is, he tries to get up, but the straps around his wrist and ankle hinder him from getting any further than an awkward sitting position. Instead of trying to get the straps off, he simply reaches out his free hand in a vain attempt to grab Dorte, who’s more than twenty feet away now. Peter claws at the floor, trying to pull himself forward, but the table is much too heavy, just as Dorte hoped, and he gets nowhere. He doesn’t even look back to see what the problem is; his attention is solely fixed on her, his mouth spewing saliva and hungry growls.

If Dorte hadn’t had medical training, she just might have fainted at the sight of her fiancé. Or at least she would have spun around and run out of the room.

But she stays put. She tells herself it’s not really him, it’s simply the unknown disease causing him to look and act like this. She tells herself she needs to think rationally; she needs to figure out what’s wrong with him and how to cure it.

She manages to pry her eyes off him and instead look to the monitors.

And what she sees makes her skin turn icy all over.

What she sees makes absolutely no sense.

What she sees is nothing.

SIX

Henrik wakes up from a deep slumber, and for a brief, blissful moment, he remembers nothing. For all he knows, this could be a perfectly ordinary Tuesday morning right before the alarm calls him awake. He could be lying next to Trine, the kids sleeping in their own rooms, the world outside about to start another day.

Then it all comes back to him in a series of gut-wrenching flashes.

Nothing is ordinary. Jennie is dead. Dan is gone. The world is turning to chaos.

Henrik opens his eyes and looks around, still hazy, realizing he is lying in Dan’s bed instead of his own. Then he remembers why; Kirsten, his mother-in-law, and Finn, their next-door neighbor, are both staying here for the night with him and Trine. He took Dan’s room so that Kirsten could sleep with her daughter in their bedroom, and Finn is sleeping in Jennie’s room.

Jennie’s old room, he corrects himself, feeling a stab of pain in his chest. The room belongs to no one anymore; it’ll be empty like those two years Jennie was away on continuation school; except this time, she won’t be home for the holidays. Or ever again.

Henrik is still surprised to find how the realization sinks in deeper every time he thinks about the death of his daughter; it’s like hearing the terrible news all over again. He just lies there in silence for a few moments, feeling the pain, fighting back the tears.

They had planned on burying Jennie on Friday. He had even gone and picked out a coffin. But now, with everything that has happened …

The thought makes him turn his head towards the window. It’s still dim outside, and the window is covered by drapes, only letting in a modest glow of early morning light. He can make out the shadows moving almost rhythmically on the other side of the glass, and if he didn’t know any better, he would have said it was an almost beautiful play of the light, like trees moving in the breeze.

But he knows what those shadows are. And there is nothing beautiful about them.

But why aren’t they making any noise?

Henrik sits up in bed, and it’s only now he remembers he put in earplugs. He takes them out and immediately hears the soft, growling moans and the scraping of nails across the window glass.

That’s why he put in the earplugs. He would never have been able to sleep without them. Now, as he finally begins to awaken properly, the feeling of stress returns.

What time is it? How long was I gone?

He reaches down into his pants lying on the floor and finds the phone. It’s only 04:05 AM, which means he was out for less than six hours. But much more importantly: there are four missed calls from Dan. Henrik tried calling him a bunch of times last night before he went to bed, but it went straight to voice mail, which means Dan’s phone was probably out of power.

Henrik didn’t wake up from the phone ringing because of the earplugs, and he regrets putting them in. Dan is probably worried sick because he didn’t answer.

He calls up his son, and this time, it doesn’t go to voice mail. Instead, a calm female voice tells him: “Cell phone service is temporarily out of order. We apologize for any inconvenience.” Then she repeats the message in English.

“Damnit,” Henrik mutters and tries once more, but gets the same result.

What does that mean? Did the entire phone network break down? Or is it just overloaded, like it usually is around midnight on New Year’s Eve, where everybody calls their friends and relatives all at the same time?

He checks the website of the national news station and finds his phone still has Internet access, although the connection seems slower than usual. Every single headline is about what’s going on outside. With each one, Henrik’s stomach sinks deeper.

At least 10,000 dead and counting!

The greatest disaster in the history of Denmark is happening right now!

Police try to seal off town!

Live: Follow the catastrophe minute-by-minute!

There are disturbing images all over the page. Corpses in the streets. Policemen in full riot gear aiming weapons at oncoming zombies. Victims with bloody bite wounds in emergency rooms. Traffic jams of collided cars. Shop windows shattered. People fleeing in groups.

It’s like looking at modern-day images from the Second World War. Except this just might be the beginning of the Third.

And now, as Henrik finally feels completely awake and alert, he can actually hear the background noises of the city. Guns firing. Something crashing. Someone screaming.

He gets up and gets dressed. The gesture is weirdly familiar yet strange at the same time. He’s putting on clothes like he would on any other day, like he’s simply about to go eat breakfast, brush his teeth and then go to work.

Instead, though, he goes down the hallway to the bedroom. He taps the door gently, then opens it. The shutters are drawn, and the room is dim. He can make out the figure of his wife under the blanket. The other side of the bed is empty.

Henrik decides to not wake up Trine. He closes the door again, then goes to the kitchen and finds his mother-in-law making coffee. The radio is playing softly.

“You’re up early,” he says.

“I never went to sleep,” she says, sending him a tired smile. “I just couldn’t. Not with those things outside the window.”

Henrik glances over at the window, which is covered by a bedsheet. Through it, he can make out the figures.

“They’re relentless,” he mutters. “And there are more of them than last night.”

“Did you reach Dan?” Kirsten asks, not heeding his remarks.

“I tried, but the network seems to be out of service.”

“Oh.”

He sits down by the table and rubs his face. “Did Trine sleep all right?”

“I think so. I was just about to go check on her.”

“What about Finn?”

“Haven’t checked on him. Here you go.” She brings him a cup of steaming hot coffee.

“You’re a lifesaver,” he smiles, breathing in the smell of the coffee.

“You should eat something, too.”

“I know. I just have zero appetite.”

The music is interrupted by a bell, followed by a serious woman’s voice: “This is a public announcement. Stay indoors until further notice. Don’t try to interact with anyone infected. The town is in lockdown and has been sealed off by the military. Anyone trying to leave will be sent back. The police are working hard on resolving the situation. Remain calm and help each other. Keep updated on any developments on our website …”

“They keep sending that every five minutes,” Kirsten says, as the music resumes. She lands a plate with two pieces of toast in front of him. “Eat this while I go and check on her.”

Henrik is just about to tell her thanks, but he can’t eat anything, when he smells the toast and his stomach growls audibly. He decides to try for a bite, and it goes down surprisingly well. Within a minute, he’s wolfed down the whole thing.

He leans back with a sigh. The feeling of food in his stomach is comforting, and he feels a little better already. He sips the coffee. He decides to try calling Dan again. Just as he pulls out his phone, Kirsten’s voice calls for him: “Henrik!”

There’s panic in her tone, and it makes him jump to his feet. He runs down the hallway and stops by the open bedroom door, prepared to see the worst; like dead people climbing in through the busted window.

But the bedroom looks like it did when he checked just five minutes ago. The only exception being Kirsten, who’s sitting on the bed, crying next to her still sleeping daughter.

“What’s wrong?” he asks. Seeing his mother-in-law cry is terrifying to Henrik—she’s one of the sternest persons he knows—and the weird thing is, Henrik has no idea why what could have caused her to burst into tears. “What happened, Kirsten? Tell me!”

She holds up a pill bottle without looking at him. “She … she took them all.”

It takes Henrik a few seconds to fill in the blanks. “No,” he says, shaking his head. “No, she didn’t. She didn’t!” He runs to the bed, almost knocking Kirsten over, tearing the blanket off his wife and grabbing her by the shoulders. “Wake up! Wake up, honey!”

But the feel of her cold skin, and the way her head just lulls from side to side is enough to tell him Trine won’t wake up ever again.

He lets go of her and instead puts his hands to his forehead, stepping back. “No. Oh, God, no. How … how could she?”

“I should have noticed,” Kirsten says, sobbing. “Oh, my sweet girl … why didn’t I notice?”

“We need … we need to call the ambulance,” Henrik hears himself say.

“It’s too late,” Kirsten says, burying her face in her palms. “It’s too late …”

Henrik walks around the room for what feels like several minutes, trying to take in the situation while simultaneously telling himself it can’t be true. The only sounds are Kirsten’s quiet sobbing and the moaning and scratching from the figures outside.

Suddenly, as Henrik passes the window, he’s gripped by an uncontrollable fury, and he screams at the blinds: “Fuck off! Get the fuck away from here! Just get away, you fucking animals!”

The figures don’t go away. Instead, they seem to grope at the glass even more eagerly, maybe because of his voice, or maybe because they sense him standing right on the other side.

Henrik leaves the bedroom. He needs to get out, needs to get air, everything is spinning, the atmosphere is suffocating. But he can’t go anywhere, can’t leave the house or even open a window. Henrik leans against the wall, burying his face in his hands.

This can’t be true. It just can’t. How am I ever going to tell Dan?

The thought of his son sends a jolt of lightning to his belly. His son is still out there. Maybe he’s in danger. Maybe he’s fighting for his life. Or maybe he’s already dead. And Henrik is locked up in here, unable to do anything about it. And now Dan is all he has left.

I can’t just stay here and wait. I need to go find him.

“Kirsten,” he hears himself croak.

A few seconds later, Kirsten appears in front of him. Her eyes are red, but she has wiped away the tears and composed herself.

What an absolute trooper. Follow her example and get yourself together.

He clears his throat. “I’m leaving. I’ll go and find Dan. If he’s safe, I’ll probably stay with him. If not, I might try and get him back here.”

Kirsten nods. “I think that’s a good idea.”

“You can come with me, Kirsten.”

Kirsten shakes her head. “I’m staying here with my daughter.”

“I understand. You don’t mind me leaving?”

“I think you should. You still have a child.”

Henrik presses his lips together, then breathes deeply. “That’s right, I have. And I’m going to find him.”

Kirsten is about to say something, when there’s a sound from down the hallway.

“I think Finn is waking up,” Kirsten says.

Henrik had completely forgotten about the neighbor sleeping in Jennie’s room. “I’ll go check on him.”

“No, let me do that. You just get going.”

Henrik smiles. “Thanks, Kirsten.”

Kirsten smiles back, briefly. Henrik feels like hugging her, but he never hugged her before, and knows his mother-in-law wouldn’t want it now, even with everything that’s happened—she’s very old-school.

She goes down the hallway, stops at the door to Jennie’s room, taps it twice, then opens it.

And that’s when everything turns from bad to worse.

SEVEN

He’s dead. But then why is he moving? He can’t be moving if he’s dead. But he is.

The argument has been chasing around Dorte’s head for what feels like half an hour. She has gotten up and is striding around the kitchen, tracing a curved line past Peter wide enough that he can’t reach her—even though he’s tirelessly attempting, reaching out his free hand towards her, groaning and drooling.

Her eyes keep going to the monitor, hoping to see something, anything indicating the situation isn’t as insane as it looks.

But so far, no such luck.

She also has a hard time not looking at Peter’s face. That rational doctor-part of her keeps trying to convince her there are no discernable emotions expressed on the face of her dead-but-somehow-not-really-dead fiancé. Yet another part of her begins increasingly to interpret something akin to sorrow, pain and longing, and it stabs her in the heart to see him like this. Even if he doesn’t feel any physical pain, it’s obvious he’s in a state of deep suffering. And she—a doctor—can’t think of any way to alleviate that suffering.

She already tried morphine. She’s definitely not doing that again.

She got a pair of thick rubber gloves and a syringe. Then, approaching Peter very carefully, she managed to grab hold of his flailing wrist and plunge the needle into the crook of his elbow, administering a dose that would put a horse to sleep.

He grabbed at her eagerly and almost managed to tear off the glove, so she had to leave the syringe sticking out of his arm as she pulled both her hands back and scrambled away from him.

She waited a minute. Then the effect came. But not as expected.

First, his movements became dull and even less coordinated than they were already. He obviously had trouble holding himself up, and finally sank to the floor, his free arm still reaching out for her.

But his eyes didn’t close. And his groans continued.

The morphine, strangely, seemed to only affect his body, leaving him conscious—if you could call his present state conscious at all, of course. The result wasn’t as much a sedation as paralyzing, and to Dorte, it looked very much like Peter was still suffering just as much, except now he couldn’t move, and she waited impatiently for the effect to wear off. Luckily, it only lasted a few minutes, which was a lot shorter than anticipated.

All in all, what is going on with Peter is a mystery to Dorte. She has never encountered anything in modern medicine able to explain how his state of consciousness can be unaffected by a high dose of morphine; let alone move without a heart rate or measurable brain activity. And on top of it all, she hadn’t been able to find anything in the tests.

She has run out of ideas, out of options, and she’s at a dead-end. The clock is approaching six, the day is beginning outside, and soon people will start to show up to start their workday. And the knocking on the door from Rikke is starting to drive her mad.

Which is why she finally decides to call the authorities.

She steps out into the hallway and finds her phone, searching for the number of the local police online and makes the call.

“Østjylland Police, how may I help you?” a cool female voice answers right away.

“Yes, hello, um … my name is Dorte Møller, I’m calling from Aarhus University Hospital. I have, um … I have two people here with me, both have contracted the virus currently being contained in Viborg.”

She pauses to let the woman reply.

“I’m sorry,” the woman says, sounding hesitant. “Are you by any chance referring to the Rhabdovirus?”

“Yes, that’s the one.”

“All right. And what makes you suspect the persons are suffering from this particular virus?”

“All the symptoms fit. And one of them got into contact with another infected, then she transferred the disease to the other person with me now.”

“Where did this happen?”

“In Viborg.”

“And you are now in Aarhus?”

“Yes. Could you please send someone who—”

“Are you aware that Viborg has been under complete lockdown as of last night? No one can enter or exit the city.”

“I’m aware of that, yes. We managed to leave anyway.”

A short pause. “That was highly illegal.”

Dorte takes a deep breath. “I know. And I take full responsibility.”

She can hear the woman converse briefly with someone in the background. When she comes back, her voice is slightly flustered, but still professional. “We’re sending someone out right now.”

“Thank you. We need two ambulances and—”

“Please give me your exact whereabouts.”

Dorte gives her the information. “Like I was saying, please send two ambulances so we can transport the patients separately. Also, we need police in protective armor and restraining equipment to secure them, as they’ll attempt to bite or scratch anyone who comes near.”

“We’ll take care of that.”

“Good, because it’s very impo—”

“Have the infected been into contact with anyone else?”

“No. They’ve just been with me the entire time.”

“Have you yourself had any physical contact with any of them?”

“Yes, but I didn’t contract the virus.”

“You can’t know that for sure; the virus might be transferred through physical contact or—”

“No, it doesn’t. It spreads much like rabies; through saliva and blood. The skin needs to be penetrated, and I don’t have any scratches or puncture wounds. Also, I have no symptoms.”

A brief pause. “How do you know all this?”

“I’m a doctor. Please make sure the people you’re sending take the proper precautions. The last thing we need is a second outbreak.”

“That wouldn’t have happened, had you stayed inside the quarantined area, Doctor.”

The ironic emphasis on that last word and the tone of the woman’s voice makes Dorte want to tell her to go fuck herself, but she knows that won’t do her any good, and she also knows the woman is right. Maybe she should have stayed. Maybe she should have followed the official instructions.

But she just couldn’t sit back and watch her sister die from an unknown illness, not as long as she was convinced the cure was fairly simple. So, she talked Peter and Rikke into it. And she lied to Martin, her childhood friend. This was all her doing. And it turned out she was not able to help either of them.

“We’ll have someone with you in five minutes,” the woman tells her, pulling her back. “You stay where you are.”

“Don’t worry,” Dorte says. “I’m not going anywhere.”

EIGHT

Henrik has turned away to go back inside the bedroom and pack a fresh set of clothes, when Kirsten screams.

He spins around and sees Finn come lunging out from Jennie’s old room, throwing himself at Kirsten, who backs away into the wall in a vain attempt to get out of reach. But it’s too late, and Finn bites down hard on her neck.

Kirsten’s scream turns even higher and more piercing.

Oh, Jesus Christ!

Henrik runs down the hallway and grabs Kirsten’s flailing arm. He begins tugging hard to get her away from Finn, but Finn acts like a predator who just caught his breakfast and isn’t intent at all on letting it go. He bears down harder with his teeth, growling and blowing bubbles in the blood from Kirsten’s throat. He also reaches up and grabs her by the grey hair, yanking her head sideways.

Kirsten screams again, very high-pitched, but a little weaker than before, and for an awful moment, she looks like a piece of toy torn between two big kids, as Henrik pulls her one way, while Finn pulls her the other.

“Let go of her!” Henrik shouts, and then, without thinking, he lets go of Kirsten with one hand in order to throw a punch at Finn. His knuckles connect with the old guy’s temple, and his jaw pops open for a moment, as he blinks his dead eyes and staggers backwards, loosening his grip on Kirsten’s hair and allowing Henrik to pull her free. She almost collapses into his arms, and Henrik half drags, half lifts her backwards down the hallway, away from Finn.

But the neighbor quickly regains his bearings and comes waddling after them, arms stretched out, the lower part of his face smothered in blood.

Behind him, another figure comes out of Jennie’s old room. Henrik briefly recognizes Lone, even though her head is tilted awkwardly sideways and her neck is all torn open. Behind her, a younger woman and a teenage boy appear. The three of them crowd the hallway, and more seem to be pushing from behind.

Jesus Christ, how many were in there?

Kirsten has almost lost consciousness now, and she can’t keep to her feet, which means Henrik can’t get her out of the way in time.

“Get back!” he roars instead at Finn, who completely ignores the command and simply comes at them even quicker.

Henrik steps forward and, still supporting Kirsten in an awkward half-embrace, throws a hard kick at the old guy’s leg. His heel lands perfectly on the kneecap, and there’s a loud, crisp and very satisfying snapping sound as Finn’s leg bends backwards, then collapses on itself, sending Finn to the floor.

Henrik stares at his old neighbor for half a second, taking in the absolute absurdity of the situation, and realizing peripherally that he just busted up Finn’s bad knee, which was already damaged from a motorcycle accident forty years back—Finn once told him about it one summer evening, where the two of them had shared a beer in the back garden, while Dan ran around in his diapers on the lawn, chasing butterflies and laughing.

The memory flies by in a flash before it’s replaced with what’s in front of Henrik now: Finn, sprawled out on the floor, growling and scrambling, his dead, white eyes rolling in their sockets.

Even though his leg is now angled the wrong way—which looks both bizarre and incredibly painful—Finn immediately tries to get back up. And when it doesn’t work, he elbows his way forward, clawing at the carpet.

Lone catches up with him and, instead of stepping around him, simply waddles over him, getting her feet entangled in his legs and falls over on top of him.

Henrik has won the few seconds he needs to haul Kirsten backwards and reach the bedroom. He slams the door and turns the key, then drags Kirsten over to the bed. He puts her down next to Trine and rolls her onto her back.

“Kirsten? Kirsten! Can you hear me?”

The bitemarks on Kirsten’s neck look really bad. Finn apparently tore off a big chunk of skin, severing several tendons and veins. The blood is hardly flowing anymore, and Kirsten’s breathing is almost gone.

“I’m sorry, Kirsten,” Henrik pleads, knowing it’s way too late, knowing all the CPR in the world won’t safe her.

He recalls from a documentary he watched recently that the human body contains somewhere between one and one and a half gallons of blood, and most of Kirsten’s blood is now on her clothes, on Henrik’s clothes, on the floor—anywhere but where it should be: inside Kirsten’s body.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispers again, tears filling his eyes, causing his mother-in-law’s pale face to go blurry in front of him.

Then, to his surprise, she talks in a low, strained voice: “It’s okay … It’s okay, Trine … I love you darling …”

Henrik squeezes his lips together, glancing over at his dead wife, who looks so peaceful, she could be simply sleeping.

“She loves you too,” he croaks, fighting back sobs. “You’ll see her soon, Kirsten.”

Kirsten doesn’t answer, but a hint of a smile drifts over her face, before she turns her head to the side. Then, with one last breath, she whispers: “Where’s Dan?”

Henrik stares at her as she dies; he can tell the exact moment it happens. It feels like some sort of energy leaves the room.

I’m the only one left alive in this house.

From out in the hallway, the sound of the intruders grows louder, as more of them are probably spilling into the house through Jennie’s room. Apparently, they can sense the nearest source of fresh meat—him—because they begin scratching at the bedroom door.

Henrik looks to the window. There are no figures visible through the curtain. They must have all clambered to the open window in Jennie’s old room.

He looks down at Kirsten and notices the greenish hue her skin has taken on. It’s probably only a matter of minutes before she wakes up again.

Then he turns his gaze to Trine, and a thought comes with surprising clarity: This will likely be the last time I see my wife’s face.

He reaches out and strokes her cheek. It’s soft and very cold. He gives off a low moan of grief and pain, then he gets up before the emotions can overwhelm him.

He’s thankful she won’t come back as a mindless monster. At least there’s that.

He collects the fresh clothes from the closet—what he originally came in here for—and then goes to pull the curtains. The bedroom faces the side of the garden, and there is no one in sight. He opens the window and climbs out.

He darts one last look into the bedroom—and immediately regrets it.

Kirsten is sitting bolt upright. She slowly turns her head to look in his direction, and he gets a glimpse of her dead, milky eyes, before he turns and runs.

NINE

Those five minutes feel more like half an hour, but finally, Dorte hears someone calling from down the hallway.

She has been standing outside the door to the kitchen, listening to Peter’s groans and moans from the other side, staring at the wall and not really thinking about anything.

“Hello?” a male voice calls.

Dorte blinks. “Down here!”

Two officers appear. They are wearing regular uniforms and no particular protective gear. One of them is wearing large, retro glasses which do nothing good for his face, and the other one is very tall.

“Are you Dorte Møller?”

“Yes, that’s me; I’m the one who called you.”

The two men stop a fair distance away from her.

“Don’t worry, I’m not infected,” she tells them with a tired smile. “I would have had symptoms by now.”

“Are the infected people in there?” the tall officer asks, nodding towards the kitchen door.

“Yes. Peter Nielsen is in the kitchen, and my sister, Rikke Møller, is in the cantina.”

“And you secured them both?”

“Well, Rikke is locked up and Peter is tied to a table.”

“Is it safe to open that door then?”

“Sure. But you really shouldn’t go near any of them without—”

“We’re not here to deal with the infected,” the officer with the glasses tells her in an irritating, nasal voice. “The task team will arrive shortly. Please show us the infected.”

Dorte opens the door and shows the officers in. They squeeze past her, making sure not to touch her.

“Holy hell,” the tall one exclaims when he sees Peter, who immediately attempts getting to them, but is stopped by the strap.

“What did you do to him?” the other one asks, looking from Dorte to the helmet and electrodes still attached to Peter.

“I tried to measure his brain activity and heart rate.”

“Uh-huh,” the officer says, eyeing her. “We were told you were a doctor.”

“That’s right. I work here.”

“So you thought it a good idea to bring two infected people here?”

“Look,” Dorte sighs. “I already got a talking to from the woman on the phone. Could we please just skip that part? I tried to help them, okay? I was sure I could cure them somehow. Or at least figure out what’s wrong with them.”

“Next time, let the authorities do the work,” the tall guy suggests with a scolding look. “Where’s the other one?”

“She’s in there,” Dorte says, pointing to the cantina door.

The officers look at her impatiently.

“Could you please show us?” the one with the glasses asks in a mock courteous tone.

“No, I can’t. We can’t open the door; she’s right on the other side.”

“You sure about that?” the tall officer asks. He has stepped closer to the cantina door and is listening. “I can’t hear anything.”

Dorte goes to the door, places her ear against it and listens. “She probably just tired out.” Without a second thought, she opens the door.

Both officers instinctively jump backwards.

But the doorway is empty. Dorte can’t see Rikke anywhere. She looks around the cantina, asking in a hopeful voice: “Rikke?”

No answer.

She walks in farther, scanning all the tables, the couch where Rikke lay earlier. “She’s not here anymore,” she mutters.

“Then where is she?”

The tall officer is suddenly next to her.

“Christ, don’t tell me she got out,” the other officer says from behind.

“Of course she didn’t,” Dorte says. “None of the windows are open and—” She stops abruptly as her gaze falls on the row of windows. One of them is open about a foot. Dorte suddenly gets a strong feeling of vertigo. “Oh, no … the cleaning lady must have … she must have forgotten to close it.”

“Shit,” the tall cop growls and runs over to check the window. “There are footprints outside in the flower bed. She obviously—”

He’s cut off by a sound coming from outside. It’s a car horn blaring a few blocks away, followed closely by a loud bang.

Dorte shakes her head in disbelief. “Oh, God. That was probably her. I hope no one got hurt.”

As though to answer her question, someone begins screaming. Another voice soon joins in—a man, shouting. There’s fear in the voice.

The tall cop takes a radio from his belt. “Four-four-seven, calling from Skejby, requesting immediate backup …”

The cop with the glasses grabs Dorte by the shoulder and hauls her back towards the kitchen. “You’re coming with me,” he sneers, checking his watch. “It’s now … 6:24 AM and you’re hereby placed under arrest.”

He leads her outside in the all-too-bright sunlight. Dorte squints as her eyes water, reminding her she hasn’t slept all night. The cop opens the back door of the patrol car and shoves Dorte inside. Then he bends down and hisses, close enough to her face that she can smell coffee on his breath: “I hope you didn’t cause this thing to run out of control, lady. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I was you.”

Dorte opens her mouth to say something, but she has no idea what. He’s right. And he doesn’t wait for an answer, either, but simply slams the door. Even from inside the cop car, Dorte can hear more screaming and shouting, another car honking and the screeching of tires.

No, no, please, Rikke, please don’t hurt anyone …

At that moment, a larger cop car comes rolling into the parking lot, and a group of six armed men jumps out.

“About time!” the cop yells at them. “One of them is in the kitchen. The other one got away. My colleague is calling it in now.”

Dorte looks in stunned silence as the task force rushes into the building.

TEN

Henrik runs around the house.

The sun is already up, but the morning air still feels slightly chilly, which is a welcome break from the baking heat that will resume in a couple of hours.

As he reaches the driveway, he becomes aware that there aren’t that many background noises anymore; in fact, the town is eerily quiet. Instead, he can smell smoke and something else he can’t quite place.

He runs to the Prius and gets in. Luckily, he usually keeps the key in his pants pocket, and today is no different, so the car willingly turns on as he presses the power button.

As he carefully drives out onto the street, he’s met by a less than encouraging sight. Several cars are either crashed or parked in a hurry both in the middle of the street and on the sidewalk. Things are lying about, like clothes, a shoe, a suitcase, a cap, even a grocery bag with the contents smashed and strewn about. More than once, Henrik notices large, dark puddles on the asphalt, which can only be blood. He also sees a hunting rifle. He knows it’s no use picking it up, though; first off, he has never used a firearm in his life, and secondly, he would have no idea where to get bullets.

The only thing Henrik doesn’t see—which comes as a surprise—is corpses.

No dead bodies are littering the streets.

And it takes him a few minutes to figure out why. The answer, of course, is obvious.

Dead bodies don’t stay dead anymore. They get up and walk on. Searching for fresh, living bodies they can kill and eat.

As though to confirm his thoughts, Henrik sees a movement by a house. He slows down a little, looking in through the front garden to see two figures standing in front of a window, clawing at the glass. One of them is Michael, a bachelor from three houses down. He’s easy to recognize, even with his back turned, as he weighs about 350 pounds and is wearing that same old black Star Wars T-shirt he always does. Except it’s torn to shreds now and showing the pale fresh covered with bite wounds underneath.

A few houses farther down, he sees two kids and an old guy in front of a door, scratching away.

Then a woman with only one arm, using both the remaining one and the bloody stump to fondle a window.

Henrik feels sick at the thought of whoever is trapped inside the houses like he was just a few minutes ago. How many others are there all across town right now? How long before someone accidentally opens a window? How long can they last with only what they’ve got in the fridge? How long before the authorities can get the situation under control and get all of the dead neutralized?

At least the zombies trying to get into the houses are a clear sign there are still people alive. That’s about the only positive thing Henrik can think of right now.

He passes a car parked halfway up a driveway. Four dead ones are huddled around it, clawing at the windows.

Henrik slows down and stops at a fair distance—far enough away so that the zombies won’t be drawn to him instead of whoever is in the car. He squints in an attempt to look through the front window.

Who’s in there? And why aren’t they driving away?

Someone is waving at him frantically. He sees a girl’s face framed by a scarf and recognizes Nasira, the young Muslim woman who lives down the street. Her eyes are big and scared, pleading with him.

He drives a little closer and rolls the window down an inch. “Hey! What’s the problem? Why don’t you just drive?”

Nasira leans over to the passenger side and rolls down the window. She shouts to him: “The key! I dropped the key!”

“Oh, fuck,” Henrik mutters. “Where is it?”

One of the zombies is making its way around the car, and Nasira has to roll up the window again. She looks at him, then gestures and points down in front of the car. Henrik stretches his neck and scans the asphalt. And there—right in front of Nasira’s car—is the key. She must have dropped it as she ran around the car.

Henrik nods at her and holds up a hand, trying to tell her to wait while he thinks.

He can’t get out of the car; that would be too risky. But someone needs to, if they want the key.

Or maybe not. Maybe I can get close enough to snatch it without getting out.

He puts the car in drive and rolls carefully forward. He needs to position the car in an awkward angle right up against Nasira’s car in order to reach the key from the door, and he goes back and forth a few times, trying to get it right. It’s not easy, because he can’t see the key once he gets close enough.

I feel like an old lady trying to parallel park, he thinks, almost bursting into shrill laughter, but he manages to choke back the sound. If Nasira—who’s watching him closely from her own car—saw him laughing right now, she’d think he’d lost it.

Just as he manages to get the car in the right position and is about to open the door and reach out, there’s a scream from the other car.

Henrik jolts and looks out the front window, expecting to see zombies crawling into Nasira’s car through a busted window. But all the windows are still intact. Nasira is looking back up the driveway, her hands at her mouth, her eyes terrified.

Henrik follows her gaze and feels a sinking feeling in his gut. “Oh, shit.”

The Ahmads are easy to recognize, as they come staggering down the street, because of the scarf the woman is wearing and the dark-brown skin of the man.

Nasira’s mom is relatively unscathed, except for a nasty crater at her collarbone, the scarf is even still on, only a little crooked.

Her dad, however, looks like he’s been through a meat grinder. His jawline is all chewed up, the skin hanging in ragged threads, revealing the bare, shiny bone underneath. His right shoulder has also been gnawed down to the socket, causing the arm to swing limply at his side. Someone has also done a number on his thigh and calf muscles, turning his leg into a wobbly, bloody stick. And his left eye is gone, apparently dug-out from the socket by eager fingers.

Looking at Mrs. Ahmad’s bloody hands, Henrik finds it reasonable to assume she might be the culprit.

Nausea comes rolling up from his stomach, and he needs to swallow hard to keep down the toast he had for breakfast.

Nasira is still staring at her dead parents, screaming. They aren’t headed for her car, though, but for Henrik’s. It’s too late for him to open the door now, as the dad quickly closes the distance and tries to make his way through the side window, grabbling eagerly at Henrik on the other side.

Henrik locks the door and looks away, his pulse spiking as the car rocks gently.

Don’t worry, he tells himself, they don’t have the skills to break a car window.

Nasira is still screaming, so Henrik honks the horn. The sound makes her jolt and snaps her out of it. She looks to him, and he holds up both hands in a gesture which hopefully signals something along the lines of “stay cool, I got this.”

Apparently, the girl gets the message, because she nods bravely.

Henrik puts the Prius in reverse and backs up. Both zombies take up the pursuit.

“That’s right, follow me,” he whispers, checking the mirrors to make sure he doesn’t hit anything or anyone.

When he’s far enough away, he stops and drives forward again, swerving to the side and speeds past the Ahmads. Approaching Nasira’s car once more, he stops right next to the key, opens the door, reaches out, but is stopped by the seat belt.

“Fuck,” he mutters, unbuckles, leans out once more and grabs the key.

Nasira screams.

Henrik sits upright and lets out a roar of surprise.

The guy came out of nowhere. His bloody fingers reach out and grab Henrik by the shirt before he has time to shut the door. He expects to be pulled from the car or bitten in the neck.

Instead, the guy breathes: “Help me! You got to help me! Get me away from here, man!”

Henrik blinks, realizing the guy isn’t a zombie. Still, he’s soaked in blood and has several deep scratches from nails all over his arms. Henrik vaguely recognizes him as the carpenter from a few streets over. He can’t recall his name, though. The guy’s eyes are wide and terrified.

“They didn’t get me!” he says, his voice shrill with hysteria. “They tried, but I got away! You got to help me, man!”

“I … I can’t …” Henrik manages, but the guy doesn’t listen. He just pushes himself into the car, climbs over Henrik and sits down in the passenger seat.

“Go,” he says, pointing frantically. “Get us out of here! Drive!”

“Look, I can’t help you,” Henrik says, remembering to close his door, as Mr. and Mrs. Ahmad are about to catch up. “You need to get out of my car.”

The carpenter doesn’t even look at him. He just keeps pointing ahead and repeats over and over: “Drive, man! Get us away from here! Just go!”

“Hey!” Henrik shouts. “Listen to me!”

The guy looks at him.

“You’re infected,” Henrik says. “I can’t help you. You need to get out.”

The guy nods. “Yeah, I know. Just get out of here. We’ll be fine. I’ll be fine. Just drive, man!”

“No, you don’t get it. I’m not going anywhere until you leave the car.”

The guy looks at him, but his eyes are drifting in and out of focus, and Henrik isn’t sure how much gets through to him.

“I’m not getting out,” he says, shaking his head. “Not with those things out there. They almost got me, man! But I got away.”

Henrik looks at the bleeding scratch marks on the guy’s arms, the blood is running down the seat. He looks down on his own lap, realizing the guy smeared him with blood when he climbed over him. A jolt of fear from his stomach.

What if I’m infected too? What if you get infected from just touching the blood?

Suddenly, the fear turns to rage.

“Get out,” he says, turning towards the guy. “Right now.”

“Just drive, man. Get us out of—”

“Get out of the car!” Henrik bellows. “Get out of the fucking car, right now!”

The guy looks at him, and for a moment, there’s clear comprehension on his face. “You … you don’t want to help me, man?”

“No, I don’t! ’Cause you’re already dead!”

The guy’s face turns from surprise to hurt and then to fear. Henrik can tell the guy finally gets it completely, and he feels bad for him. He starts shaking his head. “No … no, I’ll be fine … just get me out of here … just go, man!” He suddenly lunges for the steering wheel, apparently trying to take over the car.

Henrik leans back, pulls up his right leg and thrusts it at the guy. The kick sends him back hard, banging him against the door. He gasps for breath, giving Henrik a few seconds to reach over and open the door. He shoves the guy sideways, but he grabs onto Henrik’s arm, and Henrik yanks it back with a roar. “Don’t fucking touch me!”

He uses his leg instead, curling it up again and kicks the guy once more. But this time, the guy is prepared, and he grabs the doorframe, clinging on. Henrik kicks him again, pressing him a little farther out the door, but the guy is determined to fight for his life, his expression a terrible mixture of desperation, anguish and disbelief.

“What are you doing, man? Stop that! Help me!”

Henrik kicks him again, but the guy holds on. Just as Henrik realizes he won’t be able to get the guy out, Mrs. Ahmad appears like a jack-in-the-box right behind him. Her fingers reach around and grab the guy’s face from behind, jerking his head backwards, then she sinks her teeth into his forehead.

The guy screams and finally lets go of the doorframe to fight off the attacker, causing him to fall out onto the asphalt. Nasira’s dad joins the fight before the guy can get up, and he screams in pain as both zombies go to work on him.

Henrik reaches over, grabs the door and yanks it shut, locking all doors. He feels like he’s about to faint, feels like he’s not really there at all. The guy’s last screaming words make their way into the car, but Henrik hardly registers them.

“Help me! Help me! Please, help me!”

Then, the words turn inaudible and a few seconds later, the guy’s voice dies out completely.

Henrik looks over at Nasira’s car, seeing her gesturing to him.

Oh, that’s right, he thinks absentmindedly. I almost forgot what I was doing.

He looks down and sees the key still in his hand. He drives forward, rolling up right next to the other car, so close the side mirrors graze. He uses the bumper to push away the zombie standing outside Nasira’s door. When their side windows align, he rolls down the window, and Nasira does the same.

“Here you go,” Henrik says, handing her the key.

She takes it with a trembling hand. Her mascara has drawn black lines down her cheeks. “Thank you,” she whispers in her discrete, Arabic accent. “You saved our lives … God bless you.”

Henrik doesn’t know the polite way to return a blessing, so he simply says: “You too.” Then, it hits him. “Wait, what do you mean, ‘our lives’?”

A movement from the backseat of Nasira’s car causes him to stretch his neck and look. He sees a boy, no older than ten, huddle under a jacket, his brown, scared eyes staring up at Henrik.

“Oh,” he says, remembering the Ahmads actually have two kids. He looks at Nasira, feeling his gut sink at the thought of those two kids being on their own now. “Take good care of him.”

She nods, looks at the key, then back at him, hesitantly. “Can you … can you tell me how to do it?”

“How to what? Start the car?”

“How to drive. I don’t have a license.”

Henrik stares at her, then mutters: “That’s right, you’re only seventeen, like Jennie.”

“If you just explain to me how to do it, then I’m sure I can manage,” Nasira says.

“Have you had any practice?”

“Well, no, but—”

“Have you ever been behind the wheel?”

She shakes her head.

Henrik sighs. “It’s no good, Nasira. I can’t teach you how to drive a car in two minutes, and even if I could …”

He glances out at the zombies, eagerly trying to squeeze themselves in between the cars. One of them is lying sprawled out across the hood of his car, flailing its arms like a toddler not old enough to crawl yet.

He thinks about Jennie then, for no apparent reason. He doesn’t want to think about her, not now. He had told himself he wouldn’t until after the funeral. But now there probably won’t be any funeral, and he can’t help but recall her smiling face. A deep sadness pushes down on his chest, making it hard to breathe.

He already lost his daughter. And if he leaves Nasira and her baby brother like this, they will both end up dead, too.

“You’re coming with me,” he tells Nasira.

“No, we can’t,” Nasira says, shaking her head. “We don’t want to burden you.”

“You won’t. We’re better off helping each other anyway.”

She’s about to say something else, when her brother shouts something in Arabic. Nasira turns and answers him. They exchange a few words. The boy raises his voice and begins to cry. Nasira bites her lip, then looks at Henrik again.

“What’s he saying?” Henrik asks.

“My brother wants to come with you.”

“Clever boy. Help him over here. You’ll both have to climb through the window.”

Nasira doesn’t look at all comfortable with the idea. More zombies have joined in now, and Henrik counts at least ten around the cars—including the Ahmads—all of them pushing to get to the fresh meat inside. The one on the hood has moved a little closer, and another one has pushed itself in from behind, but neither of them is close enough to reach the open window.

Nasira talks to the boy in Arabic, and he climbs to the front seat, then onto her lap. He looks at Henrik through the windows before glancing nervously to the sides.

“It’s okay,” Henrik assures him, reaching his arms out for the boy. “They won’t hurt you.”

The boy grabs a tentative hold of his sleeves, and Henrik carefully pulls him over. The transition goes smoothly, and then the boy is sitting in the back of Henrik’s car.

“See?” he tells him, turning in his own seat and smiling at the boy. “That wasn’t too bad, was it?”

The boy smiles back shyly, shaking his head.

“You speak Danish, right?”

The boy nods.

“What’s your name again?”

“Ali.”

“I’m Henrik.”

“I know.”

Henrik tries to look as reassuring as he can. “Don’t look at the windows, okay? Just keep your head low. I’ll help your sister now.”

Ali nods again and shrinks down low.

Henrik turns to Nasira. “Your turn. You’ll have to climb over me.”

Nasira has already pulled her legs up, crouching on the front seat. She reaches one hand across to him, and Henrik takes it, the touch of her smooth skin and slender fingers reminds him painfully of Jennie, and he gulps back a gasp of emotion.

“It’s okay,” he says, more to himself than her. “You can do it.”

But Nasira doesn’t move right away; she’s staring out at the zombies, her face trembling slightly. She whispers a single word in Arabic.

Henrik follows her gaze and sees Mrs. Ahmad, who has shoved herself in front of the other living dead, trying eagerly to force herself in between the cars, scratching at the paint with her long nails, snarling at them.

“Don’t look at her,” Henrik says, making his voice stern. “You listening, Nasira? You can’t look at her, it’ll only make it worse. Hey!”

She doesn’t react to his voice, just keeps muttering in Arabic, tears filling her big, brown eyes.

“Nasira!” the boy calls from the backseat.

Nasira still doesn’t respond or take her eyes off of her mother.

Henrik reaches over and, placing his thumb on her chin, turns her head gently, forcing her to meet his eyes. “She’s dead. That’s not her anymore. I’m very sorry.”

The girl’s face crumbles up, the tears spilling over. She cries for a moment, squeezing Henrik’s hand.

“It’s okay,” he tells her softly. “I know how bad it hurts.”

Nasira gets a hold of herself, wipes her eyes, then takes a deep trembling breath and squeezes through the windows. She climbs over Henrik and sits down in the passenger seat. The boy grabs her from behind and hugs her.

Henrik rolls up the window, and the growls and moans from the zombies grow a little more distant. But the car is still rocking gently from them pushing and shoving.

Henrik fastens his seat belt. “Buckle up. And close your eyes.”

Both Nasira and the boy do as he asks.

Henrik bites down hard, squeezing the wheel, as he stares out at the zombies cluttering the front of the car. Just a few days ago, he would have never thought he had it in him to do what he’s about to do. But a lot has happened in the last days—heck, in the last hours. And Henrik is someone new now.

He puts the Prius in drive and hits the accelerator.

The feeling of the bones breaking underneath the tires is incredibly satisfying.

Nasira doesn’t seem to enjoy it as much, as she lets out a whimper, but she keeps her eyes firmly shut.

“It’s over,” Henrik says.

He drives to the end of the street, reaching the intersection. He stops the car and looks to both sides. The sight is about the same in both directions: cars parked haphazardly, things strewn about, a few dead people waddling around.

“Where are we going?” Nasira asks.

“I need to find my son. He left home yesterday, but I’m not sure where he is.”

He pulls out his phone and calls up Dan.

This time, the call goes through.

ELEVEN

Dan must have been sleeping—which is a surprise to him, given the circumstances—because he had a dream about Jennie, and she was alive and well.

As he gradually returns to the awake world, however, he’s brutally reminded that Jennie is neither alive nor well.

He sits up and looks around the tiny, dimly lit room, struggling to recall where he is. There are no windows, and only a few LED spots in the ceiling are providing him with enough light to see. The bed is more of a military bunk than anything. There are three others like it, two of them suspended over the others.

Then he remembers: Holger’s place.

The underground hideout.

He went down here to sleep, because the sound of the zombies clawing at the windows upstairs kept bugging him.

He rubs his eyes, yawns, then gets to his feet. His bad ankle feels noticeably better, which is a relief. He would hate to not be able to move around on his own right now.

He checks his phone, but still no missed calls. He wants to call up his dad again, but first he needs something to drink, as his throat is awfully dry.

He exits the bunk room and steps out into the main room of the bunker, where he finds William sitting by the flatscreen in the corner, Ozzy lying on the floor next to him, eyeing Dan lazily. The TV is showing some news channel.

William turns his head and shoots him a brief smile. “Morning, Sunshine. Is that do the new rage?”

Dan touches his hair and finds what feels like a crooked mohawk. He discretely tries to flatten it, but it just pops back up.

“How was your nap?” William asks, turning his attention back to the TV.

“Fine. Where can I get something to drink?”

William nods towards the kitchen area. “The water in the tap is fine. It just tastes a little weird, because it’s from Holger’s own well.”

Dan goes and pours himself a cup of water—Holger hasn’t got any glasses, only tin cups. He gulps it down, ignoring the slight earthy taste, then walks over to William.

“Where are the others?”

“Upstairs, I think. Not sure about Holger, he might be out in the garden, harvesting vegetables.”

Dan stares at him. “Is he outside? But aren’t the zombies still out there?”

“Last I checked, they were,” William shrugs. “But the garden is fenced in, so Holger’s safe. There’s an underground tunnel leading up to it.”

“Huh,” Dan mutters, scratching his cheek. “He thought of everything, didn’t he?”

“Pretty much. Now, will you look at that?” William points to the screen. It shows people rushing into a grocery store. Others are coming out, dragging heavy bags full of groceries.

“Where is that?”

“In Copenhagen.”

“But … why are people panicking in Copenhagen? Did the zombies reach them already?”

“No. I guess they’re just hoarding stuff because they’re scared of what’s going on here. But look at all that fucking toilet paper!”

Dan notices several of the shoppers are carrying packages of toilet rolls. He frowns. “Why would they buy that?”

“I don’t know! But that’s not the first time I’ve seen it. Jesus Christ, people are weird. Is that really their concern if they think society is going to close down? Being able to wipe their asses? How about food and water?”

“That is strange,” Dan agrees.

“They are doing it all over the country,” William goes on, shaking his head. “Especially in the big cities. They want to be prepared for the worst, I guess, in case the authorities can’t keep the zombies contained here.”

Dan looks at William and bites his lip. “Do you … do you think they can?”

William shrugs. “Honestly, I don’t know. It’s going to be difficult. I mean, it only takes one little slip-up to get the snowball rolling.”

Dan gets an eerie feeling looking at the footage. It looks surreal. The way people rush, empty faces, fear in their eyes.

He forces himself to look away. “Well, I think I’m going to call my dad again.”

“You’d better go upstairs. The reception isn’t too good down here.”

“Oh.” He goes out to the tunnel and back to the ladder, climbs up and pushes open the hatch. The sunlight tries desperately to enter Holger’s stuffy bedroom, but most of it is blocked by the heavy curtains. The door to the living room is open, and Dan enters.

Immediately, he notices the sound from the windows: eager fingers scratching away at the glass, muffled moans and groans. The curtains are drawn in here, too, but he can still make out shadows moving around outside. The temperature is a lot higher than it was down in the bunker; William mentioned how Holger has made sure every room underground is ventilated through a complex system which filters out anything poisonous, like nerve gas.

Dan makes his way through the messy living room, trying not to trip over anything. He prefers to call his dad from the kitchen, where the sound of the zombies hopefully won’t be audible.

As he passes the couch, he stops abruptly.

Mille is sitting cross-legged between piles of books and clothes. She isn’t moving at all, which is probably why Dan overlooked her at first. Her eyes are closed, and her hands are folded in her lap. She’s wearing a large headset connected to her phone.

“Oh, I didn’t see you,” he blurts out.

Mille doesn’t answer, so Dan reaches out and touches her shoulder gently.

Her eyes pop open. She pulls off the headset, looking from him to the windows. “What is it? Is anything wrong?”

“No, no, everything’s fine. At least as far as I know. I just woke up.”

Mille lets out a deep sigh. “You scared me.”

“Sorry about that. Were you, like, meditating or something?”

“Or something, yeah,” she says, avoiding his eyes. “It helps with my anxiety.”

“Oh. Great. Sorry I interrupted you.”

“That’s all right.”

Dan is about to leave her alone, when she nods towards the windows. “I just couldn’t take the sound of them anymore, you know. So I found this headset.”

“Yeah, I get that. We should turn on some music or something, try and block out the sound. I think I saw a radio somewhere.”

Mille smiles up at him, briefly. “That would be nice.”

Suddenly, Dan’s cheeks turn hot. It’s silly; Mille is Jennie’s age and would never be interested in someone like him. But she’s very pretty, and she looks at him a moment longer.

“What?” he asks.

“I was just thinking … while you slept, William told me what you’ve been through.”

“Oh. Yeah, it’s been … it’s been …” Dan doesn’t know how to finish the sentence, so he simply shrugs, then repeats: “Yeah.”

“It’s really impressive. I mean, how well you’re coping.”

Dan doesn’t know where to look, so he goes to scratch his hair, then remembers his involuntary mohawk and turns even more red-faced.

Mille doesn’t seem to notice. “How do you do it?” she asks earnestly.

“How do I do what?”

“How are you not sitting in a corner crying right now? I mean, you’ve lost your sister and been separated from your family, and you just go and take a nap! I can barely close my eyes for two seconds without getting a panic attack. I even fainted when I saw my friend getting … getting …” Mille’s voice grows steadily higher, and she begins to hyperventilate. “Give me a minute,” she whispers. “Here comes another one. I just need to breathe through it.”

Dan looks at her as she closes her eyes and begins taking deep breaths through her nose, filling her chest, then letting it out again slowly. After ten or twelve repetitions, she opens her eyes again.

“Was that … a panic attack?” Dan asks tentatively.

She nods. “I had them before, when I was younger. I thought I was done with them, but guess they chose today to return.”

“Well, I don’t think it’s a coincidence,” Dan mutters, gesturing towards the windows. “I think everyone feels a lot of fear today. They just said on the news that people in other towns are starting to hoard groceries from the shops, because they’re afraid the zombies might spread.”

Mille nods, not looking very surprised. “I would probably be doing the same thing if I wasn’t trapped here.”

“Yeah, well, at least I think this is one of the safest places to be trapped.”

Mille cocks her head slightly. “See, there it is again. How do you keep so damn positive?”

“Uhm,” Dan says, feeling strangely guilty. “I … I don’t know. I just … try not to think of the bad stuff, I suppose.”

Mille scuffs, but also smiles. “You make it sound easy. Maybe I should practice that. Not think of the bad stuff.”

Dan smiles back. Then the phone in his hand suddenly begins ringing. His heart jumps as he sees the name on the screen. “It’s my dad! I have to take this …”

“Sure.” Mille puts the headset back on.

Dan hurries out into the kitchen, then answers the call and asks: “Dad?”

“Dan? Thank God! You all right?”

“I’m fine, Dad. What about you guys?”

“I’m fine, too. I’m so glad to hear your voice. Where are you?”

“I’m at a safe place just outside town. That guy who picked me up—William—it’s his uncle’s place. He has this crazy saferoom under his house, Dad, I’m telling you, we could survive a nuclear war from here!”

“That’s great to hear. I’m very relieved you’re safe.”

“How are things at the house? Is it safe to come home?”

A short pause. “Not really, no. I … we had to leave the house. We’re in the car right now. I want to come pick you up, Dan.”

“Oh, okay. But … where would we go?”

“I was thinking we could leave town for a couple of days. Maybe go visit your aunt Lisbeth.”

“I think they’ve sealed off the town, Dad. They’re not letting anyone leave.”

“Oh. Well … then … we’ll figure it out.”

“Can’t you guys just come here? It really is a very safe place, and I’m sure Holger wouldn’t mind a few more people.”

“Let’s talk about it when we meet, okay? Do you know the address?”

“Sure! It’s Mill Road 261.”

“Right. We’ll be there soon.”

“Okay, great. See you, Dad.”

“See you, Dan. And Dan?”

“Yeah, Dad?”

“I love you. You know that, right?”

Dan was about to end the call, but now he hesitates. “Sure. I love you too.”

“Okay. Bye now.”

“Bye.”

Dan looks at his phone as the call is disconnected. That was strange. Dan can’t recall his dad ever telling him he loved him before. He does love him, of course; Dan has never doubted that for a second, and Dan loves him right back, but those three words just weren’t ever used in the Nygaard household.

And what was it he had heard in his dad’s voice? He sounded hesitant, unsure, like he didn’t know what to say.

He was probably just relieved that I was okay. They have probably all been worried sick.

But Dan isn’t convinced that’s the real reason. In fact, he feels like he did just two days ago, when he was lying in bed, trying to go to sleep. Something was bugging him back then. Something he had picked up on, but couldn’t quite place. Something bad. And now he feels like there might be something—

“Your family okay?”

Dan spins around and stares at Mille, who’s standing in the doorway to the kitchen, headset in hand.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. And I wasn’t eavesdropping.”

“It’s okay. Yeah, my family is … fine.”

Mille frowns. “Sorry for saying, but you don’t look very happy about it?”

Dan shakes his head slowly. “I just …” He forces a smile. “I just miss them very much, that’s all.”

Mille smiles back at him. “Wish I had a family to miss.”

“You don’t have any family at all?” Dan can’t help the question slip out, even though he remembers how Mille shut William down yesterday, when he asked her about her family.

But Mille doesn’t get angry, she just sighs. “I do, but I don’t exactly miss them. It’s complicated.”

“Oh. I’m sorry about that.”

“Don’t be. It’s not your fault. It’s not anybody’s fault, really.” Mille suddenly looks like she realizes what she’s saying, and her face changes abruptly. “I won’t bother you with my sad story. I’m happy your family is all right.” She’s about to turn and go back into the living room.

“It’s okay, I don’t mind listening,” Dan says.

She turns and looks back at him. For a moment, she looks like she actually considers opening up to him. Then she says: “That’s nice of you, but I don’t want to talk about it.” She’s about to leave again, then once more looks back at him. “You know, I will tell you one thing. My mom called me yesterday. I didn’t pick up, because I haven’t spoken to her for years. It was after that call my panic attacks started again; it’s got nothing to do with the zombies.” She smiles, but the smile is sour. “I think that tells you all you need to know about my relationship to my family.”

TWELVE

Driving through town is a surreal experience for Henrik.

There are obvious signs of fights everywhere; smashed-up windows, crashed cars, possessions thrown about. They see a few living people, most of them running or driving to get somewhere, but the majority of the people they see are dead ones, staggering along tirelessly in search of something fresh to eat.

They pass a supermarket, where the cracked glass doors try repeatedly to close, but can’t because of a tipped-over shopping cart. Empty plastic bags and different groceries are littering the parking lot, as the store has obviously been looted. Henrik sees an open wallet dropped on the concrete, bills drifting around it like butterflies in the breeze. No one has bothered to pick it up. Money, Henrik muses, has already lost its appeal, as people have gone into survival mode.

This thought is more than confirmed at the next intersection.

In the middle of the road, three men are fighting savagely. Two of them seem to try and wrestle something from the third guy, beating and kicking at him to get him to let go.

Henrik slows down the car.

Nasira—who has climbed over to the backseat to be with her brother—looks up at him in the mirror. “You … you are not going out there, are you?”

Henrik shakes his head. Whatever the men are trying to rob from the poor guy, Henrik isn’t going to interfere and risk getting a beating of his own.

Finally, one of the attackers rips from the guy on the ground what looks to Henrik like a black metal rod, holding it up triumphantly. The other robber kicks the guy once more for good measure, then turns to his companion. His eyes fall on the car, and he points.

The guy with the metal rod turns around, and Henrik realizes it isn’t a metal rod, but a rifle. His stomach tightens as the man points the weapon right at him.

“Get out of the car!” he shouts.

Henrik reacts per instinct, flooring the accelerator. The man is standing right in front of the car, less than twenty feet away, and he jerks in surprise as the Prius comes lunging at him.

“Fuck!” Henrik hears him shout, as he tries to jump to the side and fire the rifle at the same time, resulting in the shot going off at forty-five degrees into the sky. The sound is very loud, even inside the car, and Nasira screams.

The car shoots right past the shooter, and when Henrik looks in the rearview mirror, the guy makes no attempt to fire the rifle again or take up pursuit.

“Jesus,” Henrik mutters, navigating between two abandoned cars.

“What … what did he want?” Nasira asks.

“The car, I guess. Or maybe he wanted to see if we had anything he could use.”

“I can’t believe it,” Nasira says, shaking her head. “How can people act like this? How can they turn into monsters over night?”

Henrik recalls something he heard on TV once. “There’s a saying that the world is only four meals away from anarchy. I guess that proved pretty accurate.”

Nasira looks out the window. “I really thought people around here were different.”

“You mean Danes?”

“Yes. This reminds me of Iraq, before my family migrated. I was only five, but I remember a little bit. The war and the poverty and the hate. You could see it on people’s faces. Those guys back there … their faces reminded me of that.”

Henrik swallows dryly. He feels like he should defend his home country, come up with something positive to say about his fellow Danes. But what they just witnessed renders it all moot.

“Guess people are the same all over the world,” Nasira finishes. “In times of crisis, they turn into their worst.”

“Well, let’s try and be the exception, then,” Henrik says, sending her a brief smile.

Nasira returns the smile, then puts her arms around her brother.

Henrik concentrates on driving. They’re approaching the hospital, and even from a few hundred yards away, Henrik can tell things aren’t right.

The scene reminds him of something straight out of an action movie. Police and military vehicles are parked around the building. Shells are strewn about like hail. Bloody pools have stained the asphalt in several places. He sees helmets, boots, and even a severed hand. The front entrance of the hospital is completely trashed from the thousands of rounds fired at it, and Henrik is reminded of the gunshots he heard when he woke up.

There has obviously been a major stand-off here, and judging from the lack of living people, it’s pretty clear who won. Either the authorities decided to withdraw once they realized the flood of undead coming from the hospital couldn’t be contained, simply pulling the plug and leaving town.

Or else they were all killed.

Henrik finds the latter to be the most disturbing. Also the most probable.

As though to confirm his thought, two figures pop up from behind a jeep. Both used to be soldiers, and they’re still wearing full fighting gear, though it didn’t serve to save their lives. They stagger towards the car, and Henrik has to drive in an arch around them.

“Don’t look,” he tells Nasira as they pass the zombie soldiers by a few feet, their bloody fingers groping for the car.

“Not even the military could stop what’s happening,” Nasira remarks, as the hospital grows smaller behind them.

“Not yet, anyway,” Henrik says. “But they will. It’s just gotten out of hands here in town, but I’m sure they’re mobilizing outside, maybe they’re even getting help from other countries.”

“I don’t think they can stop it,” Nasira says bluntly.

Henrik looks at her in the mirror. “Of course they can. It’s just a matter of time. They’ve just never faced a challenge like this, that’s all.”

Nasira shakes her head slowly. “This is not something guns can make right.”

Henrik frowns. “What do you believe this is, exactly?”

She finally looks at him in the mirror. Her eyes are gleaming. “The Day of Judgement, of course.”

Henrik can’t help but feel chills. “I guess if you interpret it that way …”

“What other way is there?”

“Well, I think it’s more like a natural disaster. I think it’s some kind of contagious virus. I don’t believe God has anything to do with it.”

Nasira doesn’t answer at first.

Henrik looks up at the mirror, and she turns her head to look away, then says softly: “I pray you’re right.”

They reach the outskirts of town, and suddenly the road clears up. Henrik is able to speed up considerably. The GPS tells him the address Dan gave him is only four miles outside town.

From the backseat, Nasira and Ali are talking Arabic to each other. Judging from their voices, Henrik assumes Nasira is comforting Ali. He can’t help but think of Jennie again, and this time, the thought of Trine joins in.

How can they both be gone?

How can you lose two of the people you love most in a matter of days?

He feels his eyes fill with tears and blinks rapidly to keep them back. He can’t allow himself to cry, not with two kids in the car, kids who just lost their parents less than an hour ago. He needs to put on a brave face.

He gazes out over the open fields for a moment, fighting back the grief. The sun is baking down over the landscape, a lone buzzard circles the blue sky, and wild flowers nod their heads from the road side. Nature doesn’t know everything has changed; it clearly takes this to be any other ordinary hot summer day.

A house comes up ahead, and as they get closer, Henrik can make out a couple of figures standing by the windows facing the road. Passing by, he slows down just enough to get a look at them. His suspicion was right; it’s zombies, groping at the windows, trying to get in, trying to get at whomever is trapped inside their house.

One glance at Nasira in the mirror is enough to tell him she also notices the zombies.

“Guess they’ve already spread beyond town,” he mutters.

Nasira just nods.

They drive for a minute in silence.

Then, there’s a reflection up ahead. A car at the side of the road.

Henrik checks the GPS. Less than one mile. The destination will come up on their left in a minute or so. But they need to pass the parked car first.

As they get closer, Henrik realizes the car isn’t parked; it’s crashed. Apparently out of nowhere, the driver has suddenly driven into the ditch, and the vehicle—a metallic blue station wagon—is now stuck with its rear pointing upwards at an angle.

A figure jumps out onto the road, and for a moment, Henrik is sure it’s a zombie. Then the person begins flailing their arms in an unmistakable I-need-your-help-please-pull-over manner.

“What do they want?” Nasira asks from the back, having already spotted the person up ahead.

“Probably a ride,” Henrik says, easing off the speed.

They’re close enough now that he can tell the person is a big teenage boy.

“Are you going to pick him up?” Nasira asks, a trace of worry in her voice.

“I can’t just drive by him. I need to at least hear him out.” Henrik sends a smile in the mirror. “Remember that thing about being the exception?”

He slows down and comes to a halt next to the crashed car. The teenager keeps waving frantically even a few seconds after the Prius has stopped. He’s tall for his age, chubby and crew-cut. His round face is glistening from sweat and his eyes are big and anxious. He glances towards the blue car, then comes around to Henrik’s door.

Henrik rolls his window down a few inches. “Hey there. Did you have an accident?”

“Yes!” the boy blurts out, nodding emphatically. “Yes, we had an accident!”

“What happened?” Henrik asks. “How could you crash on an open road like that?”

“It was one of those dead people,” the boy says, pointing. “It came out of nowhere, it did! Just walked right out onto the road. Mom tried not to hit it, but it was too late!”

Henrik looks in the direction of the boy’s finger, and he notices a couple of legs protruding from the ditch in front of the station wagon. Then he also sees a torn-off arm by the side of the road. At least the zombie was killed in the collision.

“What happened to your mom?” Henrik asks.

“She’s still in the car! Could you please help her? She’s unconscious and I don’t know what to do!” The boy is shifting his weight from foot to foot nervously, his eyes darting from the station wagon to Henrik and back.

Henrik looks at the boy a moment longer. He gets the sense that he’s very earnest. He’s obviously in distress. Maybe that’s why he acts and sounds more like a younger kid—the shock of the crash must have shaken him badly.

“Please, could you help her?” he pleads, on the verge of tears now. “I would really appreciate it. I can’t get her out of the car! She’s unconscious.”

“Sure,” Henrik says, unbuckling. “I’ll see if I can help.”

“Wait!” Nasira says, grabbing his shoulder. “Look, Henrik!” She points straight ahead.

Henrik looks. Six or seven figures are coming this way, crossing the open field, their wobbling way of walking leaving no doubt they’re zombies.

The boy also looks in the direction and jumps. “Oh, no! Oh, no, no, no! That’s more of them! They’re coming this way!” He grabs the edge of the window with his chubby fingers, staring in at Henrik desperately. “Please! Please help me! Please help my mom! She’s unconscious!”

“Okay, I’ll help you. Just step back.”

The boy lets go of the window reluctantly and steps back half a step.

Nasira is about to say something, but Henrik turns to look at her and cuts her off: “It’s okay, they’re still a couple minutes away. I’ll be quick. Stay here with your brother.”

Nasira looks grave, but she nods once in silent agreement.

Henrik gets out of the car. The boy grabs him by the elbow and pulls him towards the station wagon. “Hurry! She’s unconscious! You need to help her.”

“You told me already,” Henrik says, freeing himself. “Keep an eye on the zombies, okay?”

“On the what?”

Henrik looks at him briefly, the look of utter confusion on the boy’s face throws him off for a second. “The zombies. The dead people!”

“Oh! Sure!” The boy turns and looks in the direction of the zombies. They’re still far enough away that’s there’s time to get the woman out of the car—if she isn’t too badly injured, of course.

Henrik jumps down into the ditch and looks in through the front window, which is open all the way. A woman with large, curly hair is resting against a flat airbag, facing away from him.

“Hello? Can you hear me?”

He reaches in and gently rocks the woman. She doesn’t react the slightest. Henrik notices a trace of blood on the white air bag.

Is she even still alive?

“Please help her,” the boy pleads from behind him. “She’s unconscious.”

Henrik ignores him. Why does the kid keep repeating that? Is he really just in shock? Or did he already check his mom and realized she’s dead? Is the way he keeps saying she’s unconscious a way of denial?

Henrik yanks the door. It requires all his strength, as the frame is a little bent, but he gets it open just enough. Instead of just pulling out the woman, he wants to make sure she’s not too badly beaten, so he pushes her gently back into the seat, brushing the curls aside to reveal her face. A trickle of blood has run from the side of the mouth and is smeared over her right cheek. Other than that, she looks unharmed.

Suddenly, she opens her eyes and stares right at him. Simultaneously, both her arms shoot out and grab Henrik’s shirt.

“It’s okay,” he tells her. “I’m here to help.”

“The keys,” the woman hisses. “Give them to me.”

“What?” Henrik says, trying to pull back, but the woman holds on firmly. Her eyes are blazing at him. They don’t belong to a person who just woke up from a state of unconsciousness; they are the eyes of someone who was just pretending, waiting for the right moment.

“The keys for your car,” the woman says, tightening her grip at his shirt. “Let me have them, now!”

The situation finally dawns on Henrik completely. He realizes in a flash why the boy kept saying the woman was unconscious. Anger rises to his chest.

“Let go of me,” he says, grabbing the woman by the wrists, then pulling back his hand with a roar. He looks at the bloody cut in his palm, then down at the dagger pressed against his collarbone.

He looks at the woman, and her dark eyes stare back at him. “Last chance,” she whispers. “Give me the keys for the car, or I’ll cut your throat.”

“It’s … it’s already in the car …”

“Mom!” the boy is suddenly right behind him. “Hurry up! There’re more dead ones coming this way!”

“It’s okay, Dennis!” the woman calls back at him. “Do it now!”

Henrik has time to turn his head and see the boy raise something up in the air, blotting out the sun for a brief moment—there’s a scream—then that something connects with the back of Henrik’s head.

THIRTEEN

Nasira stretches her neck, but can’t really tell what’s going on in the ditch from here. Henrik is by the front window, bent over, but his back is turned, and she can’t see what he’s doing.

Ever since he jumped down there about thirty seconds ago, the boy has been edging slowly closer, while simultaneously keeping an eye on the approaching group of undead—who is still far away, but closing the distance. And now the boy bends down and picks up something from the grass.

Nasira lets go of Ali and unbuckles her seat belt.

“No!” Ali exclaims in Arabic, clasping her arm. “What are you doing?”

“I don’t trust that boy,” she tells him. “I think he’s a liar. I need to warn Henrik.”

Ali glances towards the undead, then lets go of her very reluctantly.

“I’ll be right back,” Nasira tells him and gets out into the baking heat. “Lock the door.”

She hears the lock snap as soon as she closes the car door. She looks towards the boy, shielding her eyes with her hand, and she sees him step down into the ditch right behind Henrik, who’s still looking in through the window, but now Nasira can see the woman, who’s apparently holding him in a firm grip by the shirt. The vicious expression on the woman’s immediately tells Nasira her suspicion was right.

Then, the boy lifts the thing he just picked up, and Nasira sees it’s a thick branch. She screams out a split-second before the boy swings the club and connects with Henrik’s head. The sound is dull and heavy, and Henrik collapses without a sound, disappearing from sight.

Nasira just stands there, in the middle of the road, for a full three seconds, unsure what to do.

The woman acts a lot more resolutely, getting out of the car, grabbing the boy—who’s staring down at Henrik in stunned amazement, like he can’t fathom what he just did—and pulls him up onto the road with her.

The sight of the blade in the woman’s hand is what finally calls Nasira back. Ali sees it too, because he shouts to her from inside the car.

The woman steers right for Nasira, knife in hand, her dark eyes fixating her, and it’s all she can do to not run away. Instead, she turns and grabs the door, pulling it, but it doesn’t open.

“Unlock it, Ali!” she shouts. “Hurry up!”

Ali scrambles for the lock, but Nasira catches the reflection of the woman in the window and realizes it’s too late. She jumps to the side and creates a few paces of distance between her and the woman and the boy.

They stop by the car. The woman grabs the door and tries to open it, but luckily, Ali didn’t unlock it. The boy looks like someone who’s about to cry, his big eyes darting from the woman to the oncoming dead. The woman, however, stares menacingly in at Ali.

“Unlock the door, boy.”

“Don’t do it, Ali!”

The woman rounds on her, squinting. “Tell him to open the door.”

Nasira shakes her head, looking from Ali’s face inside the car to the place in the ditch where Henrik is lying, probably with an open headwound, then to the undead, now close enough to make out their features.

“Your friend will be the first one eaten, unless you help him,” the woman says. “And we’ll just smash a window and get into the car anyway. But if you get the boy to open the door, no one else needs to get hurt.”

Nasira hesitates a moment longer. The situation is a stand-off with no good outcome for them, unless she does as the woman asks. So she looks at Ali and calls out in Arabic: “Come out here, Ali! Come to me! It’s okay!”

Ali shakes his head, his eyes terrified.

“Yes, you need to come out here! There’s not much time! Trust me!”

Ali climbs to the door on the other side of the car, unlocks it and climbs out. He’s barely out before the other boy has jumped in and slammed the door behind him.

“Come on, Mom!” he calls out, gesturing wildly. “Come in here! The dead people are closing in, they are!”

The woman seems incredibly unfazed by the approaching threat. She takes a couple of seconds to look at Ali, as he runs to Nasira.

“I’d get your friend to safety if you want him to live,” she says, nodding towards the ditch.

“Wait!” Nasira says as the woman is about to get in behind the wheel. “Take us with you! Just away from here. You can drop us off again anywhere. Just please don’t leave us like this!”

The woman shakes her head once, not even considering the plea, and simply says: “There’s no time.”

Nasira curses the woman in Arabic. She can’t help it, the fear and the anger simply get the better of her.

The woman looks back at her, revealing her white teeth in a sneer. “You try praying to your false desert god; I’m sure he’ll help you.”

Then she gets in behind the wheel of Henrik’s car, starts up the engine and drives off, swerving to avoid the undead, who have now crossed out into the road and have picked up speed. One of them—a young girl around Nasira’s age—is faster than the others and has gained a fair lead.

Ali squeezes Nasira’s hand hard, tugging at her. “Come on, we have to run!”

“No!” she says, pulling him back. “We can’t leave Henrik. Come with me!”

She runs to the ditch and jumps down. Henrik is lying on his side, moaning and moving about, blinking and trying to open his eyes. “Oh, my head,” he groans. “What happened?”

She feels a rush of gratitude and thanks God that Henrik doesn’t seem too badly hurt, just dazed, and she grabs him by the shoulders. “We need to get inside the car! They’re coming!”

Those last words seem to get through to him, and he fights his way to his hands and knees. Nasira guides him in through the open car, shoving him across the gear shift. Then she turns and says in Arabic: “Now you, Ali! … Ali?”

Ali isn’t there.

He’s still up by the road, glaring at the undead. The front runner girl is only a few yards away, reaching out her arm and clawing at the air with her painted fingernails.

“Ali!”

Nasira jumps back up on the road, grabs her brother and yanks him out of the way a split-second before the dead girl can sink her nails into his face. She drags him down to the car and halfway hurls him in through the door. Without looking back—but sensing the dead girl right behind her—Nasira throws herself into the car, reaches back and slams the door. But the window is still open, and there’s no handle, as it can only be rolled up electronically.

The dead girl walks straight at the car, tripping as she steps into the ditch, and slams her head against the car door with a loud clap. She doesn’t seem fazed at all, though, and Nasira can hear her scramble to get back up right away.

The girl’s fall wins Nasira the five seconds she needs to see the key still in the ignition, reach out, turn it to switch the ignition on, then hit the button for the window.

At first, there’s only a scraping sound, and for a terrible moment, Nasira is certain the window won’t close, that she’s made a horrible mistake, that they will all be trapped in the car while the dead girl squeezes in through the opening.

Then, the glass appears. It moves unevenly, but it still works its way up slowly.

“Come on, come on, come on,” Nasira chants in Arabic.

Ali shouts something from the backseat, Henrik moans incoherently from the passenger side, but Nasira hears none of it, she only stares at the window rising painfully slow.

When it’s halfway up, the face of the dead girl pops up, the milky white eyes fixing on Nasira, and she catches her breath as time seems to stop for a long moment.

The girl reaches up one hand, eagerly groping at the glass, then reaching it higher, and, just before the window closes, her hand slips inside. Nasira grabs it and tries to push it back out, but the window pins the girl’s wrist to the ceiling, stopping it from coming in farther, and Nasira pulls her own hand away, holding down the button, pressing it with all her strength. The window grinds with a strained noise, working hard to push its way up farther. Then, with a snap, it stops. Nasira presses the button a few more times, but the window doesn’t react; it’s jammed.

The zombie girl doesn’t seem concerned at all about her wrist being pinned; she just gets to her feet and tries to shove her way in, using both her free hand, and, when that doesn’t prove fruitful, her face. She moans hungrily, her pink tongue lapping at the air, as though she can taste Nasira from there, her teeth gnawing at the edge of the window, causing the glass to give off an alarming creaking sound.

“She’ll get in!” Ali’s shrill voice finally cuts through to Nasira. “Do something, Nasira! Make her stop!”

She turns to Henrik, who’s leaning against the opposite door, rubbing the back of his head.

“Goddamnit,” he groans. “That piece of shit … he struck me with something …”

“Yes, and they took the car,” Nasira says, leaning closer to Henrik and away from the girl working away at the window. She notices a movement and sees two of the other undead, who have finally caught up. They wobble down into the ditch and immediately bump up against the car, trying to get in.

For the second time today, Nasira finds herself trapped inside a car with a group of undead outside.

“Holy hell,” Henrik says, looking out and finally seeming to come completely to his senses. “This is not good …”

“I know! How do we get out?”

“We can’t, there are too many.”

Henrik points, and Nasira follows his finger. The rest of the undead are joining the party, and soon the car is surrounded on all sides. The girl pinned by the window is still biting and pushing at the glass.

“It’s only a matter of time before they work their way in here,” Nasira says. “I don’t know how much longer the window will hold.”

Henrik doesn’t seem to hear her; he has pulled out his phone.

FOURTEEN

Dan strides back and forth in the kitchen, constantly checking the windows facing the courtyard. Any minute now, the white Prius will come into view. He can’t wait to see them again, Mom, Dad and Grandma.

Ozzy comes into the kitchen, glances at him briefly, then goes to his bowl of water and begins drinking.

William follows a moment later, rubbing his forehead and looking tired. “I’ve been down there all day. Figured I’d better get some daylight while I still can.” He nods towards the living room. “So, those assholes are still outside, huh?”

“Yeah, they’re very persistent.”

William bites his lip. “Maybe we should all just pretend like we are The Beatles or something, you know?”

Dan stares at him. “What?”

“Like, we’re the world’s most famous rock band, and those outside are just fans trying to get an autograph.”

Dan can’t help but smile.

“Come on, be honest,” William goes on, “wouldn’t that be a lot easier to deal with? I call dibs on Ringo.”

Dan just shakes his head. “Did they say anything new on TV?”

William shrugs. “The prime minister held another press conference, addressing people of the town, urging them to stay indoors and to not attempt to leave. She said they were working hard to get the situation under control, that more soldiers had arrived from Copenhagen, and that they would soon find a cure.”

“A cure?” Dan frowns. “For what? Zombie-itis?”

William snorts. “That’s funny. No, they’re calling it the Rhabdovirus, because they believe it’s an unknown string of virus related to rabies or something.”

Dan throws out his arms. “It’s not a virus. You can’t vaccinate people out of it. It’s something completely different. Like, some dark Voodoo magic, or whatever.”

“Right, you call her up and tell her that. I’m sure she’s all ears.”

“You don’t believe me?” Dan asks.

William holds up his hands. “Hey, I’m with you a hundred percent, man. I’m just saying, I don’t think anyone in the government is going to listen.”

Dan sighs. “You’re right.”

William leans against the counter, folding his tattooed arms across his chest. “It was uncanny, though. She kept talking about it like it was some sort of disease. I think that’s how they need to look at it, because that’s something you can fix, you know? I’m not even sure they know the zombies are dead. Unless they’ve caught one and dissected it, but I doubt they’d gone that far already.”

“Has it spread beyond town then?”

“They didn’t say outright, but they mentioned something about something going down in Aarhus, too. They didn’t want to confirm it, though.”

Dan gets a sinking feeling in his stomach. “That’s not good. What will happen if they’ve already spread to Aarhus?”

William lifts himself up onto the counter. “Okay, here’s what I think. I think it depends on the military. She tried to sound reassuring at the press conference, but I don’t know; I mean, how many people live in this town? Almost thirty k? How many of them are brain eaters by now? Are the military going to be able to keep all those fuckers back if they decide to go look for fresh hunting grounds? Not to mention how large of an area they’d need to seal off. If they’re only blocking the roads out of town—and I’m sure there’s hundreds if you count them all—then what’s preventing the zombies from just walking across the fields instead? I saw on some video footage they were sending in helicopters, but come on, they’d still need a thousand of those to patrol the whole area around town. So, all in all, I’m not having high hopes. Not to mention if it’s spread to Aarhus, that’s even worse. A lot more people, a lot bigger city to seal off. Honestly, I think this will turn into a nationwide problem within a day or two. Then, God knows where it’ll go from there.”

“That’s uplifting.”

Both Dan and William turn to see Mille standing in the doorway.

William throws out his hands. “I’d rather be realistic than uplifting. That gives us a better chance of surviving.” He looks at Dan. “Hey, did you ever get a hold of your dad?”

“I did. They’re coming here.”

William is busy scratching his elbow, but now he looks at Dan and raises his eyebrows. “They’re coming here? When?”

“They should be here any minute.”

William jumps down from the counter. “Seriously? Did you tell Holger?”

“No, not yet. My dad just called me, like, five minutes ago, and—”

“Why did they leave home?”

“It wasn’t safe anymore.”

“Have they been in contact with any zombies?”

Dan frowns. “Of course not! They’re not stupid.”

“Well, did you consider asking us if we’re cool with you inviting your family to our hideout?”

“They’re not staying, if that’s what you’re so worried about,” Dan says, feeling irritated with William for reacting like this. He also feels a little guilty because he actually did invite them to come and stay. “They’ll just pick me up, and then we’ll be out of your hair.”

“Oh, really? And where are you planning on going?”

“What’s that to you?”

“I’m just curious. I’m sure you’re aware you’re currently at the safest place in like a thousand miles. You’re really going to waltz out of here and just wing it? Just hoping you’ll find somewhere else safe that isn’t already overrun by other survivors?”

“So what if I do? What do you care? As long as you’re safe.”

They have both raised their voices now. They’re not shouting, not yet anyway, but they will be soon, Dan is sure of it. To his surprise, however, William replies in almost a whisper.

“Look, I already lost one friend who made a stupid decision.”

The fact that William just called him his friend catches Dan off guard. He blinks. “I … well, I’m not going to get myself killed, so you don’t need to worry.”

“You will if you leave.”

Mille has been following the conversation silently, but now she speaks. “Hey, no one needs to leave. We’ll figure out a way.”

Dan sends her a thankful look.

William also looks at her, but his demeanor isn’t exactly the same. “Easy to say, harder to do.”

“Nothing is easy to do anymore. But I think we can manage Dan’s parents staying here, at least until we find another solution.”

William scuffs. “Sure, why not invite everyone we know?”

Mille crosses her arms. “You’re being a real selfish dick, you know that, right?”

“It’s called making sure we survive.”

“No, it’s called making sure you survive.” She points at his chest. “It’s all about you, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, I guess it is! I like surviving, is that so bad?”

“It is,” Mille retorts instantly, “if it means you’re not willing to help other people.”

Dan looks at William, who doesn’t answer right away. His heart speeds up, fearing this will become an all-out fight.

“The bunker was built for a maximum of four people,” William argues with assumed calm. “You heard Holger say so yesterday, didn’t you?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And we are already four people here, in case you didn’t notice. It’s about food rationing. I’m thinking about the long run here, not just how we’ll make it till tomorrow.”

“Then I’ll eat a little less,” Mille says. “And I’ll sleep on the floor. If that’s what it takes, I’ll be glad to do my part in helping out.”

William rubs his temple. “We’re not helping anyone if we’re ruining our own chances of making it. Then we’ll all be dead, not just Dan’s parents.”

“Don’t talk about them like that,” Dan blurts out, feeling a surprising cold towards William. “You’re saying it like they’re already dead.”

William is about to reply when there’s a sound from the hallway, and Holger enters the kitchen. He’s carrying a big plastic tray overflowing with fresh vegetables, his hands are dark with dirt, and his face is red and sweaty from being out in the sun.

He puts the tray on the counter, then runs the back of his hand across his forehead, wiping off the sweat, but leaving a trail of dirt. “Darn it, it’s the hottest summer I can remember,” he sighs. Then, apparently noticing the less than cheery mood, he looks around at them before addressing William: “What’s going on? Is anything wrong?”

William takes a deep breath. “Dan’s parents are coming.”

“Oh,” Holger says. “Coming where?”

“Coming here.”

“No,” Holger says, shaking his head. “No, that’s not possible. We’re already four people, I told you, we can only—”

“I know, Holger, I was just reminding Dan. We were talking about maybe—”

Dan’s phone rings. He pulls it out. “It’s my dad,” he says, then answers the call. “Hi, Dad.”

“Dan? Listen to me … we need help.”

Dan can tell right away something’s very wrong at the other end of the line. Both from the strain in his dad’s voice, but also because someone is shouting shrilly in the background.

“What is it?” Dan breathes.

“We’re trapped … in a car … about a mile up road from where you are … we can’t get out … there are six, no, seven of them right outside …”

Dan feels his stomach drop to somewhere below his groin. “I’m coming, Dad,” he hears himself say, walking towards the front door.

He’s stopped as William grabs him hard by the arm, staring at him intently. “What is it?”

“You need to find someone who can drive,” Dad goes on, and now Dan can tell William is also listening. “We need another car, this one is crashed … and we can’t get out unless someone lures them away …”

Dan looks at William. “We have a car. And someone who can drive.”

“Woah, hold on,” William begins, but Dan ignores him and turns away.

“We’re coming, Dad. Just hold on. Are you … are you all okay?”

“Yes, we’re fine. But you need to hurry, Dan.”

“We will. We’re leaving right now. Just hang—”

Someone screams again in the background. Dan doesn’t catch the words, but there is unmistakable terror in the voice. It’s a woman’s voice, probably his mom, although she sounds different.

“Move away from the window!” Dad shouts. “Get in the back, Nasira!”

“Nasira?” Dan repeats, confused. “Dad, who’s there with you?”

“There’s no time to explain! Please, just hurry, Dan! One of the windows are open! It’s a matter of minutes before they make their way in!”

Dan’s stomach drops even farther. “Okay. Okay, we’ll hurry. Hang on, Dad!” He hangs up and turns to William, who’s looking back at him with a mixture of anxiety and skepticism. “Come on! We’ve got to go, now!” He makes for the front door, but when William doesn’t follow, he stops and turns back. “Come on! What are you waiting for?”

“This is a mistake,” William says, shaking his head slowly. “You heard him. The zombies are already in the car.”

“No, not yet, but they will be if we don’t help them!”

“We can’t!” William throws out his arms. “We can’t leave here, Dan! I won’t! We might be cut off, and there’ll be no way back! We’ll die out there, don’t you get that?”

The fear swirling around in Dan’s stomach rushes up into his chest, turning to fierce anger. “I don’t care! That’s a risk I’m willing to take!”

William crosses his arms. “Well, I’m not.”

It’s all Dan can do to not throw himself at William. Instead, he points to the courtyard and the road beyond it with a trembling finger, then screams at the top of his lungs, spittle flying from his mouth: “That’s my family out there, you piece of shit! I’ve already lost my sister! I watched her fucking die right in front of me! So fuck you, you coward! If you’re not driving me, I’ll fucking walk!”

William blinks and uncrosses his arms. He frowns. “What the fuck did you just call me?”

“I called you a coward!” Dan shouts, grinding his teeth. “That’s what you are! You call me a friend, but you won’t help me! Shows what you’re worth!” Dan turns to leave, then realizes he’s not done, and turns back around. “Don’t you think I’m fucking scared? I am! I’ve been terrified for four days straight! But I’m not going to hide here while my parents die!”

He doesn’t wait for William to say anything, he simply turns and leaves the kitchen. The front door is locked, so he fumbles with the many locks. Some of them turn, others slide.

“Wait!”

Dan looks back and sees William in the doorway. Dan shakes his head firmly. “I’m not waiting another minute …”

“Well, you’ll have to,” William says, pointing. “Because they’re right outside.”

Dan looks at the narrow window next to the door and sees two zombies standing on the other side, groping at the door. He gasps and steps back, horrified at how close he got to opening the door. “I’ll … I’ll climb out of a window, then,” he says, going back into the kitchen.

“You can’t,” William says as Dan shoves past him. “They’re all barred up. Unless you want to go upstairs and climb out onto the roof, then jump down.”

Dan stops dead and throws out his arms in frustration. “How the fuck do I get out of here?”

“I’ll show you,” William says. “I’m coming with you. We take my car.”

Dan rounds on him, squinting. Then, he nods. “Fine. But we need to hurry!”

William turns to Holger. “We’re leaving through the Narnia exit. We’ll be back within half an hour.”

Holger looks very uneasy, shifting his weight back and forth, but he doesn’t argue.

“Narnia exit?” Dan asks.

William doesn’t answer. “Ozzy, you’re coming with us.”

The German shepherd was obviously only waiting for the word, because it jumps forward, whining eagerly, like a kid desperate to get off the bench and join the game.

William goes out to the tiny room with the stairs leading to the first floor, Ozzy right at his heel, and Dan follows along. He looks to the window, which is very high up and very narrow, and he’s just about to tell William there’s no way they’re getting out through there, when William opens the cabinet under the stairs.

To Dan’s surprise, there’s no shelves or anything else inside the cabinet; it’s completely empty. William reaches in and presses the back wall. A click, and the wall swings open, revealing itself to be a secret door.

“Get the name now?” William asks with a brief smile, finding his phone and activating the flashlight. “I’m the one who came up with it, by the way.” Then he squeezes into the cabinet and disappears into the darkness.

Ozzy needs no further invitation, but rushes after his owner.

Dan does the same.

A short staircase leads down half a story, then a claustrophobically narrow and dirt-smelling hallway proceeds straight ahead. Dan follows the light of William’s phone for what feels like several yards. Then they reach another staircase, and William jumps up and pushes open a hatch, revealing a strip of daylight as he peeks out.

“Okay, coast is clear,” he whispers. “But we need to be quick.”

He lifts the hatch open all the way and climbs the rest of the way up. Ozzy is right behind him, and Dan follows suit. Suddenly, they’re standing at the farthest corner of Holger’s courtyard, right next to William’s car.

Dan looks in amazement at what looks like a sewer cover from above ground, but as William closes it again, he can tell it’s only a well-crafted paper-mache imitation.

“He thought of everything,” he mutters, forgetting for a moment all about his parents.

“Yeah,” William says, opening the back door to his car and allowing Ozzy to jump in. “And why do you think I parked right here? Come on, get in, before they notice us.”

Dan throws a glance towards the house. The two zombies are still clawing at the front door, and another three are standing by the kitchen windows. Through the glass, he notices Holger and Mille both looking out at him.

“Come on, Dan!” William calls, starting up the car.

Dan quickly gets in, just as the zombies—apparently drawn by the sound of the car engine—turn this direction and begin staggering for the car.

William guns it, and the car roars, speeding out of the driveway, gravel flying everywhere.

Neither of them notices the white Prius parked behind the garage, its engine idling quietly.

FIFTEEN

Mille watches from the kitchen window as they drive off.

The zombies, who had been waddling towards the car now realize it’s hopelessly out of reach, turn around and stagger back to the house, resuming their tireless scratching at the windows and the front door.

She shutters at the sight of the expressionless faces and turns away, looking instead at Holger.

The host is standing in the middle of the room, looking at the floor while his lips move with no sound. It looks like he’s debating internally what to do now.

It strikes her then, that she’s alone in the house with this man she hardly knows at all. What was it William said he suffered from? Paranoia? Are paranoid people prone to violence? She has no idea.

So far, Holger has acted pretty normal, except for those conversations in his head he tends to have, which makes him fall curiously unaware to what’s going on around him.

But right now, he looks upset, and it makes him restless, shifting his weight from foot to foot. Rubbing his sides with his palm.

“Guess it’s just you and me for a while,” she says to break the silence, trying out a nervous smile at Holger.

He meets her eyes briefly, then looks down at the floor again. “I need to rinse these,” he mutters, gesturing to the tray of vegetables.

“Oh, sure,” she says. “You need me to help?”

“No!” He shakes his head emphatically.

Mille takes a step backwards, surprised at the sudden rise of his voice.

“No, thank you,” he repeats, more calmly this time.

“Okay,” she says. “I’ll leave you to it, then.” She turns to go back to the living room, when Holger speaks again.

“I don’t know, I’ve never seen her before.”

“What’s that?” Mille says, turning around.

Holger has already begun working on the vegetables. He looks over his shoulder, but not directly at her. “Where did you live? Before this went down, I mean. Did you live in town?”

“Yeah, I did.”

“Did you live with anyone?”

“Uhm, no. I lived alone.”

“Were you born here?”

“I moved here just last year.”

“Oh, that explains it.” Holger concentrates on the vegetables again, turning on the faucet and scrubbing them briskly. The weird interview is apparently over.

Mille broods for a couple of seconds, deciding it might just be Holger’s strange way of small talking. But just as she’s about to leave the kitchen for the second time, he says in a low voice: “She claims she moved here last year.”

Mille turns once again and looks at him.

Still with his back turned, Holger shakes his head. “No, I don’t. But William does. He wouldn’t have brought her here if we couldn’t trust her.”

Mille squeezes her lips together. She suddenly feels bad for Holger. She gets the clear sense that Holger is basically friendly, if a little reclusive, but his illness makes it very hard for him to interact with others.

She feels like saying something to him, anything to make him feel a little less anxious, but she doesn’t know what, and suddenly she catches a movement through the window.

It’s not the zombies, there are no zombies at this particular window at this moment. It’s farther away, too; all the way over where William’s car was parked. Mille frowns. It seems to her she just saw the hatch to the secret exit close. Her first thought is that William or Dan might have returned—but would they be back already? It’s been less than five minutes. Besides, where is William’s car?

She’s not even sure she saw anything. Maybe it was just a bird taking off. Maybe it was pure imagination.

But her pulse has risen slightly.

“Holger?” she asks, stepping closer to the window. “That exit William and Dan just left? Can you come in that way too?”

Holger looks at her, then shakes his head. “No. No one knows that exit, and it’s very difficult to find.”

“Yeah, I know, but what I mean is, if someone did find it, could they open the hatch? Is it possible to open it from outside?”

Holger considers for a moment. “I guess so, in theory.”

“So there’s no lock on the inside?”

“No. Why would there? It’s hidden.”

A noise from out in the hallway.

“What was that?” she asks.

Holger looks at her. “What was what?”

“Didn’t you hear that?”

He shakes his head and keeps rinsing the vegetables.

Mille bites her thumb—a habit she developed when she was very young and hasn’t been able to shake—and looks at the open doorway.

Did I just imagine that noise? I must have. The situation is eerie, that’s why I’m so jumpy.

Then the woman steps into view, and Mille lets out a scream.

She’s tall and wiry and surprisingly pale considering the sunny weather these last weeks. Her skin is freckly and her hair is reddish and curly. She’s dressed in cut-off shorts and a blue tank top clutching her ribs and pointy breasts. Around her neck is a heavy necklace full of weird objects like feathers, crystals and what looks like tiny bones. Her thin fingers are full of rings. Her eyes are piercingly blue and staring right at Mille.

Holger turns towards Mille with a look of alarm. “What? What is it? What’s wrong? Why are you screaming like that?”

Mille can’t answer, she can only stare right back at the woman in the doorway.

“It’s okay,” the woman says, raising one slender hand. Her voice is surprisingly deep. “No need to be scared.”

Holger spins around, almost knocking the tray to the floor, and gapes at the woman. “How … how did you get in here?”

“Sorry for intruding like this, Holger,” the woman says, not moving. “You remember me, right? I’m Birgit. I live down the road.” She talks very measured and calmly.

“What are you doing here?” Holger demands. “How did you get in?”

“We used the underground tunnel,” the woman tells him. “Like I said, we’re sorry for barging in, but we had no choice.”

“‘We’?” Mille says, finally finding her own voice again. “Who else is here?”

The woman turns her head and looks at her for a moment. Then she steps aside slightly. “This is my son.”

Nothing happens for a few seconds. Then, a tall, chubby teenage boy peeks out from the doorway where he was hiding.

“Hello,” he says, his cracking voice a stark contrast to his mother’s. In fact, he sounds just as insecure as he looks, like a little boy on his first day of school. “My name is Dennis,” he tells Mille, smiling shyly. “Nice to meet you. Hi, Holger.”

“You … you can’t be here,” Holger says, shaking his head. “You’re trespassing. You’ll have to leave—right now! Leave!”

He steps forwards, holding out his hands in a pushing-away motion, like he’s hoping to shove them back without touching them. In his right hand he’s holding the peeler.

Dennis takes a step back, but the woman stays put, looking at Holger with fiery eyes. “Don’t do anything stupid now, Holger. We don’t want any violence.”

Holger stops abruptly, gasping, and as he steps back, Mille can see why.

In the woman’s hand is a knife. Or rather, it looks more like an old-fashioned dagger, like something out of Game of Thrones, bronze colored and decorated hilt. The woman doesn’t do anything with the knife—it just hangs there casually from her hand. But Mille gets the clear feeling she knows exactly how to use it—and that she wouldn’t hesitate to do so.

“Like I said, we had no choice,” the woman goes on, still looking at Holger, still talking very calmly. “The dead came to our house and drove us out. We managed to get to the car, but we crashed a mile from here. We had to come here; we had nowhere else to go. If we hadn’t, we would have been surely dead by now.”

She gestures towards the windows. Mille doesn’t need to look to know what she means. Her heart is pounding away in her throat, as she tries hard to discern whether their uninvited guests have clean intentions or not. The situation feels like it could go either way.

“I knew you wouldn’t let us in if we had simply knocked,” the woman goes on, still addressing Holger with her calm, commanding voice. “And I don’t blame you. I probably wouldn’t have done so myself. But when we saw those two boys come up from that tunnel, I knew it was our last chance to get to safety. So, we took it.”

Holger keeps shaking his head while the woman talks, his eyes darting from the floor to the window to the dagger in the woman’s hand. “You can’t be here,” he mutters. “You can’t, we’re too many now. With Dan’s parents coming, we will be eight people. Eight people is way too many. We won’t have food for more than a few months.”

“I’m sure we can make it work,” the woman says. “Perhaps we won’t even have to stay here for very long. We might leave again if it becomes safe to do so.”

This last statement seems to calm Holger down a little. He stops stepping and looks sideways at the woman, his lips moving. “You … you will leave again as soon as you can?”

The woman holds out her hand—the one not holding the dagger. “We don’t want to be here any more than you want us here. But the situation is quite extraordinary. You can at least grant us refuge till tomorrow, can’t you, Holger?”

Mille can’t tell if it’s on purpose or not, but the woman moves her dagger-hand ever so slightly as she talks; only just enough for Holger to notice. It might be a coincidence, but Mille thinks not.

Holger, still looking on the fence, begins shaking his head again.

The woman’s expression changes ever so slightly. Mille senses her patience running out. And she reacts instinctively.

“I think it’s okay, Holger,” she says, stepping towards him. “I think there’ll be no harm in them staying the night here. I’m sure we can spare a couple of meals, right?”

Holger glances at her, clearly uncomfortable with her being so close, but Mille stays put.

“I … I should call William,” Holger murmurs, going to his pocket.

“I’m sure William will agree this is the right thing to do,” Mille says, putting her hand on Holger’s arm, so he doesn’t take out his phone. “Besides, he’ll be back any minute, so we can ask him.”

For a moment, no one says anything.

The woman, her son and Mille all await Holger’s decision.

Mille tries to catch his eye, but Holger is staring at the floor again, conversing with himself internally. She tries to send him a mental message. Tries to warn him that he only has one right call to make here, if he doesn’t want things to escalate. Because the woman in the doorway obviously means business, and Mille feels certain she won’t take no for an answer. In fact, she strikes Mille as someone willing to do just about anything to ensure her own—and her son’s—survival.

Then, Holger darts a glance at the woman, and asks: “Just for tomorrow?”

A trace of a smile appears at the corner of the woman’s thin lips. “Just for tomorrow. Then we’ll see.”

Holger chews his tongue, then nods. “All right. All right, we can be eight people until tomorrow. That won’t be too big of a problem. We can manage that. But just for tomorrow.”

Mille draws a discrete sigh of relief, noticing the woman sliding the dagger into her belt.

Holger turns to the sink, muttering something to himself about getting on with work, then he continues scrubbing the vegetables.

“Well,” Mille says, realizing Holger isn’t going to play host. She tries to smile at the newcomers. “Is there anything you need? Something to eat or drink?”

The woman smiles back at her. “I could really use a glass of water. How about you, Dennis?”

SIXTEEN

William has barely gotten the car into fourth, before Dan leans forward and exclaims: “There! I see them!”

William sees them too. That is, he sees the rear end of a blue station wagon protruding from the roadside ditch and a flock of zombies crowding it, shoving and stumbling over each other to get close to the potential meal.

“That’s your parents’ car?” he asks, letting off the gas.

“No,” Dan says, shaking his head. “But it’s got to be them.” Dan looks at him. “Why are you slowing down? Hurry up!”

“We need a game plan,” William says. “We can’t just rush over there.”

“Just drive close enough that they’ll come for us, then back up and lure them away from the car, so my mom and dad can get out.”

William bites his lip. “I’m not sure that’ll work. I don’t think we can get close enough.”

“Well, try it anyway!”

William drives closer to the crashed car. None of the zombies react, even as they come to a halt right next to the station wagon. Dan moves around in his seat, stretching his neck in an effort to see his parents.

“There’s my dad!” he exclaims and waves frantically. “Dad! We’re here! We’ll get them away now!”

William sees a man in the passenger side of the car, leaning against the inside of the door so as to keep out of reach of the zombie girl standing by the driver side window. She appears to have gotten the window a little open and managed to squeeze both arms in, pushing eagerly to reach Dan’s father. The glass of the window is cracked and looks like it might give way any second.

In the backseat is a girl somewhere between Dan and William’s age, hugging a kid tightly and looking out at them with big, scared eyes. They look Arabic, and William recalls the name he heard on the phone. Something with a Middle Eastern ring to it. He can’t see Dan’s mother anywhere.

Ozzy growls from the backseat, eyeing the zombies menacingly.

“Settle down, boy,” William tells him, surprised at how quickly Ozzy has caught on about the undead posing a threat.

Dan rolls down his window and leans out, flailing both arms. “Hey! Hey, you! Look! I’m right here!”

None of the zombies pay any notice to him, they just keep working the station wagon, groping and biting at the windows. One of the closest briefly turns its head their way, but then apparently decides the station wagon is the better bet, turning towards it again.

“It’s no use,” William says. “The distance is too big. We would have to drive into the ditch to get their attention.”

Dan runs his hand through his hair. “Okay. I’ll get out, then. I’ll lure them away.”

“You sure about that? I mean, can you run with your bad ankle?”

“It’s better now. And there’s no other way.”

“I could go out and sick Ozzy at them. He already did it once, and he can’t get infected. Plus, they don’t care about dogs.”

“But you have to get out, too,” Dan points out, “and who would drive the car, then?”

William eyes him, as Dan—not waiting for an answer—resolutely unbuckles and opens his door, and he can’t help but admire the kid. When he first picked him up in town yesterday, he took him for a bit of a wuss. But after learning what Dan had been through, William’s respect is growing. And now, at the thought of his family being in danger, Dan was acting with more courage than William himself would probably be able to muster.

Dan steps out of the car, then looks back in at William. “You be ready to help them over as soon as I get the zombies away from the car, okay?”

“Right. Be careful, man.”

“I will.”

Dan closes the door, and William sees him take a deep breath before he walks towards the crashed car and the zombie herd.

Ozzy growls again, staring across William’s shoulder.

“I know, buddy,” he whispers, not taking his eyes off Dan. “This is a bad fucking idea …”

SEVENTEEN

Mille shows Birgit and Dennis into the living room, bringing them each a glass of water.

“Try and find someplace to sit down,” she offers, gazing around the over-stuffed living room. “I know it’s not exactly easy.”

“Thank you,” the woman says, taking a seat in the chair by the window. Even sitting down, she seems taller than Mille, with her straight posture and her chin lifted slightly.

Dennis squeezes down into the couch at the spot where Mille was sitting earlier, meditating. He takes a few big gulps of water, then begins studying all the stuff Holger has stored up.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name?” the woman asks, holding out her hand.

Mille hesitates for just a second, then takes it. The woman’s grip is firm and cool.

“Mille,” she says.

“Nice to meet you, Mille. So, how did you end up here?” Her tone is curiously nonchalant, like they had coincidentally met at the bus stop.

“I … well, I was supposed to go on a trip with my class, and we had just left town when the bus was attacked.”

The woman raises her thin eyebrows. “Oh, you were one of the poor kids on the bus?”

“Yes. I think I might have been the only one who made it.”

“Awful,” the woman says, frowning. “I’m so sorry to hear that. You must be mourning the loss of all your friends deeply.”

“Well, yes,” Mille says, a little befuddled by the way the woman talks. Who uses the word ‘mourning’? She gets the sense the woman is a lot older than her age—which can’t be much more than forty.

“And you probably saw most of them die, didn’t you?” the woman goes on, still frowning. “They said on the news it had been quite bloody. I believe they used the term ‘massacre.’” The woman shakes her head slowly. “I can’t even begin to imagine how traumatic that must have been for you.”

The empathy in the woman’s voice is almost genuine—almost. Yet Mille gets the sense she could really care less about the bloodbath Mille had witnessed.

“Yes, it … it was awful,” Mille says.

“So, you sought refuge here?”

There it is again. That old-fashioned way of talking.

“Not exactly. I went back to town. I tried to … to help one of my classmates who had been bitten. We tried to get him to the hospital in time, but … it was too late.”

“Oh, dear. Well, it was brave of you to try and help.”

“Then I …” Mille decides to skip the part where she fainted. “I was picked up by William and Dan. They brought me here.”

“That’s the two boys who left just before we came?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you know them?”

“No. They just picked me up because they wanted to help.”

The woman smiles. “It’s true what they say; crises like these really do bring out the best in people.”

“Or the worst,” Mille adds, without really thinking. Her eyes involuntarily go to the dagger in the woman’s belt, and when she meets the woman’s eyes again, she knows she noticed.

“It’s a balance,” the woman says in a low voice. “You have to help others, but you also have to survive yourself.”

“I guess.”

The woman sips her water, then asks: “And your family? Where are they?”

Suddenly, this feels to Mille like an interview more than a conversation. Like the woman is trying to get something out of her. She decides to not give her anymore private information.

“I couldn’t tell you.”

The woman tilts her head slightly. “You don’t know?”

“No.”

Ironically, it’s the truth. Yet the woman seems to sense that Mille doesn’t want to play along in the fake conversation anymore, and she stops asking. Instead, there’s a long moment of silence passing through the living room. The woman holds Mille’s gaze, and Mille doesn’t look away. The space between them suddenly seems charged, like sparks could begin flying any moment. Mille can sense the woman tries very hard to read her thoughts.

Then, Mille’s phone suddenly vibrates.

“Sorry,” she says, pulling it out reflexively and breaking eye-contact. “That’s probably William or Dan. They must be …” She stops talking when she sees the name on the screen. A rush of cold runs down her back despite the warmth of the room. She declines the call, then puts away the phone again.

When she looks up, she sees the woman still eyeing her, now smiling knowingly. She doesn’t say anything, though, doesn’t ask who called. She just sips her glass of water, then rests it in her lap.

Dennis has picked up some electronic device and shows it to his mom. “Wow, Mom, look at all this cool stuff!”

The woman doesn’t look at it; she’s still looking at Mille.

Mille picks up her headset. “I’ll just … be in the next room if you need me.” She points to Holger’s bedroom.

The woman nods once.

Mille leaves the living room, closing the door behind her. She sits down on Holger’s bed, thankful that the room is only dimly lit due to the heavy curtains shutting out most of the sunlight. Also, there are no zombies outside this window.

She puts on the headset and plugs it into her phone. The familiar feeling of creeping anxiety has formed in her chest after the phone rang. She finds a YouTube video with calming music and crosses her legs. Her thoughts are spinning, but she tries to ignore them, tries to not engage. It’s hard.

What does she want? Why does she keep calling? Is she in danger? Or is she concerned about me?

Mille closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, then breathes back out and visualizes the fear and tension flowing out of her.

Just as the technique begins working, she hears a sound and opens her eyes.

The door is open. The woman is standing there.

“Sorry for intruding,” the woman says. “I just need to know where the bathroom is. Dennis has to pee.”

Couldn’t you have asked Holger? Mille thinks, but she just says: “Sure. It’s out in the hall, then right.”

“Thank you.” The woman is about to step back out, when something apparently occurs to her, and she asks: “Was that your mother calling just now?”

Mille is dumbfounded for a couple of seconds. “That’s … that’s not really any of your business,” she says, feeling the heat rise to her cheeks.

To her surprise, the woman smiles. “You’re right. Sorry for being curious.”

She closes the door and leaves Mille in stunned silence. Her thoughts are racing even faster now, her heart pounding under her chin.

How the hell did she know?

Had she seen the display when the call came in? No, Mille was standing several feet away. Besides, the name on the phone wasn’t Mom, it was Helle.

Suddenly, it’s not so much anxiety fluttering around her chest, but anger. She feels violated, like the woman had revealed one of Mille’s ugliest secrets. Like she did manage to read her thoughts after all. Who gave her the right to intrude like that? Wasn’t it enough they had forced their way into Holger’s house, all but threatening them to let them stay?

Mille decides she’s not going to simply take it. Dagger or no dagger, the woman can’t just go around poking her nose in other people’s stuff and expect to get away with it.

She leaves the headset and goes back into the living room.

The woman is standing by the window, the glass of water in her hand. She has opened the curtain, and the late afternoon sunlight is streaming in, turning her red hair even more fiery.

Two zombies are standing right outside, pushing and shoving for the spot closest to the woman, both groping the glass. Surprisingly, the woman doesn’t seem to care at all; she just stares out over their heads and into the distance.

“Excuse me,” Mille says, stepping closer.

The woman turns her head and looks at her. “Yes?”

“I … I don’t think you … you can’t just …” The words stumble over each other, and suddenly, facing the woman, Mille doesn’t know how to express her anger.

The woman looks at her, patiently, her expression serene.

Oh, like you have no idea, Mille thinks, getting even angrier.

She decides to stop pretending and flings out her arms. “How did you know?”

“Know what?”

“Who called me just now?”

“Hm,” the woman says, smiling faintly. “Well, I just wondered why you wouldn’t answer a call if someone’s trying to reach you right now. And I noticed you became quite upset. I figured that could only mean the person on the other end hurt you badly.” She shrugs. “And who can hurt a young woman worse than her own mother?”

Mille opens her mouth, then closes it again. The words have connected like punches to her gut. “You shouldn’t … you don’t have the right to …” Her voice is weak, her objections fall short; the woman doesn’t even seem to hear her.

She simply looks out the window again, giving off an impression of a general overseeing a battlefield.

“I understand your anger,” she says.

“You have no idea,” Mille begins, her voice a little stronger now. “How dare you talk about—”

“My own mother hurt me too, you know. In so many ways. The physical punishment was the least of it.”

Mille stares at the woman, not knowing what to say. Her pulse is racing so fast, her vision is going a little dark, and for a moment, she feels like she’s going to faint again. She has never spoken a word to anybody about this, not even her closest friends. Not even Krista knew how abusive Mille’s mom had been. And now, this total stranger was acting like she knew all about it.

Dennis enters the living room. “Mom, come look at this! Holger has this really cool—” The boy breaks off when he notices Mille.

“Go help Holger with the vegetables, Dennis,” the woman says without turning away from the window. “The least we can do is be helpful while we’re here.”

“Okay, Mom,” the boy says obediently, turning around and walking back out to the kitchen—after darting one last glance at Mille.

“I never told my son about this,” the woman goes on. “I don’t want him to know. I don’t want anybody to know, really.” She takes a deep breath. “I ran away from home at the age of fourteen. One night, I just decided I’d had enough. I think that she had burnt me with cigarettes that day. That was one of her favorite ways of punishing me.” The woman finally seems to notice the zombies outside the window. There are four of them now. “These poor things were human beings just a few days ago—can you believe it?”

Mille glances briefly at the undead, swallowing. “I can, actually,” she whispers. “I’ve seen several of them come back from the dead.”

The woman nods. “I’m glad to hear you don’t believe the lies they’re telling on the news. This virus-thing … it’s just silly. I mean, just look at them. It should be obvious to anyone there’s nothing human left in them. The merciful thing would be simply putting them down.” The woman shakes her head. “But they’re not going to. Our society has become too humanitarian. They will keep on trying to help, instead of doing what’s necessary, and it’ll be our doom.”

She sits down on the chair, looking at her glass for a moment, then drinking the last of the water, tasting it before swallowing.

“It took me years to forgive my mother,” she says, not looking at Mille. “By the time I was finally able to return home, it was too late. My mother had died. Cancer. You know how many times I prayed for her to get cancer?”

Mille doesn’t say anything; the woman doesn’t seem to expect an answer, either. She goes on.

“Her death hit me like you wouldn’t believe. I fell to pieces. It showed me how much love there had been despite the abuse. I realized the hate was only a thin veil. And the funny thing was, that I had always known. I just … chose to overlook it. You know?”

The woman finally looks at her, and Mille becomes aware her own mouth is open. She closes it, blinks and nods. “I guess … I guess I know what you mean.”

“Sure you do. You’re a clever young woman. You’ve made tough choices, but they were necessary for you to survive at the time. Now … with all of this going on, the world falling apart …” The woman shrugs. “It may be time for every one of us to reconsider our choices. Especially the ones we’ve made regarding our families.”

Mille shakes her head. “This doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t change what she’s done to me.” She can’t believe the words left her mouth.

“I know. Nothing can change that. But you can change. If you want to. You can forgive. You can return home.”

Mille suddenly realizes—to her utter horror—that she’s on the verge of crying. The woman is talking in such a calming manner, it’s like listening to a lullaby slowly leading you to sleep.

“I only have Dennis now,” the woman goes on, sending a warm look towards the kitchen. “He’s all I have, and I’ll do anything for him.” She looks back at Mille, and suddenly, there’s that fierceness in the blue eyes again. “Anything. I would even kill if I had to. He’s my blood, and he will be so forever. Even if he hates me. Even if he leaves me. That’s why your mother is calling you now.”

Mille tries to shake her head, tries to say something, but she can’t. She can’t stop the tears from spilling over, either.

The woman’s expression grows soft once more. “If this is the end of the world, wouldn’t you want to see your mother one last time? Wouldn’t you want her to know that you love her?”

EIGHTEEN

What the hell am I doing?

The thought flies through William’s mind as he sees Dan walk towards the herd of zombies surrounding the car in the ditch.

I can’t just sit here and let him kill himself.

He unbuckles and opens the door. Ozzy whines impatiently from the backseat. “Not yet, buddy. You stay here.”

William gets out, but leaves the engine running and the door open.

Dan is still on the asphalt, but close enough now that the zombies should be reacting to him. But they all seem engrossed in the people inside the car.

“Hey!” Dan says, stepping out onto the shoulder and waving his arms. “I’m right here! Come get me!”

The closest of the undead—an old, skinny lady with a nasty crater in her sternum, revealing both a row of ribs and what looks like part of a collapsed lung—turns towards him.

Dan turns and runs away as the zombie lady comes waddling up from the ditch. But as soon as he gets too far out of reach, the zombie stops, turns around and goes back to work on the car.

“No, no!” Dan shouts, walking back. “Come to me! Come here! All of you!”

He walks closer, trying to catch the attention of more of the zombies, and he manages to get a few of them to turn towards him. Two of them even give it a try, but as soon as Dan moves away, they lose interest and turn back to the easier meal in the car.

“Fuck!” Dan shouts, running both hands through his hair. “It’s not working!”

“I’ll help you,” William says, stepping closer.

Dan looks over at him with surprise. “It’s no use! We’ll never get them all away at once.”

“Maybe we don’t need to. Maybe if we just get the ones on this side to move, then your folks can climb out.”

Dan looks at the car. “Did you hear that, Dad? We’ll try and get them to move away from the passenger door. So be ready to come out on this side, okay?”

William sees the man in the front seat nod and send a thumbs-up.

“Let me go first,” William says. “Wait until I have mine a little way down the road. They’re not moving very fast, so maybe I can run back and do another one after you.”

Dan nods.

William takes a few deep breaths. Then he walks towards the car, surprised at how unwilling his legs feel. It requires all of his will power to get them to move.

How the fuck did Dan just do it? He’s a lot braver than he looks.

Of course, Dan is motivated by the fact that the people in the car are his family; to William, they’re random strangers.

I’m risking my life for someone I don’t know.

The thought is followed by a shot of guilt, as he realizes how selfish it is. So, he shoves it aside and concentrates on the situation. As soon as he gets close enough, he bends down and picks up a small stone from the roadside, not taking his eyes off the nearest zombies.

“Hey!” he shouts, throwing the stone and hitting one of them in the back of the head.

The zombie—a fat, middle-aged guy with a torn-open throat and an unhinged jaw—turns and makes a move at William, who jumps backwards. He backs away but makes sure not to create too much distance between them, keeping it below ten feet, which seems like way too close. But it works; the fat guy keeps going, following William down the road away from the cars.

“Now you!” he shouts, taking his eyes off the fat zombie just a split-second to look at Dan. “You lure away the old hag!”

Dan is already moving towards the car again, and as William backs farther away, keeping an eye on both the fat guy and Dan, he suddenly catches a movement from a completely different direction. A tall, gangly guy wearing nothing but shorts comes staggering out from the opposite wheatfield and crosses the road, headed right for Dan, whose full attention is on the old lady zombie.

“Dan!” William roars. “Look out!”

Dan hears him, but he doesn’t get the message; he obviously thinks William is just warning him to be careful about the zombie lady, because he only looks in William’s direction briefly and nods once.

“No, behind you!” William screams, and without thinking, he sprints back towards Dan, barely steering clear of the fat zombie, who tries to grab him but misses by an inch as William flies past him. “Behind you, Dan!”

Dan looks back, sees the newcomer, lets out a scream and tries to spin around and run all at once, resulting in his shoe slipping on the hot asphalt, sending him down on one knee.

William is still too far away.

He can’t reach Dan in time.

The zombies are too close, closing in from both sides.

Oh, fuck! This is it …

Ozzy barks from inside the car just as William passes it, and an idea flies through his head. Even before he can think, he shouts: “Ozzy, attack!”

The dog needs no further invitation; it was already perched on the front seat, just waiting to be tapped in. Now it bolts out of the car and closes the distance to Dan in no time. The German shepherd gives off one angry bark before it lurches full speed at the male zombie, tackling him like an American footballer.

“Holy shit,” William exclaims, stopping in surprise and forgetting about Dan completely for a moment, as he stares at Ozzy tearing at the zombie’s shoulder. The dead guy doesn’t seem to pay any heed to the dog, he tries instead to get up and get back at Dan. But Ozzy thrashes hard enough to throw the zombie onto its back, then he drags it away.

Dan has already seen the opportunity and scrambled away from the lady zombie, now getting to his feet and running towards William.

“Holy shit,” William says again, reaching out and grabbing Dan by the arm. “You okay, man? That was a fucking close call!”

“I … I think I’m fine,” Dan mutters, looking like someone who just stared death in the face. “I just hurt my hand a little when I fell down.”

They move away farther, as the zombie lady makes a halfhearted attempt to follow them, before she changes her mind and heads back for the car in the ditch.

Ozzy is still working the other zombie, having torn open his shoulder and dragged him several yards down the road.

“Ozzy!” William shouts. “Release! Heel!”

Ozzy lets go of the zombie—not completely voluntarily, but still he obeys and returns to William. He’s panting, looking proud and his mouth is full of blood.

“Good boy,” William says, not touching Ozzy, as he suspects the zombie blood will be contagious if he comes into contact with it. Being a dog, Ozzy will most likely be fine—after all, he already bit one zombie yesterday and probably swallowed at least a few drops.

“This isn’t working,” Dan says, looking over at the zombie who was just mangled by Ozzy. The guy gets to his feet and simply waddles over to the car in the ditch like nothing happened, joining the rest of the gang.

“You’re right,” William says, wiping sweat from his chin. He’s completely soaked from running around out here under the baking afternoon sun, and he could really use a Coke right now. Or, better yet, an ice-cold Carlsberg. “We need help.”

As though his words made it happen, there’s a honking of a car horn, and William turns to see a red SUV approaching. There’s a heavyset guy behind the wheel and a frail-looking woman next him. The driver is gesturing for them to move out of the way.

“Hey, we need some help!” William shouts and waves his arms.

The SUV lunges forward, and William and Dan jump to the side.

“Wow, asshole!” William cries out, flipping the finger to the guy behind the wheel as he speeds past them. “Thank you for not being a selfish dick!”

The SUV speeds on off down the road.

“What now?” Dan asks, wiping sweat from his brow. The afternoon is turning into early evening, but the sun is still hot.

“Guess we’ll just have to wait and hope the next one will be more generous.”

At that moment, they both hear the sound of a rumbling engine approaching from behind.

NINETEEN

Mille looks at her phone and breathes deeply. Her finger hovers over the call button. She’s back in Holger’s bedroom, alone.

Surprisingly, there’s hardly any fear. She feels oddly resolved. Like she has already made the decision several hours ago, and now finally is able to stop fighting it.

Then, she makes the call. Puts the phone to her ear as it begins ringing.

It’s answered almost immediately. The voice is shaky and full of hope.

“Mille? My God, is that you?”

“Hi, Mom.”

“Oh, God! It’s so good to hear your voice. Are you okay?” Her mom is on the verge of tears.

“I’m fine. How about you?”

“I was so worried. I thought something might have happened to you. We’ve been at your apartment, looking for you, but you weren’t there.”

Mille frowns. “You’ve been in town?”

“We still are! We came here as soon as we heard about what was happening.”

Mille blinks. “Who are ‘we’?”

“Torben and I, of course.”

“Oh, so you’re back together?”

“We’ve been for two years now. We—”

A man’s voice in the background. Torben, no doubt. It sounds like they’re in a car.

“What’s he saying?”

“He’s wants me to ask where you are, so we can come pick you up.”

“I … I don’t know, Mom. Did you guys really come all this way just to get me?”

“Sure! I couldn’t live with myself if I knew anything had happened to you and I could have prevented it.”

Mille closes her eyes in an effort to hold back fresh tears. She doesn’t want her mother to hear her crying, doesn’t want to let down her guard—not yet, at least. But hearing the warmth in her mother’s voice is so unexpected. The last words they exchanged were so full of hate, both of them shouting, Mille cursing her mother, and her mother telling her to fuck off and stop being a such a burden.

Mille had taken her on her word. She had left her key and walked out without looking back.

That was three years ago.

It feels like a lifetime.

“Mille,” her mom says earnestly. “I know … what happened between us … I can never undo it. I’ve wanted to take back what I said a million times.”

Mille squeezes her lips together.

“All I can say is, I wasn’t myself back then. It was the depression speaking, and the alcohol. And I know that’s no excuse. Kicking you out was unforgivable. Please let me come pick you up. Please give me another chance, even if I don’t deserve it.”

It’s surreal. It’s got to be a dream.

Mille can’t believe she’s hearing those words she’s been wanting to hear for so long, even if she would have never admitted it, even to herself. The walls she has built, which seemed so solid, are now coming crumbling down.

She nods and swallows hard. “All right, Mom.”

“Thank God! Thank you, Mille. What’s the address?”

“Mill Road 261.”

“You got that, Torben?”

“But, Mom,” Mille says, wiping her nose in her sleeve. “Where will we go? They’ve sealed off the area.”

“That’s okay, hon, Torben has a special permit. Because of his diabetes. We’ll be allowed to leave.”

“Oh. Okay, well … how long till you’ll be here?”

“How long, Torben? … Ten minutes, honey.”

“Right. I’ll just … I need to tell the guy I’m staying with I’m leaving.”

“Why doesn’t your boyfriend join us?”

“It’s not a boyfriend, Mom, it’s just a … I’ll explain later.”

“All right. See you soon, honey.”

“See you.”

Mille disconnects and looks at her phone for almost a full minute. Her brain is trying to adopt to the new reality. She just spoke with Mom. Mom told her she was sorry. They will see each other in less than ten minutes.

In the span of a short phone call, everything has changed.

Somehow, this is harder to process than the fact that the world might be ending.

Mille feels a strange mixture of confusion, excitement and worry. She also feels like a new person. She gets up from the bed and leaves the bedroom.

She finds the living room empty. She feels a sudden pressing urge to pee and hurries out to the bathroom. In the mirror, she wipes away any stray mascara and fixes her hair as best she can.

Back in the kitchen, she finds Holger just finishing up on the vegetables.

“Where are the guests, Holger?” she asks.

He answers without looking at her: “Upstairs, resting.”

“Have you heard anything from William?”

Holger shakes his head as he wipes his hands on a dish towel.

“I’ll be leaving soon. My mom is coming for me.”

Finally, Holger looks at her in a weird, sideways glance. “Why? I thought you wanted to stay here.”

“Honestly, I had no choice. But now I do. I’m thankful you let me spend the night here, Holger. Soon you’ll have one less person to worry about.” She smiles, but Holger doesn’t return it. “I’ll go pack my things,” she tells him and turns to leave.

“I don’t trust her.”

Mille turns back around. “What’s that?”

Holger squeezes the dish towel and looks at the counter. “I don’t trust Birgit.”

Mille frowns. “Why not?”

“I heard them whispering.”

“Whispering what?”

Mille is also whispering now, her heart beating faster for some reason.

Holger doesn’t answer, he just shakes his head, as though he doesn’t know.

“Holger, who are they? You know them, don’t you?”

“I know of them. They live down the road. We’ve only met in passing. She’s weird, that’s all I know. Practicing some strange occult religion. And her son is slow in the head because she used some of her rituals on him when he was little. That’s what everybody around here is saying.”

“That … that sounds like rumors,” Mille says. “I know she’s a little hard around the edges, but I don’t think she’s a witch or anything.”

“She is,” Holger says, nodding emphatically. “And she can’t be trusted. I only let them in because William will be back, and he’ll get them to leave tomorrow if they don’t go voluntarily.” Holger breathes fast through his nose, avoiding her eyes. “I can tell when people lie. That’s one of the things I’m very good at. And she’s lying. She’s lying about something.”

Mille feels a rush of cold run down her spine. She’s just about to say something else, when she hears footsteps from behind, and the woman appears in the doorway.

“Oh, sorry to barge in,” she says with a brief smile. “I just wanted to know if you got hold of your mother, Mille?”

Mille smiles, but suddenly, she doesn’t feel comfortable. “I did,” she says hesitantly, glancing at Holger, who just stands there. “She’s … she’s coming for me soon. I’ll be leaving with her.”

Birgit smiles, the pale skin around her mouth drawing thin creases. “That’s so great to hear. I’m glad you got it to work.”

“Yeah, me too.”

All three of them just look at each other for a moment. Mille can’t help but notice Birgit’s necklace with all the strange items. And the dagger protruding from her belt. Now that she thinks about it, Birgit could be a modern-day witch like Holger suggested. Or, it could all be made up by people around here just talking. It’s easy for someone with a slightly different way of dressing and acting to be called weird. And even if Birgit really is a witch, how does that change anything? Witches aren’t evil, they just practice love of nature and stuff. It’s most likely just Holger’s paranoia making him suspicious of Birgit.

Mille realizes the quiet has gone on for several seconds now, and she feels like she needs to say something else. “Thank you for … you know, talking me into calling her back.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“Well, I’d better get ready. The others will be back any time now.” She says this more to Holger than to Birgit, wanting him not to feel anxious about being alone in the house with the woman and her son.

He doesn’t look at her, though, and she’s not sure he even caught the message.

Then, Mille sees the red car coming into the driveway.

“That must be your mom,” Birgit says somewhere behind her.

Mille barely hears her; she’s staring out at the woman in the passenger seat. Smaller, older and paler than she remembers. Her haircut is also a lot shorter. But it’s definitely her.

TWENTY

William turns and shields his eyes from the light of the sinking sun.

A big, red tractor is approaching from a little way out on the field. It’s harvesting the wheat, and a cloud of golden dust is rising straight up into the blue sky.

“Who the fuck is working their fields now?” William blurts out.

“I don’t know, but maybe they can help,” Dan says, waving his arms.

The tractor slows down, then comes to a full stop. A door high up swings open, and a guy not much older than William leans out, tipping his cap at them. “Hiya!”

“Hi!” Dan shouts back over the rumbling of the engine. “Could you please help us? My parents are trapped in that car over there!”

The young farmer glances at the crashed car, then leans back inside the tractor and turns off the machine. The silence that follows is deafening. Now William can hear the zombies moaning again.

The farmer jumps down and walks towards them, stopping at the edge of the field. “Yeah, I noticed that car before. I didn’t know anyone was inside, though. Should have figured that much, I guess; otherwise, them sick bastards wouldn’t have been there.”

“They’re not sick, they’re dead,” William corrects him. “Haven’t you heard anything about what’s going on?”

The farmer looks at him and tips his cap again, scratching his white, damp hair. “Sure, I’ve been listening to the radio. But in my experience, dead fellows don’t usually go about attacking us living folks.”

“They’re zombies,” William begins. “They’ve been—”

“It doesn’t matter,” Dan cuts him off. “We need to get them away from the car so my parents can get out. We already tried luring them away, but there’re too many of them. Can you help us in any way?”

The farmer snorts and looks over at the station wagon. “Mmmm. How do you get seven people away from a car if they don’t want to?” He chews his lower lip, then answers his own question. “Seems to me it would be easier to go about it the other way around. Ya know, get the car away from the seven people.”

“That … that might actually work,” William says. “Can you, like, push the car out of the ditch using your tractor?”

The farmer looks at him and sends him a wide, yellow-teethed smile. “You’re from the city, aren’t ya? That’s not a tractor, it’s a harvester. And you don’t push a stuck car, you pull it.”

“All right,” William says, feeling like punching the guy, but suppressing the anger from his voice. “You got anything to pull it with, then?”

“Sure do. Got a wire round the back for that exact purpose. Happens more often than you’d think, another machine getting stuck in the field, and we need to drag it free.”

“Great!” Dan exclaims. “Let’s do it!”

“Sure, we could give it a go,” the farmer says. “Only problem is, we need to get the hook onto the car, and I don’t see any of you guys waltzing over there and pushing your way past those poor pricks.”

“Can’t we … can’t we do it from like, inside the trac … harvester?” Dan suggests.

“Mmmm, no, but we might be able to do it from atop it.” He looks at Dan. “If you climb up onto the roof, I’ll drive as close to the car as I can. I think you can catch the hitch from there.”

“Okay,” Dan says, nodding. “Let’s try.”

“All righty. Name’s Jens, by the way,” the farmer says, reaching out a surprisingly large hand. “What’s yours?”

“Dan. This is William.”

“Nice to meet both of ya,” Jens says, shaking William’s hand as well. “Whose dog is that?”

“Mine,” William says. “But you shouldn’t touch him; he just bit one of the zombies.”

“Oh, good boy,” Jens says.

“Listen, I’ve got to ask you: Why the fuck are you harvesting wheat right now? Don’t you know the whole area has been sealed off? The town is fucked, everyone is probably dead by now.”

“Sure, I know the situation is a little extraordinary,” Jens says with a shrug of his boney shoulder. “But me and my boss spoke about it this morning, and we figured, why stop working? Who’d that serve? I mean, we’ve got livestock to take care of.”

William can’t really argue with that. After all, harvesting wheat makes more sense than hogging toilet paper. At least you can make bread out of wheat.

“We need to hurry,” Dan reminds them.

William and Ozzy stand back as Jens helps Dan climb to the top of the machine. He then pulls out a thick metal wire from the back of the harvester, climbs halfway up and raises it to Dan who takes it.

“Right, now, hold on as best you can,” Jens instructs him, squinting against the sun as he looks up at Dan, who’s at least twelve feet above ground. “I’ll do my best to drive carefully.”

Dan—who’s already lying flat, holding on for dear life, while clutching the wire under his arm—nods affirmative.

Jens gets in and starts up the machine again.

He drives out onto the road, very slowly. Every time the harvester sways a little, Dan is thrown from side to side. He looks very pale, but he doesn’t cry out.

As the machine approaches the car in the ditch and the horde of zombies, William envisions Jens turning on the harvesting-thing and plowing into the undead, chopping them to bloody pieces. It’s a satisfying thought; however, he doubts it’ll work. The machine is made for cutting wheat, not human bodies, and it would probably jam-up pretty quickly.

Jens drives up right next to the station wagon and stops. He shouts out the open side window: “Now you do your thing, Dan!”

Dan unclutches his grasp and sits up on his knees. He peeks down, then begins lowering the hook at the end of the wire. As it reaches the back end of the car, Dan begins swinging it from side to side, slowly gaining the momentum needed to get out far enough. The hook passes the hitch a few times, getting closer with each swing. The zombies don’t pay any notice at all.

“Come on,” William mutters. “Come on, Dan. You almost got it.”

Then, the hook catches its target.

“Yes!” William cries out, raising a triumphant fist. He reminds himself to check every direction so no one uninvited sneaks up on them again. Luckily, no one is in sight.

“Good job!” Jens calls out, opening the door. “Now, come on down here!”

Dan lies back down and swings one leg out the side. He climbs down and into the harvester, receiving a helping hand from Jens, who pulls the door shut again. Then, Jens puts the machine into motion, driving slowly down the road, dragging the wire. Within a few moments, the wire is pulled taught, and the car in the ditch jerks to life.

The harvester is a giant compared to the station wagon, and it has no problem dragging it up onto the road.

Two of the zombies are behind it and get caught below it, and William can’t help but cheer as they both are crushed into the ground. The rest of the zombies take up pursuit as the car is pulling away from them. But one of them—a young woman—seems to have her hand stuck in the driver-side window, and she’s dragged along the for ride, fumbling to get to her feet, but constantly tripping as the harvester picks up speed.

“Roll it down!” William shouts as the harvester passes by him. He gestures to Dan’s father. “Roll down the window!”

He’s not sure if the message comes across, and he has no time to stay and find out, because as the station wagon passes him, the horde of zombies, who are making their way up from the ditch, seem to lose interest in the car, as William is now the closest meal.

Ozzy growls at his side, stepping forward.

“No, Ozzy, come with me,” he says, running to the car. They both get in, and William speeds off down the road, taking up pursuit of the harvester.

The zombie girl is still hanging from the side of the station wagon, but then one of her legs goes under the car and is caught beneath the tire. What happens to her can best be described as a doll being ripped apart between two kids fighting over it. Her arm gives way at the shoulder, as the rest of her body is torn under the car, flung around and spit out the front end, tumbling around a few times before lying still. The arm dangles from the window a few seconds, before it falls.

“Jesus Christ,” William mutters, trying not to look as he passes the mangled girl, who—to his surprise and horror—immediately begins getting back up, despite several of her bones being obviously shattered, and most of the skin torn from her face and scalp.

They keep going down the road for another couple of minutes, until the zombies are growing small in the rearview mirror. Then, the harvester slows down and stops.

Immediately, the doors of the blue car are pushed open, and three persons come out: Dan’s father, a brown-skinned girl William’s age and a similar-looking boy around ten.

William frowns. “Where’s his mother?”

TWENTY-ONE

Mille goes to the hallway, checks her pockets for the umpteenth time. She has her phone and nothing else, just like when she got here.

She looks back and sees Birgit standing there. Holger, however, hasn’t followed her out.

“Well, this is it,” Mille says, not really sure what she means, just wanting to gain a few more seconds before she goes out there.

“You’ll be fine,” Birgit assures her.

Mille takes out her phone as it begins vibrating. It’s Mom.

“Yeah, Mom?”

“We’re here now, honey. There are infected people outside, so you need to be very careful when you—”

“I know. There’s a secret way. Tell Torben to place the car next to the well cover at the far end of the courtyard; I’ll be coming up from there.”

“Oh. Okay. You hear that, Torben?”

An affirmative grunt in the background.

“Tell me when you’re ready,” Mille says, looking at Birgit, who looks back at her with an expectant smile.

“Right. I think we’re good to go.”

“Okay, I’m going out now. Be ready to open the door as soon as you see me.”

“I will. Be careful, honey.”

Mille disconnects the call and looks back at Birgit one last time. Birgit nods once. Mille nods back. Then she opens the cupboard and steps inside. She opens the secret backwall and is met by the smell of dirt. She uses the light from her phone to navigate as she steps down the narrow staircase and reaches a narrow tunnel. She follows it until she meets another staircase, leading back up. She steps up and pushes on the hatch. It swings open, letting in the bright early evening sunlight. Mille squints as she steps up and looks around.

The car is parked right next to the hole. She climbs up and darts a look over at the house, where the zombies are clawing at the windows. Two of them have already turned around and are headed this way.

The back door of the car opens, and Mom leans out: “Quickly, get in!”

Mille jumps in and slams the door.

Before she has time to look around the car, Mom throws herself at her, embracing her. The feel of the boney woman clutching her, the smell of her hair and the faint odor of cigarette smoke, are all exactly the same as Mille remembers, except that Mom feels smaller. But that’s probably just because Mille herself has grown; they’re actually the same size now.

“I’m so glad to see you,” Mom says into Mille’s shoulder, her voice choked with sobs. “I’ve missed you so much.”

Mille doesn’t know what to say, so she doesn’t say anything, just tentatively returns the embrace, feeling awkward.

Torben puts the car in gear and drives out of the courtyard before the zombies can reach them, leaving a cloud of dust behind as they speed out of the driveway.

Finally, Mom lets go of her and sits back into her own seat, wiping her eyes with the back of her hands. Her nails are shorter than Mille remembers and not painted over with red like they used to be. She’s also dressed differently; her shirt is not the kind with buttons or anything fancy, just a regular, nondescript Mom-shirt. No jewelry, either, except for one finger ring and a couple of discrete earrings.

Mom herself looks different, too. More suntanned, but in a natural way, and her eyebrows aren’t plucked thin anymore. The skin seems to sit closer to the skull, and there are several tiny wrinkles around her eyes and mouth. It’s only been three years, but Mom looks ten years older.

“Hello, Mille,” Torben says, sending her a look in the mirror. “Nice to meet you—properly, I mean.”

“Hi, Torben,” Mille mutters, forcing a polite smile.

The last time they saw each other was the day Mille ran away. Torben came over just as she was headed out the door. She only got a glimpse of him, but she remembers he was less heavy back then, and he didn’t have the moustache now grazing his upper lip.

Torben turns on the radio at low volume. It’s some sort of news channel.

“I’m so glad you’re okay,” Mom says, smiling. “With all the horrible images they’re showing on the news …”

“I know,” Mille says.

“We got here as soon as we could. I just had to find you. I’m so glad you returned my call; I honestly don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t got hold of you.”

“I’m glad you came,” Mille says. “Thank you.”

“Oh, honey, you don’t need to thank me. I just did what every mom would do.”

Mille tries another smile, but this one feels too awkward, so she looks out the window instead, just as they reach the highway.

Torben turns right.

“So, where are we going?” Mille asks.

“To Sweden,” Mom says, still smiling.

“Sweden?” Mille repeats. “Why?”

“We need to get out of the country,” Torben says, even though Mille was addressing her mom. “I have a cabin way up in Östersund, out in the middle of nowhere. We can ride out the storm there, until this thing blows over. Even if it spreads to Sweden, we’ll be fine so far away from any major cities.”

The thought of spending several days in a cottage with Mom and Torben makes Mille a little claustrophobic. But then again, she tells herself, is that really that different from Holger’s house?

“Darn it,” Torben mutters, jerking the wheel and causing the SUV to swerve. “Here comes another one …”

Mille looks out just in time to see a single zombie wobble out into the street, reaching uselessly for the car.

“They’ve got no consideration for their own health, do they?” Mom asks with a shudder. “Just walk right out into the road. Like they aren’t even thinking.”

“They’re not,” Mille says. “They’re braindead.”

“Well, that’s a little harsh,” Torben observes.

“No, I mean it literally,” Mille says. “Their brains have been shut-off when they died.”

Mom sends her a curious look. “What do you mean, ‘when they died’? Obviously, they aren’t dead yet.”

“Yes, they are, Mom. They’re zombies. Like in the movies.”

“That’s silly,” Torben scuffs. “I think you’ve been listening too much to what people are saying online, if you really believe that such things—”

“My friend died right in front of me, and he woke up a few seconds later. Then he killed my other friend, and she woke up right away, too.”

Neither Torben nor Mom seem to know what to say.

“Believe me,” Mille says, lowering her voice and speaking to her mother. “Those people out there aren’t humans anymore; they are walking corpses.”

To Mille’s surprise, Mom reaches over a hand and strokes her cheek. The gesture is so tender and unfamiliar, it’s all Mille can do not to recoil.

“I’m so sorry for what you had to go through,” Mom says, her voice soft. “You want to talk about it? Get it off your chest?”

Mille just stares at the woman next to her, thinking: Who are you?

Then, she says simply: “No, it’s okay.”

“You sure? Losing two of your friends like that must have been traumatic for you. It’ll probably help to talk to someone about it.”

Mille is tempted for a second or two—her mother really does seem like she genuinely wants to hear about it, wants to listen, to help—but there’s something else in her voice, too, something Mille can’t quite put her finger on, something which makes her not want to lower her guard, not just yet anyway.

She forces a smile. “Really, Mom, I’m fine.”

Mom nods. “If you change your mind, I’m here.”

“Thanks.” Mille looks out the window at the fields gliding by. The sun is headed for the horizon and will soon start painting the sky orange. A few hundred yards out, silhouetted against the sky, is a group of five or six people. No doubt dead ones.

Torben slows down, and Mille stretches her neck, expecting to see more zombies up ahead. Instead, she sees a jeep parked across the road half a mile from here. Two soldiers are standing next to it, and they looked like they’re armed.

Torben turns onto a narrow dirt road, which leads into a forest.

“Why … why are we taking this way?” Mille asks. “I thought we were leaving the area.”

“We are,” Torben says, adding no further explanation, as the car bumps along the uneven road.

Mille looks at her mother, who shrugs. “They wouldn’t let us pass, but luckily, Torben knew about this old way, which they haven’t blocked.”

“But … I thought you said you were allowed to pass … because of Torben’s diabetes?”

Mom just looks at her, smiling faintly, then looks out the window.

They lied, Mille thinks to herself, sinking back into her seat. They lied to get me to come.

The dirt road leads them through the forest and out onto the other side, where it crosses a stream and leads them along the edge of a field, before it meets up with a highway. The dirt road has obviously not been in use for several years, which must be why the military didn’t think to block it.

“And we’re out,” Torben says with a satisfied smile, turning onto the asphalt and speeding up.

Mille doesn’t say anything, she just looks out the side window again. On the radio they’re talking about the government taking further precautions.

“It’s in Aarhus now,” Torben mutters.

Mille feels a chill. She prefers to not think about it. She really hopes William wasn’t right when he said this could turn into a world-wide pandemic. If that happens, no one will be safe—not even in a cabin way up in Sweden.

Mom reaches over to the front seat and takes her handbag—it’s not the old, glossy pink nightmare Mille remembers, but a stylish, brown leather bag. She begins rummaging through it, then looks over at Mille. “Would you be okay with me smoking a cigarette? I’ll open the window.”

“Uhm, sure,” Mille says, surprised that Mom would even be considerate enough to ask.

She rolls down her window and lights a cigarette, making sure to blow the smoke out of the car with every inhalation.

Mille feels her looking at her. Mom is smiling. “I quit drinking, you know.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“That’s great news, Mom.”

“I know. Sixteen months sober in two days.”

“So, how did you do it?”

“I just decided it was time. I realized it was ruining my life, quite frankly. It made me into someone I didn’t want to be.”

Mille just looks at her mom as she speaks, taking in every word. “That’s … amazing, Mom.”

Mom smiles, but her smile turns sad. “I’m just sorry I couldn’t stop earlier, honey. I realize now how painful it must have been for you growing up with a mom who got drunk every weekend.”

It was a little more often than just the weekends—at least at the end—but Mille says nothing; she’s just stunned at the level of insight her mom has gained into her own life. Mille would have never believed those words could come out of her mouth. Mom really has changed.

“Can you ever forgive me, honey?” she says, putting her hand on Mille’s arm—the one not holding the cigarette. “Can you ever forgive me for being drunk so much of the time, when I should have been there for you?”

“It … it wasn’t the drinking, Mom. Well, if you want to see it that way, I guess you can. But it was really how you acted when you got drunk. It was like … like the truth came out. Like all the things you couldn’t say sober just came spilling out.”

Mom frowns. “Like what? What did I say?”

There’s no defensiveness in her voice, and her expression is earnestly baffled. Almost like she truly doesn’t know.

“Well, there are a lot of things …”

“Give me an example, please.”

“All right. Like the time you told me you wanted to down all your sleeping pills because you couldn’t stand the thought that I wouldn’t move away from home for another five years at least. You weren’t sure you could take it for that long—living with me in the house.”

Mom’s face turns to a mask of horror. “Did I … did I say that? No, I couldn’t have said that.”

“You did,” Mille says.

“Are you sure? Look, honey, I’m not trying to deny your feelings or anything, it’s just … that really doesn’t sound like something I would say.”

Mille throws out her hands. “Why would I make it up?”

“Sometimes, memories can be tricky,” Torben says, interjecting himself into the conversation with no invitation whatsoever. “I mean, they tend to change over time. Grow worse, you know, the more you think about them. Turning a feather into five hens and all that. Perhaps that’s what happened here.”

“No, that’s not what happened,” Mille says, feeling the anger tighten her stomach. “And I’d appreciate it if you stayed out of this, Torben. This doesn’t concern you.”

Torben eyes her in the mirror, grunts and looks out the front window again.

“Torben’s just trying to help,” Mom says, putting a hand on Mille’s arm.

“He wasn’t around, so how would he know?”

“He’s very clever when it comes to things like this. He’s almost like a psychologist. You know, it was him who got me to see a therapist.”

“Mom,” Mille says, lowering her voice. “I don’t care if he’s Mahatma Gandhi; this is between you and me.”

Mom smiles, and there’s something overbearing in the smile, which makes Mille furious. “It doesn’t hurt having someone neutral to mediate.”

Mille pulls her arm away and shakes her head. “Someone neutral? How’s Torben neutral? He’s your boyfriend; of course he’s going to side with you.”

“This isn’t about sides, Mille,” Torben says.

“Shut up!” Mille exclaims. “I’m not talking to you!”

“Honey,” Mom says, keeping her voice calm. “Perhaps this is why things didn’t work out between us in the past.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you getting all riled up. Telling people to shut up. Raising your voice.”

Mille puts both her hands to her forehead and looks down. Something is pressing in her throat, fighting to get out. She’s not sure if it’s a scream or laughter.

“Honey, there’s really no need to act like this,” Mom says, still in her assumed therapeutic tone of voice. “Just say what you’re feeling.”

Mille looks at her. “What I’m feeling? Well, if you’re finally interested, I’ll be glad to tell you.”

“Of course I’m interested.”

Mille decides to lay it all out there, no matter how hurtful it’ll be. All those words have been bottled up for so long, and finally, here’s her chance. “All right. I feel like you don’t really care, and that you never did. I feel like you’re always siding with whomever you’re sleeping with at the time. You put yourself and your boyfriend’s well-being before your own children. That’s why Kim left as soon as he could, and I honestly can’t blame him, even though it hurt me to lose my brother. He was the one person I could confide in. Because I could never do that with you. You were too self-absorbed. And I get why; your life’s a mess, it has always been. The slightest ripple throws you back into the bottle. You wallow in self-pity and you live off of other people’s sympathy. But that’s not the worst part. The worst part is that you blame others for your misery. You make them feel guilty for not sacrificing themselves. You’re an emotional black hole.”

Mille finally stops talking. Her heart is beating in her throat, causing her vision to go blurry around the edges as she stares at her mom, awaiting a reaction. To her surprise, none comes; Mom’s expression is blank.

“That being said,” Mille goes on, realizing that this is the hard part. The words come less fluently now. “You’re still my mother, and I’d like to reconcile things—as much as it’s possible anyway. That’s why I’m here.”

Mom nods. “Good. I’m glad to hear that.”

Her voice is oddly non-emotional; Mille can’t get a read on her.

“So … what do you think about what I just said?”

“It’s a lot to take in. You’ll have to give me time to process.”

“Sure.”

Mom looks straight ahead, as though the conversation is over. And after a minute of silence, Mille realizes it is over. She doesn’t have anything else to say. She got it all out. And for better or for worse, she feels good about it. She feels lighter.

She closes her eyes and leans back her head.

TWENTY-TWO

Dan jumps down from the harvester and runs to his dad, embracing him. “I’m so glad you guys are safe!”

“Me too.”

His dad reeks of sour sweat, but Dan doesn’t mind at all, he breathes in the smell deeply, savoring it, as his dad squeezes back.

Not until Dad lets go and Dan steps back a little does he realize his dad’s shirt has streaks of dried blood on it.

“Is that …?”

“It’s not mine,” Dad assures him. “I’m not hurt. Well, except for my hand. But that was a knife that did that.”

He shows Dan his right hand which is bound up with a cloth of some kind. Some blood has soaked through.

Jens comes jogging up. “Nice to meet ya’ll,” he says, tipping his cap, then bending down and releasing the hook from the car. “Don’t mean to be rude, but I’ll be off now. You folks take care!”

“Thank you!” Dad exclaims. “Thank you so much!”

Jens sends him a quick, crooked smile. “Don’t mention it.” Then he runs back to the idling harvester blocking the empty road.

The sound of another engine, as William’s car rolls up next to them. “Hate to be the buzzkill here,” he says from the rolled-down window, pointing backwards with a thumb, “but the dead fuckers haven’t given up.”

Dan turns to see the oncoming group of zombies.

“He’s right,” Dad says. “We need to get out of here.”

“Where’s Mom?” Dan asks, looking towards the blue car, but only sees a young woman and a boy whom he recognizes. “Is that … Nasira and Ali?”

“It is,” Dad says. “I’ll tell you about it once we’re safe, Dan.”

“Great idea,” William says, leaning over and pushing open the passenger-side door. “Jump in, everyone!”

Nasira and Ali head for William’s car and get in. Dad tugs at Dan, but Dan looks back at the blue car again, frowning. “But … what about Mom, Dad? I thought you said … weren’t both of you coming?”

Dan looks at his dad’s face, and even though he doesn’t say anything, Dan reads something from his dad’s eyes he cares very little for.

“Did … did anything happen to Mom?”

“Not now, Dan.”

Dad avoids his eyes, pulling him along.

Dan rips himself free with a jerk, his heart being faster. “Tell me! Tell me now, Dad! What happened to her?”

“Dan, come on!” William calls from the car. “There’s no time! They’re coming!”

Dan doesn’t care about the zombies. He doesn’t care about anything at that moment. All he sees is his dad’s lips, trembling, as he still avoids looking at Dan.

Dad throws out his arms in a gesture of hopelessness. “She didn’t … she couldn’t … she couldn’t, Dan … I’m so sorry.”

“Couldn’t what?” Dan hears himself say, as the daylight suddenly fades and a suffocating darkness creeps into his field of vision. “Couldn’t what, Dad?”

Finally, Dad looks him in the eye, and Dan sees the tears spilling over. “She couldn’t go on.” Then, his expression turns from agony to concern. “Are you … all right … Dan?”

The words drop several octaves and get drowned out before they reach Dan’s ears. The darkness swallows up everything now, and Dan feels the road sway below him as though he were at sea. The last thing he sees is Dad jumping forward to catch him before he collapses.

Then, there’s only darkness for a long time.

Or maybe it’s only a couple of minutes.

Dan can’t tell.

It’s not complete darkness, though. It’s like a thick blanket. Muffling sounds. Shutting out most of the light. He can still pick up bits now and then. People talking. William’s voice. Dad’s voice. Someone talking in a foreign language. The sound of an engine. The gentle rocking as the car turns. The rumbling of gravel below the tires.

Dan fights to open his eyes, to get back out from under the blanket. But part of him doesn’t want him to. That part wants to stay here, to sink down deeper, to never wake up again. Something happened. Something too terrible to deal with. It’s easier to just stay here. To not suffer anymore. Dan has suffered plenty already.

He doesn’t want to live in a world where both his sister and his mom are dead. If that’s his only option, then he prefers to stay right here, in the empty darkness, where no pain can reach him.

Dan lets himself sink deeper down.

TWENTY-THREE

Dennis watches from the upstairs window as the girl comes up from the underground tunnel and quickly slips into the backseat of the red car. Even from up here, he can see the woman in the passenger seat turn around to embrace her daughter.

He gets one last glance of the girl in the backseat as the car drives off out of the courtyard and disappears from sight. He’s a little sad she left, but also a little relieved. She was very pretty, and Dennis always gets nervous around pretty girls.

The floor creaks behind him. He turns to see Mom standing there, looking past him and out through the window.

“She just left,” Dennis says.

Mom nods once. “Good.”

“Why did you want her to leave, Mom?”

“It’s better for her that way. She’s with her family now.”

Dennis considers for a moment if it’s wise to say what’s on his lips. Then he decides to chance it. “I didn’t … I didn’t know you ran away when you were little.”

Mom looks at him. “Did you eavesdrop?”

Dennis shrinks a little. “I’m sorry, Mom, I couldn’t help it. I got really scared when you said Grandma had died. That’s not true, is it?”

“No,” Mom says, breathing deeply. “None of it was.”

“Then why did you say it?”

“I told the girl what she needed to hear.”

Dennis frowns. “They told us at school you’re not supposed to lie.”

“That’s not always true, Dennis. Sometimes, telling a lie is better than the alternative.”

“What was the ulterma… that thing you said?”

Mom doesn’t answer; instead, she asks: “Where’s Holger?”

“He’s down in that underground room he’s got. Did you see it, Mom? He has this supercool secret hatch in the bedroom which leads down there. I really wish I could see it, but he didn’t want me to go with him.”

Mom shakes her head slowly, then says: “He doesn’t trust us.” She sounds absentminded, like she’s thinking.

For some reason, the look on her face makes Dennis ill at ease. These last few days have more than proved to him what his mother is capable of. And Dennis himself isn’t exactly innocent. The things he has done have already given him nightmares.

The poor animals he caught, knowing what Mom would do to them. The dead body he buried in Esther’s backyard. And now the man he had clubbed in the back of the head.

He sure hopes he didn’t hurt him too badly; he was only supposed to knock him out, so they could get the car. That was what Mom had instructed him.

All the bad things Dennis has done, he has done because Mom told him to. Part of him didn’t want to do any of it, but another part would do anything Mom told him to.

Still, what haunts him most in his dreams isn’t really the violence. It’s what Old Niels said just before he died.

“I thought you were a good boy, Dennis.”

Dennis had thought so too. All his life, he had tried to be good, to treat animals and other people well—even his classmates, who would often tease him because he was a little slow.

But Dennis isn’t a good boy, not anymore, not by a longshot. Good boys don’t take part in murdering animals and people. They don’t cause dead people to wake up and begin eating each other either.

Because this was all their fault, his and Mom’s. People on television were talking about society collapsing and all the thousands of people who had already died.

The guilt was almost too much for Dennis to handle. If he thought about it, he would begin to shake uncontrollably all over. He had no idea how Mom could be so calm about it.

After they left Esther’s house that morning, they drove back home, and Dennis slept for twenty-four hours straight. That wasn’t really that surprising, as he had been up all night long.

Then things got back to normal. Kind of, anyway.

Dennis spent the next few days like he used to; or at least he tried. He played in the garden, he went down to the lake for a swim, and he played his online games. He tried not to think about what had happened. But the nightmares had reminded him every night.

Mom seemed almost normal. Except she watched the news a lot closer than she used to. Dennis couldn’t help but pick up on how the situation escalated. He understood how the living dead people could make other people into living dead ones, too, if they bit them; that was what happened to Esther.

He hoped very much the police would deal with it.

But they didn’t.

And it soon spiraled out of control.

Until finally, this morning, Mom told him to pack all of his things. They would be leaving the house and they wouldn’t come back for a long time. She didn’t say where they would be going, and Dennis didn’t ask.

They went to the car and drove away.

But they only made it a few miles down the road when a dead person waddled out in front of the car and caused Mom to crash into ditch—at least that much Mom had been honest about, when she told Holger how they ended up here. She didn’t mention anything about how they stole the car from the man and the young woman and the little boy, however. Dennis feels bad for them. He sure hopes they got away before the dead people got to them.

Then they had driven to Holger’s place in the stolen car.

Once they got close, Mom had decided that Holger shouldn’t see them coming by car, so instead of driving into the courtyard, she had parked behind the garage. And that’s when they saw the boys come up from the secret hatch.

Which reminds Dennis of something he almost forgot to tell Mom.

“Mom?”

“Hm?”

“One of those boys that were here—I recognized him. He was at Esther’s place that morning. You remember? He was the one that brought the newspaper.”

Mom looks at him. “You sure, Dennis?”

“Uh-huh, hundred percent.”

Mom bites her lip. “Do you think he saw you too? When they came to the house?”

Dennis hadn’t even considered that. “I don’t … I don’t think so. I mean, they didn’t look in our direction or anything, not as far as I remember anyway, but …”

“But what, Dennis?”

“I don’t know, maybe he looked out of the windows when we left—I couldn’t tell, Mom. Maybe he saw me. Maybe he didn’t. I just don’t know!”

Mom breathes through her nose. “This is not good, Dennis.”

He lowers his head. “Sorry, Mom.”

“It’s not your fault. It’s just pure bad luck.”

“Why is it so bad if he saw us?”

“Because if he did, and he comes back here and recognizes us … he might figure out we had something to do with how all this got started. He might decide to call the police.”

Dennis’s eyes grow wide. “Oh, no. I don’t want to go to jail, Mom!”

“You won’t. We’ll just have to make sure that kid doesn’t get back here.”

“But how? They could be here any minute. And what will we tell Holger?”

Mom ponders for a moment. “I’ll figure out a way to convince Holger it’s not safe letting them in. That won’t be a problem. While I talk with him, you go back down that tunnel we came in through, and you find a way to jam the hatch. You understand? Use anything you can find, just make sure it won’t open from the outside.”

“Okay, Mom.”

“Go now. There’s not much time.”

She ushers him towards the door.

Just before Dennis can leave the room, she hisses: “Dennis, wait!”

Dennis stops and turns back around. “What is it, Mom?”

Mom isn’t looking at him; she’s staring up into the corner. Dennis follows her gaze. From the ceiling hangs a tiny surveillance camera. A tiny red diode tells them the device is on.

“Oh, that’s just one of Holger’s cameras,” Dennis says. “He told me he can watch what happens in every room, and also outside, from down in the underground room. It’s very cool!”

Mom looks at him and says, in a very low, almost inaudible voice: “Do they also record sound?”

“Oh, yeah, they record anything that—” Dennis finally realizes why Mom looks so disturbed, and there’s a deep, sinking feeling in his gut. “Oh. Oh, crap. As soon as Holger hears this, he’ll know—”

“Shut up,” Mom tells him. “Don’t say another word. Just go, Dennis. Go and seal that hatch. Now!”

Dennis wants to obey Mom, but he hesitates. “But, Mom, what about Holger?”

Mom glances back up at the camera briefly. “I’ll deal with him. Don’t you worry about it.”

Dennis swallows dryly, then turns and runs downstairs. He heads for the hall and is just about to open the door under the staircase, when a voice says from behind: “Stop, Dennis.”

He turns around and gasps.

Holger is standing there, pointing at him with a handgun. Dennis has never seen one outside of movies; it looks smaller but just as dangerous. For a moment, he’s sure Holger is going to kill him. He instinctively raises his hands.

“Please … please don’t shoot me, Holger,” he says, his voice cracking.

“I heard you just now. I know what you’ve done. You and your crazy mom. I know you started all this. I knew you were lying all along; I just knew it.”

Dennis gapes, unable to answer. He can’t take his eyes off the gun.

“You’re going to leave here right now,” Holger says, nodding towards the front door. “You and your mom. I want you out of here.”

“But … the dead people outside …”

“I don’t care. That’s your problem. You’re not welcome here. Where’s your mom, Dennis?”

“She’s … I don’t know …”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not! She was going to find you and talk with you, but I don’t know where she …”

Dennis breaks off as something catches his eyes behind Holger. Mom comes into view, gliding across the floor, silently approaching Holger. It takes all Dennis’s will power to not look right at her. Instead, he looks Holger dead in the eye.

“Tell me where she is, Dennis,” Holger demands, and Dennis realizes Holger’s jaws are shaking. Large beads of sweat have formed on his forehead, too. He’s obviously very nervous. His hand—the one holding the gun still pointed at Dennis—is shaking. “No more lies!”

Dennis decides to go for one last lie, recalling in a flash what his mother just told him about it sometimes being the better choice. “I’m sorry, Holger,” he whispers. “But I don’t know where my mom is.”

Holger squints his eyes, apparently nonplussed at the sudden drop in Dennis’s voice.

Mom is less than ten feet away from him now.

Maybe there’s a sound. Maybe that’s what alarms Holger. Or maybe he just senses something is wrong. Whatever the reason, he suddenly whips his head around and stares directly at Mom.

Dennis looks at her too, seeing the dagger in her hand.

“Mom!” he shouts. “Look out! He’s got a—”

Dennis never gets to finish that sentence.

Holger turns the gun on Mom, and Mom throws the dagger. It flies through the air just as the gun flashes, and the sound is so deafening, it feels like someone slapping Dennis on both ears.

TWENTY-FOUR

Dad’s voice is what calls him back.

“Dan?” it says softly, very close to his ear. “Can you hear me? We’re here, now. We need to get out of the car.”

Dan opens his eyes with an effort. Dad’s face appears, smiling tentatively. “I’m sorry,” he says. “But I had to wake you. William tells me we have to climb down a shaft, and I can’t carry you.”

“What happened, Dad?” Dan croaks. “How did Mom die?”

He can’t believe how calm his own voice sounds.

Dad’s face reveals a stab of pain, and his eyes flicker for a moment, and Dan becomes more aware of their immediate surroundings: they’re still in William’s car. Dan is lying halfway leaning against his dad who has an arm around him. Next to them is Ali, and in the front seat sits Nasira. Behind the wheel is William. None of them are looking at Dan, but he can tell they’re all listening. The car is idling.

“It … it was my fault,” Dad whispers. “I should have checked on her. I should have known she couldn’t cope.”

“What happened?”

“She … she took her sleeping pills. All of them. She died in her sleep. Peacefully.”

Dan closes his eyes as everything within him turns to emptiness. Something big opens up in his chest, a pit of some kind, bottomless. And something is swallowed up by it, never to return. It feels like part of Dan.

“It’s not fair,” he whispers.

“I know,” Dad says, straining to keep from crying. “I know it isn’t. But we’ll get through it, Dan. Together.”

Dan begins sobbing, and Dad holds him awkwardly.

Several minutes pass by, as Dan cries from that deep hole in the middle of his chest, the tears never seeming to end. Dad strokes his hair and tells him it’ll be all right.

Finally, Dan feels the gap shrinking a little; not closing all the way. He doubts it will do that for a long, long time, but enough for him to stop crying, wipe his eyes and look around the car.

Nasira has turned in her seat and is looking at him, a consoling smile on her face. “I’m so sorry for your loss. But just know that it’s all God’s will. Your mother is in a better place now.”

“Oh, cut that out,” William blurts out.

Nasira looks at him like he just slapped her. “I … I was just trying to—”

“To make the poor guy feel better by telling him a fairy tale,” William cuts her off. “God’s will, my ass. Your god’s got nothing to do with this.”

“Everything God does, He does for a reason,” Nasira says, her voice surprisingly calm, and she looks at Dan. “Even when he calls someone home before we expected it.”

William shakes his head. “That’s a load of crap.”

“Earlier today,” Nasira goes on, still not a trace of anger in her voice, still looking at Dan. “He called home both of my parents, too. And even though I mourn them, I know there is no more pain or suffering for them.”

William looks surprised, then embarrassed.

Dan sniffs. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Don’t be,” Nasira smiles.

William clears his throat. “Right, we need to get moving. Here’s what’s going to happen. I’ll drive into the courtyard and park the car. Then, I’ll get out and open the hidden latch. We all need to exit the car on my side, so be ready to climb over the seats. Follow me down into the shaft. Last man makes sure to close the latch. That’s very important. And we need to move fast, because there will probably be at least ten zombies by the house. As soon as they see us, they’ll come at us. But they aren’t very fast, as you all know by now, so we should have enough time to get down the shaft.”

It’s only now that Dan looks outside and sees where they are: a few hundred yards down the driveway from Holger’s house. From here, the courtyard is hidden from view by the trees.

William looks around at them. “Everyone cool with that plan?”

“Sure,” Dad says.

Nasira nods.

“Cool,” William says. “Let’s do it, then.” He puts the car into gear and heads the last way up the driveway.

As they roll into the courtyard, Dan immediately sees the zombies by the front door and the windows. More have come to join the party since they left; he counts at least a dozen now. He also sees something else; a face in the kitchen window, staring out at them. It’s a woman, but not Mille. She’s considerably older and has curly hair.

Who’s that?

“Okay, let’s get going!” William says, parking the car and shutting off the engine. “After me, hurry!”

“Wait!” Dan shouts, just as William opens the door. “Someone’s in the house!”

William has already jumped out and is bending down to grab the fake well cover. Now, he looks back into the car. “What do you mean? Of course someone’s in the house!”

“It’s someone we don’t know,” Dan says, staring at the house. The woman is still in the window. “A woman. She’s right there!”

Nasira and Dad hesitate. So does William.

“What do we do?” Dad asks.

“We need to get inside,” William says, grabbing the cover. “It’s probably just someone Holger invited in. Maybe someone he knows who came by, or—what the fuck? I can’t get this thing open!”

He tugs at the hatch, trying different angles, but it doesn’t budge.

Dan looks over at the window again. The woman is still looking right back out at him, her expression is weirdly emotionless. For some reason, Dan gets the chills.

Why is she just standing there?

“They’re coming, William!” Dad warns him, as the zombies begin losing interest in the house and turning one by one to stagger towards the car instead.

“Fuck!” William exclaims, kicking the hatch.

“Something’s wrong,” Dan mutters.

“You’re damn right something’s wrong,” William says, panting as he gets back into the car and slams the door. “They locked the hatch. Why the fuck would they lock it?”

“What do we do?” Nasira asks, pulling away from the window as the zombies approach the car.

“Don’t do anything right now,” William says, pulling out his phone. “We need to try again, once Holger has unlocked the hatch. I’m calling him now.”

He makes the call, then puts it on speaker and places it on the dashboard, freeing up both his hands. Silence in the car as William’s phone rings. From the trunk, the dog gives off a low growl. Everyone looks out at the zombies who gather around the car and begin pushing and shoving to get inside.

Dan is the only one still looking over at the house. The woman in the window—there’s something about her, something sinister. Dan gets a very clear feeling that something bad happened.

“Pick up, Holger,” William mutters, and then, to the zombie outside his window: “Hey, stop drooling on my car, asshole!”

Dan sees the woman raise her hand and put it to her ear.

Then, the call is answered.

Dan sees the woman mouth the word, and a split-second later, her voice comes through the phone: “Hello.”

“Who … who the hell are you?” William says, staring at the phone in surprise. “Why are you answering Holger’s phone? Where’s Holger? Put him on!”

“Holger’s not able to come to the phone,” the woman says calmly, not taking her eyes off Dan.

“Then tell him to come unlock the hatch so we can get in!”

“I’m afraid the hatch is jammed. We already tried, but we can’t get it to open.”

“What do mean, jammed? There’s no lock on it!”

“There is now.”

“Wha—” William cuts himself off, as he finally realizes what the woman means.

“I know that voice,” Dan’s father mutters.

“She’s standing right there,” Dan says and points. “She’s looking out at us.”

Everyone in the car turns their heads in unison.

“That’s her,” Dad confirms, nodding grimly. “That’s the woman who stole my car.”

“Oh, you piece of shit,” William growls. “You come open that hatch right now! And let me talk to Holger!”

The woman doesn’t move an inch, and her expression doesn’t change. “I can do one of those for you,” she says calmly. “Hold on a moment.” She lowers Holger’s phone and presses it to her chest. “Dennis!” she calls out, her voice making it through the phone. “Let Holger out!”

Dan has been feeling a growing sense of discomfort ever since he saw the woman, and now the feeling intensifies.

“They’ve locked up Holger,” William mutters. “Those fucking assholes—how the hell did they get in?”

Before anyone in the car can come up with an answer, Dan notices a movement from the roof of the house. He looks up and sees the dormer window swing open. The face of a boy not much older than him appears for a second, before vanishing again. Then, something else appears. It’s Holger. At first, it looks to Dan like Holger is climbing out the window.

“Holy hell,” Dad murmurs. “Look up there.”

“That’s … that’s Holger,” William says. “What the hell are they doing?”

Holger is hanging halfway out the window, one arm dangling limply down the roof, and as he turns awkwardly to the side, Dan gets a better look at his face and realizes his eyes are closed. There’s a stream of dried-up blood on his cheek.

“He’s … he’s dead,” Nasira whispers. “Look at the blood on his face.”

“Oh, no,” William exclaims, grabbing his head. “Oh, fuck, no! Maybe … maybe he’s just unconscious. Maybe they knocked him out to keep him as a hostage. Maybe—”

Before William can put forth another suggestion as to what might be going on, the answer becomes obvious, as Holger is thrust from the window.

Nasira screams, Dan’s father gasps aloud, and Dan feels the air getting sucked from his lungs as Holger tumbles down the roof and out over the gutter. He lands on the gravel right next to the front door with a heavy, bone-chilling thud and lies completely still.

The zombies clawing at the front door don’t even flinch, but simply keep on clawing.

“He’s … he’s really dead,” Dan hears himself say. “Look at the zombies. They don’t even care.”

“You fucking … you fucking assholes,” Williams says, his voice rising as he stares blankly at his dead uncle lying in an awkward posture on the gravel. “You’re going to pay for that! You hear me!?”

Dan looks at the kitchen window again. The woman is still gazing out at them, her expression still serene. She doesn’t look down at Holger’s body even for a second, and Dan thinks to himself with surprising clarity: She’s a psychopath. A real-life psychopath.

“We’ve filled the underground tunnel with gasoline,” she tells them through the phone in a matter-of-fact way. “If anyone tries to force their way in, we’ll light a match and burn the intruders alive.”

“We’ll find another way!” William shouts. “You rest assured! We’re going to—”

“This is our place now,” the woman interrupts him, only raising her voice slightly, yet something in her tone makes William shut up. Something very cold and sharp. “I’m sorry it had to happen this way, but Holger attacked us first. And these are desperate times, I’m sure you’ll agree. We all need to do whatever we can to make sure our loved ones survive.”

“You’re going to prison for this, you crazy bitch,” William mutters.

“That may be,” the woman replies, still with an eerie calm, like a customer service employee explaining something to an unsatisfied customer. “Although I’m not sure there will be any prisons in the near future.”

Then Dan remembers. “What about Mille?” he asks, fearing the answer. When the woman doesn’t hear him, he leans towards William’s phone and repeats the question. “What about the girl? What did you do to her?”

“Nothing. Mille left with her mom right after we came.”

It could be a lie, but Dan sees no good reason why the woman shouldn’t be telling the truth; she has been, so far.

William takes the phone from the dashboard. “This is not over,” he sneers into it before ending the call.

In the window, Dan sees the woman lower the phone, look at them for another moment, then simply walking away.

“Is there any other way in?” Dan’s father asks.

“No,” William says. “Not one that we can get to, anyway. I’m sure they locked the front door, and all the windows have bars. Besides, if we break into the house, we would have made a perfect entrance for the zombies, and the place would be useless as a hideout.”

“You think she was telling the truth about the gasoline?” Dad asks.

“I’m not sure,” William says, running his hands through his hair. “But does it matter? We can’t take the chance. I’m not going to risk getting burnt alive. Oh, Jesus, everything is fucked up now. Poor Holger.”

“Where do we go?” Nasira asks in a low voice.

William shakes his head. “I have no idea.”

“Well, we can’t stay here,” Dan’s father says. “Maybe we can go to one of the other houses around here and ask for shelter.”

“We could,” William says in a sour tone. “But who would let in five people and a dog?”

“Someone with compassion,” Nasira answers.

William scoffs. “Someone with little sense,” he corrects her. “Even if we did find someone willing to let us in, how long could we survive? We’re too many now. Normal people don’t have food for several days in their home, much less any sustainable sources once they run out. Holger did. That’s why this was the perfect place.” He looks over at the house, grinding his teeth. “We should have never left. What was I thinking?”

“Can’t we just get out of here for a start?” Nasira asks. “Those things out there are starting to get on my nerves.”

Dan is surprised to find he almost managed to forget about the zombies pushing and shoving outside the car, squeezing against the windows and fumbling for a way in. Apparently, you get used to sitting in a car surrounded by zombies once you’ve tried it a couple of times. Amazing what the mind can learn to filter out.

William puts the car in reverse and backs up. He pays no particular heed to the zombies, either, knocking over two of them as he drives out of Holger’s courtyard and heads back down the driveway.

“How about going back to Jens?” Dan suggests. “Maybe he’ll let us stay at his boss’s farm. He said they have cows, didn’t he? That means they’ll have food for a long time.”

“I don’t know,” William says. “I think we might be better off trying to get out of here altogether. Holger’s place was definitely our best bet if we had to stay. Now that it’s no longer an option, I prefer getting as far away from here as possible.”

“I agree,” Dad says. “I think we should leave the country until they get this situation under control.”

“If,” William mutters.

“What’s that?”

“If they get the situation under control.”

“Sure they will,” Dad says, sounding like he’s not sure at all.

Suddenly, Dan gets an idea. “Wait, what about Mille? The woman said she left with her mom.”

“She was probably lying,” William scuffs. “They probably killed her too.”

“Why would she lie about that, but not about Holger? No, I think she told the truth about Mille. I could call her and ask where they went.”

William looks at him in the mirror. “You’ve got her number?”

“Sure. She gave it to me.”

William raises one eyebrow. “Well done, dude.”

Dan pulls out his phone and calls up Mille just as they reach the end of Holger’s driveway. William stops the car and looks at Dan, waiting to see if Mille will have anything to tell them.

Dan puts the call on speaker.

Mille answers after the third ring. “Dan?”

“Yeah, it’s me. Are you okay?”

“Sure. I was just about to ask you that. You found your parents?”

“We did,” Dan says simply, avoiding Dad’s eyes. “But when we returned to Holger’s place … there was a woman there. And her son.”

“Oh, yeah. That’s Birgit and Dennis. They came right after you guys left.”

“What do you mean, ‘they came’?” William interjects. “Who let them in?”

A short pause. “No one did. They came in through the tunnel. Why? Is anything wrong?”

“You could say that,” William growls. “They killed Holger.”

Mille gasps. “Oh, no!”

Someone speaks in the background on Mille’s end.

“Is that your mom?” Dan asks.

Mille doesn’t answer right away. She sounds like she’s fighting to keep calm. “Yes … I’m with her now. Oh, my God, I’m so … I’m so sorry about Holger. I shouldn’t have left him alone …”

“No, you probably shouldn’t,” William says.

“Shut up, William,” Dan says, ignoring the look of surprise William sends him in the mirror. “It wasn’t her fault. If she hadn’t left, they would have just killed her, too.”

A moment of silence.

Then, Mille whispers: “I can’t believe I trusted her. I did notice there was … something odd about her. Something dangerous. And her son, I think he's intellectually disabled or something. He's like a slave to her, but she seemed very protective of him, so I … I let her convince me she wouldn’t … oh, God.”

“Where are you now?” Dan asks.

“We just left the area. We’re headed for Frederikshavn. Torben—my Mom’s boyfriend—he’s got a cabin up in Sweden somewhere. We’ll try and get there.”

“Wait,” William chimes in. “Did you say you left the area? How did you manage that? I thought they sealed it off?”

“They did. There are military posts on all the highways and the smaller ones, too. But we found another way. A dirt road they haven’t blocked.”

“Where?” William demands.

“It’s just down road from Holger, then make a right after the next house, and once you get to the trees, you turn left. Keep going till you hit the highway again.”

William puts the car in drive and heads out onto the road.

“Thank you,” Dan says. “We’ll try and get out that way too.”

“I hope you make it,” Mille says.

Dan switches the call off speaker and puts the phone to his ear. “I’m glad your mom came for you, Mille.”

Another short pause. “Yeah, me too.”

She doesn’t sound completely sincere, though.

Suddenly, he’s not sure what to say. “So, I guess … good luck.”

“Good luck. And Dan?”

“Yeah?”

“You can always call me if … you know, anything.”

“Same.”

“Right. Stay safe.”

“You too.”

He disconnects. Dad puts an arm around his shoulder and smiles at him. Then, he says something totally unexpected: “I’m proud of you, son.”

“Uhm … thanks, Dad.”

“Listen,” William says. “While you were flirting it up with Mille back there, I got an idea. My friend, Janus, he, um … well, he died yesterday. But he has a brother who lives down in Haderslev. He’s an airline pilot, and Janus told me he has his own plane. Maybe we can get him to fly us all the hell out of here. To an island somewhere.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” Dad says. “But what if he doesn’t want to?”

“I’m sure we can convince him,” William says. “He’ll probably want to save his own family, too. And if we can’t get him to do it, we just keep going down through Germany. That’s our plan B.”

They exchange looks. No one seems to have any objections.

“That’s settled, then,” William concludes, speeding up.

TWENTY-FIVE

“Hello? Excuse me? Could somebody please come?”

Dorte listens as the words echo back to her down the empty corridor, then die out. No one answers. She’s been calling for twenty minutes now.

The guard who brought her dinner told her someone would come and take her statement within an hour. It’s been four now, and she hasn’t seen anyone.

There are only four detention rooms in this corridor—she noticed when they put her in here—and none of the other three seem to have any occupants. At least she hasn’t heard anything.

They took her phone, so she hasn’t been able to call anyone—but who would she call? The two persons closest to her are both dead, and just the thought of breaking the news about Rikke to her dad is too much. It will crush him. He’s not sick with cancer, like she told Martin and the other soldier at the roadblock; he’s in his home in Copenhagen with his new wife. Besides, the authorities may have already done the job for her of calling him up and delivering the bad news.

Unless, of course, Rikke hasn’t been found yet.

The tiny, wall-mounted TV is running on mute, showing a news channel covering what’s going on in Viborg. An hour ago, they began showing footage from Aarhus as well. It was a mixture of private videos captured from phones and a news helicopter hovering overhead. They showed a gas station being overrun by four infected people and a pedestrian street where people fled in panic.

The images were very disturbing. Not so much because of the infected, but because it was obvious that things weren’t under control, despite the news reporter saying that “unlike Viborg, the police and the military got a head start on things in Aarhus” and were doing “a very effective job of pacifying and isolating the infected.’”

They showed gunmen in full protective gear armed with guns, and they informed the viewers that everything was being done to not harm the infected, but simply get them into custody, using rubber bullets, water cannons and other nonlethal equipment.

To Dorte, this sounded like something they would say to keep people reassured rather than telling the truth.

From her tiny, barred-up window she only had a view of the courtyard. But she had heard gunfire earlier. What sounded like a car crashing; or perhaps an explosion. Someone screaming. Sirens.

It was like being dropped into an American disaster movie. She got to witness everything turn to chaos from her claustrophobically small detention cell, and there was nothing she could do.

What was worse: it was her fault the disease had reached Aarhus.

The disease.

She kept thinking about it like that. Her brain was too well trained to accept anything else.

Whatever had happened to Rikke and Peter, it sure looked like a disease; it had plenty of physical symptoms. Except none of them could be measured. At least not with any medical device.

How was that possible?

That was the question her mind had been wrestling with ever since she came here—and, being locked up in less than sixty square feet, she had not much else to do.

To Dorte’s own surprise, she hadn’t really cried yet. Sure, the thought of Peter and Rikke brought a deep, stinging pain to her chest. But she obviously wasn’t mourning yet, and she didn’t believe herself to be in shock, either. She was still functioning very well. Apparently, she was surprisingly good at working under a crisis.

But the real reason the grief process hadn’t begun was simply that she didn’t feel like her role had been played out yet; she still had a job to do, as a doctor with firsthand experience of whatever this thing was.

And she still couldn’t accept the fact that Rikke and Peter were out of reach of modern medicine. There had to be some way to cure them. She just had to figure out what was wrong with them.

It couldn’t be a mental thing, it just couldn’t. A handful of sick people could maybe be explained like that, some strange case of factitious disorder, where the patients would basically will themselves sick, creating the symptoms from pure conscious effort.

But several thousand?

All happening within a span of a few days?

No way.

And that left her with no real explanation. She simply couldn’t give even a peripheric guess, had her life depended on it—which very well could turn out to be the case.

She shoves aside the thoughts and bangs the door again, then shouts out through the tiny, square hole placed in nose-height.

“Hello? Anybody? Please help me!”

Earlier, when she came to the jail, there had been a constant humming of voices from elsewhere in the building, and every once in a while, a guard had passed by out in the corridor.

But now everything was quiet like the grave. And she hadn’t seen anyone since dinner.

It was probably just because the nightshift had begun. There were only a couple of guards here now, and they would soon make their rounds to check on the detainees.

Or maybe they had all been called out on active duty.

Or maybe something even worse had happened.

A scream from behind her.

Dorte spins around and stares at the window. She hurries over there in three long paces. Looking out, she can only see thanks to the yellow light posts around the closed courtyard. A female officer is running across the pavement—or rather, limping. One of her legs is obviously broken, the foot twisted in a wrong direction. She darts a look back and up, and Dorte notices the open window three stories up.

Did she … did she just jump?

The officer cries from pain and tries desperately to get away from the building, as though she’s afraid someone is following her. And someone is. Dorte sees a big, broad man in guard uniform lean out the open window, reaching his arms out clumsily—one of his sleeves is torn off, and the hand is mostly gone, chewed off, apparently—and then he loses his balance and falls out of the window.

Dorte gasps but can’t look away.

The guard flies through the air for what feels like several seconds, flailing his arms and legs helplessly, before connecting with the concrete, giving off a loud, sickening and very meaty thud. He lands halfway on his shoulder, just barely missing his head, which would surely have been cracked open like a coconut, had it taken the impact.

And to Dorte’s utter horror and amazement, the guard immediately begins getting to his feet. He doesn’t even cry out. He simply gets up and walks after the woman, who’s still limp-running away from him. His collarbone is obviously shattered, his right shoulder sitting way lower than the other, hindering him in raising his arm all the way. This doesn’t seem to bother him either, though.

The woman looks back and accidentally puts weight on her busted foot. She falls over with a scream. The guard ups his speed and moves in eagerly.

“Get up, get up,” Dorte finds herself chanting. “Run, goddamnit. Run!”

But the female guard can’t get up. So she crawls instead, crying as she does it. She reaches a door in the other building, reaching for the handle and pulling herself to her feet.

“Good, now open it,” Dorte whispers, feeling her heart pounding in her throat as the man closes the distance to the woman.

The door is locked.

The woman fumbles for a key in her belt.

She almost gets it in.

And then he reaches her.

Dorte can’t look away. She wants to, but she can’t. She’s forced to watch the scene play out. It takes less than thirty seconds. The woman stops screaming halfway through. The man is almost double her size, and he works with vicious efficiency. Not elegant and precise, like a cat killing a mouse, but more like a crocodile tearing a gazelle to shreds.

It’s only because of the dim lighting Dorte can’t see the gruesome details, and she’s thankful for that. But she can see the dark pool forming around the woman as she sinks to the ground. And she can hear the wet smacking sounds as the man begins feasting on her flesh.

This is not anything like rabies, a faraway thought tells her in that fact-of-the-matter voice she has developed over the years. His motivation wasn’t to spread whatever he has to her—he just wanted to eat her.

Dorte is finally able to turn away, and she staggers towards the sink in the corner. She stands there, leaning against the wall for a minute or so, taking deep breaths, fighting back the nausea, trying to shut out the noises from outside.

Her dinner decides to stay down, and Dorte realizes the sounds have stopped. She doesn’t want to go back to the window, but once again, she can’t help it.

The male guard has gotten to his feet and is walking away. At first, Dorte assumes he’s full and doesn’t want to eat anymore.

Then, the woman sits up. She looks around, like someone just waking up from a nap, before getting to her feet. She takes a few wobbly steps after the guy, seemingly finding her bearings, reminding Dorte of a toddler walking for the first time. Her broken ankle is no longer of any concern to her, and she simply walks on the crooked foot.

The male guard heads for the bars enclosing the courtyard. Behind them is another set of bars, and behind them again is the street. But instead of unlocking the gate, the guard simply walks into it and tries pushing himself through.

The woman soon joins him and does the exact same. They just stand there, side-by-side, trying to move through the bars to get to the street.

They have very little brain-function left, that detached doctor’s voice observes. No memory. No problem-solving skills. They’re probably not even capable of hypothesis-driven thinking any longer. Only things that seems to be left are limited motor skills and a motivation for finding and eating human flesh. That’s why he lost interest in her. She wasn’t alive anymore. The second she came back, she joined him in searching for new prey.

“Hello?”

The voice is so unexpected, it makes her jump. She spins around and scans the room, expecting someone to have snuck up on her. But she’s alone.

“Over here.”

She sees the face looking in at her through the window in the door. It’s a young man with dark hair and dark, worried eyes.

“Oh, thank God,” Dorte breathes. “I was beginning to wonder if anybody would come.” She walks to the door. “Listen, there are two infected people out in the courtyard. Both of them were officers. It’s important no one goes out there to try and—”

“Who are you talking about?” the guy cuts her off. “Who would go out there? There is no one left.”

Dorte just stares at him as he finds his keys and unlocks the door.

“What do you mean?” she asks as he opens it.

“The entire building has been evacuated. You’re lucky I decided to take one last look. Almost cost me dearly, too.” He holds out his hand to reveal a tear in his sleeve. A couple of red scratch marks snake down his wrist.

Dorte knows instantly the poor guy is done for. The cuts in his skin are just barely deep enough to draw blood, but that’s plenty for the infection—or whatever it is—to take hold. Rikke’s wounds had been even smaller, and she died within five hours. This guy has probably only two or three left to live.

Dorte looks him in the eye and feels her throat close up. He’s young, around her own age, and he has that young George Clooney melancholy look over him. Dark tan, soft-spoken, clean hands. Probably a very nice guy.

“What?” he asks. “Why are you looking like that? Is anything wrong?”

“I just … you got those … scratch marks because you came back to see if anyone was still in the building?”

“Yeah. I figured they might lock down the city like they did in Viborg, so it might be several days before anyone made their way in here. Would be a bummer to spend a week locked-up in here with nothing to eat, huh? I couldn’t live with that thought. Now, there’s three of them downstairs. One of them tried to grab me, but I tore loose. I think they might have followed me, so we need to go the other way and use the fire escape so we don’t—”

A noise from down the corridor. It sounds like something tipping over.

“Hurry,” the guy says, pushing Dorte along. “We’d better get out of here.”

They run down the corridor, and the guy opens the door with his key. They enter a staircase and run up a floor. There, he opens a door marked with a fire sign. An alarm sounds somewhere in the building. They step out onto a metal platform suspended several meters above ground-level. Below is the parking lot to the detention facility.

Dorte pauses for a moment, looking out over Aarhus. And she finally realizes just how serious the situation is—and how quickly it has escalated.

The night sky is lightened by the glow of the city. But unlike any normal night, the lights aren’t just from cars and lamp posts and windows. In fact, there seems to be less electrical light sources. Instead, there are several fires blazing.

Not many cars are out, either. Most of them are parked haphazardly in the streets or on the sidewalks. A few of them are crashed. She sees windows smashed, things strewn about and only a few people—most of them seem to be infected.

“Good God,” she breathes. “It’s just like Viborg. Except it’s going a lot faster.”

“You been in Viborg recently?” the guy asks, closing the fire door behind them.

“I was there just yesterday,” Dorte says. “How could it run out of control so fast? It’s been only one day …”

“I couldn’t tell you. All I know is that it started in Skejby. I think it reached the city so quickly because several people carrying the infection drove here for medical help. As to why it spread a lot faster here than Viborg, well, I figure it’s because there are a lot more people here, and they live a lot closer to each other.”

“Good God,” Dorte says again, and thinks to herself: This is my fault. I brought it here. Because of me, the country’s second biggest city will be in ruins by tomorrow evening.

A movement from below catches her eye. A group of infected people are coming down the street, headed for the parking lot.

“Come on,” the guy says, beginning to descend the stairs. “We’d better hurry, or we’ll get trapped up here.”

They rush down the stairs and reach the ground well before the infected can reach them. They run across the parking lot and out into the street.

The guy looks from side to side. “My car is parked in an underground parking two blocks from here. I’m going to try and get out of town, then reach Silkeborg—that’s where my wife is waiting. You can join me if you want.”

Dorte looks at the guy briefly, and can’t help but feel a deep love towards him. He looks so innocent, and even in a very dangerous situation, he took the time to go back into a detention facility to look for anyone locked up. Now, he’s going home to his wife, a short, yellow-haired woman no doubt who’s probably worried sick by now. Except he won’t make it to Silkeborg; he’ll be dead before that.

Should I tell him?

“You’re giving me that look again,” he says.

“I’m not going with you,” she says.

“You sure? I really don’t think you want to be out in the streets right now.”

“It’s okay, I’ll be fine.”

“Okay, if that’s what you want. See you, then.”

He’s just about to run off.

“Thank you,” Dorte says, the words coming out as hardly more than a whisper. “Thank you for getting me out. You saved my life.”

The guy smiles briefly. “Don’t mention it. To be honest, I didn’t expect to see someone like you up here. You don’t look like a typical bad guy.”

“I am,” she says. “Believe me.”

“Well, I believe in second chances,” he says, smiles once more, and then he’s gone.

TWENTY-SIX

She soon regrets not going with the guard. Walking alone through the city center isn’t exactly a pleasant experience.

The streets are mostly empty, but there’s an eerie atmosphere looming over everything. Here and there are crashed cars, smashed storefronts and items dropped or thrown.

She hears police sirens passing by now and then, and she considers waving one of them down, but for one thing, she doesn’t want to burden the people trying to tidy up the mess she made, and secondly, she’s technically a fugitive.

She also considers calling anyone she can think of who lives in or around the city—which proves to be only three persons. Two old med school friends and her aunt whom she never sees. But she can’t bring herself to call any of them and ask them to come pick her up. And calling a cab is also kind of opportune, as she doubts any company would send a car into what is basically a war zone.

So, Dorte resolves herself to walking.

Weirdly, a part of her feels it’s the right call, despite the danger. This is her mess. It seems an apt punishment for her to walk her own way out of it.

She heads west, hoping to reach the highway going around the city; out there, she might have more luck in hitching a ride.

She feels exhausted but is running on adrenaline and cortisol, which heightens her senses and makes her super-aware of any movements and sounds nearby. As she turns a corner, a teenage boy comes running at her full speed, only wearing shorts.

Dorte jumps aside, holding out her hands in a protective way, but the boy runs right past her. He only slows down enough to yell at her: “Get away! Two of them are coming!”

Dorte has time to notice the bloody lines across the boy’s shoulder blade; they look an awful lot like something from fingernails. Then, the boy is gone.

She turns and looks the way he came, immediately spotting the two silhouettes coming this way in that characteristic, wobbly stride. Even from this far away, she can hear their hungry groans.

Dorte runs across the street and slips down a smaller alley, reaching the next block, just as someone screams up ahead.

Dorte sees the woman lying on the ground, sprawling to get away from the infected person who has thrown itself on top of her. A young guy—possibly the woman’s boyfriend—is kicking the infected from behind, while yelling at it to stop, but to no avail. The infected bites down on the woman’s throat, muffling her scream. The guy bends over and grabs the infected, pulling it away. But the infected has grabbed the woman’s hair, so she is dragged along, while the blood starts spurting from her open throat. The infected snaps its head around and bites down on the guy’s arm, causing him to scream out in pain.

Dorte turns, feeling nauseous and dizzy, then staggers down a new side street to get away from the awful scene.

The sound of gushing water reaches her. On the next block she sees a group of armed men shooting a water cannon at a large group of infected people, forcing them back, all the while others are closing in from other directions.

“Stay back!” one of the soldiers roars. “Stay back, or we’ll open fire!”

The infected don’t heed the warning, and two of the men begin firing their weapons at them. The sound is deafening, causing Dorte’s ears to ring. Although it’s clear the bullets connect, sending arms flailing and torsos twisting back and forth, they don’t stop the oncoming.

“The head!” one of the men roars. “Aim for their fucking heads!”

That won’t work, Dorte thinks to herself. There’s no brain activity …

The men take aim and fire a new round of shots. This time, to Dorte’s surprise, there’s much more effect. Two of the infected go down immediately, apparently dying for real, as they simply collapse and don’t move anymore. Soon the rest of them follow suit, as the men hit their targets.

Dorte frowns, for a moment snapping back into rational thinking. How’s that possible? How does destroying the brain make any difference, when the entire central nerves system is already switched off?

“What the hell are you doing?” one of the men by the water cannon bellows and runs to the men who just put down half a dozen infected. “Are you using live rounds? Are you insane?”

“We had no choice!” one of the soldiers defends himself. “It was us or them!”

“We can’t go around killing these poor pricks! How do you think WHO will react once they find out we’re executing sick people? They’ll hang us out like goddamn Nazis!”

“When are you going to listen, Troels?” the other soldier shouts back, punctuating every word by jabbing a finger in the chest of his colleague. “They … are … fucking … zombies!”

“Will you stop spouting that movie nonsense?” the guy retorts, shoving away the other’s hand. “I’m in charge here, and I say we follow orders. And the orders are to treat these people like sick individuals. We keep our distance, we pacify them and bring them in, and we don’t use lethal force! Got that?”

The two men are so wrapped up, they don’t see the three infected coming from the alley and heading right for them.

“Look out!” Dorte screams, but she’s too far away, and the sound of the water cannon drowns out her warning.

Luckily, the third soldier notices the threat just in time, and the two others jump out of the way. They begin dealing with the infected by throwing nets over them and using long poles which reminds Dorte of the ones dog catchers use.

She decides she’s seen enough and turns to leave.

And that’s when she sees her.

Coming towards Dorte from the alley, the figure emerges from the shadows. Dorte recognizes her right away.

No, it can’t be her … she can’t have come this far … it’s a four-mile walk …

But it is her.

And Rikke looks like she’s been very busy: her hands are black with blood and so is the front of her shirt and the lower part of her face. Some of it is still red and shiny. Something has happened to her face, too; the left cheekbone appears to have been caved in a little, the skin torn open in a couple of places, the eye squeezed almost shut. Like someone clubbed her with something. Or maybe Rikke has simply fallen over and landed on her face. Either way, the injury seems of no concern to her; instead, she’s focused on Dorte.

“Rikke,” she croaks, backing up. “It’s me.”

She knows it’s pointless. She knows Rikke can’t hear her, much less comprehend the words or recognize her sister. She might as well be talking to a coma patient. And yet her mouth keeps trying.

“It’s me, Rikke. Please listen to me. Don’t you remember my voice?”

Rikke ups her speed as she closes the distance and lets out a groan of hunger.

Dorte walks backwards, almost running now, trying to get her eyes off of Rikke, trying to force herself to turn and flee, but she can’t, and she’s still talking and now she’s also crying.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I couldn’t help you. I tried; I really did.”

Then she’s finally able to spin on her heel and sprint down the alley. She turns left on the street where the men are still battling the oncoming horde and she almost bumps into a new group of infected, managing to avoid a tall, skinny guy at the last possible second and bolt past them. She looks back to see the group taking up pursuit.

Dorte runs every other day, and she’s in great shape. But she hasn’t slept for almost two whole days, and her body is functioning mostly on adrenaline. Up ahead, the road slopes upwards as it turns into a bridge, and Dorte decides to cross it, since that will bring her away from the city center.

She runs at a reasonable speed, putting distance between her and the group of infected while at the same time not exhausting herself—as she darts a look back, she realizes the infected are still pursuing her. Luckily, she can’t see Rikke, who must be at the back of the group.

The amount of parked or crashed cars grows larger the farther she comes up onto the bridge. At the highest point, the road is almost closed off due to a tipped-over truck.

And that’s when she sees the other group.

It’s even bigger than the one following her; at least two dozen infected. They’re less than fifty yards away, huddling around something, pushing and shoving each other.

They’re eating someone, Dorte thinks and stops abruptly.

This second group is way too big; they’re blocking the entire road, and there’s no way she can get past them. She looks back to see the pursuing group, which has spread out somewhat, as some of them are walking faster than others. The front runners have already reached the bridgehead and have begun the ascent towards her. Even though there aren’t as many in the first group, there are still enough of them to cut her off, as many cars narrow the road. Which means she’s effectively trapped.

Oh, shit …

Dorte looks back and forth, trying to determine which way is the least dangerous, which one offers her the best chance of making it, but neither of them seems a good choice. And now the members of the second group seem to lose interest in whatever poor soul they were gorging themselves on, and one by one they break out and begin walking towards the next closest meal: Dorte.

Oh, shit, shit, shit!

Dorte considers for a moment climbing atop the truck, but she’s not sure whether the infected will be able to climb after her, so she heads for the bridge’s railings. Looking down at the motorway, she feels her gut tighten, as the jump is at least sixteen feet—and she’d land on concrete, most likely breaking both ankles.

Maybe if I hang from my arms … that will shorten the fall with six feet or so …

It’s still a big risk, but a brief glance over her shoulder tells her that she’s running out of options fast: the fastest from both groups are closing in at a scary speed, wobbling away almost too fast for their dead legs to carry them, as though they sense their prey is about to escape.

Dorte climbs the railings and swings her legs over. The metal bars are cold, and her palms are sweaty from running, so she grips firmly to not slip. Still, it’s difficult finding anything to place her feet on—the railings were obviously not designed for scaling. She fumbles, swears and looks up to see the infected come rushing.

Fuck! I won’t make it!

She’s halfway hanging, halfway standing, clutching the railing awkwardly, and is just about to jump blindly out into the void, when a voice calls her name.

“Dorte! Hey, Dorte!”

She looks down, blinking sweat from her eyes, straining to focus.

A car is parked right below her. The driver—a young man in a white T-shirt, revealing his tattooed arms—is standing next to it, looking up.

“Goddamnit, I thought that was you!” he calls out, grinning.

“William?” Dorte croaks, not loud enough for him to hear her.

“You gotta jump!” he calls out, jumping up onto the hood of the car, then up onto the roof. He reaches his arms up towards her. “Just do it! I’ll catch you!”

Dorte is just about to tell him she can’t, when she hears a snarling growl right next to her, and she whips her head around and screams as a dead-eyed face with grey skin comes rushing at her, mouth wide open.

It’s more of a fall than a jump.

Dorte flies through the air, screaming and flailing, for what feels like several seconds. Then she lands with a metallic bang, feeling a couple of hands halfway catch her.

“It’s all right, you’re all right,” Williams tells her, as his face appears in front of her, smiling. “Hey. Long time, no see.”

Dorte tries to answer, but the shock of falling has left her gasping for air. She lets him help her down onto the hood of the car. A man Dorte hasn’t seen before, considerably older than William, comes out from the car and takes her by the arm, helping her down onto the concrete.

Another car comes speeding by, causing Dorte to jump and reminding her they’re standing in the middle of the motorway.

“We should probably get going,” the man says, leading her towards the open back door.

“Wait a second,” William says. “Are you hurt, Dorte?”

Dorte looks at him, then down her own body. She shakes her head. “No, I’m okay. It didn’t hurt. Thank you for catching me.”

“You’re welcome. But what I mean is, were you hurt before? Any scratches? Any wounds? Did any of them touch you?” He points up, to where the infected have gathered at the railing, pushing up against the metal bars, a forest of arms are reaching out, grasping at the air.

She shakes her head again. “No, I haven’t been in close contact with any of them. I’m not infected.”

“Glad to hear it. Then get in.”

Dorte climbs into the backseat. A teenage boy with golden hair is looking at her with big, serious eyes, and beside him a young woman is sitting with a small boy on her lap. Both the woman and the younger boy are Middle Eastern.

The man gets into the front seat, and William gets in behind the wheel.

Something sniffs the back of Dorte’s neck, and she turns to see a German shepherd looking back at her from the trunk.

“Everyone, this is Dorte,” William says, putting the car into motion, quickly getting up to speed with the rest of traffic. “She and I went to high school together, but we haven’t spoken for—what, four years?” He looks at her in the mirror.

“I … I guess that’s about right,” Dorte says, forcing a smile.

The Middle Eastern woman smiles back at her. “Hi, Dorte. My name is Nasira, and this is my brother Ali.”

Dorte nods and looks at the teenager.

“I’m Dan,” he mutters.

“What are the odds of us meeting like this?” William goes on. “I can only interpret it as fate. Where are you headed?”

“I … I don’t really know, honestly. I’ve lost my … I’ve lost … everyone.” The last word comes out as a whisper, and Dorte realizes to her horror that she’s on the verge of tears. The last thing she needs right now is crying in front of a bunch of strangers.

“Sorry to hear that,” William says, the cheerful tone gone from his voice.

“It’s okay,” the Nasira girl says in nearly perfect Danish, looking at her. “We’ve all lost someone.”

Dan nods his silent agreement, and to Dorte, those big eyes suddenly seem a lot older than the rest of his face. The boy looks like someone who has recently lived through a lot worse than Dorte herself, and she feels an unexpected pang of sympathy for him.

“So, you want us to drop you off somewhere, or are you going along for the ride?” William asks.

Dorte breathes in deeply. “I have no idea, to be honest. Where are you going?”

“The plan is to find a guy I know down in Haderslev and get him to fly us out of the country before things get completely out of control.”

“That sounds a little …”

“Rash?” William guesses.

“Well, are you sure it’s necessary to leave the country?”

“Wow, shit!” William swerves to avoid a handful of infected who have made their way out into the motorway and are reaching for the oncoming cars with no regard for their own safety. He looks back at Dorte. “You tell me if it’s necessary. I for one don’t think it looks very promising. We would love to have you along—right, guys?”

The others nod or sound their agreement.

Dorte looks down at her hands. “Okay,” she says. “I guess it’s as good an idea as anything else I’ve got. Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.” William is quiet for a moment. “So … are you up for telling your story? Or do you want to hear ours first?”

“I think I’d prefer to listen rather than talk right now,” Dorte says.

“That’s fine. You’re going to love this. Our story’s got Voodoo in it. Right, Dan? You care to start?” William looks at the teenager, who yawns.

“Actually, I was hoping to get some sleep.”

“Oh, sure. Mind if we talk?”

“No, not at all.” He leans his head back and closes his eyes.

“I’ll do my best to tell you what Dan told me, then,” William says, sending her a wink in the mirror—Dorte can’t believe his spirit is this high, considering the circumstances. But then again, this is exactly like she remembers him—carefree and laid back, but also smart and decisive when the situation calls for it. “I mean, we’ll be driving all night, so it’s not like we’re in a hurry or anything.”

TWENTY-SEVEN

Mille must have dozed off, because the next time she opens her eyes, it’s dark outside. They have reached some town Mille doesn’t recognize, the streetlamps glowing yellow overhead. The air conditioner is still blazing, and the inside of the car is nice and chill. On the radio the broadcaster is still talking in a serious voice about the situation.

She looks to her mother, who’s still sitting next to her, looking out of her own window. Mille checks her phone. No messages or missed calls. It’s eleven forty-five. She’s been gone for a few hours. Surprisingly, she feels very well rested.

“We’d better fill her up,” Torben mutters and pulls over at a gas station.

Mom stretches and looks over at Mille. “Oh, you’re awake. Did you get a good rest?”

“Sure. Where are we?”

“Frederikshavn,” Torben says, unbuckling. “The ferry leaves in half an hour; we’re just in time.” He gets out of the car with a grunt, the weight of his body causing the SUV to sway.

“… not only Aarhus, but several of the smaller surrounding towns now also face the problem, as the so-called Rhabdovirus seems to be spreading at a terrifying speed no one could have predicted. Medical experts now call for immediate action on the part of the authorities, urging them to put out a complete curfew in large parts of the country, hoping it’s still possible to contain the spread of the infection or at least slow it down enough that an effective vaccine can be found. So far, medical tests have come up empty in the attempt of curing the disease, and the outlook isn’t very good …”

“Not exactly uplifting, huh?” Mom says. “What a crazy situation this is turning into. I mean, this could become worse than when the country got occupied during World War II.”

“I know,” Mille says, watching Torben put his credit card into the slot. She looks at her mother. “We’re going with a ferry?”

Mom nods. “That way, we can bring the car, you see.”

Mille bites her lip. “Is it legal?”

Mom raises her eyebrows. “To bring your car to Sweden?”

“No, to leave the country.”

“Oh, you mean because of the … situation? Well, if that was the case, I think they’d cancel the ferry, don’t you?”

“I guess.”

A moment of silence. Torben walks around the car, unhooks the hose and begins filling up the car. Mille can’t help but notice how he walks, like his legs are hurting. It’s probably just because of his weight, though. He reminds her of John Goodman when he was at his biggest. She can’t fathom what her mother sees in him.

“How’s Kim doing?”

Mille looks at Mom, surprised at the question. “You tell me.”

“You mean you haven’t spoken to him recently?”

“No, it’s been forever.”

“Oh. I thought you guys kept in touch.”

“We did to begin with, but … it just kind of died out.”

“That’s a shame.”

“You haven’t spoken to him either?”

Mom sighs. “I tried calling him a couple of times, but he doesn’t return my calls. I’m not even sure I’ve got the right number anymore. He’s living in Stockholm these days, did you know?”

“I had no idea. Why did he move there?”

“He met a girl. A really pretty blonde. They married earlier this year.”

Mille is confused for a moment. “How do you know … oh, you stalked him on Facebook, didn’t you?”

Her mother shrugs. “I just wanted to know how my son was doing.” She looks out at Torben briefly, who’s still filling up the tank. “I was thinking we could maybe drive by and … ask him if they wanted to come with us. It would be so nice to have the family back together.”

Mom smiles at her. Mille can’t quite bring herself to return the smile.

“That would mean bringing Dad back,” she says.

Mom nods slowly. “I know. But we can’t. No matter how much we wanted to.”

Mille eyes her mother intently, trying to figure out if she’s being sincere. Dad left when Mille was five; she can barely remember him. But what she can remember, is that Mom basically drove him out. And that her drinking escalated drastically from that point. Mille has never heard her talk anything but trash about Dad. And now, she’s suddenly inferring that she actually misses him?

What’s her game? Has she really changed, or is this some ploy to get something from me?

“I know Torben will never be able to replace your father,” her mother goes on, “but he’s a good man. Clever. Helpful. He wants the best for all of us. He’s even okay with us bringing Kim too, if he wants to come. We could become like a family again. Wouldn’t that be great?”

Mille frowns. “It’s a little late for that, Mom; I’m seventeen. I don’t need a new dad.”

“Of course you do,” Mom says, smiling. “Every girl does, no matter how old she gets.”

“Well, Torben isn’t exactly …” Mille is just about to say something cruel, but she manages to keep it in.

“I know,” her mother says. “But if you could give him a chance, I think he will grow on you.”

Mille doesn’t answer. She looks out at Torben. Behind him, on the other side of the street, someone is out walking their dog. An old lady, judging from the hunched-over posture. The dog is small and black and walks very slowly. It’s probably even older than its owner.

“I was thinking,” Mom goes on, a slight tone of hesitation in her voice now. “I was thinking that you could try calling Kim. You know, maybe he’ll pick up when it’s you calling.”

Mille looks at her. “You want me to call him and convince him to come with us?”

Mom shrugs. “You could at least offer him the chance. If the virus reaches Sweden, they certainly won’t be safe in Stockholm with all those people living so close.”

Mille bites her lip. “I don’t know, Mom. I have no idea how he’ll react if I call him.”

“Well, isn’t it worth a shot?” Mom asks, leaning a little towards her. “Maybe if we all—” She stops talking as something catches her eye behind Mille. She squints. “Say, is that … oh, no!”

Mille turns her head. The old lady has come closer and is now crossing the street, headed straight for the car. Except it’s not an old lady. It’s a tall, bald, middle-aged man. The reason he’s walking hunched over is that someone has torn open his rib cage, causing his torso to sack forwards. He’s craning his neck back just enough for Mille to see his face and his dead, white eyes. The dog on the leash isn’t a dog on a leash, either; it’s a string of intestines being dragged from the man’s open wound, with a bloody lump—which could very well be his stomach—at the end of it.

“Shit,” Mille says. “He’s going for Torben.”

“Torben!” Mom screams, climbing halfway over Mille to bang the window. “Torben, look out! Behind you!”

Torben is too slow in turning around. When he finally does, the zombie is over him. Mom screams. Torben utters a grunt of surprise, drops the hose and grabs the guy’s wrists, barely managing to keep them away from his face. Instead, the zombie tries to bite Torben’s fat neck, snapping its teeth inches from his skin.

“You get off me!” Torben roars and pushes the zombie back hard, but not hard enough. The dead guy just stumbles a few steps backwards, then lunges forward again. Torben has no time to move out of the way and is pinned against his own car. Mom screams piercingly.

Luckily, though, the zombie trips on its own intestines and falls clumsily to its knees, giving Torben just enough time to move sideways and get out of reach. He waddles around the car, a look of shock on his face, opens the door and throws himself behind the wheel.

“Oh, good God,” Mom breathes, grabbing Torben’s shoulders. “Are you okay, honey? Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine,” Torben growls, shaking Mom’s hands off of him. “Let’s just get out of here.”

He puts the car in drive, just as the zombie finally gets back up and attacks Mille’s window, smearing saliva all over it.

Mom screams again, as Torben guns it and races out on the road.

“Goddamnit,” he mutters, rubbing his neck, and keeps checking the mirrors. “I didn’t know they had already reached this far.”

“I’m so relieved you’re okay, honey,” Mom says, fighting back tears. “That could have gone horribly wrong. I’m so glad you reacted fast.”

“Not fast enough,” Torben mutters. “I touched the damn thing.”

“Yes, but that’s not enough to get infected, is it?” Mom asks, looking from Torben to Mille.

Mille shakes her head. “It only spreads through blood.” She leans forward. “Did you get any scratch marks?”

Torben checks his hands one at a time, turning them over, even spreading the fat fingers. “No, I’m fine,” he finally says, a note of relief in his voice.

“Oh, thank heaven,” Mom exclaims, clutching her chest. “We’re okay. We’re okay. Good thing we’re leaving the country, too. This thing will be everywhere in a couple of days.”

“I think it’s more like hours,” Torben murmurs, clutching the wheel as he races through the streets of Frederikshavn way past the speed limit. Not many people are out, and no cars, either.

Not until Torben turns down to the harbor, that is.

Mille sees the forest of headlights from some distance away. The cars are lined up in several long queues, all waiting to board the ferry.

Torben whistles. “Guess we’re not the only ones who got the idea of going to Sweden.”

“Jesus,” Mom whispers. “Good thing we got a ticket, huh?”

Torben drives up to the shortest queue and stops. The lines are moving slowly, letting the cars onto the ferry one at a time.

Mille can see the people in the other cars, entire families crammed in between piles of baggage, their faces serious.

I hope none of them are sick, she thinks and feels an icy chill down her back. The last thing I want is to be trapped on a ferry with someone turning into a zombie …

The lines pick up speed, and within ten minutes, they drive aboard the ferry. Torben parks the car at the place assigned to them by the crew member waving an orange flag.

He stops the engine. “Right, let’s get out and find something to eat. Then, if we’re quick, we can grab a couple of hours shut-eye.”

They leave the car. Mille takes one of the bags from the trunk. She follows her mom towards the door leading to the upper decks, where a lot of other people are already streaming. She’s hit by a peculiar feeling of being a little girl going on a vacation with her mom.

Mom turns around. “Hold on, where’s Torben?”

Mille looks back. “There! By the van.”

Torben has stopped by the side-view mirror of a yellow van. He’s pulling out his collar and apparently examining his neck in the mirror.

“Torben!” Mom calls out.

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” he calls back and joins them. His expression is grave. “I felt something sting. Well, looks like I wasn’t too lucky after all.” He pulls out his collar to reveal a bright pink scratch.

Mille feels her stomach fall.

Mom gasps. “Oh, no …”

“It’s okay,” Torben assures her, talking in a stern voice. “They have disinfectant aboard. We’ll clean it up and I’ll be fine.”

Mille can’t tell if Torben believes what he’s saying, or if he’s trying to convince himself. The way his eyes keeps darting back and forth suggests at least part of him knows this is really bad news, and that disinfecting the wound won’t do squat.

“Come on,” he says, cutting Mom off as she’s about to say something. “The sooner we get it fixed, the better.”

“No,” Mille says, shaking her head. “You can’t go, Torben. You’ll have to get off the ferry.”

Torben looks at her like she’s a dog who just peed on his shoes. “What are you talking about?”

“You’ll bring it to Sweden. You can’t do that.”

Mom looks from Mille to Torben, her eyes wide and terrified. “Oh, no … no, no, no …”

“Nonsense,” Torben scuffs. “I’ll be fine. They have doctors onboard, too.”

“They can’t do anything to help you,” Mille says. “Please listen to me. You can’t do this, Torben. You’ll have to get off.”

There’s a loud whistle from upstairs just at that moment. Torben looks up, then back at Mille. “Guess I have no choice. We’ve just left shore. Now, enough talking.” He pushes past them and heads for the door.

Mom is about to follow him, but Mille grabs her arm and looks her in the eye. “Mom, listen to me. I really need you to listen. There’s only one way this will pan out. We can’t let this happen.”

Mom’s face jerks in a series of different expressions. “I … I don’t know … I think we’d better follow him …”

She’s about to turn, but Mille tightens her grip. “Please, Mom. Please believe me. If you still love me, you’ll believe me when I say Torben is going to die. I know it’s hard to hear that. But if we don’t do something quickly, he might take everyone on this ferry with him.”

“Excuse me,” a male voice says from behind them. “Could you please move?”

A man with two suitcases and his wife standing behind him is trying to get past.

“One moment,” Mille says, looking back at her Mom. “Tell me you believe me, Mom. For once, do what’s right. Please!”

Her mother fights herself for another couple of seconds. Then, for the first time since Mille got into Torben’s car, she sees a flash of her old mother, the mother she remembers, the volatile, closed-off, emotionally wrecked mother who raised her and drove her out like she had driven out Mille’s father and older brother before her.

“Don’t be silly,” Mom says in what’s almost a snarl. “You listen to Torben now. He knows what he’s doing. It’ll be fine. Stop making a scene.”

Mille lets go of her mother’s arm, but her mother grips her in turn and drags her along.

TWENTY-EIGHT

Nasira ought to be feeling tired, but she isn’t. In fact, she feels more awake than ever, although it’s close to midnight.

She’s sitting comfortably with Ali on her lap, her temple leaning against the cool car window. Outside, the lights of the freeway zip by. Only a few other cars are out.

She seems to be the only one awake except for William who’s driving the car.

Now that they have left Aarhus behind and are driving south, the dead people are no longer walking on the road.

Once or twice, groups of large, black helicopters have flown by overhead, and they’ve also passed quite a few military vehicles going the opposite way. Some of them had foreign license plates. William said they had probably called in reinforcements from Germany and other of the neighboring countries.

By all measures, it’s been the craziest day of Nasira’s life. And that includes those days she spent as a refugee before they came to Denmark, crossing the Mediterranean on an old fishing boat during a storm which caused them to almost capsize several times. Crammed in with a dozen other Muslims, they had run out of drinking water hours before, and the floor of the boat was soaked with diarrhea and puke.

But they had all come out of it alive; Mom, Dad, herself and Ali, who was but an infant back then, wrapped in a cloth sling, sleeping against Mom’s chest.

That was more than could be said about today. Both Mom and Dad had already died, and Nasira would soon follow them to the afterlife.

Initially, she had thought it would happen within hours. She even considered telling the others and asking William to stop the car so she could get out. And she would have, had she begun to feel even the slightest ill.

But she doesn’t feel ill at all.

In fact, she feels vibrant and alive. Peaceful, even. There is no more fear. No more worry.

It is odd. And at the same time, it makes sense. Facing death is a gruesome thought if you have no faith, if you don’t know God. Nasira knows him intimately. And that’s why she doesn’t fear what will happen to her. She knows it’s all part of His plan. Besides, she will meet up with her parents.

The only thing that causes her concern is the thought of Ali. Luckily, he will be in the hands of good people. She knows both Henrik and Dan from down the street, and they are both honest, humble men. They will take care of Ali once Nasira has left this earthly world; she doesn’t even need to ask to know they will.

Of course it’s sad he will have to grow up without his parents or any siblings, but thousands of children from where they came from have suffered that same fate and made decent lives for themselves despite it. She’s sure Ali will do the same; he is a strong boy.

She looks down at him and smiles. He’s leaning against her shoulder, eyes closed, brows slightly furrowed. As though he can feel her gaze, he opens his eyes.

“You still awake?” he whispers in Arabic and yawns.

“I can’t sleep.”

“How long have we been driving?”

“A couple of hours. It’s late. You should sleep some more.”

“I’m not sure I can sleep anymore.” He considers for a moment, looking out the window, then back at her. “I think it’s because we didn’t say prayer before I went to sleep.”

“Oh,” Nasira says, smiling. “Well, we can say it now if you’d like.”

“I would. I want to … to pray for Mom and Dad.”

“That’s a good idea.”

His lower lip begins to quiver. “Are they … are they with God now, Nasira?”

“Of course they are.”

“And there’s no pain with God, is there?”

“No. Only peace and joy. Pain is only for the living.”

“Good. I don’t want them to be suffering.”

“Would you like to begin the prayer?”

Ali nods and takes a deep breath. Then he recites the words they say every evening. Nasira closes her eyes and listens. Ali ends the prayer by thanking God for taking care of their parents.

When he finishes, Nasira opens her eyes again and notices the woman next to her has opened her eyes and is looking at them.

“Were you … praying?” she asks in a low voice.

“Yes. Sorry if we woke you.”

“No, that’s fine. I think it’s a great time to be praying. Even though I don’t really believe in God myself.”

Nasira smiles. “Don’t worry; He believes in you.”

Dorte returns the smile. “Well, that’s nice to know. I think I’ll be needing some forgiveness.”

“He forgives you when you forgive yourself.”

Dorte sends her a curious look. “Are you Muslims?”

“By custom, yes, but we don’t really identify with any particular religion. That’s why we had to leave our home country and come here. Our father was a preacher, but a controversial one.”

“Oh, I see. Where is he now?”

Nasira smiles again. “With God.”

Dorte’s expression goes from curious to sad. “Oh, I’m so sorry, I … I didn’t know.”

“How could you?”

“I wouldn’t have asked if I …”

“It’s fine,” Nasira assures her, putting a hand on her arm. “We have all lost someone recently, haven’t we?”

A host of different emotions seem to fight on Dorte’s face for a moment, then, resolve wins. “I guess so.” She looks out the window briefly. “I can’t help but think I might have caused this thing to run out of control. And just because I thought I could cure my sister.”

“That doesn’t sound like a bad reason to me.”

Dorte shakes her head. “That’s not how I see it. My sister was one person, that’s nothing compared to how many people are now … are now …” She squeezes her lips together, then whispers: “What have I done?”

Nasira notices William look in the rearview mirror. “Hey, it could have gotten out in a million ways. It was just a matter of time. I never believed for a second they could contain it.”

Dorte wipes her eye discretely. “If I had just found that damned cure, it wouldn’t all have been for nothing. And my sister and my fiancé would still be alive.”

“I’m not even sure there is a cure,” William says.

“What do you mean?” Dorte asks.

“You know that creepy Voodoo-ritual I told you about? The one Dan suspects started this whole thing? Well, he’s convinced it’s not a real, like medical sickness, but more like a … I don’t know, a curse or something.”

Dorte’s expression goes blank. “That … that’s silly.”

“I know, but …” William shrugs. “We’ll see if they find a cure or not, then we’ll know for sure.”

“I don’t think they will,” Dorte says. “I ran every possible test on my sister while she was still alive and I took further readings from my fiancé after he died. I found nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

William looks at her in the mirror. “Well, I guess that supports Dan’s theory, then. Maybe it’s not a virus; maybe it’s something spiritual.”

“Of course it is,” Nasira says.

Both Dorte and William look at her. Ali too. Nasira notices he’s following the conversation.

“I looked into my mother’s eyes as she died,” Nasira says calmly. “I felt her soul leave her body. Then something else took over, and it made her able to move again. But it wasn’t her.”

“What do you think it is, then?” William asks. “A curse?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Nasira says. “I never thought the body could go on without the soul, but for some reason, God has allowed for a strange exception to the rules of nature. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s more like a possession. Something evil drives out the soul and replaces it.”

A few seconds of silence follows inside the car.

“If I hadn’t seen what I saw,” Dorte says, “I’d say you were crazy. But honestly, I have no better explanation.”

“So, you say this is God’s work?” William goes on. “Is he the mastermind behind this?”

“Naturally. He’s the mastermind behind everything.”

“Do you know why he would do such a thing? I mean, this doesn’t seem like something a nice god would thrust upon the world.”

“Every seemingly bad thing God does, is a blessing in disguise. Because within is the possibility to find Him.”

“What?” Dorte says, frowning. “You mean, like dying?”

“No, no. By surrendering to His will.”

“I don’t like that word,” William says. “Surrender. It sounds like defeat to me. I’m not into that. I’m going to keep fighting to stay alive.”

“Sure, keep fighting,” Nasira says, smiling. “That’s what God wants from you. Surrender is something else. Surrender is accepting that whether you win the fight or not, is not up to you. You trust in God, and what will be will be.”

“So what’s the point?” William argues back. “If it’s like, predetermined or whatever, why would we even try?”

Nasira reaches over and puts a hand on William’s shoulder. “Because that’s why you’re here, William.”

He eyes her in the rearview mirror for several seconds, then mutters: “I’m beginning to see why you guys were chased out of your own country; you’re nuts.”

Nasira can’t help but laugh.

“I’m sorry,” William says, rubbing his eyes. “I didn’t mean that. I’m just very tired. It’s been a couple of long fucking days.”

“I know,” Nasira says, smiling. “And there are many more long days to come.” She looks at Ali, who looks back up at her. His eyelids are fighting to stay up.

Nasira breathes deeply and closes her own eyes as the car keeps moving through the night. Her left thumb goes to feel the tiny scratch on the inside of the ring finger. It still feels the same, maybe a tiny bit more tender, but that could be because she has been rubbing it now and then all throughout the day, ever since the dead girl tried to get into the car through the window and Nasira tried to push her hand back out and the girl’s nail grazed Nasira’s finger.

She should be feeling a torrent of emotions; fear of what’s to come, despair at the thought there’s nothing to do, grief for the life she’s losing.

But she feels none of that. In her heart is only hope and love. Her mind is quiet, resting in the assurance that it is all in God’s hands, and that He will make sure what happens is right.

Whatever that may be.

DAY 5

The following takes places on

Wednesday, July 30

ONE

“Sweetheart?”

Mommy’s voice, somewhere nearby.

“Sweetheart, are you awake?”

Christine can’t open her eyes; she is too tired. And the soft, low rumbling of an engine nearby doesn’t make it any easier. The sound also reminds her where they are; not at home, but in the car. The whole family. In the middle of the night. How strange.

Christine remembers dimly she was sleeping at home in her bed earlier this evening, when things were still normal—kind of normal, anyway. Mommy had tucked her in like she always does, reading a chapter from one of the H. C. Andersen fairy tales Christine loves so much. She doesn’t recall actually falling asleep, though, but she must have, because suddenly, Daddy came bursting into the room, turning on the lights and pulling clothes from Christine’s closet.

“Wake up, honey,” he told her with a rushed, not-quite-genuine smile. “We need to go on a little trip.”

“Right now?” Christine had asked, sitting up and squinting against the light. “But it’s nighttime, Daddy.”

“I know, it’s a little strange, but we have to go,” Daddy told her, moshing the pile of clothes into a sports bag and zipping it. “Come on, let’s go.”

He held out his hand, and Christine was just about to take it when she heard a sound from the window. It was almost like someone dragging their fingers across the glass. There was a moaning sound, too, like someone in distress.

“Who’s tha—” she was about to ask, when Daddy grabbed her hand and cut her off.

“It’s okay, honey, don’t worry about it. Someone’s just playing around out there.”

There was something in Daddy’s voice Christine couldn’t quite place, but it sprouted a tiny, gnawing sensation in the pit of her stomach. A feeling of worry. Was Daddy scared? Daddy couldn’t be scared; he wasn’t afraid of anything.

Then, things got even stranger.

As Daddy dragged her out into the hall, where the lights were also on, she was met by the sight of Anton already standing there, still in his pajamas, hair messy, eyes wide and confused.

Mommy came out from the bathroom at that moment, stuffing something into a bag. “Okay, I think I got everything.” She was looking at Daddy and talking very fast. “Toothbrushes, phone charger, sleeping bags, Anton’s inhaler. Am I missing something?”

“How about food?” Daddy asked.

“I took the tuna and the crackers. I filled two large bottles with water. I don’t know if it’ll be enough.”

“It’s fine. We can stop at a gas station and get more. Get your coats, kids. We’re going on a trip.”

“Where are we—” Anton began, but Daddy cut him off like he did Christine.

“No questions, Anton. Just please, do as I ask.”

Normally, Anton could very well have decided to argue—after all, he was seven now, and had just entered what Mommy called the “stroppy sevens”—but apparently, Anton seemed to also pick up on the trace of fear in Daddy’s voice, and he simply grabbed his coat. Christine did the same, while Daddy unlocked the door and opened it.

“Stay in here just for a second, okay?” he said, glancing back quickly. “I’ll get the car.”

Christine felt Mommy’s hand on her shoulder, and Christine looked up at her. “What’s going on, Mommy? Why do we have to go on a trip?”

Mommy looked down at her, blinking, then smiling. “It’s just for fun. It’ll be like a vacation. You remember when we went camping? Well, this is the same, just that we didn’t really plan for it, we just … decided to go.”

“In the middle of the night?” Anton asked, and now Christine could hear that old, familiar tone of defiance in her brother’s voice. “Couldn’t it wait till the morning?”

“No,” Mommy simply said, and when Anton asked her why, she didn’t reply.

Then Daddy was back, waving at them, telling them in a hushed voice to hurry up, to get into the car, and as they left the house, Christine was surprised to find that Daddy had driven the car all the way up to the front door and parked it right below the stairs so they didn’t need to walk more than a few steps. She only got a whiff of the cool, clean night air, before they were all inside the car, Mommy in the front and Christine and Anton in the back. Daddy got in behind the wheel and sped out of the driveway, turning down the street, driving a lot faster than he normally would, and Christine noticed him constantly checking the rearview mirror, like he was afraid he had forgotten something back there.

Anton asked a few more times where they were going, but neither Mommy nor Daddy answered, and finally, Anton just found his phone and began playing some game.

Christine didn’t have a phone—she had asked Mommy when she could have one, and Mommy had told her when she turned six next month. That was a long time away for Christine. So, she simply resolved herself to looking out the window at the streetlights gliding past and the dark lawns and just as dark houses behind them. Only a few other cars were also out driving for unknown reasons; other than that, the town seemed to be asleep.

Christine began nodding off, when she saw something strange.

It happened just as they stopped at a red light. A movement caught her eye, and she saw an old man come walking across the street. He wasn’t using the sidewalk, but was straddling along in the middle of the road. There was something odd about the way he walked, too; he seemed to be dragging one leg, as though he had hurt it, and his arms were stretched out, like he was reaching for something. Then, as he entered the light from one of the posts, Christine got a better look at him, and she could have sworn there was something dark smeared all over the man’s white T-shirt, like Nutella or something.

Then Mommy noticed the man too and let out a gasp.

“What?” Daddy asked in alarm, and, following Mommy’s gaze, he whispered: “Fuck!” Then he drove right across the intersection, accelerating so fast Christine was pushed back in her seat.

“Dad!” Anton exclaimed. “The lights were still red!”

“I know,” Daddy murmured, checking the mirrors again.

“It’s illegal to run a red light!”

Daddy didn’t answer.

“Dad? Didn’t you hear me?” Anton persisted. “I said it’s illegal to—”

“I know!” Daddy shouted, causing everyone—including Mommy—to jump in their seats. “I know,” he repeated more softly, sending Anton a quick glance in the mirror. “I’m sorry, son, I didn’t notice the lights were red. Luckily, nothing happened. Okay?”

Anton seemed too surprised to answer.

Mommy turned in her seat. “It’s okay, Daddy is just a little tired. We all are. Try and see if you can get some sleep, all right?”

Anton just nodded and turned away.

Mommy looked at Christine at smiled. The smile was only on her lips; it didn’t reach her eyes. “You okay, sweetheart?”

Christine nodded.

Then Mommy turned back around and put on the radio. She found a station playing very soft music and turned the volume all the way down low.

Christine looked at Daddy, his hands restless on the wheel. And suddenly, she remembered seeing Daddy like this before. It was the time Anton fell very ill with fever and almost couldn’t breathe because of his asthma, and Daddy had to rush him to the hospital. Daddy had been afraid back then. Afraid that Anton might die. He didn’t say so, but Christine figured it out later.

And this situation seemed eerily similar, except Christine couldn’t tell what Daddy was afraid of this time. Anton wasn’t sick, and neither were Mommy or Christine.

But she was pretty sure it had something to do with whoever was outside her window back at the house. And the old guy at the intersection. Daddy saw him. And that was when he decided to run the red light. Daddy would never do such a thing.

Christine kept mulling it over until her eyelids grew heavy and her thoughts began to drift away. The last thing she saw was the city lights fading, as they exited on the highway, now only accompanied by the stars overhead in the black night sky.

And now—

“Sweetheart?”

Mommy’s voice, insistent.

Christine finally manages to raise her eyelids. The car has stopped, the doors are open, and Anton is gone. Instead, Mommy is leaning in, looking at Christine with a faint smile.

“Good, you’re awake. I need you to get out of the car, sweetheart.”

“Are we … are we there?” Christine asks, yawning.

“Yes, well, no. We need to get on the boat now.”

Christine frowns. “What?”

“We’re going sailing,” Mommy explains. “Come on, please. We need to hurry.”

Christine fumbles with the buckle, gets it open and slides out of the car. She rubs her eyes and looks around. She doesn’t recognize the surroundings at first, because she has only been here a few times in her life, and never at nighttime. But the smell of the water and the fact that Mommy mentioned a boat helps her along.

The boats are lined up neatly along the piers, all of them tied to separate poles. Some are larger than others. The water is black and almost completely still, only tiny waves making the boat move gently up and down. Somewhere out over the water, a seagull cries shrilly.

She looks to the side and sees Anton dragging a sports bag. Farther ahead is Daddy, talking to another man who’s the exact same height, but has a potbelly.

“Is that … Uncle Kent?” Christine asks as Mommy takes the last suitcase from the car, then shuts the door.

“Yes. Come on now, sweetheart.”

They walk over to Daddy and Uncle Kent, who are talking in low voices. Christine catches some of it.

“… haven’t seen any of them, but can’t be too careful,” Uncle Kent says.

“… just a matter of time,” Daddy says, his voice grim. “… saw at least three going through town … spreading like wildfire.”

“Who are you talking about?” Anton asks, dropping the bag on the ground. “It’s the sick people, isn’t it? The ones they’re talking about on TV.”

Christine is glad he asked, because she also wants to know.

“It’s nothing, son,” Daddy says, brushing him off. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Stop telling me that!” Anton insists, and to Christine’s surprise, she can tell Anton is close to crying. “I want to know what’s going on! Why are we out here in the middle of the night? Where are we going?”

Daddy looks at him, and for a moment, Christine is afraid he might shout at Anton again. Then his expression softens, and he looks at Christine, too. “I guess it’s better you both know.”

“I’ll start her up,” Uncle Kent says, climbing aboard and beginning to untie a rope holding the boat to the pier.

Christine is very confused by that, and she’s about to ask Mommy who “she” is—did Uncle Kent get a girlfriend? Is she aboard the boat right now? And why does she need starting up?

But before she can ask, Daddy looks at Mommy, throwing out his arms. “Would you tell them?”

“Sure. You take this.”

Daddy takes the suitcase from her and follows Uncle Kent onto the boat. He begins helping him untie the ropes.

Mommy crouches down in front of them, and both Christine and Anton look at her with anticipation.

“Okay, listen. You both saw the news, right? Where they told about the disease spreading in Viborg?”

“It’s in Aarhus, too, now,” Anton interjects promptly. “That’s what they said.”

Mommy nods. “The policemen and the soldiers tried to keep it in Viborg, but it got out, and now … now Daddy and I decided we’d better leave town for a while. Just until the policemen and the soldiers get things under control. Okay?”

“So, where are we going to stay?” Anton asks.

Mommy takes a deep breath. “We’re going to England.”

“England?” Anton exclaims.

“Sssh!” Mommy darts a look around. “Keep your voice down, please. No one can know we’re leaving.”

“Why not? Is it illegal?”

“No, it’s just … it’s just better that way. We don’t want to draw any attention. Other people might get the same idea.”

“But why are we going all the way to England?” Anton asks. “Like, couldn’t we just stay outside of Aarhus somewhere? At Granny’s place, maybe? She lives all the way over in Struer—there are no sick people there!”

“We could,” Mommy admits, glancing towards the boat. “And your Daddy and I spoke about that. But we decided it’s better to leave Denmark altogether.”

“Why?” Anton demands.

“Because maybe they won’t be able to keep it from spreading outside of Aarhus, just like they couldn’t do it in Viborg,” Mommy says.

Anton is about to ask something else, when Mom quickly adds: “It’s probably just for a few days. We’ll be back before you know it. Until then, we’ll be staying in a cozy little motel in England. It’ll be nice, you’ll see. They have delicious food, and we can go for walks in the forest. And people are talking English, just like you’re learning in school, Anton.” Mommy is smiling now. “Maybe you’ll be able to understand what some of them are saying. Wouldn’t that be cool? You’ll get to practice, and once we get back and school begins again, you’ll be better at English than anyone else in class.”

Anton smiles vaguely, as the prospect of bragging to his friends apparently appeals to him.

“But, Mommy,” Christine asks, “what will happen to all the people who stay in Denmark? Are they all going to be sick?”

The smile fades from Mommy’s face as she looks at Christine. “I don’t know, sweetheart. Some of them might.”

“What about Alma? And Ida? And Freja? Will they all be sick?”

“Yeah,” Anton adds, “and what about Granny?”

Mom shakes her head slowly. “I’m sorry, but I just don’t know. Nobody does. Some of your friends might become sick, but I’m sure the doctors will find some medicine that works soon, and then they might be able to cure everyone again. And don’t worry about Granny. They’ll take good care of her at the nursing home; she’s safe there.”

A low, coughing rumble behind them, as the boat’s engine gradually comes to life.

“Come on, it’s time to go,” Mom says, ushering them towards the boat.

Just as they’re about to cross the board going from the pier to the boat, Christine hears someone scream. It’s coming from behind her, and it’s not that far away. She turns to look, but she can’t see anything on the dark pier.

“What the hell was that?” Anton says.

Mommy apparently doesn’t even notice him swearing, because she doesn’t scold him; she just grabs him by the arm and pulls him aboard the boat.

Then, she turns to Christine and reaches out her arms. “Now you, sweetheart. Come on!”

Christine walks onto the board as there’s another sound from behind. This time, it’s not a scream but more of a growl. She can’t help but turn her head again, and it causes her to lose her balance.

Mommy leans forward and grabs her, lifting her onto the boat. Christine looks back and just has time to see a skinny lady wearing nothing but a robe. She comes staggering out of the dark, headed right for the boat. Her skin is awfully grey, and her eyes are turned towards the black night sky, showing nothing but white. Her mouth is open and she’s groaning like she’s got something stuck deep down in her throat, something sticky.

“Holy shit!”

Daddy’s voice. He’s suddenly in front of Christine, kicking at the board just as the old lady steps onto it. It doesn’t move at first, but then Daddy kicks hard, and it slips sideways. The lady disappears, and Christine hears the splash as she hits the water.

“Get ’er moving, Kent!” Daddy shouts in a way Christine has never heard him shout before.

Somewhere, Anton is crying, asking questions about the lady. Mommy is breathing fast in Christine’s ear, whispering something Christine can’t make out. Daddy is shouting to Uncle Kent who’s shouting back up from inside the boat’s cabin.

Then, the engine roars loudly and the boat lurches forward with a jerk, causing Mommy to stumble and scream out, and both her and Christine would’ve no doubt fallen over if Daddy hadn’t caught them.

Anton, on the other hand, isn’t that lucky. Christine sees him tumble backwards and disappear over the railing. There’s another splash.

“Nooo!” Mommy screams, causing Christine’s head to ring. “He fell off! Get him, Steffen! Get Anton! He’s in the water! Stop the boat, Kent!”

“Shit!” Daddy shouts, running to the place Anton fell over. He leans over the railing, reaching down. The boat has stopped again.

Christine can hear Anton splash and gurgle. He knows how to swim, but he doesn’t like it.

“Grab my hand, Anton!” Daddy says. “Grab it!”

Then he groans and pulls back and Anton’s head appears, his hair clinging wet to his forehead, his eyes wide with shock, his lips quivering.

“Oh, thank heavens!” Mom cries out as Daddy hauls Anton back onto the boat. “You okay, sweetheart? You okay?”

Anton doesn’t look like he’s able to speak, so he just nods as he clings to Dad like a wet mouse.

“Shit, I’m sorry about that. You got him?”

Kent’s voice. His head is poking out of the door to the cabin.

“Yes!” Daddy shouts. “We’re okay! Get us out of here!”

Kent nods, disappears back inside, and a second later, the boat gets moving again—a little less sudden this time. They sail away from the pier, and as Christine looks back, she thinks she can make out someone running over there. There are voices, too, and someone screams again. She realizes she’s shaking all over. So is Mommy. And so is Anton, but that’s probably mostly because he’s drenched.

“Let’s get downstairs and get you dried off,” Daddy says, his voice a little less tense but still trembling slightly. “That was a close call …”

They head inside the cabin, where Kent is standing by the wheel—or whatever it’s called on a boat. There are screens, too, and he’s navigating them with silent concentration.

“Everything’s okay?” Daddy asks, stopping briefly.

Kent nods. “I think so. We’re pulling a little to the right, but that’s probably just the current.”

“We’ve got enough gas?”

“Plenty. I just filled ’er up.”

“How long will it take?”

“Till we’re there? Close to twenty-four hours. Don’t worry, I brought food.”

“You got any spare clothes, too?”

“Check the cabinet.”

They go down a couple steps leading to the inside of the boat. There’s surprisingly lots of room, Christine notices; four beds, a small kitchen and a dining table.

Daddy puts Anton down on one of the beds and helps him get the wet shirt and pants off.

Mommy lets go of Christine to go to the cabinet in the corner and open it. She pulls out a set of clothes which looks a little too big for Anton. But he puts it on anyway.

“There you go,” Mommy says, squeezing him. “Isn’t that better?”

“I … I saw her,” Anton mutters.

“Saw who, sweetheart?”

“The old lady. In the water.”

Mommy and Daddy look at each other. Then they look at Anton.

“She came for me,” Anton goes on, staring at his hands. “She was, like, moving through the water …”

Mommy’s hand goes to her mouth.

Daddy clears his throat. “Did she … did she touch you, buddy?”

A moment of dead silence inside the cabin. Then, Anton shakes his head.

Mommy gives off a trembling sigh of relief. Daddy closes his eyes for a second.

“Good,” he mutters. “Then we’re okay.” He breathes deeply and repeats it: “We’re okay.”

To Christine, it sounds like he’s trying to convince himself.

Personally, Christine has never felt less okay in her short life.

TWO

“I thought you were a good boy, Dennis.”

The words echo around him in the empty living room, but Dennis can’t see Old Niels anywhere; yet he recognizes his voice. He also recognizes where he is: back at Esther’s house.

But how can Old Niels be here? After all, Old Niels is dead. Mom killed him. Dennis saw it. He was right there.

Judging from the dim lighting, it must be nighttime. There’s an eerie silence hovering in the air. Dennis can hear his own, ragged breathing. He’s scared, but he doesn’t know exactly why. Something’s wrong. Very wrong. Not just here, but everywhere. The world is burning.

“Goodness gracious. What have you done to that little girl?”

Dennis spins around and looks at the door to the bedroom. It’s open. A faint, flickering light comes streaming out.

Dennis doesn’t want to see what’s going on in there, but he can’t help it; his feet move all on their own, bringing him closer to the bedroom, and then his hand reaches out and pushes the door gently open.

The bedroom looks like it’s been out of use for decades: piles of dust on the cracked floorboards, cobwebs dangling from the ceiling, the wallpaper curling at the edges, revealing the bare brick wall underneath.

The only piece of furniture is the old bed in the middle of the room. On the windowsill, a single, black candle is burning, casting its orange glow out over the room.

A figure is lying on the bed’s naked mattress, arms and legs spread out to the sides, neck craned back.

It’s the girl. Esther’s granddaughter. What was her name? Nadia.

“That’s not Nadia.”

Dennis looks towards the window. Outside in the darkness, he sees Mom looking in, her eyes resting on the girl on the bed, her expression grim. She shakes her head slowly, then repeats: “That’s not Nadia.”

Dennis looks back at the girl.

Her face is white, her mouth open and her eyes closed. From her pale lips runs a trickle of dried-up blood—although it’s so dark it looks more like tar to Dennis.

Yet he knows it’s blood. He recalls how Mom and Esther made the girl drink it.

He looks to the window again, but now Mom is gone. Then, suddenly, a voice hisses in his ear: “I know you stole my rabbits, you bloody thief!”

Dennis spins around—at least he tries to, but it’s more of a long, slow turn, as the air around him has suddenly grown thick like mud, making it hard to move.

When he finally manages to turn all the way around, he stares into a face which once belonged to Old Niels, but now is a mask of horror.

The skin is hanging in threads, spotted in blue, as the flesh underneath has begun to rot. In the tufts of white hair still visible at the skull sit tiny cakes of dirt. The eyes are white and have no irises, yet they stare fixedly at Dennis. Old Niels—who has obviously been dead for a long time—opens his mouth to reveal a row of broken, brown teeth and a purple, dried-up tongue.

“I thought you were a good boy, Dennis,” he whispers, tilting his head, causing more dirt to drizzle off his skull. “How could you let her do this?”

“I … I … didn’t mean to … I didn’t think she … I … I …”

Dennis fights to get the words out, but it’s no use, his throat is squeezing itself tightly shut, strangling his vocal cords, making it hard to breathe.

Old Niels doesn’t seem to pay any notice. He raises his hand and scratches his cheek like Dennis has seen him do many times back when he was alive. This time, however, the fingernails dig into the skin, tearing off large pieces, revealing the jawbone underneath.

It doesn’t seem to hurt Old Niels, though, as he just keeps scratching.

Dennis notices the hand is also full of dirt, and then it finally dawns on him why Old Niels is so dirty.

He dug himself out. He woke up and dug himself out of his grave.

Dennis wants to scream, wants to run away, wants to cry out for Mom, but he can do none of it. He can only stand there and watch Old Niels tear up his own face.

“I’m sorry,” Dennis croaks, warm tears spilling down his cheeks now, and suddenly he’s able to get the words out. “I’m so sorry, Niels. I’m sorry I buried you, and I’m sorry I stole your rabbits, and I’m sorry Mom killed you, I’m sure she didn’t mean to, it’s just that she didn’t have a choice, and I’m sorry about the girl, too, it wasn’t supposed to happen, none of it was, they wanted to help her, they tried to bring her back to life, but not like this, not like this at all! And I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry about everything!”

Dennis closes his eyes for a moment, waiting for Old Niels to say something, but when Dennis looks again, Old Niels is gone. Instead, there’s a noise from behind, and Dennis turns to see the girl sitting up in bed, reaching her tiny hands out to grab him, growling and spurting fresh blood from her mouth.

Dennis screams and stumbles backwards, hitting the wall just as a bang rings through the room and the girl climbs down from the bed and comes for him, and Dennis squeezes into the corner and tries to move even farther away, but he’s trapped, and then there’s another bang, even louder this time, the sound filling his ears, drowning out the girl’s hungry grunts as she lunges for him, and Dennis screams at the top of his lungs, he flails his arms and tries to get the girl off, but he can feel her hands groping him everywhere, and there’s another bang, and then Mom’s voice very close by: “Dennis, for heaven’s sake, wake up! You’re dreaming!”

Dennis sees the girl morph into Mom’s face as Esther’s bedroom disappears around him.

Dennis blinks frantically, trying to catch his breath. Mom is sitting on his bunk, clutching his wrists, staring at him intently in the dim light. “Are you awake?”

“I … I think so,” Dennis croaks.

Mom lets go of him, and Dennis wipes his cheeks, which are wet from tears. He looks around and at first has no idea where they are. Then he remembers. They’re at Holger’s place. In the secret underground bunker.

“Listen to me, Dennis,” Mom begins, when she’s interrupted by a bang from somewhere nearby, exactly like the ones from Dennis’s dream just now, and for a moment he’s not sure he really did wake up.

“What was that?” he asks wide-eyed.

“Someone’s shooting a gun outside.”

“Why? What are they shooting at? Who is it?”

“I don’t know. I just woke up too. Come with me.”

Mom gets up and leaves the room, still wearing her white nightgown. Dennis sleeps in his worn Timon and Pumbaa T-shirt, which Mom wanted him to throw out a long time ago, but he loves it so much he convinced her to let him keep it.

He gets up and follows her out into the main room of the bunker, where the lights are on.

Mom goes to the computer and looks at the split screen showing all the many different rooms of Holger’s house. Some of the cameras are placed outside, too, and Dennis immediately notices movement on the one in the corner, which shows the courtyard.

It’s still nighttime, but the courtyard is lit up by the headlights of what looks like a pickup truck parked right in the center. A figure is standing on the bed of the truck, while several others—the dead ones, who have been hovering around the house—are crowding the truck from all sides.

Suddenly, a tiny white flash.

Then, a quarter of a second later, another bang reaches Dennis’s ears from upstairs.

“Ooh,” he says, staring at the screen. He’s never seen or heard a weapon outside of movies, so it takes him a moment to put the pieces together. “I think he just fired a gun, Mom …”

“How do I make it bigger?” Mom says, moving the curser around the screen.

“I think it’s that one right there,” Dennis tells her, pointing at a tiny square symbol in the corner.

Mom clicks on it, and the window pops up to full size. Now, Dennis can see the guy on the truck bed brandishing a rifle, which he aims at one of the dead ones, and then—

Flash.

Bang.

The dead person collapses.

“He’s … he’s killing them,” Dennis muses, not sure whether to be terrified or excited. “He’s killing them for real, Mom!”

“I can see that,” Mom mutters, not taking her eyes off of the screen. “But why?”

Dennis hasn’t even considered the guy’s motives, and honestly, he doesn’t really care, either. He’s just amazed to see that the dead people can be killed properly.

Another flash, another bang, another figure tilts backwards and lands in the gravel, not moving. There are only three of them left now. The shooter seems to be reloading the rifle. His movements are impressively calm, like being surrounded by dead people wanting to eat him doesn’t cause him any stress at all.

“It’s got to be a policeman,” Dennis says, looking at Mom. “Don’t you think? Or maybe a soldier?”

“He looks like a civilian to me,” Mom says, still eyeing the screen closely. “And the car isn’t a military vehicle, either.”

“But … he’s come to help us, right?”

Mom doesn’t answer. Instead, she gets to her feet, just as the guy on the screen fires two times in quick succession, followed by the bangs. Only one dead person is left standing now.

“Where are you going, Mom?” Dennis asks as Mom heads for the exit which leads through the tunnel up into Holger’s bedroom.

She turns around and looks at him. “I’m going to talk with him. Find out what he wants. You just stay right here.”

“But—”

“Lock the door when I leave, and don’t open to anybody but me. Okay?”

Mom doesn’t wait for an answer, she just turns and leaves the bunker, slamming the door behind her.

Dennis goes and slides the bolt in place.

Then he goes back over to the screen. He needs to pee really bad, which usually happens whenever he’s feeling anxious. But he doesn’t want to miss what’s going on.

On the footage of the courtyard, there isn’t much movement now. All around the pickup truck, the dead people are lying sprawled in the gravel, some facedown, some faceup. The guy who shot them is still standing at the bed of the truck, the rifle flung casually over his shoulder, the other hand placed on his hip. He’s looking up at the house, and it looks like he might be saying something—Dennis can’t really tell.

Then, he notices another symbol at the bottom of the screen. It’s a loudspeaker with a cross over it. He’s pretty sure that means Mute. Without really thinking, Dennis moves the curser and clicks the symbol.

Immediately, a voice comes through the speakers, clear and crisp: “… you in there? Holger? … Hey, man, we just helped you get rid of all these assholes—least you can do is talk with us!”

“‘Us’? What does he mean, ‘us’?” Dennis whispers to himself, just as the truck’s driver side door opens and another guy steps out.

“Hey, Holger!” the driver shouts towards the house. “We’re not here to harm you in any way. We just want to talk, all right?”

A moment of silence, as the men apparently wait for an answer. When no answer comes, the guy with the rifle flings out his arm: “Listen, we don’t have all night for this! If you’re in there—which I know you are—come out here and let’s talk!”

“Easy, Silas,” Dennis hears the other guy say in a low voice, looking up at the guy on the truck bed. “We can’t be confrontational, remember? We’ll scare him off. He’s not normal.”

“But what’s taking the prick so long?” the other guy replies in a whisper. “Don’t tell me he slept through all those rounds I just fired.”

“He’s probably just—”

The guy cuts himself off, and both of the men turn their heads in unison to look at the house, as they apparently pick up on something Dennis can’t see or hear. It seems like they’re looking up at the second-floor window—the one Mom instructed Dennis to push Holger’s corpse out off last night.

“What do you want?”

Mom’s voice. Dennis feels a measure of relief. Mom’ll deal with the situation.

“We just want to talk,” the one without the rifle says, stepping closer to the house, taking care to not step on any of the dead people.

“We don’t have anything to talk about,” Mom says.

“Is Holger in there?”

“Holger’s dead.”

“Oh,” the guy says, shrugging. “I’m … I’m sorry to hear that.”

“We don’t have anything to talk about,” Mom repeats. “Please leave the premises.”

“Hold on, lady,” the guy with the rifle chimes in. “We’re not leaving till you talk with us. You owe us that much.” He gestures towards the dead people, then looks back up at Mom.

A moment of silence.

“What do you want to talk about?” Mom asks. “We’re not letting you in, if that’s what you think. And as to the favor you just did us, I’m sure the house will be surrounded again by daybreak.”

“That’s just the thing, though,” the guy without the rifle says, and to Dennis, it looks like he’s smiling invitingly—though it’s hard to tell in the light of the car. “You’ll need someone to keep the dead ones at bay. And we’ll need a safe place to stay. We can help each other out here.”

“I don’t think so,” Mom says. “We’ll manage just fine without you.”

“Listen, we knew Holger,” the guy with the rifle says, now jumping down from the truck. “We grew up just a few miles from here. I’m Silas, by the way, and this is my brother Jonas. Our mom still lives out here, couple of houses down road. We came back as soon as we heard what was going on. We wanted to help her, but we couldn’t leave the area again, so now we need to figure out something else. And then our mom told us about the rumor of Holger’s underground safe place. That’s why we’re here; we wanted to make a deal with Holger.”

“Well, like I said, Holger is dead,” Mom replies from off-screen, “and we’re not interested in a deal. Now, please leave.”

The men exchange a brief look, as though they both hope for the other to come up with something more to say.

“Wait,” the guy without the rifle—Jonas—says, holding up a hand. “What happened to Holger? Did he get bitten?”

A brief pause.

“No,” Mom says. “He died in an accident.”

“What accident?”

“He had a nasty fall.”

“That sounds strange,” the guy with the rifle—Silas—says.

His brother grabs his arm, as though to tell him to shut up.

“If you don’t believe me,” Mom says, “you can see for yourselves. He’s lying right there in front of you.”

The men look down. They both lock eyes on something just outside of the screen. Jonas steps forward and kneels.

“Holy shit, it really is him,” he says. “You … you shot Holger, dude.”

“The hell I did!” Silas exclaims.

“Then why does he have an open gunshot wound in the neck?”

Silas goes to his brother and kneels down beside him. “That’s not from a gun, you half-wit. A knife did that. Someone stabbed him.”

As though the same thought occurs to both of the brothers at once, they both get back up and look up.

“She’s gone,” Jonas says.

“Hey, lady!” Silas shouts. “Come back!”

“She doesn’t want to talk anymore,” Jonas says.

“The hell she doesn’t. But she killed Holger!”

“I know, what are you going to do about it?” He turns towards the car. “Come on, man.”

“Are we just leaving?” Silas exclaims, throwing out his arms. “That’s it? Some crazy bitch got here first and killed the poor prick, and we just leave?”

“What else can we do? You see those bars on the windows? That place is probably impossible to break in to.”

“Maybe not,” Silas says, lowering his voice as he steps closer to his brother. They begin talking together in voices too low for Dennis to hear.

A knocking from behind him makes him jump and turn.

“It’s me, Dennis!” Mom’s voice calls from the door. “Please open up.”

Dennis rushes to let her in.

She closes and locks the door behind them.

“Mom, I think they’re planning to break in,” Dennis blurts out, pointing to the terminal. “I couldn’t hear them properly, they were talking too low, but—”

“It’s okay, Dennis,” she tells him, putting a hand on his shoulder. “There’s no way they can get down here. Even if they break into the house, this place is still safe.”

“Are you sure?” Dennis asks, wanting to believe Mom.

“I’m sure. Holger designed it that way.”

Dennis bites his lip. “I found out there’s audio too, Mom. On the surveillance system. I heard you talking with them.”

Mom’s eyes grow a little wider, then she looks over at the terminal and goes to takes a closer look. Dennis follows her.

“That’s clever,” Mom says. “He put up microphones, too.”

“Look, they’re leaving,” Dennis says.

The men are getting back into the truck and turning it around. They speed out of the driveway.

“What did I tell you?” Mom says, smiling.

“But what if they come back?”

“There’s only one entrance, and the door is made of armored steel.”

“But … but what if they bring like, a bomb or something, to like, blow it open?”

“Even with a stick of dynamite, all they’d achieve is to collapse the tunnel.”

“But what if—”

“Enough, Dennis.”

Mom’s tone of voice changes ever so slightly, and Dennis knows the conversation is over.

“Go back to sleep, you need to rest. There’s still a couple of hours till sunup.”

“What … what about you?” Dennis dares to ask. “Are you going to sleep, too?”

“In a little while,” Mom says without looking at him and without explaining further.

Dennis knows better than to ask anymore.

He goes back inside the bunk room, turns down the lighting from the spots and crawls under the blanket. He stares at the wall, thinking that he probably won’t get back to sleep, despite how exhausted he is.

Maybe that’s for the best, though; going back to sleep will likely mean going back to the nightmares which have plagued him constantly ever since what happened at Esther’s house.

“That place is probably impossible to break in to.”

“Maybe not.”

The men’s voices replay in his head. The way they whispered to each other is still bothering him, and he’s afraid they’ll come back, despite what Mom said about Holger’s bunker being safe.

“Maybe not,” Dennis whispers to himself, blinking and feeling sleepy after all, now that the adrenaline is leaving his blood. “Maybe it’s not safe here,” he mutters and yawns. “I sure hope they won’t come back …”

Without knowing it, he drifts into sleep.

THREE

It’s only a twenty-minute trip, but today, those twenty minutes feels more like twenty hours.

Her mother is there with her, sitting in the passenger seat. Normally, she would be chatting away while knitting. Today, the tiny, grey-haired woman just looks out the window, silent.

The traffic is surprisingly sparse, at least on this side of the freeway; the other lane, the southbound one, is stuffed with cars going by.

Where’re they headed? Josefine thinks to herself. Germany? Some place even farther?

It won’t make a difference. This thing has already spread across borders, and it will keep doing so. Josefine knows that, and she suspects most of the people in the cars know it too. Despite the reassuring faces they keep showing on the news. Doctors, politicians, military personnel—all of them calm, assertive, promising everything is under control, assuring people it will be over soon, if everyone just stays calm and follows the instructions they keep pumping out every five minutes on the radio.

Keep indoors.

Stay away from other people.

If you have any scratch or bite marks, report to the local hospital for isolation immediately.

If things really are under control, she thinks, squeezing the wheel a little harder, then how come they let the infection reach a nursing home?

Shouldn’t the old, the sick and the fragile be the ones best protected?

There were rumors about several care facilities being overrun by the infection. She has even heard about a kindergarten being struck. The mere thought of young children dying from this awful thing is too much, and she has never been more thankful that she never had any kids of her own.

In her younger years, she would still play with the thought now and then, but since she reached forty-five last winter, and she still hasn’t gotten married, she decided to put it to rest and focus on herself instead.

There was also the hospital in Viborg being “shut down”—that was the official statement of what had happened, anyway, though the images she saw on Facebook suggested it had been more like a massacre. Infected people everywhere, soldiers trying to keep them inside the building, guns and helicopters, crashed cars and corpses littering the streets. It was like a scene right out of a disaster movie.

Josefine had never imagined she would experience anything like this, not in her lifetime. Denmark had always been gracefully spared of any natural catastrophes, and the wars and conflicts they had been involved in had all taken place far away, in the Middle East or the Balkans. Even the Second World War and the great flu pandemic had only caused the country minor hardship compared to many others.

Maybe that’s why this thing started here. You could say we had it coming. With so much shit in the world, it was bound to be our time to get sticky sooner or later.

She becomes aware of how gloomy her thoughts are, and she makes an effort to turn her attitude around.

She needs to stay positive. For herself, and for her mom. And for her dad, most of all.

They are almost there.

The longest ride of Josefine’s life is finally coming to an end. And what waits for her will probably be the toughest experience of her life.

She takes a deep breath as she turns into the parking lot in front of the red brick building. A white tent has been set up in front of the glass doors, and several medical vehicles are parked around the entrance. A person—Josefine can’t even tell if it’s a man or a woman—is walking around in a hazmat suit.

This will be the last time I see him.

She has tried to prepare herself mentally for the past year, ever since he was admitted. People his age don’t live long with dementia that far advanced. And yet it was so hard—impossible, really—to imagine a reality without her daddy in it. He had been there all her life, after all, and Josefine had secretly hoped he would continue being there forever.

Time to grow up, she tells herself as she parks the car. You’re a big girl now. He taught you to be brave, didn’t he? Well, this is your time to prove it.

She turns the key and kills the engine.

Silence falls over the car.

Her mom is still staring out the window, even though the view is blocked by a hedge.

“Well, we’re here,” Josefine says, forcing a smile. “You ready, Mom?”

Her mother blinks, looks at her, the grey eyes are distant for a moment, daydreamy. Then she smiles coolly and nods. “I’m ready, hon. How about you?”

“As ready as you can get, I guess.”

As soon as they leave the car, they’re met by a short, stern-looking woman with her hair bundled up in a tight knot and the lower part of her face covered by a mask. She’s also wearing rubber gloves and carrying a tablet.

“Who are you here to see?” she demands, without even greeting them.

“Gert Johansen,” Josefine says. “We got a call that if we wanted to see him—”

“You’re just in time,” the woman cuts her off, tapping the screen, then pointing towards the building. “They just told us they’ll be here in fifteen minutes, clearing the place out.”

“Clearing the place out?” Josefine repeats. “What does that mean?”

“You need to go around the back,” the woman says, gesturing in the direction, completely ignoring the question. “A man will instruct you on how to—”

“Excuse me,” Josefine says. “What do you mean, the place will be cleared out?”

The woman looks at her impatiently, like the question is too obvious to warrant an answer. “The authorities are closing the place down. That means they’ll come and collect the infected, and those still in the early stages will most likely be kept here in isolation until they reach the paralytic stage.”

“What … what happens to them then?”

The woman shrugs. “I couldn’t tell you. They don’t tell me more than I need to know.”

“Do you at least know where they take them?”

“You’ll have to ask them. I’m sorry, but I need to get going.” The woman turns around on her heel and marches back into the tent. Just before she disappears out of sight, she stops, turns and says: “Around the back. He’s waiting for you.”

FOUR

Mille feels the growing panic like a rat trapped inside her chest, thrashing and gnawing to get out.

She’s trapped, too, and even though she has room to move around, she feels claustrophobic.

She’s on a ferry. Out at sea. The ultimate trap. Nowhere to escape.

Her mom is gripping her by the elbow and dragging her up the stairs of the ship, making her feel like a helpless little girl again.

Torben is trudging along in front of them, wheezing from the exertion of climbing the steps, and behind them is a group of other passengers headed for their cabins. Mille notices the looks on their faces. They all have something in common, something just below the surface.

Mille recognizes it; it’s fear. No one aboard this ferry is here because they’re going on vacation, that much is clear. They’re all refugees who foresaw what was to come and made an effort to get out of Dodge while they could.

And now.

Now they might all become some of the first ones to go.

Because Torben is infected, and it’s probably a matter of minutes rather than hours before he’ll turn.

The trip to Sweden will take at least three hours.

That’s plenty of time for all hell to break loose.

“Mom,” Mille tries again, not really expecting to be heard. “Mom, please listen to me!”

Her mom yanks her arm harder as Torben makes a turn and leaves the stairway.

“It’s here,” he breathes, wiping sweat from his upper lip with a purple tongue. “Deck 13. We need to find cabin B55.”

“This is a terrible mistake,” Mille says, this time addressing Torben. “We need to warn people—we need to get you off the ferry!”

“Nonsense,” Torben mutters, giving her but half a look. “I told you, I’ll be fine. We just need to find our cabin …” He looks around as he speaks, then, apparently spotting a sign, he heads off down the hallway.

Mom pulls Mille along before she can come up with another objection. Mille looks out of the row of windows all facing the calm, black Kattegat Sea with the looming, dark blue sky above it.

And somewhere beyond the horizon, still too far away to see, lies Sweden. Twice as many inhabitants as Denmark. Boarders to both Norway and Finland, and, a little farther east: Russia.

The world’s largest country.

The thought is almost enough for Mille’s knees to buckle as she’s dragged along by her mother.

The situation is far, far graver than Mille thought at first. In Denmark, the infection could conceivably be contained, as the country is surrounded on three sides by ocean.

If the infection reaches Sweden, however, there will be absolutely no chance of stopping it. It’ll have a free pass to spread across the globe.

And right now, Mille is the only one aware of the risk.

Torben turns another corner and points down a smaller hallway with a lot of doors on each side. “Found it! Down there!”

“Great,” Mom sighs with relief. “Do you think they have something to clean your wound in the cabin?”

“If not, we’ll have to send for something.”

“Don’t you get it?” Mille shouts, suddenly filled with not just horror, but a raging fury. She tears herself loose from her mother’s grip and stares at Torben. “It’s too late! Disinfecting it won’t do anything! I’ve seen it happen! Once you’re bitten or scratched, there’s no way to—”

Mom interrupts her with a stinging slap of her right palm.

Mille blinks with shock and stares at her mother, who points a finger right between her eyes. “You shut up now! You hear me? I won’t hear another word out of you!”

Mille just glares at her, feeling her cheek begin to swell and burn. She sees the muscles under her mother’s left eye tic and her lips tremble. She sees fear and wrath and regret all mixed together. And she finally sees her mother completely as she remembers her: a grown-up by body only, but a body navigated by someone endlessly fragile and weak, a constant victim of circumstances, blindly staggering through life, trying to avoid pain but encountering it again and again, forcing her to hide deeper inside herself, cowering behind the cheap makeup and the booze and the pretend strength of some asshole whom she calls her boyfriend.

And within three seconds, something changes completely inside of Mille. It feels most of all like growing up in an instance. Her anxiety level plummets. The fearful thoughts dissipate, allowing her to see clearly. Resolve fills her as she breathes deeply.

“I’m sorry, Mom. Sorry about everything. I truly am.”

Mom’s expression softens at the words, and she begins to speak in a warmer tone: “Oh, honey, it’s okay. I just need you to stop—”

“I’m sorry your life is such a mess. And that you’re constantly hurting yourself and people around you. I understand you don’t mean to. But I can’t be a part of it anymore.”

Mille feels almost as surprised as her mother at the words coming out of her. She shakes her head gently.

“I’m going to go warn the crew now. They need to turn the ferry back. That’s the only right thing to do.”

“No,” Mom says, obviously trying to regain some of the forcefulness she had just mustered but now lost completely. “No, you can’t do that …”

“You’ll do no such thing,” Torben cuts in, stepping in between Mille and her mother. “You come with us, and you’ll keep your mouth shut like your mother told you to.”

He reaches out a fat hand to grab Mille, but she steps back briskly, easily getting out of Torben’s reach.

He glares at her in surprise and anger. “You come here, girl …”

“No,” Mille says, shaking her head once, then she turns her back on him and runs down the hallway.

FIVE

Seeing her father through the window is a lot easier than she feared. In fact, he looks surprisingly like himself. The thin, white hair combed back, the usual brown slippers on his feet. His head is turned away, and it looks like he’s sleeping.

The only thing different about him is the bandages on his left elbow. That, and the straps around his wrists and ankles, tying him to the bed.

“Oh, dear,” her mother whispers. “They’ve tied him down. Why did they tie him down like that?”

“It’s a safety thing,” Josefine tells her. “So he doesn’t … hurt anyone else.”

“Oh, dear,” her mother says again, shaking her head. “Can we at least go inside?”

“I don’t think—”

Before Josefine can stop her, she’s grabbed the handle to the terrace door and is trying to turn it. It’s locked.

The sound makes her father turn his head and look straight at her. “Josie? That you?”

“Yes, Dad,” she says, and she can’t help but smile. “It’s me. Mom’s here, too.”

Her father squints his eyes and lifts his head slightly from the pillow. “Oh, hello, dear. Didn’t see you there.”

“Hello, Per,” Josefine’s mother says, her voice already starting to shake. “How’re you holding up, love?”

“Well, I’ve been better, to tell you the truth,” Josefine’s father says, breaking into a grin, then into a cough.

“I can’t bear to see him like this,” her mother tells her in a low voice, squeezing her arm. “I’ll wait in the car until it’s over.”

Josefine grabs her hard. “At least tell him goodbye, Mom.”

Her mother’s lips start trembling. Then she breathes deeply and says calmly: “You tell him from me.” She frees herself and walks away.

Josefine looks after her, dumbstruck, wondering how you can know someone for forty-five years and still get surprised when they act how they’ve always acted.

“Where’d your mother go?”

Josefine looks back at her father. He’s done coughing, but there’s a string of spittle at the corner of his mouth.

“She … she had to use the lady’s room,” Josefine lies.

“Oh, that’s typical,” he snorts. “Got the bladder of a four-year-old, your mother does. Can’t sit in a car for half an hour without asking me to pullover so she can take a leak.”

It’s been at least ten years since old Per Rasmussen has been behind the wheel, but Josefine just smiles.

“Speaking of,” he goes on, “how’s the trip? I can’t believe you came all this way to see me.”

“I do that every weekend, Dad. It’s no big deal, I told you.”

“You should’ve stayed home. Spent your time productively instead of looking at me lying around.”

Josefine is still trying to discern how much her father is aware of the situation. He’s surprisingly clearheaded right now; at least he knows he’s in the nursing home, but does he also know what happened earlier this morning? Does he remember getting scratched by one of the other old people? Has he got a clue that most of them are already dead and that he has only hours to live?

“Why don’t you come inside?” her father asks. “Don’t stand around out there.”

“I … I can’t, Dad.”

“Why not? You haven’t picked up smoking, have you? That’d break your old dad’s heart, you know.”

“No, it’s just … the rules …”

“Ah, to hell with their rules. This room is mine, and I decide who enters. Come on in, honey.”

Josefine decides that he probably doesn’t realize the full scope of the situation. If he knew there was only a slight chance of him infecting her, he would’ve never asked her in.

“I’d love to come inside, Dad, but …” Her eyes fall on the terrace door as she speaks. The window right next to it is ajar; just enough for her to slip her hand inside and reach the lock.

“But what?” her father asks, coughing again.

Josefine makes a quick decision. One that very well may seal her fate. But she makes it anyway. She heard them say on the news last night that the infection most likely spreads through blood only, like AIDS. So as long as she doesn’t touch his wound, she should be fine.

She slips her hand through the open window and unlocks the terrace door.

As she steps into the room, she immediately notices the smell of fever. The air is warm and sour and salty. And as she approaches the bed, she notices the pearls of sweat beading her father’s forehead. His cheeks are red and his eyes are puffy.

“You hot, Daddy?” she asks. “You want me to get you something cool to drink?”

“That’d be lovely,” he says, smiling up at her.

She takes his cup from the table and goes to the tiny bathroom, fills the cup with icy water and goes back to him.

Seeing the cup, he instinctively tries to reach for it, but the strap stops his arm. He looks down at it, frowning.

“Here, let me help you,” Josefine says quickly, holding the cup to his lips.

Her father closes his eyes and drinks deeply, emptying the cup. Afterwards, he sighs. “Lord, that was just what I needed.”

How long has he been lying here without anyone checking on him?

Josefine isn’t too surprised, though. Even at the best of times, the nursing homes have a reputation of being understaffed, and now, under these crazy circumstances, with everything falling apart …

“So, how are things?” her father asks, sounding heartbreakingly cheerful, as though he takes this to be any other ordinary Wednesday.

“Things are … good,” Josefine says, forcing a smile. “You know … same old, same old.”

“Come on, now, when did you start lying to your old dad?” he says, tilting his head. “I can tell something’s bugging you, sweetheart.” He winks at her and lowers his voice. “Hey, you can tell me. Honestly, it’s okay. I’ll probably forget it by tomorrow.”

Josefine breaks into laughter which quickly turns into sobbing. And she realizes then and there that she was actually hoping the whole way up here that her father would’ve had one of his bad days, that he wouldn’t really be here, because this, seeing and hearing her real dad, the one she’s known for as long as she can remember, and then having to say goodbye to him, that’s too much to ask.

I can’t bear to see him like this, she thinks, then immediately realizing that the thought spoke in her mother’s voice, and that’s enough for her to stop crying. No. I won’t bail on him. And I won’t be a sobbing mess, either. He deserves better.

She looks her father in the eye. He’s calmly waiting for her to speak.

“It’s bad, Dad,” she begins. “And I think it’s only just starting. I think it might turn really, really bad. Maybe irredeemably.”

“Oh, come on now, nothing’s that bad. You make it sound like it’s the end of the world.”

“I’m afraid it might be,” Josefine whispers.

“Huh,” her dad mutters. “It’s really that bad?”

She nods. “It is. And I have no idea what to do, Dad. Soon it’ll just be me and Mom, and you know her, she won’t face facts no matter how much you scream at her.”

Josefine realizes too late she just told her dad he’s dying, but that doesn’t seem to shake him. Perhaps he knows more about the situation than he’s letting on, because he simply shrugs.

“You can’t save everyone, sweetheart. Especially not the stubborn ones like your sweet old mother. Don’t get me wrong, she’s the love of my life, but you can’t force people to get with the program, not even people you love. You just have to try your best and what will be will be, right?”

“Right,” Josefine agrees, discretely wiping away a tear with her thumb. Lucky she decided not to wear any makeup today, or her mascara would be running by now.

“You remember when this awful disease started to take a toll on me?” her father goes on. “Well, it damn near destroyed your mother. I mean, you’d think just from looking at her she was the one who’d just been diagnosed. I had to be the one to keep it together, for the both of us, you know? I had to tell her things would be all right. That we’d had a good run, that now wasn’t the time to be sad. I mean, it’s almost greedy, you know? This thing about wanting to live to be a hundred and never falling ill—who are you to demand that of life? Why not focus on all the good things you’ve been given instead? I tell you, that’s what I spend my days thinking about now—on the days I’m able too, at least.” He smiles briefly, then turns serious again. “What I’m trying to say is, you’ve got what it takes, sweetheart. And no one can take it away from you.”

Josefine nods and looks down, feeling like a little girl, as she always does when her father gives her advice.

“Thank you, Daddy,” she whispers. And before she can think to stop herself, she reaches out and takes his hand.

It’s hot and clammy, but he squeezes back with surprising strength.

They’re quiet for a minute or so. It’s almost like a lot of things pass between them, unspoken. All the words she wanted to say simply leave her and float away. And she senses her father feeling all of them.

When Josefine looks up at him again, his eyes are closed, his mouth open slightly. His breathing has grown deeper and rattlier. It looks like he’s sleeping. But then he suddenly opens his eyes, sees her and smiles.

“Hi, sweetheart.”

“Hi, Daddy.”

“I must’ve nodded off.” His voice is noticeably weaker.

“That’s okay. You can sleep if you’re tired.”

“I didn’t hear you come in. Where’s your mother? She’s not with you today?”

“No, she’s …”

“So, how are things?”

Josefine swallows, realizing that her dad has gone. “Fine, Dad. Just fine.”

“Good, I’m glad to hear it.”

He smiles, blinks, then blinks once more, and this time, he doesn’t open his eyes again.

SIX

Returning to the larger hallway, Mille finds the stream of passengers dragging along luggage and younger family members has grown thinner as most of them seem to have found their cabins.

She has no idea where to find crew members or even how to identify them, so she starts walking briskly towards what she takes to be the front-end of the ship.

She can feel the ferry moving under her feet now, and glancing out the windows, the water gliding by confirms to her that they are headed out to sea.

If I don’t make them turn back in time and get everyone off the ship, we’ll become like a zombie Titanic …

The thought makes her pick up the pace. She reaches a dining area with a buffet, but it’s currently closed and no one is there.

She goes on to find another staircase and decides to go down a deck, when someone comes around the corner and almost crashes into her.

“Whoops!” a tall, young, gangly guy exclaims. “Sorry about that. Didn’t see you.”

He’s talking Swedish and smiling at Mille for just a second, before moving out of her way, allowing her to pass.

He can’t be more than thirty, and he’s got a bad case of acne. But he’s wearing a bordeaux-colored vest with the logo of the ferry company on his chest.

“You work here?” she asks.

“I sure do.”

“Thank God. I need your help.”

“Sure, what can I do for you?”

Mille isn’t used to hearing Swedish, but it’s close enough to Danish that she gets the gist of what he’s saying, helped along by his tone and facial expression.

“It’s very important,” she says, lowering her voice as a few more people come up the stairs and pass by them. “There’s an infected person aboard the ferry. It’s my mother’s boyfriend. He’s got the virus-thing that they’re talking about in the news—you’ve heard about it, right?”

Even before he can answer, the boy’s face tells her with abundant clarity that he’s more than aware of what she’s talking about.

“Oh, no,” he says. “Are you sure? I mean, they told us they checked people before boarding them …”

“We weren’t checked at all,” Mille says, shaking her head. “I don’t know, we got here at the last minute, maybe we slipped past.”

The boy utters what must be a Swedish curse, then looks down the hallway and bites his lip. “This is not good. This is not good at all …”

“I know,” Mille says, almost ready to cry with relief that someone believes her, and that she now at least can put half the burden on this guy’s skinny shoulders. “What do we do? We’ve got to make them turn back, right?”

He nods. “I think we need to go straight to the captain with this.”

“Straight to the captain with what?”

Mille spins around at the Danish voice, which is so raspy that she’s surprised to find it belonging to a girl only a few years older than her. Her haircut is short and she’s wearing a vest matching the boy’s.

“Charlotte,” the boy says. “This woman just told me some pretty bad news.”

“Oh?” the girl says, looking from him to Mille. “And what’s that?”

“There’s an infected person on the ferry,” she tells her.

“Infected?” the girl repeats, frowning. “With what?” Before Mille can answer, comprehension dawns on the girl’s face. “Oh, shit! Tell me it’s not that Rhabdo-thing?”

“It is,” Mille says gravely. “He’s not … turned yet, but I suspect he will within an hour.”

“Fuck me,” the girl says, looking around as though searching for the nearest exit.

“We need to warn Sorensen right away,” the guy says, about to leave, waving at them both. “Come with me.”

“No, wait!” Charlotte exclaims.

The boy blinks. “Why?”

The girl darts another look around, as though to make sure no one else is within earshot, then steps away from the stairs.

Mille and the boy follow her, leaning in as she waves them closer and whispers in a hoarse voice reeking of stale coffee: “We need to think this through. If we go and tell the captain, what do you figure will happen?”

The boy shrugs. “He’ll turn back, of course. We won’t be allowed to land in Sweden when someone aboard is—”

“Exactly. But what makes you think we’ll be allowed to land back in Denmark?”

The boy blinks.

“We won’t,” the girl hisses. “We’ll be quarantined at sea. There’s no way in hell they’ll ever land a ship containing the virus anywhere.”

The boy bites his lip. “You may be right … I hadn’t thought about that.”

“Then what if we can isolate the person?” Mille interjects. “He’s still pretty healthy, I don’t think he’s even contagious yet. We could just get them to lock him up somewhere he can’t get into contact with anybody, can’t we?”

The boy frowns. “I think that would be against maritime law. You can’t detain someone unless they’re threatening to sink the ship or—”

“Oh, fuck your maritime law!” Charlotte snarls. “This is a fucking emergency. The whole country is already in lockdown. I’m sure they’ll let us lock him up.”

“But that will have to be the captain’s decision,” the boy goes on. “We need to bring this to him immediately, the sooner the better, so he can contact the authorities and find out what needs to be done.”

“And by the time that’s decided?” Charlotte asks, her eyes wide now. “And they find this guy? Do we even know where he is?” She snaps her head to look at Mille.

“Uhm, cabin B55, right down the hallway,” Mille says, pointing.

“And what if he’s gone when they come for him? Or dead? He could be dead as we speak, right?”

“I don’t think it—”

“This fucking thing is spreading like crazy!” the girl goes on, paying no more heed to Mille, but looking back at the boy again. “It’d be better to seal off the whole deck …”

“That would condemn a whole lot of healthy people,” Mille says.

“And still, it would be the captain’s decision,” the boy repeats.

Charlotte doesn’t seem to listen; she’s running her hand through her hair repeatedly and begins mumbling. “Shit, I knew it … I knew it when they said the borders might be shut down … I should’ve called in sick, but I thought it’d be safer to get to Sweden and just stay there until this thing blows over … and now look!”

“I’m sure they’ll figure out a way to deal with this,” Mille says, trying to get through to the girl, who’s looking like she’s about to panic. “Even if they quarantine the ship, they’ll probably let us non-infected leave and get back to—”

“Back to where?” Charlotte exclaims, staring at Mille. “To Denmark? Where the shit is already running wild? No, they won’t let us go anywhere. We’ll be trapped on this ship.”

“They might let us leave,” the boy argues. “Perhaps they’ll test us or something first, but I’m sure they won’t just let three thousand people strand out here.”

The girl grinds her teeth and spits at him: “They couldn’t deal with it on land, why the fuck do you think they’ll be able to on a ship full of people? The only difference is, out here, there’s nowhere to run!”

“Okay,” Mille says, trying to keep her cool. “You don’t want to take this to the captain, right?”

“No, I don’t. Because if we do, they’ll shut down everything, and we’ll be at the mercy of whatever they decide. I mean, maybe they’ll get it under control, fine, I’ll give you that—there’s a chance. But are you willing to risk your life on that?”

“What do you suggest we do, then?”

Charlotte thinks for a second, clicking her jaw. Then she says firmly: “We bail. We launch a lifeboat and get the hell off the ship as soon as possible.”

“That would be cowardly,” Mille says before she can help herself. “We can’t leave the rest of the people here unknowing about the threat.”

“Fine, then we call them once we’re far enough away.”

The boy is about to say something, but Mille cuts him off by raising her voice.

“Let me tell you something. I already bailed on a bus full of my classmates. You know what happened to them? They’re dead. Every last one of them. I’m not bailing again.”

“That’s fine, you play the hero,” the girl snaps. “But I’m leaving.”

“Charlotte, wait,” the boy says, but Charlotte has already turned to leave, and she runs downstairs.

Mille looks at the boy, and he looks back at her.

“You still want to tell the captain?” Mille asks.

The boy doesn’t look so certain anymore. “Maybe … we should secure the guy first. You know, just so we don’t risk him infecting anybody else.”

Mille nods. “That’s a good idea.” And when the boy is about to run down the hallway, she grabs his arm. “Wait. It’s better I do it alone.”

He looks at her. “You sure? I mean, what if he doesn’t … agree?”

“He definitely won’t. That’s why we need to be sneaky about it. If he sees anyone else than me, he’ll freak out.”

“Okay, well … I could still come, but just stay back? And if you need help, you can call out to me.”

Mille nods. “That’s fine. Come on, then.”

Mille is about to run, when the boy holds out a hand. “I’m Iver, by the way.”

She smiles and takes his hand. “Hi, Iver. I’m Mille.”

SEVEN

The room falls completely quiet. It’s like a vacuum. Like sounds never existed.

Josefine watches her father take his last breath before his chest stops rising and falling.

And then she just sits there for a minute, still holding his hand, feeling the warmth leaving it.

Something begins to stir at the back of her mind, some incessant thought telling her to remove her hand, to get away from the bed, to leave the room.

At first, the thought annoys her, but then she realizes it’s simply her mind trying to protect her, and she decides to follow its advice.

She squeezes his hand one last time, then gets up and steps back.

And at that exact moment, there’s a rattling of keys, a snap of a lock, and then the door to the room is opened briskly. A man—at least Josefine assumes it’s a man, judging from his height—all dressed in what looks like a medical spacesuit, stares at her from the doorway.

“What the hell are you doing in here?” he exclaims, his voice distorted by the breathing mask. “No one is allowed in the patients’ rooms!”

“He’s my father,” she says, as though that explains anything.

“Christ, we’re trying to keep people safe,” he mutters, then walks to the bed, his suit swishing and swooshing. “Per?” he exclaims. “Per Rasmussen? Can you hear me?”

“He’s gone,” Josefine hears herself tell the man in the hazmat suit. “He died less than two minutes ago.”

The man looks at her, and she can make out his eyes through the protective glass. He’s younger than she thought. Around her own age. “You really shouldn’t be in here,” he tells her, and this time, the voice is almost compassionate.

And Josefine knows he’s right. But she doesn’t want to leave.

“I’m fine,” she says. “I’m going with him.”

“You are?”

“Yes. They told me one relative could go.”

“Yes, but …”

Josefine never finds out what comes after “but,” because the man in the suit is interrupted by a throaty noise coming from her father.

His chest jerks upwards, and for a second, it looks to Josefine like he’s suddenly begun breathing again, but then she realizes it’s simply his body cramping, as he thrashes his head from side to side and tries to lift his arms and pull up his legs. He’s stopped by the straps. Instead, he cranes his neck and stares directly at her.

Josefine thought she was prepared to see him like this. She thought the years of dementia had gotten her used to looking at his face and seeing a stranger.

But this …

This is different.

It’s not a stranger glaring at her from those empty eyes. It’s no one. It’s a dead thing. And as much as Josefine wants to feel pity and grief for the thing strapped to the bed, she finds nothing but horror in her heart.

The thing bares its grey teeth and growls at her.

Josefine automatically takes a step backwards.

“The patient in room 14 has just turned,” the man in the suit says, and when Josefine looks dreamily over at him, she sees him talking into a walkie. “I need two of you to come and help me secure him.” Then, he looks over at Josefine. “You really don’t need to be here for this.”

“It’s fine,” her voice tells him. “I want to.”

The man looks at her a moment longer, then shrugs. “Suit yourself. But I warned you.”

He opens a small medical purse Josefine hasn’t noticed till now and produces a syringe and a tiny bottle from it. Even with the big gloves on, he manages to prepare the syringe with no real trouble; he’s obviously trained in doing it.

“What are you giving … him?” Josefine asks, hesitating at the final word, weary at even referring to the thing on the bed with a pronoun.

“It’s a sedative,” the man answers. “It won’t hurt him, but he’ll be unable to move for about four to six minutes.”

Josefine takes a deep breath. First the straps and now a forced injection. Somehow, that’s what she finds most scary about this whole thing: the fact that nursing homes are treating the people like inmates in a high-security prison. Or like psychotic people in a 1920’s asylum.

The door to the room opens, and two more suits enter, bringing a gurney and what looks an awful lot like a straightjacket. They look at Josefine, but ask no questions. After briefly coordinating amongst them, the three men take up position around the bed, where the dead thing is still struggling and groaning, trying to get at anybody.

“Ready?” one of them asks. “I’m giving it now.”

He plunges the needle into the inner thigh of the thing that was Josefine’s father a few minutes ago, swiftly pushing the clear liquid into the body.

The effect is almost immediate.

The thrashing subsides and the groans die out. The milky-white eyes close halfway and the mouth stops biting.

“Okay, let’s do it!”

The men work like they’ve done this at least a dozen times before; working together as a team. Within ninety seconds, the body has been unstrapped, hoisted up, dressed in the straightjacket and placed on the gurney. They then fasten another set of leather strap around the shoulders, chest and waist.

They step back and watch the thing strapped to the gurney as it makes a few halfhearted attempts to move its sedated and secured limbs.

“Great job,” one of the men says, letting out a discrete sigh of relief. “He isn’t going anywhere.”

“Is the other patient ready?” another one of them asks.

“Yeah, we loaded her into the chopper twenty minutes ago. The tranq must have worn off by now, so she’s probably alive and kicking.”

“Then let’s get this guy out there before he wakes back up, too.”

They go to open the terrace door and roll the gurney outside. As they pass by Josefine, who’s standing by the wall, watching silently, one of the men—the first one—stops and looks at her. “You coming or what?”

EIGHT

Mille returns to hallway B and finds door number 55 open. From inside, she can hear her mom and Torben speaking.

“Ouch!” Torben exclaims. “Be careful, that stings like hell.”

“It’s supposed to sting,” Mille’s mom tells him. “That’s how you know it works.”

Mille pushes the door open all the way and steps inside the crammed cabin. There are four bunks and a single, narrow window at the end, letting in the early, greenish twilight.

Torben is sitting on one of the bunks, his head tilted to the side, his shirt buttoned down to show one hairy, brown nipple.

Mille’s mom is busy dabbing at the scratch right above his collarbone—which looks glowing red—with a wad of wet toilet paper. In her other hand is a bottle of what looks like chlorhexidine.

Torben already looks feverish; his forehead is beaded with sweat and his cheeks are pink. Also, the air in the cabin is stuffy and moist.

He’s dying even faster than I feared, Mille thinks, feeling her stomach tighten.

Torben winces and is about to say something when he notices Mille. “Oh,” he groans. “She’s back.”

Mom turns her head, sees Mille, and her face turns blank. “What are you doing here? I thought you were going to get them to turn the ferry around …”

“Mom,” Mille says. “Can I talk with you outside for a moment?”

“I’m kind of busy,” her mom retorts coolly.

Mille looks at Torben, and he scowls back at her. “What?” he barks.

“You look terrible.”

Torben shoves Mille’s mom’s hand away as she tries to resume rinsing the scratch. “Don’t you start again. I’m fine, it’s just a goddamn scratch, and it’s been disinfected thoroughly.” He points a fat finger at Mille. “You get the hell out of here! I don’t need you around to be a pain in my ass.”

Mille answers in a calm voice: “You obviously have a fever.”

“No, I don’t,” he scuffs, pulling out his shirt and fanning it. “I’m just warm. It’s very warm in here. Damn, honey, get me a Coke, will you?”

“Sure,” Mille’s mom says.

Torben sends Mille one last, triumphant look.

Mille simply turns and leaves the cabin. She darts a look down the hallway to see Iver standing by the end. He sends her a questioning look, and Mille shakes her head. He steps out of sight.

Her mother joins her a moment later, gently closing the door behind them, right after telling Torben: “I’ll be back in a jiff, honey.”

“Hurry up,” Torben groans. “I’m burning up.”

Mille’s mother looks at her defiantly. “So, is this how you’re going to play it? Act all grown-up on me.”

Someone needs to, Mille thinks, but keeps the thought to herself. Instead, she says: “You can’t go back in there. He’ll be dead within half an hour. Probably sooner.”

“Will you stop with that nons—”

“Please believe me, Mom,” Mille says, surprising them both by reaching out and taking her mother’s wrist gently. “It won’t be safe for you with him. As soon as he dies, he won’t recognize you. He’ll only want to attack you.”

A host of different emotions flicker across her mother’s face. Then she settles on disgust and pulls free her arm. “You have no way of knowing what’ll happen to Torben. He’s strong as a bull. He’ll fight it off.”

“No, Mom. He won’t. No one can fight it off.”

“Torben can,” her mother sneers, putting her face close to Mille’s. “You’ll see.”

Then she walks right past her.

Mille stands there for a moment, considering her options.

I need to secure the door.

Mille looks around. A few doors down the hallway a trolley containing cleaning supplies are parked. The cabin door opens in, however, which makes it impossible to barricade from this side. But Mille’s gaze fall on the roll of extension wire hanging from the trolley, and she reacts without thinking.

She runs to the trolley and drags it back to door 55, placing it right up against the door. It’s just wide enough that it can’t pass through the doorway. Mille grabs the wire, twirls it a few times around the handle, then secures it tightly to the trolley.

Just as she pulls a firm knot, she hears heavy footsteps from the other side, and then the handle turns and someone pulls the door. It only opens half an inch, though, before the wire pulls the trolley up against the doorframe.

“What the—” Torben’s voice from the inside. Another tug at the door. Then Torben’s face appears at the crack, one bloodshot eye peering out at the trolley. Then the eye fixes on Mille, and the gaze turns icy. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? Where’s your mother?”

“It’s important you stay out of contact with an—”

“You open this door at once!”

The handle is pulled violently back—so hard, in fact, that Mille for a moment is sure something will give.

But the extension cord holds, and so does the handle itself. The trolley slams up against the walls as Torben pulls the handle again, even harder. Still, the blockade works.

Mille is about to leave, when the door to the neighboring cabin opens and a woman pokes her head out. “What’s going on? We’re trying to sleep.”

Mille sees the woman looking at the trolley serving as a homemade barricade, and her expression darkens.

“Why is someone locked inside that cabin?”

Torben yanks the handle again, and Mille has no idea what to say to the woman.

Then, suddenly, Iver steps in front of her and addresses the woman in a low voice: “Hello, and sorry for the disturbance. The passenger in cabin 55 is possibly infected and contagious. You need to stay inside your own cabin. Please don’t tell anyone. The situation is being dealt with.”

Mille is amazed at how calm and assertive Iver sounds, talking with an authority she didn’t sense in him before.

The woman seems to take him very seriously, because her eyes widen immediately. “Is it … is it that virus they’re talking about?”

“We don’t know yet,” Iver lies without flinching. “But we don’t want to take any chances. The doctor will see to the person very soon. The best thing you can do is stay inside your cabin until further notice.”

The woman nods, looks over at the trolley again, then back at Iver. “All right,” she whispers. Then she closes the door and locks it.

“Well done,” Mille praises him, and Iver smiles briefly. “Let’s go.”

“You come back!” Torben shouts, his voice already sounding strained and raspy. “You open this door! When I get my hands on you, young lady, you won’t like it! I swear!” Then he breaks into a nasty cough.

Mille and Iver are about to walk away when a shrill voice comes from behind: “What the hell are you doing?”

Mille spins around to see her mother standing there, a Coke in her hand, glaring at her open-mouthed, eyes wide in disbelief.

“Have you lost your mind completely? Torben is sick, he needs medical attention. And you’re locking him in? And who are you?” Staring at Iver. “You told the crew about Torben? How dare you?”

“Torben is infected, Mom,” Mille says. “He can’t get into contact with anybody. It’s only a matter of time before he …”

Her mother obviously isn’t listening. Even as Mille is speaking, she puts the Coke on the trolley and makes to undo the wire.

Mille grabs her wrist hard and flings it away. “You stop that!” she shouts, looking her mother dead in the eye. “Listen to me! For the last time: you can’t let him out! He’ll endanger everyone on this ship.”

“But … he needs help …” her mother croaks, apparently taken aback by Mille’s sudden anger, and—as she always does when she can’t bully someone—resorts to her hurt-little-girl-demeanor. “It’s cruel locking him up like that …”

Torben is still coughing and banging at the door.

“It’s too late, Mom. I’m sorry. I really am.”

Her mom’s lips start quivering.

Mille feels an unexpected stab of sympathy, and she reaches out to take her mom’s hands. “Listen to me, Mom. I’m going with Iver to talk to the captain now. They’ll decide what to do.”

“Will they … will they cure him?”

Mille shakes her head. “They can’t.”

Her mother starts crying.

“But … I’m sure they’ll do everything they can to ease his discomfort,” Mille goes on, offering what is probably a white lie. “We need your help, Mom. Are you listening?”

Her mother looks at her through wet eyes. “What?”

“You need to stay here and guard the door. Make sure no one comes by and tries to open it. Okay? It’s very important.” She points to the door. Torben has fallen silent on the other side now. Mille says very firmly: “If that door is opened, a lot of people will die. You hear me?”

She holds her mom’s gaze, watching the struggle on her face. Then, she nods in resignation.

“Good,” Mille says, smiling vaguely. “Thank you, Mom. I knew I could trust you.”

Her mom nods again, avoiding her eye.

Before she can stop herself, she puts her arms around her mother and whispers: “You’re being very brave. I know how difficult it is. I lost my best friend just two days ago. I was right there. I … I know how it feels.”

She pulls away gently, and her mother sobs, nods again, but still doesn’t look Mille in the eye. Mille squeezes her arm and whispers: “Stay strong until I come back, Mom.”

Then she walks away, waving Iver after her. It takes an effort not to look back.

NINE

“I told you it was a bad fucking idea! Didn’t I tell you?”

Malthe’s voice is shrill with shock, cutting through the music blaring from the speakers.

Aksel ignores him, concentrating instead on the road and the many obstacles in the form of living dead people staggering back and forth, grabbing hopelessly at the car.

“You fucking asshole, you just had to do it, didn’t you?” Malthe goes on, running his hands through his slicked-back hair. “And now look at you! Your hand is all fucked-up!”

He reaches over and grabs Aksel’s wrist.

“Let go of me!” Aksel snarls, swatting at Malthe—then instantly regretting it, as the movement sends a pang of pain through the busted hand.

“Ugh!” Malthe shrieks and pulls back. “You got blood on me, asshole! This is my best shirt.”

“Then keep your fucking hands to yourself,” Aksel mutters, blinking sweat from his eyes and clutching the steering wheel as he swerves the Mercedes to narrowly avoid a dead woman with one tit hanging out of her tank top—and not a bad tit at that, Aksel has time to notice.

“Hey, you saw that broad?” Eli croaks from the backseat. “She was half-naked!”

“I thought you were out cold,” Malthe remarks and looks back at Eli. “After you downed that last rum, I was sure you were out for the night.”

“No, no way,” Eli says, hoisting himself up from the seat.

Aksel notices in the rearview mirror how Eli’s head dangles from side to side, his eyes swimming in their sockets. He burps and laughs. “I could go for another cold one. We got any more beers?”

“I think you had enough,” Malthe says.

“Fuck you, Mom,” Eli grins, reaching out his hand. “Gimme! Or I’ll start kicking your seat.”

Malthe bends down, takes another can from the box, then throws it over his shoulder. “Here, catch!”

“Ouch! You hit me right on the fucking nose!”

Malthe snorts laughter, and Aksel can’t help but smile despite the pain in his hand at the sight of Eli in the mirror, rubbing his nose, looking at it cross-eyed, like a goddamn cartoon character.

“Hey, what was that about some naked chick?” Eli asks.

“I don’t know, you tell us!” Malthe blurts out. “You were the one who mentioned her!”

“Oh, right. I saw her out the window. Had one boob hanging out.”

“’One boob’,” Malthe repeats. “How old are you, five? They’re called tits. Or bazookas. Or melons. Or anything but boobs, really.”

“I call them whatever the boob I want,” Eli grunts and opens the can. “The point is, it was hanging out.”

“Was she dead?”

“Huh?”

“I asked you, was she dead?”

“No, she was walking around.”

“That doesn’t mean she wasn’t dead,” Malthe says grimly.

“What are you on about?” Eli asks, sipping his beer and spilling half of it down his shirt. “Hey, where are we?”

“In Aarhus, you drunk asshole. You forgot? You wanted to see real-life zombies, so we drove here.”

“All the way from Fredericia?” Eli asks earnestly.

“Yeah, and you slept through most of the trip. So take in the view, because we’re leaving again.”

Just then, Aksel turns on to the freeway and speeds up. The number of dead people decreases drastically, so does the number of cars abandoned on the road, making it possible for him to get the car in fourth and floor it.

“No, wait,” Eli says, turning in the seat to look back. “Why are we leaving already? I want to see more of them!”

“Because Axe got bitten,” Malthe says, looking at Aksel’s hand and immediately—as though he recalls the seriousness of the situation—his voice turns shrill again. “He wanted to high-five one of them, and it caught him like a fucking alligator; almost ripped his hand clean off.”

“Holy shit!” Eli gasps. “Is that true, Axe?”

“He’s exaggerating,” Aksel mutters, holding up his right hand for Eli to see. “It looks worse than it is.”

Actually, it doesn’t; it looks exactly as bad as a bite wound to the hand looks. There’s a deep, ragged-edged gash between his middle and forth finger, making it look like someone tried to cleave his hand in two. His first three fingers are relatively unscathed, but the two others took the worst of it: the teeth of the zombie peeled the skin all the way to the bone on the ring finger, and the nail on his pinkie is missing altogether.

“Holy shit,” Eli says again. “Looks like you stuck it in a fucking blender, dude.”

“It doesn’t even hurt,” Aksel shrugs, placing the hand back on the wheel. It’s already sticky from blood, and some of it has dripped onto the seat. What does it matter at this point anyway? His father is going to have him boiled alive for taking the car without asking, not to mention driving around in it drunk.

“You’re going to die, man,” Eli says, glaring at Aksel wide-eyed. “You’re going to turn into a zombie.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Aksel says.

“It’s true!” Eli shouts. “Didn’t you play Dying Light? You’re going to die and wake back up again. That’s how it works. Once you’re bitten, there’s no way to save you.”

“Except for chopping off the hand,” Malthe remarks.

Aksel looks at him sideways. “Fuck you.”

“I’m serious,” Malthe says, sending him his most earnest look. “I think we should do it.”

“I think you should blow yourself.”

Eli snorts with laughter. “If only he could!”

“I won’t be able to play the drums with one fucking hand, will I?” Aksel says, looking at Malthe.

“Fuck that, wouldn’t you rather live?” Malthe says, throwing out his arms. “There are more important things in life than playing music, you know.”

“Not to me there isn’t.”

“Gotta agree with Axe on this one,” Eli says. “I wouldn’t know what the fuck to do with my life if we broke up the band.”

“You guys are nuts,” Malthe says, shaking his head. “I’d screw the band in a minute if it meant I could live.”

Aksel shakes his head, placing his limited focus back on the road. He realizes they’re going way above the limit, the Mercedes’s engine working like a beast. He lets off the gas a little.

A surprisingly sober thought shoots through his mind then. If they hadn’t all been boozed out of their minds, the situation would look a whole lot different. If he hadn’t downed all those Carlsbergs and almost as many shots, he would have been terrified right now. He would have cursed himself for putting his hand out the window. For even coming here. For going out drinking with his friends in the first place, when everyone was talking about staying at home, staying indoors, staying safe.

But no, he just had to play the asshole, didn’t he? He was the one who wanted to go, after all. He talked Eli into it, who in turn talked Malthe into it. And then they were off, buying booze at the local supermarket, where pretty much everything else had been ripped off the shelves, including cotton swabs and baby diapers.

“What … what will happen?” Malthe asks, looking at Aksel and sounding almost sober now. “When you die, I mean? You can’t drive the car when you die. You need to let one of us take over.”

“No way,” Aksel says, shaking his head. “It’s my dad’s car. No one but me drives it.”

“But we’ll crash.”

“No we won’t, because I won’t die.”

“You look pale.”

“And you look ugly.”

“You’re sweating like a pig, too.”

“Are you a fucking doctor now? Why don’t you just go ahead and take my temperature, you faggot?”

Even as he speaks, Aksel realizes Malthe is right; he is sweating profusely, his hair clinging to his temples, drops running down his back. His hands are shaking, too. And his vision is starting to go fuzzy around the edges.

“Just need to concentrate,” he mutters, not really aware he’s talking aloud.

He fucked up. Royally. He knows that, even in his heavily intoxicated state. Some deeper part of him is freaking out. He knows what happens once you get bitten by a zombie. And he knows those things back in Aarhus were most likely zombies, even though the media is calling them “sick people” and “victims of the virus” and other kind of keeping-the-calm bull-crap terms.

“It’s okay,” he whispers underneath his breath, which has turned slightly ragged now, warm spittle foaming at the corners of his mouth. “I’ll be fine. Just need to kill the germs.”

“What’s that?” Malthe asks. “You talking to me?”

“Give me your lighter,” Aksel says, turning into the emergency lane and hitting the brake hard.

“Woah,” Eli exclaims as he is thrust forward, almost taking a dive over the gear shift. “What’s with the driving, dude?”

“Get the bottle of absinth from the trunk,” Aksel says as the car comes to a halt.

“Right on!” Eli says, leaning over the backseat. “Now you’re talking!”

Aksel unbuckles and looks at Malthe. “And where’s that lighter?”

Malthe is going through his pockets. “I don’t know, man, I had it just a minute ago. Wait, here it is.” He hands Aksel a packet of cigarettes.

Aksel takes out the lighter and throws the packet back at Malthe. “I only asked for the lighter.”

“What, I thought you wanted a smoke?”

“The absinth, Eli! Hurry up!”

“Hold your water,” Eli says. He’s hanging over the seats, rummaging through the bags in the trunk, bottles clinging. “There’s a lot of booze back here. Absinth … that’s the green one, right?”

“Right.”

Aksel notices Malthe eyeing him.

“Don’t you think you’ve had enough?” he asks.

“I’m not going to drink it,” Aksel says, grinding his teeth as a stab of pain jolts up through his arm. It’s intense enough that the alcohol in his system can only take the edge off it.

Malthe looks at the lighter, which Aksel turns over in his good hand, flicking it and producing sparks.

“Wait … are you going to set something on fire?”

“Ten points to Einstein over here,” Aksel says, just as Eli blurts out: “There it is!”

He hands the tiny bottle of green liquid to Aksel, who places the lighter between his teeth, takes the absinth and opens the door.

“Hey, where you going?” Eli shouts.

Aksel doesn’t answer. His focus is on the task at hand. He watched a war movie once, where they cleaned a dirty gunshot like this. He knows it’ll work; fire will kill any germs or infection. He also knows it’ll hurt like hell.

He unscrews the absinth, careful not to use his bad hand, instead pinning the bottle in his armpit. He drops the cap and puts the bottle to his lips, drinking three large gulps. The booze burns like it’s already on fire, causing a searing pain down through his throat and on the inside of his chest.

“Woooh!” Eli howls, hanging halfway out the car window. “Now we’re fucking talking! Dude, you’re an animal! I’m up next!”

“No, you moron, you’ll kill yourself,” Malthe objects. “And stay in the car, goddamnit! Aksel’s about to do something stupid.”

“I sure am,” Aksel grins, blinking away the tears filling his eyes, trying to focus his gaze on the bad hand. Most of the blood has dried up by now, but fresh, red trickles are still coming out. He takes a deep breath, then pours the absinth out over his hand.

The pain is surprisingly mild, considering how people in movies always scream when their wounds are disinfected. It burns, for sure, but not worse than what the absinth did to his intestines just a second ago.

“Why’re you pouring out the booze?” Eli blurts out, hanging from the window, trying to get free from Malthe, who’s caught him by the belt.

Aksel puts the bottle on the ground and takes the lighter. “Right, here goes,” he croaks. And before giving himself time to think, he flicks it.

The flame is blue and thin and instantaneous. Beautiful, really. Licking all the way up to his elbow, nipping at the sleeve of his T-shirt. Aksel just stares at it for a moment; he can see the hair on his arm curl up and melt.

Then comes the pain.

This time, it’s just as bad as you’d expect from lighting yourself on fire, immediately drowning out the pain from the wound.

And that’s when Aksel realizes he has not thought the plan through, has no game plan as to how he’ll put out the fire again. He expected it to simply give off a quick, intense burst and then extinguish itself. But his hand just keeps burning, and with his next breath, he can smell his own skin searing.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” he shouts, beginning to flail his arm. It does nothing to put out the fire, just causes it to give off a sound like someone violently brandishing a flag. And a cascade of tiny, burning sparks fly off into every direction, some of them landing on the car, one of them catching Aksel right under the eye. He screams as he’s blinded, instinctively putting both hands to his face.

Which is when the bad plan turns into a deadly one.

Someplace nearby, he can hear someone—sounds like Eli—screaming. But he can’t make out the words. The world is drowning in fire and pain, as he smears himself in burning absinth, setting himself further and further on fire.

TEN

Josefine has never been in a helicopter before. Then again, she’s never watched a loved one die before, so flying a helicopter won’t be the craziest thing she’s done today.

It’s one of those yellow medical helicopters she’s seen fly across the city now and then. Her first impression is that it seems awfully crammed, the walls are full of medical equipment and the ceiling isn’t tall enough for a grown person to stand.

The other patient is already loaded, a woman, and quite a large one at that; Josefine recognizes her as Bodil, a lovely, jovial old lady with a booming laugh and pug nose. Everything about Bodil is gone, of course—except for the pug nose.

There’s something funny about the way she’s lying on the gurney, though. Her right arm seems to be sitting too low, twisting her torso at an awkward angle. But maybe it’s just because of how she’s writhing to get free of the straps.

The men secure the other gurney opposite to Bodil’s, just as the thing that was Josefine’s father begins to move more frantically again, rearing its head, snapping its teeth and trying to sit up.

The two patients don’t seem to notice each other, both are only concerned with getting free and reaching the nearest live person, which right now is the man in the protective suit, who’s placed himself on the seat next to Josefine.

The way the two gurneys are placed parallel to each other leaves only a narrow passage between them.

The man next to her has taken off the mask and zipped down the suit enough to free his arms and shoulders.

To Jennifer’s surprise, he’s at least ten years younger than she first thought, though he’s sporting grey sideburns and a week’s worth of stubble. He’s also a lot more handsome.

“I guess it’s just going to be you and me, then,” he says, putting his radio away. “One of my colleagues was supposed to join us, but he just got himself scratched.”

“Oh. Sorry to hear that.”

“Never mind, he was kind of an asshole anyway.”

Josefine looks at him in stunned surprise.

He sighs and rubs his face. “I’m sorry. It’s been a really tough couple of days. I watched so many people die, you wouldn’t believe it.”

“Everything set back here?” a hoarse voice shouts from the open door, causing Josefine to jump.

A muscular guy wearing a helmet with a headset looks in at them. He’s wearing a tight, white T-shirt and grey aviator sunglasses. And as though the clichés weren’t obvious enough, he’s also chewing loudly on a piece of gum.

“I think we’re good to go,” the man next to Josefine says.

“And the patients?” the pilot asks, nodding towards the gurneys. “Are they secured properly?”

“We double-checked.”

“Sure? Wouldn’t want anything to happen while we’re up in the air.”

“I think we’re good.”

“Great. Well, let’s get ’er floatin’, then.” The pilot grins at them, slaps his palm against the outside of the helicopter twice, then closes the door and climbs in the front.

“It’ll be pretty noisy,” the man tells Josefine, pointing over her head. “You can put those on if you like.”

Josefine turns her head and sees a set of earmuffs hanging from a hook.

“I didn’t even catch your name,” he goes on, securing his seat belt. “Mine’s Michael.”

“Josefine. Nice to meet you.” Without thinking, she offers him her hand.

He looks at it, then looks up at her. “We better not. The virus, you know.”

“Oh. Sorry.” She pulls back her hand, feeling stupid.

“Don’t be sorry. Just get used to it. We’ll all be practicing social distancing for the foreseeable future.”

“I thought they said it only transfers through blood?”

“That’s how it looks right now, yeah, but we can’t know for certain. There’s also the possibility that we’re dealing with more than one thing, so better safe than sorry.”

“More than one virus?”

“Yeah, or rather, several strains of the same virus. It could have mutated already.”

“I see.”

The pilot says something on a radio, then begins navigating the instruments with practiced movements. A deep rumbling as the engine starts, then a fluttery whisking sound grows louder and faster.

Michael puts on a set of earmuffs. Then, he reaches over and flips a switch on Josefine’s pair, and the sound changes slightly.

“Can you hear me?” he asks, his voice sounding in her ears, slightly delayed in comparison with the movement of his lips.

Josefine nods. “I can.”

“Good. Then we don’t need to shout.”

The sound of the rotors has by now risen to a booming roar, and suddenly, Josefine feels a jolt in her stomach as the helicopter lifts off.

She watches through the window how the parking lot moves away from them, then she sees the roof of the nursing home, the lawn behind the building, the street and the next street, more buildings, and soon she has a clear view over the whole town.

Her mother has probably already left for home. The thought of her driving home alone makes Josefine sad.

The only good thing about the noise from the helicopter is that she can’t hear the groans from either of the two bodies writhing on the gurneys in front of her.

She looks at Bodil and again notices something odd about the way she’s lying; the right arm looks like it’s not moving properly, and Bodil has pushed herself sideways, causing her to almost turn over on the gurney, if it hadn’t been for the straps, of course.

“What’s up with her arm?” Josefine asks, pointing at Bodil.

Michael looks at Bodil, then at Josefine. “I think it’s dislocated. They told me they had a hard time getting her on to the gurney. She was very heavy, and it tipped over.”

“Oh. Was she …?”

“Dead when it happened? Yeah, don’t worry. She didn’t feel anything.”

“How about now?” Josefine glances at the thing that used to be her father. “Do they feel pain?”

“There’s really no way to tell. But from looking at them, I’d say no. They don’t react the least to things which would cause pain.”

“I guess that’s a good thing.”

He shrugs and looks out the window.

Josefine does the same, surprised at how far they’ve traveled already; the town is gone and all she can see now are open fields, yellow and green and thriving under the baking sun.

She looks over at Michael once more. “Did you know any of them?”

He nods towards the gurneys. “Any of them?”

“No, the ones you watched die?”

“Oh. No, they were all just patients.” He glances at her. “I’m sure it’s different when they’re your family …”

“I’m actually surprisingly okay with it.”

Michael raises one eyebrow. “You are?”

She nods and shrugs. “I’ve seen him slowly disappear for years now. It’s like my brain has gotten used to seeing his body without him in it.”

“Oh, that’s right, he had Alzheimer’s, didn’t he?”

She nods again.

“Interesting.”

She looks at him, and his expression changes.

“I don’t mean to sound insensitive. It’s just that, examining a patient with severe dementia might teach us something new.”

“Well, I hope he can be of some help. Are you … close to finding a cure?”

“Not as far as I know.”

“How can a person with Alzheimer’s tell you anything about a virus then?”

“It’s a little technical to explain.”

“Try me—I had biology in college.”

She says it as a joke, but Michael doesn’t seem to catch it. He leans forward.

“Whatever this thing is, it’s clear that it’s affecting the brain. All other vital organs seem to shut down once the patient reaches the final stage. In fact, they begin decaying, just like the rest of the body. The blood more or less coagulates, the muscles atrophy, the bones even turn brittle. That’s why they have a hard time moving normally; for all intents and purposes, they’re corpses walking around.”

Josefine feels an involuntary shiver.

Michael is too busy talking to notice. “For some unknown reason, the virus is able to highjack the motor cortex and keep it running even after everything else has been shut down. That’s why it has zero effect when the police use rubber bullets and tear gas to try and pacify them. The only thing stopping an infected person is either damaging the brain or cutting it off from the rest of the nervous system.”

Josefine flinches. “Do you mean, like … decapitation? That’s brutal! Has anyone done that?”

Michael sends her a grim look. “I’ve heard some pretty gruesome stories. People get very creative when they’re trying to survive. One guy saw his neighbor use a tennis rachet to—”

“I think I can do without the details.”

“I get that. What I’m trying to say is, it doesn’t need to be anyway near that brutal.” He reaches over and places two fingers gently on the back of her neck. “You feel this? The soft spot right at the base of the skull? That’s where the connection to the brain is most vulnerable. A half-inch cut would probably do it.”

He takes his hand away again and Josefine takes a second to rid that awful image from her mind. Then, she asks: “How do you feel about euthanasia?”

He gives her a curious look. “I’m a doctor. My job is to keep people alive.”

“I know, but … aren’t these people already dead?”

“Clinically, yes. But we might need to redefine the term.”

“Okay, but if we assume they are dead and that this virus is keeping them artificially alive, don’t you believe there comes a point where death is the merciful thing?”

“Merciful to whom?”

Josefine frowns and gestures towards the gurney. “The person suffering, of course. I mean, if there’s no cure …”

“I’ve always opposed the thought of death as the easy way out,” Michael says. “But this is different. Here, we might need to do it to stop the virus from spreading any further.”

Josefine considers it for a moment. “I think it still might be justified. You know, for the greater good.”

“The thing is, we wouldn’t be doing it to ease their pain, but to save our own asses. Besides, you’d be talking about organized mass murder. The number I heard this morning suggested that almost a million people are now infected. By tomorrow it’ll likely be triple that. And once it really reaches mainland Europe, it’ll grow exponentially. Within a week, we’d have to orchestrate a genocide even the Nazis would’ve envied.”

Josefine swallows dryly, then clears her throat. “But if they are … rotting, basically … won’t they eventually stop moving and die for real?”

Michael shrugs. “It’s too early to tell. So far, there’s no signs of any of them slowing down, even in the first patients we restrained. The human body is a tough machine; it takes weeks for it to decompose completely, even after the respiratory and circulatory systems have ceased functioning.” He looks at the two bodies, and Josefine can tell from the way his cheek is moving that he’s biting down hard. “I don’t think waiting for the infected to die out will be a viable option. Just like putting down that many people won’t be possible, even if we wanted to.” He shakes his head slowly. “No, I’m telling you: a vaccine is our only hope. If we don’t find one very soon, there won’t be a happy ending for humanity.”

ELEVEN

Mille and Iver step inside the elevator, and Iver scans a card hanging from his hip, then presses a button. The elevator starts moving up.

“You think your mom will let him out?” Iver asks.

“No,” Mille says.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. I could tell she understand the danger.”

Iver doesn’t say anything, but he keeps looking at Mille sideways.

She looks back at him. “What?”

“It’s just … I didn’t feel good about leaving her to guard the door.”

“Look, she’s a coward, but she wouldn’t risk other people’s lives,” Mille says, feeling suddenly and unexpectedly protective of her mother.

“So you don’t think she might give in if he starts talking to her through the door?”

“No. I trust her.”

Mille hears the lie in her voice even as she speaks the words. And Iver hears it too, apparently, because he looks at her until the elevator stops. Mille makes a point to not look back. She believes her mother won’t open the door. No, she needs to believe it. Needs to believe that her mother is capable of doing something unselfish for once. Just this one time. That’s she’s not a complete and selfish narcissist.

She glances at Iver and wants to say something, to tell him she’s sorry for snapping at him. But she doesn’t know how, and then the doors open and they step out into a wider hallway ending in a couple of double doors.

Iver knocks on the door twice and opens it without waiting for an invite, waving Mille after him.

The room must be the cockpit of the ferry—if that’s even the right word, Mille has no idea—and it’s impressively big. In the middle is a big control desk with all kinds of screens and buttons, and on three sides are tall windows showing the open sea and the dawning sky above.

There are only two people in the room, both male, both dressed in white uniforms and ties. One is sitting by the desk, sipping from a mug of coffee; the other is standing off to the side, looking at his phone. The guy at the desk is young and heavyset, the guy checking his phone is older and has a grey, well-trimmed beard.

“Darn it,” the older guy says. “It keeps telling me the app is already running, but it won’t open.”

“Hi, Iver,” the chubby man says, raising his mug as a salute. “You found a friend who wants a look-see?”

“Could you help me out here, Frederik?” the older man says with a grunt of annoyance, stilling looking at his phone. “I’ll never figure out this silly technology.”

“Captain,” Iver says, turning to the older man. “I’m afraid we have a serious problem.”

The man looks at him over rimless glasses. “So?”

Iver takes a deep breath. “I believe … we believe … there’s a person aboard who’s infected with the Rhabdo-virus.”

The guy with the coffee stands up, almost spilling coffee down his shirt.

The older man doesn’t move a muscle; he just holds Iver’s gaze. “That’s not possible. We checked every last passenger before boarding.”

“You didn’t check me,” Mille blurts out.

Both men turn their eyes on her, and she feels an impulse to shrink back, but doesn’t.

“You’ll excuse me for saying this, young lady,” the captain says in a still calm voice, “but you don’t look sick to me.”

“It’s not me.”

“It’s not her.”

Mille and Iver speaks in unison.

“It’s her stepfather,” Iver goes on. “He’s locked inside cabin B55.”

The guy with the coffee looks from Iver to the captain and back again.

The captain finally moves. He looks down at his phone again, and for a moment, it looks to Mille as though he’s simply going to continue doing what he was doing before they came in. But he puts away the phone after carefully shutting off the screen. Then he takes off his reading glasses, folds them and places them in his breast pocket. He then comes, placing his hands casually on his hips. He’s older than Mille took him for—close to seventy, probably.

He smiles a little when he looks at her. “What’s your name, young lady?”

“Mille Klitgaard.”

“I’m Carsten Sorensen, I’m the captain of this ship. This right here is Frederik, my second mate. So, what makes the two of you think that Mille’s—was it stepdad?—is suffering from the infamous virus?”

Iver looks to Mille.

“He was scratched by another infected person,” Mille says. “I saw it happen. He has a tear in his skin right here.” She taps her collarbone. “He’s already feverish. It’ll be a matter of fifteen to twenty minutes tops before he dies and—I mean, before he becomes contagious.”

Mille realizes at the last second that explaining to the captain how things really work with the infected probably isn’t the right thing.

“Back up a minute, please,” the captain says, waving his hand. “Where exactly did this happen? Where did your stepdad get this scratch?”

“In Frederikshavn.”

“There are no infected people in Frederikshavn. We checked with the authorities less than an hour before we took off. They wouldn’t have let us leave if the infection had reached Frederikshavn.”

“Well, it has,” Mille says plainly.

The captain moves his jaw in a peculiar thinking motion, then he looks at the second mate. “Call this in. Ask them if there’s been any infected people reported in Frederikshavn since we took off.”

The second mate puts down his coffee and goes to another, smaller desk by the windows.

“So, please carry on,” the captain encourages Mille. “Once you came aboard, what happened?”

“I didn’t realize he was infected until we were already on the ship,” Mille goes on. “When I did, I tried to convince my mother that we needed to take it seriously, but … she didn’t really believe me. Then I found Iver and explained it to him. After that, I went back and locked my stepdad in his cabin.”

The captain raises one bushy white brow. “You locked him in the cabin? How did you manage that?”

“I barricaded the door using a cleaning trolley and some extension cord.”

“That’s very resourceful of you,” the captain says, a tone of mild condescension in his voice. “Did your stepdad try to get out?”

“Yes. He couldn’t.”

“Is he alone in the cabin?”

“Yes.”

“You mentioned your mother—where’s she now?”

“Outside the cabin. Guarding the door.”

“And was it just the three of you who boarded together?”

“Yes.”

“Anybody else been in close contact with your stepdad?”

Mille thinks for a moment. “No.”

“But you and your mother have?”

“Yes.”

“Hmmm.”

He eyes her with something Mille can’t quite read. She’s about to say something else when the second mate comes back and cuts in. “They said they’re just beginning to get calls about people being attacked in Frederikshavn, too.”

“Darn it,” the captain says, much in the same tone of voice he used five minutes ago when he couldn’t get his phone to work. “I guess that settles it, then. We have to treat this as a possible outbreak of the virus aboard the ship.”

Mille feels a deep pull of relief in her lower belly.

“What … what do we do?” the second mate asks in a hoarse voice, looking at the captain like a small boy looks at his father.

The captain turns his head and looks out the windows for a moment, as though the answer is out there amongst the waves. Then he takes a deep breath through the nose and begins speaking.

“We need to get the infected person into proper isolation. Send medical personnel to move him to the ICU, then get them to confirm this is the virus. Make sure they understand the situation and take whatever precautions they need. Until we know for sure this is in fact the virus, we don’t mention that word to anybody who doesn’t need to know about it. The last thing we want is a panic spreading.”

“Yes, sir,” the second mate says, reaching for his phone and calling up someone.

“I … I don’t think that’s wise,” Mille says, frowning. “Sending someone to move him. You shouldn’t let anybody near him …”

The captain doesn’t listen; he’s busy navigating something on the control panel.

“Please listen to me,” Mille says, stepping closer, raising her voice. “Don’t send the doctors to check up on my stepdad; it’s too late anyway.”

“We’ll let the medical professionals decide that,” the captain says without looking at her. “Please step aside.”

Mille moves out of his way as he walks briskly to another desk.

“They’re on their way,” the second mate reports, putting his phone away.

“Good,” the captain says. “Now, please lock both doors to the cockpit, Frederik.”

Iver frowns. “Excuse me, but why would you lock the doors?”

“Because the four of us are quarantined starting five minutes ago.”

The second mate, who was striding towards the door Mille and Iver came in through, now stops and turns around. “Wh-what?”

“You heard me,” the captain says, still with a calm voice, but with an added tone of not inviting any backtalk. “These two young people might have brought the virus up here with them, and we could all be infected by now.”

“No,” Mille says, shaking her head. “No, that’s not how it works.”

“I’m sorry,” the captain says, turning away from her, “but I’m obliged to follow the guidelines put forth by the authorities.”

“Listen, you’re completely missing the point! This is not the right way to deal with this …”

“Frederik, the doors.”

Before Mille can think, she steps out in front of the second mate, cutting him off. He recoils like she was a leper.

“Listen to me!” Mille demands, almost shouting. “I know more about this than the damned authorities, I guarantee you that! I’ve seen this shit go down firsthand more than once!”

All three of them look at her.

Mille realizes there’s no other way than breaking the Z-word to the captain. So she addresses him: “Have you heard of zombies?”

He frowns. “Zombies?”

“Yes.”

He shakes his head. “Can’t say I have.”

“I have,” the second mate says, raising a hand in a schoolboy like motion. “They’re dead people coming back to eat the living.”

“That’s right,” Mille nods.

“Come now,” the captain says in that overbearing tone that’s starting to grind Mille’s gears. “You can’t expect me to believe—”

“I’m not,” Mille cuts him off. “I don’t expect you to believe anything. ’Cause you haven’t seen what I’ve seen.”

Mille realizes her lips are shaking, and she takes a couple of breaths to steady herself.

“To my knowledge,” the captain says calmly, “not a single person has died from the Rhabdo-virus yet.”

“That’s bullshit,” Mille says plainly. “You heard about the school bus that was attacked the day before yesterday?”

The second mate nods emphatically. The captain gives a single tip of his head.

“Well, I was on that bus. And I’m the only one still alive. I saw most of my classmates die. One of them right in front of me.” Mille suddenly sees Mads’s face drift by and she blinks dazedly as she keeps talking. “He stopped breathing. His heart stopped beating. He was dead. If you’ve ever been close to a dead person, you know without a doubt they’re dead. And he stayed that way for maybe a minute. Perhaps two. It’s hard to tell. Then, he woke up again. But it wasn’t that he came back to life. He was still dead. Just, somehow, able to move. He attacked my friend and killed her almost instantly. She bled out in a matter of minutes. Then she woke up again, too. Started chasing other living people, I’m sure. By that time, I was unconscious. Someone else came by just in time and saved me.”

She pauses, steadies herself and looks the captain squarely in the eye.

“I don’t know if ‘zombies’ is the right term for the people infected, but I think it comes pretty close. Once you’re infected, it’s done. You’ll be dead within minutes. It can’t be treated; it can’t be cured. If we don’t handle this properly, everyone on this ship will die.”

The captain looks at her for a couple of seconds. Then, he clears his throat. “I assure you, I’m taking it very seriously,” he says, a note of insult in his voice now. “This is my ship, and the thirty-two hundred passengers are my responsibility.”

“Great, then make sure they get off this ship alive.”

He crosses his arms. “Since you’re an expert on the subject, how do you suggest I do that?”

“First off, don’t send anybody to look at my stepdad, and certainly don’t move him. No matter how cautious they’ll be, it’s too dangerous. Secondly, make sure there’s no way he gets out of that cabin. Seal the door properly and get somebody with weapons to guard it. Then turn the ship back and let the rest of the passengers off somewhere safe.”

“And where would that be? Frederikshavn is now infected, and so are the rest of the major harbors. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t get permission to board anywhere. The authorities simply wouldn’t let—”

“Then don’t tell the authorities! All of these passengers deserve the chance to get off this ship, and not being trapped here waiting to get eaten alive!”

The captain breathes deeply. Then he takes a step towards Mille. It’s not an aggressive gesture, but still Mille draws back a little.

“I understand you’ve been through some terrible things,” he says, suddenly taking on a fatherly demeanor. “And I appreciate you trying to help. But there are protocols. And I’m obliged to follow them. End of discussion.” He turns to the second mate. “Now, close those doors, Frederik.”

The second mate glances briefly at Mille, then nods and goes to the door. The captain turns towards the desk and picks up the radio.

Mille just stands there for a moment, the terrible realization dawning on her that no matter what she says, the captain is never going to listen. That Charlotte was right. That it was a mistake coming up here.

Iver leans towards her and whispers: “Why is it so bad to be quarantined up here? I mean, at least we’ll be safe.”

“We won’t be safe, we’ll be trapped,” Mille mutters, turning around to look for another exit—the captain said there were two doors. She sees it at the far end. It has an EMERGENCY EXIT sign on it.

Mille looks to the second mate, who’s busy locking the first door. Then to the captain, who’s now speaking into the radio.

“This is Captain Sorenson of the Stena Danica. We just left Frederikshavn, but we’re stopping at our current position at fifty-seven-point-five-three-three and ten-point-seven-eight-six due to a possible contagion aboard the vessel …”

“Captain!” the second mate suddenly blurts out. He’s holding a phone to his ear and looks at the captain with wide eyes. “They found cabin B55 empty … the door has been opened …”

Mille feels a sinking sensation going down all the way to her feet.

“Darn it,” the captain says, lowering the radio. “Tell them to find the infected person as soon as possible. And put out a message over the speakers, telling everyone to stay inside their cabins …”

Mille decides then and there to make a run for it. She turns around and grabs Iver’s wrist, pulling him along.

He’s too stunned to resist.

She opens the emergency exit door and slips out of the cockpit without the captain or the second mate even noticing.

TWELVE

Malthe is trying hard to focus. Trying hard to clear his head of the fuzzy buzzing. But it’s hard, fighting off the effects of a dozen Jägerbombs.

Part of him understands the gruesome seriousness of the situation: Axe got himself bitten and is likely infected with that nasty zombie virus. His friend is probably going to die, and sterilizing the wound with fire will likely do squat to save him.

Yet another part of Malthe finds it all perfectly hilarious: Who the hell tries to high-five a zombie? It’s like the perfect YouTube movie. Axe almost deserves to die for something that stupid. And setting his hand on fire afterwards? That just seals the deal.

Also, holding on to Eli’s belt, trying to keep him from nosediving out the car window while his legs kick frantically and his pants are pulled down far enough to show Malthe an all-too detailed view of his ass crack is enough for him to start snorting laughter.

That is, until he notices Axe burning.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

The sound of pain and fright in his friend’s voice makes Malthe forget completely to hold on to Eli, who falls out of the car with a yelp.

The night has turned into morning, which means the surroundings are getting brighter. But Axe still lights everything up in a greenish glow. In a matter of seconds, both his arms are burning, his white Pet Shop Boys T-shirt is turning black as the flames spread across his chest and down his back. Axe’s head is also quickly engulfed in blue-green flames, lapping at his skin, turning it red and eating away at his hair.

Eli screams out as he finally realizes what’s happening right in front of him.

“Axe! I’ll help you!” he shouts, clumsily getting to his feet and pulling off his T-shirt. “Hold still, man! Hold still! Let me put it out!”

He begins whacking his T-shirt at Axe in a hopeless effort to quell the flames, none of his attempts hitting the mark, as Axe is spinning and jumping around, screaming. He grabs onto Eli—more out of blind luck than actual intention—and Eli roars with pain and tries to pull back.

“Let go, man! You’re burning me!”

Axe obviously doesn’t hear him; he probably doesn’t hear anything anymore, Malthe surmises in his stunned state of fascinated horror, because Axe’s ears have both curled in on themselves, like plastic cups melting on a hot stove.

Eli pulls away with a jerk, managing to trip over his own heels and fall flat on his back, narrowly missing the side of the car with his head.

Axe gets pulled down too, and he doesn’t miss the car, slamming his temple squarely onto the back door, hard enough to shake Malthe out of his stupor.

He blinks and comes to, just as Eli pops up and runs away, looking back at Axe, as though he expects him to follow.

Axe is suddenly quiet. No more screaming. Only a seething crackling of fire.

Malthe leans forward and peeks out the window. The heat is enough to make him gasp. And as he does so, he also breathes in a lungful of the smoke coming off Axe’s burning body.

The stench of scorched skin and melted flesh barely registers in his brain before sending a wrenching cramp through his stomach.

Malthe pushes himself backwards, fumbles for the opposite door and opens it just in time for the last hour’s supply of booze to come spilling up his throat and out onto the pavement.

He pukes until there’s nothing left, then he spits and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Oh, man … oh, fuck me …”

He gets out of the car on legs shaky with shock. He walks around the car to find Eli standing a few yards away, squatting over a fresh pile of puke of his own.

“Don’t … don’t breathe in … the smell …” he croaks as he sees Malthe. “It smells like … spareribs …” Eli burps and wrenches again.

Malthe isn’t sure what kind of gross spareribs Eli has been eating; the smell from Axe’s burning body doesn’t remind him the least bit of anything edible.

Still, he clams his nose shut using two fingers before he turns to look at his friend.

Axe is poised up against the Mercedes, his cheek resting against the door. There’s a dent in the metal where his skull connected with it, and the white paint has got streaks of black and brown from the flames, which are still lapping away, though less so than before.

Axe is clearly dead. At least, Malthe dearly hopes so.

His hair is gone, and what’s left of his skin is black and bubbly. His face reminds Malthe of The Grauballe Man—a famous bog body he saw at a museum on a school outing once—it’s dark and crumbled, his lips gone and his eyes halfway opened, staring at nothing.

“Oh, shit,” Eli croaks. “Oh, shit, dude … why the fuck would he …? I mean … oh, fuck me …”

Malthe tries to say something, but his throat is still clogged with puke, and he has to swallow to clear it.

“It’s … it’s too late, right?” Eli goes on, his eyes darting from Axe to Malthe. “I mean … he’s dead, isn’t he?”

“I think so,” Malthe mutters, feeling like someone else is speaking through his mouth.

“So … what do we do?” Eli goes on. “Do we … I mean … call someone?”

“I don’t know,” Malthe says, rubbing his brow, which feels numb. “Let me just think for a moment …”

He collects his thoughts as best he can. There’s a bunch of unpleasant facts they need to put together. Axe’s dead. They are parked on the freeway in the middle of nowhere. It’s nighttime. Not to mention—

“Malthe!”

“Hold on,” Malthe says. “I’m trying to think here.”

“No, seriously, look!”

Malthe looks up.

Eli is pointing down the freeway. Four or five figures are coming this way, waddling out of sync in that already familiar dead-people-stride.

“Fuck me,” Malthe whispers. “Okay, we need to scram. Do you know how to drive manual stick shift?”

“Sure, I’ve done it many times,” Eli says, already headed for the driver’s door, but tripping over his own feet on the way, almost falling over.

“Forget it,” Malthe says, shoving him back. “You’re way too drunk. You’ll drive us into a tree or some shit.”

“There’re no trees on the freeway!” Eli argues.

“You take the passenger seat and tell me how to do it.”

Eli scuffs, but then, apparently remembering the threat, he darts a look at the oncoming zombies and runs around the car.

Malthe turns to get in behind the wheel, when his gaze falls on Axe’s corpse. It’s still smoking, but the fire’s out. And suddenly, without any discernable preamble, Malthe gets a vision of Axe’s mom and dad, smiling at him. Malthe has known them his whole life, just like he’s known Axe. He really likes them. The thought of them hearing what happened to Axe causes Malthe’s stomach to clench up hard.

“We can’t leave him here,” he hears himself say.

“What?” Eli bleats from inside the car. “Come on, man! Let’s get the hell outta here!”

“We can’t leave Axe! Get your ass out here and help me!”

Eli steps back out and comes around the car. The sight of Axe makes him recoil. “Oh, Jesus fuck, dude … I can’t … I can’t do it, man … I can’t, like … touch him …”

“You have to! What if it was you lying around here like that? Would you want to be left behind like fucking roadkill?”

Eli doesn’t answer; he suddenly looks thoughtful for the first time since they began drinking earlier that evening. “You don’t … you don’t turn into a zombie when you die from, like, natural causes … do you?”

Malthe thinks about it for a second. He had taken it for granted that no, you don’t wake up when you’re killed by fire. But then again, Axe was bitten. And in the video games you always need to destroy the brain to kill a zombie.

“I don’t know,” he admits. “Don’t you think he would have … come back by now?”

“Probably,” Eli shrugs. “We should put him in the trunk, though. Just in case.”

“That’s the first useful thing you’ve said,” Malthe remarks.

“Fuck you,” Eli bites back.

“Help me hoist him up. You want the legs or the arms?”

“None of them!”

“That’s not a choice! Take his fucking legs!”

Malthe reaches over and grabs hold of Axe’s wrists. He pulls back immediately. The skin is warm, but not burning. Yet the mushy feel of the charred skin is like touching a chicken leg that’s been cooked for way too long.

“They’re coming!” Eli remarks in a shrill tone.

Malthe looks back and sees the zombies approaching. Two of them have taken the lead, apparently upping the speed at the sight of fresh meat.

“Help me!” Malthe shouts, biting down hard and grabbing Aksel’s wrists once more, ignoring how it feels. “Lift him up!”

Eli does so very reluctantly. “Oh, fuck, his skin is all fucked up!”

“I know, think about something else,” Malthe breathes through gritted teeth as they haul Aksel around the back of the car. “Hold on,” Malthe says, fumbling with one hand to open the trunk. He finds the button and it pops up.

“Hurry the fuck up!” Eli shouts.

The dragging steps and the hungry groans are now audible in the morning air.

They hoist Aksel’s body into the trunk, and Malthe slams the lid. Eli has already run to the front door, and Malthe follows his example, not noticing the pile of burnt blood and black pieces of clothing left on the pavement from Aksel. All he can think of is the oncoming dead people, now only a few yards away.

His left shoe slips in the greasy gunk, sliding sideways and causing him to do a nearly perfect split. He screams out in pain as the tendons in his inner thighs are stretched to the ripping point and he falls hard on his ass, clapping his teeth together, biting his tongue hard. He barely notices the pain, though, he just scrambles to get back up. But his left shoe is still slippery, and as he tries to push himself to his feet, it betrays him a second time, sending him back to his knees.

A hand clasps down on his shoulder hard, and someone growls wetly into his ear.

Malthe throws himself sideways out of pure reflex, rolling around like James Bond, scraping his elbows and palms bloody on the asphalt, but managing to get free of the dead person’s grip.

He jumps to his feet and backs away from the car as he realizes three of the zombies are coming at him from different angles.

“Malthe!” Eli screams from inside the car. “Look out!”

Malthe keeps backing away and ignores the warning; he knows to look out, he can see the three fucking dead people coming at him. Does Eli think he’s blind?

Eli bangs the window frantically. “Look out behind you!”

Malthe snaps his head around, expecting to see a zombie coming at him.

Instead, he sees the headlights of a car. The horn blares and the car swerves to avoid him.

Malthe has no choice but to lunge forward. The car misses him by mere inches, the slipstream is strong enough to spin him halfway around.

Before he can get out of the way, the nearest zombie grabs him by the neck and digs in its nails.

“No!” Malthe screams, shoving the guy—a tall, gangly dude somewhere in his late forties—in the chest, hard enough to make him stumble backwards.

Malthe feels his neck and for a moment, the world stops moving. He looks down at his fingers, blinks and stares at the blood. His blood.

“He … he got me …” Malthe hears himself whisper.

Then the second zombie reaches him—a young woman who might have once been pretty—it’s impossible to tell, because someone dug out both her eyes and ripped the skin off her forehead. She wastes no time, but grabs his elbow and buries her perfectly white teeth in his triceps.

Malthe screams at the pain and yanks his arm away, but the woman has bitten down like a predator and follows suit with a hungry growl.

“Get the fuck off me!” Malthe screams, punching the woman between the empty eye sockets with his free hand. She ignores him and starts thrashing. She manages to rip off a large chunk of skin and the muscle underneath.

Malthe screams as the blood begins spurting, and then his legs give out and he finds himself on his back, still screaming up at the dark-blue sky where a few golden stars are still visible, and suddenly he’s no longer on the freeway but lying on the terrace back at the house where he grew up, his younger brother Mark lying next to him as they take turns pointing out constellations. That summer evening is one of Malthe’s happiest memories, and it floods his mind in that instant, drowning out reality and causing him to stop screaming, and though his eyes are wide open, he sees none of the dead faces crowding his field of vision as the zombies descend upon him. He doesn’t feel them eating him alive, either, nor does he hear their eager growling or the wet noises of his flesh being ripped from his bones. The only thing he perceives is his brother’s voice, laughing: “That doesn’t count, I already said Orion!”

There’s a smile at the corner of Malthe’s mouth as he dies.

THIRTEEN

“Holy shit!”

Dan wakes up with a startle at the sound of William’s voice. He looks around frantically, finding himself in the backseat of a car in between people he doesn’t immediately recognize.

William is driving, and he honks the horn and twists the wheel at the same time, causing the car to lunge sideways.

“Jesus!” Dan’s father exclaims from the passenger seat.

“Look out!” the woman next to Dan yells.

The car narrowly misses a person who jumps awkwardly to get out of the way.

Dan has time to see a white sports car parked in the emergency lane and a few other figures standing next to it.

“Who the hell was that?” William shouts, fighting to get the swerving car back under control. He hits the brake and brings the car almost to a stop, looking up at the rearview mirror. “What the fuck was he doing in the middle of the road?”

Dan turns in his seat to look back. He can’t quite make out what’s going on next to the sports car, but he doesn’t need to see it clearly; he can hear the scream as one of the figures is brought down by the others, and that’s plenty for Dan to know.

“Oh,” William says. “He was trying to get away …”

“It’s too late to help him, right?” Dan’s father asks, watching the scene in the side mirror.

“It is,” Dan says, as he sees the guy William almost hit being wrestled to the ground, right before he looks away.

“Poor prick,” William sighs. “I almost wish I had clipped him. Would’ve been over much faster.”

“What’s going on back there?” Ali—who just woke up—asks, looking from the window to his sister.

Nasira replies in Arabic.

Dan can’t tell what she’s saying, but her voice is soothing, and Ali is satisfied by it, because he relaxes and leans back up against her.

“Shouldn’t we stop anyway?” Dan’s father asks. “See if there might be anyone left back there who needs our help?”

“I say we keep going,” William says, upping the speed again. “We are six healthy people here, no need to risk that. Besides, I’m pretty sure the rest of those back there were already dead.”

At that moment, a pair of headlights turn on behind them. Dan turns back around to see the white car taking up pursuit.

“I guess you were wrong,” Dorte remarks. “Unless the dead people know how to drive.”

The sports car quickly gains on them, even though William is still speeding up. The headlights grow bigger, and within half a minute, the Mercedes speeds past them, its engine whining like an angry wasp.

Dan has time to make out the person driving it—it’s a teenage boy with blond hair, clutching the wheel, darting a quick glance at them before passing. The white car swerves dangerously back and forth.

“Well, he’s in a hurry to get out of Dodge,” Dan’s father remarks.

“Yeah, and he’s driving like he’s drunk,” William adds. “He’ll probably crash before long.”

They watch in silence as the red taillights of the Mercedes quickly grow smaller and then disappear.

William is the one to break the silence.

“This thing is spreading so fucking fast,” he mutters. “I thought we’d outrun it, but turns out it outran us.”

“Most of the country must be affected by now,” Dan’s father says. “It probably already reached Haderslev.”

“How long till we’re there?” Dan asks.

“Fifteen minutes, tops,” William says.

“What do we do if there’s already chaos when we get there?” Dorte asks.

“Let’s cross that bridge if we have to,” William says.

“I think it might be a good idea to have some sort of game plan,” Dan interjects—surprising himself by speaking up. “I mean … just so we don’t end up getting a surprise.”

William looks at him briefly in the mirror. “The thing is, we have no idea what to expect. Hard to plan for something you don’t know.”

“No, but if we assume Haderslev will be about as badly hit as Aarhus was,” Dan’s father asserts, “then we might have to abandon the idea of finding this pilot guy. It might be wiser to just pass right by and keep going south. We could drive to Germany, or maybe—”

“Hold on a minute,” William says, turning up the radio, which has been going on low volume.

A calm but assertive female voice is speaking.

“… which means that all borders will be closed indefinitely as of six o’clock this morning. This goes for all traffic, both in and out of the country, including but not exclusive to airlines, ships and cars. All neighboring countries have been asked to help reinforce this border blockade, and military personnel is already stationed at all airports, harbors and land border crossings. I repeat that all attempts to leave Denmark will be met with deadly force. The situation is critical, and the government asks for all citizens to fulfill their civic duties and obey the rules set out in this emergency protocol. Thank you.” A short pause, then a brief melody plays, and the voice starts speaking again. “This is an urgent message from the Danish government addressed to all citizens. Please pay close attention to the following …”

“Christ on the can,” Dan’s father whispers. “They’re finally doing it. They’re shutting the whole place down.”

“About damn time,” William mutters. “Should’ve done it two days ago. I bet you it’s too late now.”

“You think any of the dead people reached the border already?” Dorte asks, leaning forward. “I mean, they’re on foot, and there’s at least seventy-five miles from here to Germany, which is the only land border.”

“It can spread a lot faster than by foot,” William says grimly, darting her a significant look in the mirror. “Like if someone infected but not dead yet decides to make a run for it.”

Dorte sinks back in her seat. Dan notices her face grow pale.

“Luckily, there’s only about forty miles of border they need to close down and defend,” Dan’s father says. “That should be possible, given that none of the infected have already crossed it, of course. Good thing Denmark is a peninsula, right?”

“Then what about the several hundred miles of coastline?” William asks.

Dan’s father looks at him. “You think they can swim?”

“I don’t know. But I think they can get aboard ships. And planes. And right now, I’ll bet you thousands of people are scrambling to get out of the country, just like we are. What are the odds that none of them are harboring a zombie? Or someone bringing along an infected loved one? Or a person hiding a scratch? I mean, come on. It only takes one little mistake, and this thing will turn into a pandemic.”

A long pause follows inside the car, where they all exchange glances. Dan gets the feeling that everyone is suddenly suspecting the others of hiding something.

He decides to break the unpleasant silence. “If they’ve shut down the airports, do you still think we can fly out of the country?”

William shrugs. “I still think it’s our best bet. It’s a lot harder for them to patrol the skies than the roads, so if we can just get airborne, then at least we have a chance.”

FOURTEEN

Josefine is gently pulled from what feels like half a dream, half a memory, as someone touches her knee.

She was back at the facility on the day her father was admitted. That was the day it finally dawned on her how sick he’d turned, how little of his old self was left. Her mother couldn’t bear having him in the house anymore, but she probably would’ve gone on if Josefine’s father hadn’t insisted in moving to the facility himself in one of his still-rarer moments of clarity.

Josefine remembers tears forming in her eyes as they’re about to leave, and when her father noticed, he looked at her with a frown which Josefine first took to be a sign that he was gone again. But when he spoke, she realized he was more there than he’d ever been.

“Why are you crying, Josie?”

“I … it’s just … seeing you here, Daddy.”

“I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.”

He held out his hand, and Josefine placed her own in it. Even at the age of almost seventy, his hand was nearly double the size of hers. It was warm, too, as it squeezed hers.

“Seriously, Josie. I don’t want you to cry. It’s very important that you stay strong, okay?”

“Okay,” she told him, wiping her eyes obediently, feeling like a little girl. “I’ll try, but I’m not sure I can help it. I’m not strong like you.”

“Sure you are. You’re my daughter, aren’t you?”

There’s a brush at her knee, shaking the dream.

That meeting is one of Josefine’s fondest memories, and she doesn’t want to let go of it, not now, not until she’s relived it once more. Her father speaks again.

“It’s always—”

Then, there’s another brush at her knee, and she opens her eyes. The pleasant feeling of the memory evaporates as she finds herself back in the helicopter. Michael is leaned against the wall, eyes closed. Her father is dead and strapped to a gurney opposite her.

Bodil is dead, too, but she’s no longer strapped down—not completely, at least. Somehow, she’s managed to push herself sideways just enough to escape one of the shoulder straps.

For the longest second, Josefine can do nothing but stare at the heavy, dead woman hanging off the side of the gurney, her only-partly-working right arm groping at Josefine’s leg, the fat, wrinkly fingers with those thick, yellow nails typical of smokers brushing her knee a third time, scraping at the fabric.

Then, Josefine’s brain finally kickstarts, and she sits upright with a jerk and a gasp, pulling back her legs. There’s only enough room to create a few more inches of distance between her and Bodil’s flailing hand, and Josefine moving back only seems to make Bodil more eager to reach her: she leans farther out, twists and pushes against the straps. The way she’s hanging, it looks like her entire torso might slip free at any moment.

“Michael!” Josefine calls out, reaching over and tapping his shoulder hard. “Michael, wake up!”

Michael jerks awake. “What? What’s happening?” Then, seeing Bodil: “Oh, Christ! Steen! Steen, we got a problem back here!”

The pilot twists in his seat to look over his shoulder. “What’s going on?”

“Move away from her!” Michael shouts at Josefine as Bodil edges a little more to the side, her reach growing a couple of inches longer.

“I can’t!” Josefine shouts back, fumbling to unbuckle her seat belt and get to her feet at the same time but succeeding in neither.

“The fuck are you doing back there?” the pilot shouts.

“One of them is trying to get free!”

“Fuck me! I thought you said they were secured?”

“Apparently not!” Michael shouts, unbuckling. “She must have twisted out of the strap due to her dislocated shoulder.”

“Well, get her back on that fucking gurney!”

Michael works quickly to get the top half of his suit zipped back up and the gloves on. “I’ll try, but you might have to land!”

Josefine is squeezing up against the back of her seat, her fingers still working the belt buckle, which isn’t like the ones in cars. Bodil’s hand is dangerously close now, and her upper body is dangling in free air, the only thing keeping her from falling to the floor being the waist strap. The way Bodil is hanging looks extremely painful, her hip twisted almost ninety degrees, while carrying all the weight of the upper body. It doesn’t seem to bother her at all, though.

Finally, Josefine hears the click from the buckle, and she scrambles to her feet, pushing past the seat and reaching relative safety at the farther corner of the passenger area.

“What’s going on?” the pilot demands, turning in his seat. “You got her secured?”

“Not yet,” Michael answers. He has managed to get all the protective gear on now, except for the mask. He’s about to put it on, when there’s a loud, crunchy snap.

Josefine can’t immediately tell where the sound came from, but then Bodil flops sideways and slips out of the straps completely, landing clumsily on the floor.

Josefine hears herself scream and Michael shout at the same time, and when Bodil begins getting to her feet, Josefine realizes what made the sound: it was some large bone in Bodil’s body—the hip, most likely—giving in to the pressure and cracking in half. As the heavy lady makes it up on all fours, her whole lower body seems to buckle at the waist, making her look like someone going limp on one side.

“Christ!” Michael shouts. “She’s free!”

It’s not completely true, though, as Bodil’s legs are still entangled in the now loose straps, hindering her from moving forwards.

The pilot turns his head and looks back, then shouts: “Get her tied up, will you!”

“I’m trying!” Michael replies, approaching the woman and grabbing her before she can get to her feet. He tries to lift her back up onto the gurney, but she’s clearly too heavy, and she’s also trying to grab him, which doesn’t seem to make the task easier, her fingers clawing at the suit.

Michael lets go of her with a grunt, and Bodil slumps to the floor with a thud.

“I can’t do it! She’s too heavy!”

“Use the fucking wire!” the pilot roars.

“What wire?”

Josefine turns her head and realizes she’s staring right at metal wire with a hook and a strap-arrangement at the end, protruding from a box on the wall, apparently meant for picking up stuff from the ground while the helicopter is airborne.

She grabs it and yanks it hard, pulling out at least ten feet. “Michael!” she shouts, before realizing he’s already looking at her. “Here!”

She throws the end of the wire clumsily at him, and he catches it.

Bodil has gotten halfway to her feet and now lunges at him in a crooked but very eager thrust, finally slipping out of the straps completely. Michael manages in the last second to thrust the wire out in front of himself, catching Bodil under her fat chin and forcing her head backwards. He deftly maneuvers around her by climbing over the gurney and uses the wire to pull her back before she can turn around. She stumbles and falls to her knees, hissing and moaning angrily.

“That’s it, I’m putting her down, hold on!” the pilot shouts.

“No, wait!” Michael objects, but too late.

Josefine feels a strong sinking sensation in her stomach as the helicopter drops suddenly. The abrupt change in gravity causes Michael—who had finally gained the upper hand over Bodil—to lose balance and stumble backwards, his back hitting the pilot’s seat, his arm reeling for something to grab hold of.

What he finds is the head of the thing that used to be Josefine’s father. And the thing doesn’t hesitate, but immediately bites down hard on the gloved hand.

Michael gives off a roar of surprise while yanking his hand back, losing the glove, which the thing is still tearing at like a furious dog. Michael stares at his bare hand, eyes wide, while turning it over.

Josefine can’t see any blood on it, and apparently neither can Michael, because he gives off a brief sigh of relief, just as Bodil—who has managed to turn around despite being entangled in the wire—lunges for his legs.

“Lookout!” Josefine screams.

Michael almost manages to dodge the attack. Bodil catches him around the waist like a rugby player, forcing him backwards while biting at his groin and sliding down his legs.

“Get off me!” he roars, pounding away on the top of Bodil’s head with his still-gloved left hand. The punches seem to do little damage and only cause Bodil a slight inconvenience, as she keeps biting down on the fabric of his suit, trying to tear through it and get to his skin underneath.

She’s on her knees now, forcing Michael to back up, pinning him in the narrow space between the pilot’s seat and the other gurney where the thing that was Josefine’s father is twisting eagerly, craning its neck and clawing at the air in a futile attempt to reach Michael, who’s less than ten inches away.

Then, a terrifying sound rips through the raucous: fabric tearing open.

“No, no, no!” Michael roars.

He has no choice but to use both hands, so he grabs Bodil’s heavy jaw and pushes her head backward at what looks to be a severely painful angle. Between her teeth is a large piece of his suit, and Josefine gets a glimpse of the hole right at his navel-area, revealing his blue T-shirt and part of the bare skin. There’s a clearly visible red mark formed like two half-moons facing each other where Bodil’s teeth has pinched the skin.

“Help me!” he roars. “She bit me! She fucking bit me!”

Finally, Josefine wakes up from her stupor and is able to move. She looks down and sees the wire, which is still halfway wrapped around Bodil’s neck and chest like a seat belt.

Josefine bends down and grabs it, then yanks it hard.

Bodil is jerked backwards, tips over onto her back, both her knees twisting to max capacity. Her fingers are still holding onto Michael’s suit, but he manages to rip himself free and thrust himself to the side, grabbling for something in a box.

“Where is it? Where’s the damn methanol?”

Josefine has enough to do with her tug-of-war with Bodil, who’s pulling sideways now in order to reach Michael, the only thing holding her back being the wire.

Michael hardly notices; he’s found a plastic bottle and is now pouring the content—a clear, jell-like liquid—onto his stomach, rubbing it in frantically.

Josefine stares at him for a second, hardly recognizing the calm, assertive doctor she had a conversation with just minutes ago. Now, he looks more like a wild animal, his eyes wide, foam at the corner of his mouth.

“She didn’t pierce the skin, she didn’t pierce the skin,” he chants in a shrill voice, rubbing away at the bite mark on his stomach.

“I can’t hold her!” Josefine cries out as Bodil makes another sideways thrash and lunges for Michael.

He screams, drops the bottle and climbs backwards, kicking his legs blindly as he squeezes himself onto the passenger’s seat.

“The hell are you doing?” the pilot shouts, staring from Michael to the back of the helicopter. “Go back there and tie her up!”

“I can’t! She came this close to biting me! Get us down to the ground!”

“I’m trying!”

Bodil slips out of the wire and grabs Michael’s leg, which is still kicking the air. She tears off the shoe with sudden determination and sinks her teeth into Michael’s bared ankle.

He screams again, even more high-pitched, and the pilot shouts something as Michael grabs his arm in a desperate attempt to get his help, causing the helicopter to swerve violently. The sudden movement makes the second gurney—the one holding the thing that used to be Josefine’s father—to buckle two of its legs and flop to a forty-five-degree angle. If the thing on it hadn’t been secured by the straps, it would’ve tumbled to the floor.

Josefine is suddenly thrown into a weird detached state where she sees everything from behind her own eyes and in slow motion: Michael, scrambling to get Bodil off his leg, the pilot, fighting to keep the helicopter level, the thing on the gurney, writhing to get free and join the party, the tops of trees passing by out the windows.

And Josefine herself, watching everything from the back of the helicopter. And as she does, a thought comes to her, very clear and concise: We’re going to crash now. This is how I die.

And amazingly, she’s actually kind of okay with it. At least this way, it’ll be fast. She won’t have to grow old and get an awful disease like Alzheimer’s and slowly wither away. Most of all, she won’t have to live in a world without her dad.

Then the thing still strapped to the tilted gurney turns it head and hisses at her, and for some strange reason, she’s thrown back into the memory and she actually hears her father’s voice in her head, hears him uttering the words he told her that very first day in the facility: “It’s always up to you, Josie. No matter how bad things turn, you decide how you handle it. Even if that’s the only thing left for you to control, no one can take that away from you.”

“You’re right, Daddy,” Josefine breathes, and the words are drowned out by the noise and the shouting.

She climbs back into her seat, grabs the belt and buckles it.

Then, half a second later, the helicopter meets the ground.

FIFTEEN

A ton of different scenarios fly through Mille’s mind as she runs down the staircase, closely followed by Iver.

Somehow, Torben got out. The first thing Mille considers is that her mother left her post and someone came by and opened the door.

Or maybe Torben managed to call up someone in the neighboring cabins and convince them to open the door.

He could also have gotten out if the barricade had failed. If he had simply kept at it and pulled at the door hard enough, the extension cord or the handle might have given way.

Or maybe he simply smashed the door, put his boot right through it.

The possibilities are plenty. But for some reason, Mille’s imagination refuses to go to the most likely one. In fact, she doesn’t even consider it until they reach the hallway.

She stops abruptly a few doors away, almost causing Iver to bump into her. She stares at the trolley and the cord hanging from it like a dead snake. She looks at the wide-open door which has no marks or other signs of damage.

A woman dressed from top to bottom in a light-blue spacesuit and wearing a face mask comes out of the cabin, talking on a radio in a high-pitched voice. “Well, I don’t care! You tell them to lock down the entire deck if that’s what they need to do to find this g—” She stops talking the minute she sees Mille and Iver staring back at her. “We have a situation here,” she says in what should probably have been a reassuring tone. “Please return to your cabins and stay there.”

“Uhm, I don’t—” Iver begins, but Mille cuts him off.

“Sure, we’ll go now.” She drags him past the doctor and the cabin, darting a glance inside as they pass. Another spacesuit-clad person is in there, rummaging through the bed where Torben had lain, as though to find him in the sheets.

Mille and Iver keep going until they reach the other end of the hallway where it meets up with the wider passage connecting the next hallway to this one. At the intersection, the carpet is replaced with linoleum. And Mille sees the puddle of clear liquid right away; it’s about the size of a half-dollar and has a yellowish hue.

“Look,” Mille says, pointing. “He came by here. He spat right there.”

“That could be anybody,” Iver says without much conviction.

“It’s him,” Mille says. “He went this way. Come on.”

“Wait!” Iver says, throwing out his arms. “What exactly are we doing?”

“We’re finding him, of course. Before it’s too late.”

“And then what? Do we wrestle him to the ground and call security?”

“I … I don’t know,” Mille admits. “But we have to find him.”

Iver shakes his head, but still follows along.

They reach the next hallway where a watercooler has been used by someone obviously not concerned with spilling; water has been splattered all over the wall and formed a pool on the floor. Wet footprints lead to the right, which is the opening to the stairs.

There are two sets.

“Looks like he had company,” Iver remarks.

Mille just stares at the prints—one pair big and clunky and the other a lot smaller and slimmer—as something very unpleasant tries to make it into her conscious mind. She shoves it away, muttering: “Could have been someone who came by later. Come on.”

The wet marks indicate that Torben—and his possible companion—went upstairs, and Mille and Iver follow suit. By the time they reach the next landing, the prints have dried up.

Mille steps out into the hallway, looking down both directions, but seeing no one.

“I think he went up another deck,” she says, and just as she’s about to step back into the stairwell, there’s a wet cough coming from down the hallway.

Mille looks back.

And she sees Torben.

He enters the hallway from a glass door leading outside. He looks horrible, most of the color has drained from his face and he’s barely able to walk. The only thing keeping him on his feet is his companion, who’s doing her very best to support him.

“Come on, Torben, let’s get you back inside,” Mille’s mother says, and even from this far away, Mille can hear her sobbing.

“That’s him!” Iver exclaims from behind Mille.

His voice makes Mille’s mother look up. Her red eyes fix on Mille. “Oh! Mille! I’m so glad you came … please, help us! We need to get Torben to the doctor …”

“No doctor,” Torben drools, his eyes only halfway open.

“He said … he said he just needed some fresh air,” Mille’s mother goes on, her voice jumpy with sobs now. “But I think … I think he’s really sick … I think you were right, Mille … it’s that virus, isn’t it?”

Mille isn’t able to answer, much less move. For several seconds, she just stands there, like a cowboy on the main road of a dusty old Western town, facing his opponent in a draw match. She stares at her mother clutching Torben, who’s all but tipped over now, leaning on her and breathing in sticky rasps. And Mille finally realizes the thing she didn’t want to see. It finally comes home to her how Torben got out of the cabin.

How could you?

“Mille, please,” her mother says, all-out crying now, stumbling to keep to her feet as Torben collapses sideways. “Help me!”

Then the weight of Torben becomes too much for her to bear, as his legs finally give way completely, and the two of them sink to the floor in unison, Torben’s body coming to rest halfway atop Mille’s mother.

“Torben!” she cries out, trying to free herself from underneath him while shaking him. “Torben, please wake up!”

“I think … I think he died,” Iver says.

“He did,” Mille hears herself say.

“We have to help her!” Iver says. He is about to step forward, but Mille flings out her arm and grabs his shirt firmly.

“Stay here. It’s too late.”

Iver glances at her sideways, then back down the hallway, where Mille’s mother has now managed to squeeze herself free. She’s kneeling over Torben, crying and hugging him, begging him to wake up.

And then he does.

And Mille thinks she’s prepared to see it happen. But she’s not. And she can’t look away.

“Oh, my God,” Iver breathes.

Mille’s mother’s cries turn to high-pitched shrieks of pain and anguish, as Torben reaches up and pulls her head down, biting into the soft flesh behind her ear, ripping out a big chunk of skin with hair still attached to it. The blood begins to spurt out like a fountain, painting Torben’s face red. He doesn’t seem fazed by it at all, though, as he immediately goes for another bite out of Mille’s mother.

How could you? Mille thinks again, as she watches her mother die.

Then something else comes into view. Only a few yards away from Torben and Mille’s mother, a door opens, and a young woman comes out, carrying a sleeping toddler on her arm.

As the woman sees the bloody scene unfolding in front of her, she freezes up, her face going blank, her mouth opening wide, but no words are coming out. She simply stands there, like a deer in the headlights, less than five paces away from Torben, who’s now really getting into it, burying his face in Mille’s mother—who’s already stopped screaming.

“Get away!” Iver shouts, his voice ringing in Mille’s ears. As the young woman doesn’t seem to react, he tries flailing his arms, like a stranded person signaling to a passing ship. “Get away from there!”

While his call has no effect on the young mother, it does seem to wake up her child. The toddler—a boy, Mille can tell—lifts his head from off his mother’s shoulder, rubs his eye with one chubby, pink hand, then turns his head and looks at the scene unfolding right in front of him with no comprehension on his sleepy face.

Iver is still shouting and waving at the woman. Mille is still unable to do anything. The woman is still paralyzed. Torben is still eating.

And then he’s done.

And he gets to his feet with slow, cumbersome movements, mimicking how he had trouble moving when he was alive, turning towards the woman.

At the sight of Torben facing her in his full height, his face and neck covered in blood, the woman is finally jerked out of her stupor. She begins to scream, backs up and clutches her son tightly. Her back meets the wall, and Torben reaches out his arms.

That’s when Mille realizes she’s begun running. In fact, she must have been doing so for at least a couple of seconds, because she’s already at full speed and closing in on Torben fast.

Just before he can grab the screaming woman, Mille flings herself into him. It’s like colliding with a rhino. The wind is knocked out of her, and there’s an audible crack from someplace between her neck and shoulder, and she slumps to the floor.

Luckily, though, so does Torben, losing his balance from the shove and tumbling sideways like an overgrown toddler.

“Get … out of … here,” Mille croaks, looking up at the woman, who’s stopped screaming and is now breathing in rapid gasps like someone drowning, her eyes darting back and forth from Torben to Mille.

The boy is crying now.

“Run away!” Mille says hoarsely.

The woman blinks, gasps some more, then, just as Torben begins crawling towards her, she finally regains enough of her bearings to turn on her heel and run down the hallway, the crying toddler bouncing in her arms.

Torben, realizing almost immediately that his easiest prey is out of reach, turns his attention to Mille instead, reaching for her shoes.

Mille bites down hard, pulls back both legs and stomps them as hard as she can into Torben’s face. There’s a satisfying snap as both his front teeth break, and Mille thinks with manic elation: I’ve always wanted to do that!

Then she uses the two seconds she bought herself to get back onto her feet. But when she uses her right arm to push off the floor, a searing pain shoots out from her collarbone, causing her to cry out.

At the same time, there’s another scream from behind her, and Mille turns her head to see the woman now splayed out on the floor. The toddler is a few feet away from her, rolling around. The woman must have tripped and dropped him, but, amazingly, he seems unharmed as he manages to sit up and look around with an expression of shock and confusion on his little face. His mother screams again, reaching for him but can’t quite make it.

At first, Mille has no idea why she’s screaming like that, or how she could fall on a perfectly flat floor.

Then she sees her mother gnawing away at the woman’s leg. Mille’s mother is still lying down, but she must have awoken just as the woman passed by her, and maybe she reached out an arm to grab her, thereby tripping her, or maybe she just sat up and the woman ran right into her; whatever the case, the woman wasn’t fast enough to get back up, and now it’s too late.

“Mom!” Mille hears herself cry out. “Stop that!”

Her mother doesn’t react to her call, of course, just working her way farther up the legs of the woman, tearing at the skin and biting off chunks.

The toddler begins to cry at the sight of his mother screaming.

“Iver!” Mille shouts, even as she’s trying to get back up herself. “Iver, help her!”

Iver comes closer with a look of utter horror on his face, but he’s still too far away to do any good.

Just as Mille makes it to her hands and knees, there’s a growl right behind her and a big hand grabs her by the belt.

Mille flings back her elbow as a reflex, connecting squarely with Torben’s temple, and she thrusts forward, freeing herself from his grip and stumbling to her feet.

Iver has almost reached them now, and Mille notices a lot more people behind him, a crowd starting to gather as other passengers come out from their cabins to see what’s going on.

Mille’s mother has reached the lower back of the woman, and the pool of blood growing on the floor suggests that not much can be left inside the woman. She’s fallen silent and is no longer struggling to get free, only one hand still reaching blindly for the toddler.

“Get him, Iver,” Mille tries to shout, but only has air enough for another croak. “Get him away from there!”

Things are moving very fast now.

Mille’s mother, maybe drawn by the crowd, maybe just losing interest in the now obviously dead woman, decides greedily to move on to the next course and begins crawling down the hallway.

“Don’t you fucking touch him!” Mille screams, bending down and grabbing her mother’s ankles just as she reaches out her arm for the toddler. Mille pulls her back, but her mother kicks with surprising force, slipping out of her shoe and leaving Mille to stumble backwards.

The toddler, though, now bawling loudly, seems to have taken matters into his own little hands, because he’s now crawling away, headed for the glass door leading outside. They open for him and let him crawl through.

Mille’s mother isn’t giving up on her tiny prey, and she, too, crawls for the doors like a big, clumsy spider.

Mille would maybe have had the time to stop her, if Torben hadn’t made another attempt to grab her pant leg just at that moment, forcing her to once more turn and place a hard kick to his jaw.

As she turns back around, she sees her mother’s feet disappear through the open door out into the dawn light.

“Iver!” she shouts—unnecessarily so, because Iver has finally gathered enough courage to come close enough, and is headed towards the door.

Mille’s shout makes him stop and look in her direction. But he looks right past her, at something going on behind her, and Mille darts a glance back to see Torben attack some old guy in his underwear, who’s just come out of a nearby door. Another, younger man rushes to help but only manages to get his hand bitten.

It’s happening, Mille thinks.

But she wastes no time brooding; she simply gets to her feet and runs out the glass door. The fresh morning air is cool and salty and makes her gasp for breath.

A narrow passageway between the ship and the railing leads maybe thirty yards down, and the toddler is still crawling to get away with Mille’s mother close at his heels.

Mille feels her heart jump as she speeds up and catches up with her mother just inches before she can reach out and grab the boy.

Mille throws herself flat on top of her mother, pushing the skinny woman to the metal floor. She immediately begins squirming and tries to reach back and grab at Mille, but Mille gets to her knees and shoves down hard with both hands between her mother’s shoulder blades. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Iver hesitating.

“Get the boy!” she shouts.

But Iver can’t seem to squeeze past, and the half a second she takes her attention away is all her mother needs. She twists sideways, Mille’s hands slip, and her mother bites down on her wrist.

Mille screams in pain and rips her arm back. A piece of skin comes off with a snap and the blood begins trickling immediately.

Mille tumbles backwards, clutching at her wounded wrist, trying to stop the blood from flowing, but it makes its way through her fingers.

Oh, no, no, I’m infected …

“Mille!” Iver shouts from behind her.

Mille looks up and sees her mother going for the toddler again. He’s reached the end of the walkway and is just sitting there, bawling and looking scared.

Mille, without thinking, throws herself forward and lands on top of her mother for the second time, this time her mother’s eager hand is even closer to the toddler, almost grazing his feet. But instead of just holding down her mother, this time, Mille locks her arm around her throat and pulls back as hard as she can, craning her mother’s neck back, hoping to break it. She realizes she’s screaming. She pulls back harder as her mother reaches her hands back and claws at her hair and her cheeks. Mille closes her eyes as her mother’s fingers fumble their way to her face. She wrestles her back and to the side, managing to keep herself on top and still keep her mother in a headlock. However, her grip slips just enough for her mother to get her mouth to Mille’s arm, and she doesn’t waste a second, but immediately begins biting at it. Mille screams again, but for some reason, the pain isn’t as bad this time, and that’s good because she can’t let go; if she does, her mother will go right after the toddler, so Mille just holds on with all her might. At the same time, she uses her other arm to reach up and grab the railings. She then hoists herself up, and—with a strength she had no idea she possessed—she pulls her mother to her feet, too.

Mille isn’t really aware of what she’s doing before she’s doing it. It’s like her body is no longer under her own power but is being controlled like a character in a computer game.

She slings one arm around the railing, while the other—the one being eaten—is still locked around her mother’s head. She pulls her arms towards each other, forcing her mother up against the railing. Then, with a sudden jerk, she rips her arm free, and for a split second she sees just how badly hurt it is—the skin open like a bloody flower, the flesh gone and revealing the bone—then her arms dip down and go between her mother’s legs, one from each side. It happens so fast Mille barely has time to register anything herself. But suddenly, she’s lifting her mother off the floor. Mille is fueled with the power of panic, and her mother, luckily, weighs below a hundred. And with a twist of her upper body, Mille throws her mother over the railing.

The movement is far from elegant, but it has enough force behind it to be successful.

Just before she disappears out of sight, Mille gets one last glimpse of her mother’s face, as she turns her head in what could be construed as surprise to look back at Mille. The eyes, though, which are white and empty, reveal that Helle Klitgaard is no longer capable of feeling anything, much less surprise.

Then she’s gone.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” Mille sighs, waddling backwards. Suddenly, she picks up on the noise of the crying toddler, and she turns to see him sitting there, shrinking back and looking up at her.

Mille smiles at him as she bends down. “Hi there, buddy. It’s all right now. You’re safe.”

He looks at her questioningly, and he stops crying for a moment. She reaches out her arms, and, to her surprise, the toddler returns the gesture. Mille picks him up and holds him tightly, making sure to keep the wounded arm by her side so as to not get any blood on him. She turns to see Iver still standing there, dumbstruck.

There’s a scream from the other side of the windows, and Mille looks to see a terrible scene unfold right behind the glass; people scrambling, many of them with bloody wounds, some of them fighting against Torben and the toddler’s mother—who’s now gotten back up and joined the fun.

The toddler begins sobbing again, and Mille turns towards the sea so he can’t see what’s going on inside.

“It’s okay,” Mille whispers, placing her mouth close to his little ear. “The bad people can’t hurt you now.”

Then, suddenly, Iver comes back to life, like a robot being plugged back in. “Oh, fuck! Oh, no! Oh, fuck!” he begins chanting in a shrill voice, holding his head with both hands as he looks from the window to Mille. “It’s all messed up now! It’s all messed up! We should have just jumped ship like Charlotte said. Now we’re all going to die!”

“It’s okay now,” Mille tells the toddler, hugging him a little tighter, placing a kiss on his temple, as he leans his head against her shoulder and stops crying with a whimpering sigh. “You’re going to be okay; I promise.”

“Don’t say that!” Iver cries out. “Don’t tell the baby he’s going to be okay; he’s not! We’re all going to—”

“He’s going to make it,” Mille says, looking at Iver, her expression set in stone, her voice offering no room for debate. “You’re going to take him, and you’re going to find a way to get him off this ship.”

Iver shakes his head. “I … I can’t … there’s no way …”

Mille steps towards him with great difficulty; pangs of pain shoot from her busted shoulder and the many bite wounds all over her arm. Her body is already aching from the inside, too; she can literally feel the virus coursing through her veins, setting everything on fire, killing her with the efficiency of cyanide.

I’ll be dead within three minutes.

The toddler moves a little in her arms, but keeps holding on to her shirt and pushes his cheek against her.

“You take him, Iver,” she says softly. “You make sure he gets off the ship.” When Iver begins to shake his head again, she goes on: “I thought I was going to save everyone. Turns out, I was only meant to save one.”

She looks down at the toddler who’s looking back up at her with big, blue, timid eyes, and she smiles as tears begin spilling from her own.

“But then again, one is better than nobody, right?” she tells the toddler, her voice surprisingly calm. She looks at Iver again. “Do whatever you need to do. But get him to safety.”

Iver hesitates. But this time, instead of shaking his head, he actually holds out his hands.

Mille kisses the toddler’s head once more, then hands him over. He gives off a weak whimper, holds on for half a second, then surrenders to Iver and tucks himself in the same way he did with Mille.

“This is how it was supposed to happen,” she says, not sure where the words are coming from. “I get it now.”

She steps back a few paces, struggling to keep her balance as her vision begins to go blurry.

“Get him off the ship,” she tells Iver one last time. “Promise me.”

“I will,” he says. And there’s sudden conviction in his voice. Maybe he’s simply offering her one final piece of solace, but Mille doesn’t think so; she thinks he really means it, that he’s determined to save the boy.

“Good,” Mille says, turning towards the railing and the bright morning sky reflecting in the calm ocean several feet below, the light already bright enough to cause her to squint her eyes. “I did it,” she whispers, smiling to herself.

She reaches out and grabs the cold metal. Then she hoists herself up with a painful grunt.

“Mille, wait,” Iver says.

But Mille doesn’t wait. She turns her face towards the sun one last time, as she leans forward and allows gravity to take over.

And as she falls through the air, faster and faster, there’s no memories passing in front of her eyes, no scenes from her life rushing by.

Instead, her last thought goes to the toddler and his big, bright eyes, and she imagines how he’ll get to grow into a handsome teenager and how those eyes will one day break the hearts of quite a few girls.

Mille is smiling by the time she hits the water.

SIXTEEN

Eli tries his best to keep the wheel steady, but his hands are trembling and drops of sweat keep running down his forehead, stinging his eyes.

His ragged breath competes with the scream of the engine as the lights of the freeway zip by. He already passed the exit for Fredericia. He’s not going there; why would he? Malthe’s apartment is in Frederica, and Eli was supposed to spend the night there, but Malthe is dead. So is Axe. Eli can still smell his burning flesh.

“Fuck me,” he mutters, fumbling for the ventilation, not wanting to take his eyes off the road. He finds it and cranks it up.

He suddenly feels strikingly sober. Apparently, seeing two bandmates lose their lives within a couple of minutes is enough to kick the brain into gear.

He passes a sign telling him Haderslev is only four miles out. He pushes the accelerator down even farther, pushing towards 130. Axe didn’t exaggerate when he bragged about how fast his dad’s car could go.

The thought of Axe makes Eli conscious of the stench again, and he frowns. “Fuck, how can I still smell him on me? Oh, man, I need some goddamn music …”

He turns on the stereo at max volume. The tunes of Kraftwerk make his eardrums throb pleasantly, soothing his nerves a little. It’s not enough, though, and before he knows what he’s doing, Eli finds himself leaning over and rummaging through the glove compartment.

“Come on … come on … didn’t Axe say he brought some green?”

Eli has been clean for almost seven months, the only thing he’s enjoyed being alcohol; no drugs whatsoever. It’s been very hard sometimes, especially that time he almost got run over by a car while riding his skateboard. Or when he found a lump on his balls which turned out to be harmless.

Fear of death seemed to be the biggest challenge; the thing most likely to bring back the urge for the comfortable numbness the drugs provided him. And ever since he heard about this virus spreading across the country, Eli had been more scared than ever. No wonder he was quick to agree when Axe called him, wanting to go drinking.

The first time Eli ever used was when his mother killed herself. Eli was the one who found her in the garage. The car was still running, the air thick with smoke. He was only fifteen back then. Finding her like that was the biggest scare of his life. He spent five months having terrible nightmares, trying to shake the image of her sitting behind the wheel, head tilted to the side, her eyes closed and her mouth open.

It wasn’t until he met Axe and Malthe and they introduced him to pot that he was finally able to sleep again.

Of course, pot was only the beginning.

“Shit!” he hisses to himself as he realizes there’s nothing in the glove box but stuff you ordinarily keep there. “Okay,” he mutters, clenching the wheel. “Okay, I can do this. I don’t need it. I can do—”

Suddenly, he becomes aware of a strange, deep vibrating feeling in the air. He has no time to figure out where it comes from, because without warning, something large and yellow comes into the upper corner of his visual field.

“Wow, shit!”

Eli hits leans against the side window to see a spinning helicopter dropping out of the sky at an alarming speed just off the road. It connects with the ground behind a couple of trees, the rotors still spinning as Eli loses it from sight.

“Holy hell,” Eli whispers to himself as he keeps driving. “Hope whoever was in there is all right …”

He doesn’t think too long about it, though; he knows he’s in deep trouble himself. Worst off, he’ll likely go to jail. He was at least partly responsible for Axe and Malthe dying, since they all broke the rules and went out even after the curfew had been put out.

Unless this is the end of the world, of course. Like Axe kept saying it was. Going drinking was Axe’s idea. Come to think of it, Eli has never seen Axe act like he did tonight. It was like he wanted to die. Like he knew they would all end up dead soon, so they might as well get it over with.

Eli knows Axe has been struggling lately. Something about depression. Maybe that’s why he wanted to go in the first place. Not that it matters now. Axe is dead. And Eli can still smell him even with the ventilation on.

He rolls down the window, and the brisk morning air comes roaring in, clearing the stench a little.

Maybe there’s still a way out … Maybe I don’t need to go to jail. What if I simply don’t tell anyone about what happened? Who can prove I was even there?

The thought brings a glimmer of hope.

The exit comes up ahead. Eli lets off the gas and turns off the freeway. He hasn’t given much thought to where exactly he’s going until now, but he suddenly realizes he’s heading for Claus’s place.

It’s silly; Eli is nineteen. He should be old enough to deal with this. But he automatically sought the one person that can help him now.

Claus has bailed him out of trouble before. He will know what to do. And he won’t judge him.

As he drives through the city, Eli notices the smell of burning flesh growing stronger inside the car again.

It’s incredible how strong that smell is; Eli only touched Axe’s body for a few seconds when they lifted it, and yet his hands must be where the smell is coming from.

He tentatively sniffs his palms, but to his surprise, he can only smell his own sweat. He sniffs his T-shirt, but that doesn’t smell either.

“The fuck?” he mutters, as he makes a left turn. Claus’s place is still a few blocks away.

He decides to call up Claus and ask him to come out. Eli finds his phone and turns down the music.

That’s when he hears it: the noises coming from the trunk.

And finally, his brain connects the dots.

The stench. That’s where it’s coming from. That’s why he can still smell burning flesh. They put Axe in the fucking trunk.

How could he forget? He’s been driving with his dead friend in the car.

Except that, judging from the thuds and the scraping and the moaning coming from the back, his friend isn’t exactly dead anymore.

SEVENTEEN

The impact is hard enough to make her teeth chatter and her vision go blurry for a few seconds.

When she’s able to focus again, Josefine is amazed that the helicopter is actually standing upright. And that she’s still alive—unhurt, even.

Which is more than she can say for Michael.

When they hit the ground, everything went flying, including Michael, who was still sprawled out between the seats. He was thrown hard against the ceiling, then flopped lifelessly to the floor.

Bodil, who took a rough tumbling herself, has landed on top of him and is now busy working on him with both hands and mouth. What exactly she’s doing to him is mercifully hidden from Josefine’s view, but the wet noises leave little room for interpretation.

The pilot is unconscious or maybe even dead, tilted over in his seat, not moving.

Josefine glances dazedly out of the window at the bright, sunny day. They have touched down on a grassy field next to the trees which the pilot must have steered clear of at the last second.

At that moment, the pilot moans and sits upright, rubbing his forehead. “Goddamnit …”

Josefine tries to speak, but her breath is still too shallow, and the words come out as no more than a whisper: “Watch out …”

The pilot gradually comes to, and when he looks to the side, he utters a curse at the sight of Bodil eating away at Michael—who by now, Josefine figures, must be dead, if he wasn’t already.

“Get out of here,” Josefine croaks.

The pilot still doesn’t hear her, but he doesn’t need to; he’s finally caught on to the fact that he’s within reach of Bodil, and he immediately begins scrambling to unbuckle.

Unfortunately, his movements seem to draw Bodil’s attention away from Michael—or perhaps she’s simply done with him—because she looks up with a predatory snap of her head, red droplets flying to both sides. Even from the back, Josefine can tell Bodil’s fat cheeks are smeared in blood.

“No!” the pilot roars, pushing at the door as Bodil comes at him. “Don’t you fucking touch me!”

If the door had given way at first try, the pilot may have made it out. But it doesn’t. Maybe the handle slips. Maybe the door just jams slightly after the rough landing.

Either way, it takes the pilot another violent push to get it open, and that’s all Bodil needs to shoot forwards and bite down hard on his shoulder.

The pilot roars out in pain, flails his arm in an attempt to get Bodil off, just as the door opens and he tumbles out of the helicopter. Bodil, who’s bitten down on his shoulder like a police dog on duty, follows suit.

Josefine can’t see from in here what’s going on, but she can hear them fight on the ground; the pilot curses and shouts, Bodil groans and snaps her teeth.

Then the pilot manages to get to his feet, grabbing the door to gain his balance. He then heads off away from the helicopter, running across the open field, holding his bleeding shoulder as he looks back. He seems to be aiming for the highway Josefine hadn’t noticed until now.

Bodil’s head comes into view as she too manages to stand up. She takes up pursuit, but she’s hopelessly slow, waddling away crookedly on the broken hip, almost falling over with every step.

Within ten yards or so, she seems to realize her chances of catching up with the pilot—who has now reached the highway and is running along it—are close to nothing.

So, she simply stops, turns around and begins trudging back towards the now-closest prey: Josefine.

At the sight of Bodil coming back this way, Josefine is finally called out of her stupor. She has no idea whether Bodil will be able to climb in through the open door, but she has no intention of leaving it up to chance.

She tries to get up, then remembers the belt and fumbles to unbuckle it. This time, it only takes her a couple of seconds, but those seconds feel more like minutes to Josefine. When she finally hears the snap of the buckle, she lunges forward and climbs right past the thing still secured to the tipped-over gurney.

She grabs hold of Michael by his shoulders, intentionally not looking at the bloody craters Bodil left on him. It takes all her strength to haul him up against the sliding door. She grabs the handle and opens the door, then shoves Michael out. He tumbles to the ground.

Josefine looks up to see Bodil come waddling at her, and she slams the door shut at the last possible second.

She breathes a sigh of relief.

Then, she remembers.

The front door … it’s still open …

Josefine jolts back into action, squeezes through the seats and reaches for the door, but can’t quite reach it.

Bodil has made her made around the helicopter and is coming at her as fast as she can.

Josefine bites down hard and climbs all the way over to the pilot’s seat, leans out and grabs the handle just as Bodil reaches out her bloody hand. As Josefine yanks the door shut, Bodil’s fingers graze the back of her hand.

Then the door slams, and Josefine screams out in a mixture of relief and terror, staring from the window with Bodil’s blood-red face and white, empty eyes glaring back in at her, to the traces of blood smeared across her hand.

She recalls Michael pouring the disinfectant over his stomach and looks down to see the bottle on the floor. She picks it up and squeezes out plenty of the chilly liquid, then rubs her hand thoroughly.

When the blood is gone, Josefine examines the skin closely. It doesn’t appear to be broken anywhere. Hopefully, that means she’ll be okay.

Still, her system is panicking, her heart is racing, her lungs heaving for breath.

It’s okay, she tells herself. I just need to calm down. I’m not in any immediate danger anymore.

It’s true; the situation is bad, but not critical. She has time to think. She can figure out a way to get out of here. The thought actually calms her down a little.

She turns in the seat and scans the inside of the helicopter, looking for exits. There are four, but the two in the front are impossible to use because of Bodil standing right outside. Which leaves only two of them as viable exits: the right-side sliding door and the rear-end opening through which the gurneys were passed. The sliding door requires she climb over the gurney with the writhing thing on it. The thing has managed to pry one arm free from the straps, which must have given way during the crash-landing, and, looking at the way the others straps are only barely holding on, it doesn’t exactly seem like an inviting choice to scale the gurney.

Which leaves only the rear opening. Josefine climbs back through the helicopter, passing the gurney at a safe distance, ignores the arm reaching greedily for her.

She looks at the handle to the rear hatch and realizes it requires some sort of key to open.

“Damnit,” she mutters.

Then she becomes aware of the sound of fingers scraping on the outside of the helicopter right in front of her. For a moment, she figures another dead person must have joined Bodil, but then she looks back out the window and realizes Bodil is no longer at the front of the helicopter.

“She followed me back here,” Josefine mutters. “She can sense where I’m at …”

This means, of course, that if she wants to get out of the helicopter, she needs to either lure Bodil away or slip past her. If she’s too slow, Bodil will be waiting right outside, welcoming her with open arms …

Think. There’s got to be another way.

She looks up, hoping to see a sunroof or the like, but the roof of the helicopter is all metal.

Then her gaze falls on a square on the floor. There’s a handle in the middle and an unmistakable drawing of a guy running away from a fire plus the words: Emergency Exit – Warning: Do Not Open While Airborne.

She tries to recall the outside of the helicopter, tries to remember how much space there is below it. She had to take a big step up to get in, which means there’s probably at least a couple of feet. Plenty of room for her to slip out. But will Bodil also be able to get under the helicopter?

Her question is answered as nails scrape audibly on the underside of the helicopter.

But, lifting her head back up, she can hear scraping from the back, too.

Someone else is out there …

Josefine goes to the window and looks out. Within thirty seconds, Bodil comes waddling into view. And then, from below the helicopter, Michael comes crawling. He gets to his feet and joins Bodil in clawing at the window.

Josefine steps back, breathing quickly again.

At the same time, she’s reminded of another, much more immediate danger, as there comes a snapping sound from the gurney.

Josefine stares at the thing, which is now hanging awkwardly from the two straps still clinging on to the gurney, both its arms are now free and able to grab at the legs of the other gurney, pulling the body forward and putting pressure on the remaining straps.

It’s only a matter of seconds. Better get my butt in gear and get out of here somehow …

Despite the very clear command from her thoughts, Josefine doesn’t move. A strange sensation fills her. It feels like her body knows something she doesn’t.

I can’t leave; not with the two of them outside. And I can’t leave him like this.

It seems like two separate issues, but as they merge together, Josefine’s brain finally catches on and she knows what she needs to do.

It’s obvious, actually, now that she sees it. She even spoke with Michael about euthanasia.

At first, the notion is terrifying to her, impossible to even consider. But this is no longer her father. It never will be again. There’s absolutely nothing left of the strong, loving man who raised her. Letting him go on like this is undignified. He would have been mortified had he known he would end up a living corpse. He would probably have ended it himself if he could, simply stopped eating and drinking. There would have been no fear, no hesitation on his part whatsoever. Even up until the end he never lost his fierce determination.

But I can’t do it … I’m not nearly as strong …

“Sure you are. You’re my daughter, aren’t you?”

The voice is so clear in her mind, it’s almost like he spoke right next to her.

Josefine breathes deeply. Then she looks around the medical equipment, some of it still hanging on the walls, some of it has fallen to the floor. She sees a tiny utensil with a cap on. She picks it up and removes the cap. The silvery blade of a scalpel shines up at her.

Josefine swallows, and for some reason, she feels a tingle at the back of her neck while Michael’s voice echoes in her mind: “A half-inch cut would probably do it.”

She looks over at the gurney. One of the remaining straps has given way a few inches, enabling the thing to put one foot on the floor, kicking eagerly to get going, to get at her, its dead eyes fixed right at her chest.

Josefine maneuvers around to the head-end of the gurney, making sure to keep out of reach of the flailing arms. The chest strap is still in place, hindering the thing in reaching its arms overhead. Instead, it cranes its nearly bald head backwards to growl up at her.

“I’m so sorry about this, Daddy,” Josefine whispers as she slips the scalpel under his neck. She can’t help but feel the soft skin, and the coolness of it makes her flinch. It also solidifies her decision; whatever this thing is, it’s dead. It should have stopped moving by now. What she’s about to do is simply setting things right.

She closes her eyes, tries to block out the groans and the creaking from the straps, tries to envision her father’s face, smiling up at her. Tears begin to spill from her eyes, her breathing grows faster, and her hand begins to shake.

I can’t do it. I just can’t.

“Sure you can. Go on, sweetheart.”

Josefine shakes her head as she begins to cry out loud, still with her eyes closed.

“I don’t even know if it’ll work,” she sobs.

“It will. The doctor said so. Do it now, sweetheart. Before it’s too late.”

Josefine clenches her teeth, gathers her willpower, focuses all her attention on the scalpel clutched in her sweaty hand.

Then there’s a loud snap as the chest strap gives way …

EIGHTEEN

“Hello? Eli?” Claus’s voice in his ear, drowsy. “Why you calling so late? Everything okay?”

Eli isn’t able to answer. He’s barely able to concentrate on driving.

He’s staring in the rearview mirror. Staring at the backseat. The leather is bulging and moving where Axe’s hands are fondling it from the backside. It looks like he’s already torn out most of the upholstery, the only thing separating him from Eli being the leather. Luckily, his nails don’t seem sharp enough to penetrate it.

“Cl … Claus,” Eli manages to croak. “I … I need your help …”

“You sound terrible, buddy. Don’t tell me you used again?”

“No, it’s not that.”

“Oh, thank God.”

“It’s even worse.”

A brief pause. “How can it be worse?”

“Look, I really need to see you.”

“I’m sorry, buddy, but that’s not going to work.”

Eli is so stunned he forgets about Axe for a moment. “What? You said I could always call you if I needed help.”

“Wish I could, but you see—”

“It’s a matter of life and death!”

“I get that, Eli, but I’m just not—”

“You’re just not what? In the mood for my annoying problems? Well, I’m fucking sorry to trouble you, but I almost got killed two times this morning already! How’s that for your—”

He’s interrupted by a ripping noise causing him to look into the mirror once more. Axe is now biting his way through the leather, tearing at it like an animal. And it’s working. Within seconds, there’s a gash wide enough for his face to squeeze through.

“Oh, fuck, no!”

He didn’t look at Axe when they moved him; he made very sure not to. But now, his friend’s face is staring right back at him, protruding comically from the backseat.

“Eli? Eli?” Claus’s voice calls from somewhere nearby, and Eli realizes peripherally that he must have put the phone back in his pocket without disconnecting the call, because it’s not in his hand anymore.

Eli can’t get a word out. He can only stare at Axe.

Axe’s eyebrows are gone, his lips are blistered and pulled back in a snare, revealing the pink gums and white teeth, a string of black leather caught between two of them. His skin is mostly black and has been peeled off in several places, causing the white cheekbones to peek through. Also, his hair is mostly gone, or rather, it’s melted onto the skull like a wilted flower bed.

No wonder it stinks in here, a thought interjects in Eli’s mind, surprisingly clear. He looks like a pig roast.

Axe begins squirming eagerly, trying to push his shoulders through the seat.

Then, Eli is jerked out of his stupor, as the car bounces violently, making its way up onto the sidewalk, smashing a parking meter.

“Fuck!”

Eli jerks the wheel sideways just in time to avoid a light post. Instead, he crashes into a parked car. Something white covers his field of vision in a flash, and even before the sound of the collision reaches his ears, his face is slammed into something not quite soft.

Eli sinks back into the seat with a deep sigh as he slips away into a freeing darkness. The last thing he hears is someone growling behind him.

NINETEEN

Iver just stands there for several seconds which feel more like hours, staring at the railing at the place where Mille stood just a moment ago.

What brings him back isn’t the noises of people fighting and dying, but the toddler moving gently against his chest, whimpering.

He looks down at the boy’s face, blinking like a sleepwalker being called back to wakefulness. And he recalls the fact that he’s now responsible for this little guy.

Iver is eighteen and has only had one sexual encounter with a girl—which ended pretty disastrous, as most first times do. The experience did serve a useful purpose, though, as it brought home to him what he’d expected since early puberty, namely that he was gay.

So being a parent is something very far from how Iver sees himself. He doesn’t have any younger siblings, either, so taking care of a toddler is pretty much completely foreign to him. The closest he comes to any kind of paternity is RuPaul, his Maine Coon, who’s waiting for him in his apartment back in Stockholm.

Still, to his amazement, he feels a strong surge of protectiveness as he looks at the boy. It’s like a primal instinct coming to life, and he resolves himself to keep his promise to Mille, shoving aside the shock of seeing her jump over the railing, putting a pin in it for later processing, once he’s no longer in danger.

And, speaking of danger, when he turns to look through the windows, the sight that meets him is something straight out of a horror movie. Most of the people he sees inside are either dead or dying. A few of them are fleeing. Blood is everywhere, painting the floor and the walls and everybody, even staining the glass in several places. The doors to the elevator close and open again as they meet the obstacle that is a woman eating away at the face of another woman.

Suddenly, a bald, blood-stained head appears right on the other side of the glass, as an old man rises and begins groping at the window with a hand that’s been gnawed to bloody stumps.

The toddler whimpers and Iver turns his head gently towards his chest. “It’s all right, don’t look at them,” he whispers.

The sound of the glass door sliding open causes him to spin around. A young guy not much older than Iver comes waddling out onto the walkway. For half a second, he stops, almost as though to take in the fresh air, tilting back his head slightly.

He’s using his sense of smell, Iver thinks with a sinking feeling in his gut.

And his thought is confirmed as the zombie turns towards them and begins staggering down the walkway.

The glass door is the only way for passengers to enter and exit the walkway. There is, however, another way, which is only meant for emergencies. Iver can’t really think of a situation more emergent than the one he currently finds himself in, so he turns to the other end of the walkway.

A ladder poised at eye level can be slid down, offering a way to enter the front deck. Iver reaches up and pulls down the ladder. “Listen, little buddy, I need to hold on now, okay? Hold on to me.”

He’s not sure whether the toddler understands him, but there’s no time to find out, because the young guy is closing in on them, so Iver begins climbing, squeezing the toddler while climbing awkwardly using only one hand.

It’s difficult but doable, and as the zombie reaches the ladder, Iver’s shoes are just out of its reach. Iver has never been much for heights, and he feels his muscles begin to tense up as the ladder shakes.

For a terrifying second, he’s sure the zombie has taken up pursuit and is also scaling the ladder. But as he glances down, Iver sees it simply bumping into the ladder, aimlessly groping for Iver’s legs, not even trying to climb up.

Iver is already several feet above the walkway, yet he’s only halfway to the front deck, and he can’t help but notice how easy it would be to slip and fall over the railing from here, only to plummet to the sea below.

“Don’t look down,” he breathes, focusing on the ladder. “Just don’t look down.”

It’s an increasingly difficult task to convince his limbs to keep working, as sweat pours down his forehead despite the chilly sea breeze. But finally, there are no more rungs, and Iver climbs onto the deck, stepping quickly away from the railing, as though some strange vacuum could pull him back over the edge.

“We made it,” he whispers, offering a weak smile to the toddler, who’s resorted to suck his index and middle finger in an obvious effort to console himself.

Iver looks around. The deck is lit up by the early day sun and mostly empty but for a couple of smokers. None of them have the slightest idea of what’s going on a couple of decks below them.

“So far, so good,” Iver says. “Now, let me just think for a second. How do we get off this ship?”

There are really only a couple of options when wanting to leave a ship at sea.

Someone picks you up from the air; another ship invites you aboard; you launch a lifeboat; or you jump in the water and begin swimming.

Iver looks west. Denmark is still very much visible in the horizon. In fact, they seem to be only around eight nautical miles out, which translates to a little over nine miles. That’s a long way to swim, but Iver might be one of the only ones aboard the ferry who could actually do it. He’s an excellent swimmer, having competed at the Swedish national youth championship for the past three years. He’s even trained at swimming long distances at open sea, and right now, the water isn’t even that cold.

So it’s probably doable. The thing is, he could never do it with a toddler. And he’s not going to abandon either the boy or his promise to Mille.

Contacting another ship or a helicopter is also out of the question; even if he could get access to a radio and call the Danish authorities, they would need to know why he needed their help.

Which leaves only one option; the one Charlotte spoke in favor of.

Iver turns to look up at the bridge—from this position he doesn’t need to worry about the captain or the second mate spotting him, as he’s too close to the bridge. The orange lifeboats, however, are clearly visible from down here, suspended in heavy wires from which they can be lowered down to sea level.

Lowering and launching the lifeboats is a surprisingly simple task, and it can even be done by only one person. The entire process is operable from inside the boat and is done with no electrical systems, but solely by mechanical and hydraulic means. It also doesn’t require any special access key or the like; only knowledge. And Iver has that knowledge.

The only challenge, really, is getting to the boats and lowering them without anybody noticing.

If a passenger spotted the lifeboat being released, panic would quickly spread across the ship.

If a crew member saw it, word would soon reach the captain, and Iver is pretty sure Sorenson would order security to stop him or maybe even apprehend the boat, should Iver manage to get it launched.

He even suspects that, failing to stop the lifeboat, Sorenson might feel forced to take more drastic measures, like alerting the authorities, or, even worse, take direct action to sink the lifeboat.

It’s a crazy scenario, but given the situation and Sorenson’s dedication to his duty, Iver doesn’t find it all too far-fetched.

So he needs to not only lower the lifeboat unseen, he also needs to get as far away from the ship as possible the moment the lifeboat hits the water.

Iver looks up at the lifeboats, brooding over the difficult task, trying to find a way to go about it, when, suddenly, a movement by the rear lifeboat catches his eye. He squints to see better.

A person is handling the crane. Another one pops up from behind the lifeboat. Both are wearing life vests. And one of them looks a lot like …

“Charlotte,” Iver breathes.

“Excuse me?” a voice behind him.

Iver turns around and sees an old lady approaching. Her husband is sitting on a bench, looking this way.

“Do you work here?” the woman asks in Danish, smiling at him.

“I … I do,” Iver says.

“Could you tell me why we’ve stopped? Is there some sort of problem?”

“It’s, uhm …” Iver fumbles for an excuse. His mind is still working on understanding the fact that he just saw Charlotte prepping the lifeboat—he had taken it for granted that she was long gone by now. But she obviously decided to not go about the task alone, and has spent some time to find someone to help her.

The old woman is still looking at him, her eyes hopping back and forth between Iver and the toddler in his arms, her expression growing more confused by the second.

“Listen,” Iver says, deciding suddenly to be honest. “There’s been an outbreak of the Rhabdo-virus on the ship. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I suggest you return to your cabin immediately and lock yourselves in. Bring some food if you have any; you might have to stay there for a while.”

Iver waits only long enough to see the look of terrified comprehension on the woman’s face, then, before she can ask him anything else, he turns and heads for the nearest door.

TWENTY

“Sorry, you guys,” Eli whispers hoarsely. “It wasn’t supposed to happen. We should’ve never left town.”

Axe looks at him, a curious look on his face. “The fuck are you on about, dude?”

“You’re dead,” Eli says, feeling like crying. “So is Malthe. It’s all fucked up. Everything is fucked up.”

Axe scuffs. “Dude, you need to get a grip.”

“I’m so sorry,” Eli repeats, and now he can actually feel the tears spilling down his cheeks. “I’ll really fucking miss you guys. You were my best friends, you know. My only friends, really. And the band … how the fuck am I going to live without the band?”

Axe moves closer. It’s a weird movement, almost like his face is drifting on its own. “Listen, dickbreath, you really need to get yourself together. We all feel sorry for ourselves now and then. I know, believe me. That doesn’t mean you just lie around and cry like that. You either get on with it or you put an end to it.”

Eli sobs. It’s very dark in here—wherever “in here” is. There’s also an unpleasant smell. And a strange noise. Eli couldn’t care less about any of that, though. All he cares about is that Axe and Malthe are both dead.

“I’m so sorry,” he sobs. “It’s all my fau—”

“Hey!” Axe says, his voice turning weirdly distorted, like he’s growling. “You listening to me? If you don’t want to end up like us, then you need to get the fuck up and keep moving!”

The words are becoming harder to discern as Axe speaks, and something’s happening to his face as well—it’s morphing into something else. Something dead.

“What … what’s going on?” Eli mutters, trying to sit up, trying to look around, but it’s very hard to move, like he’s being pinned in place by something, and he can’t take his eyes off of Axe’s face, which is still transforming in front of him, the skin flaking and darkening, the features contorting into an angry mask, the pupils fading and leaving the eyes as white, empty balls.

Axe’s expression turns into a sneer as he croaks: “Get … away … from … me!”

With each word—which is more of a snarl now—Axe seems to lunge at him, opening and closing his mouth, his teeth clapping right in front of Eli’s face. Spit drizzles onto his face and now the stench is so intense, it finally snaps Eli back into a waking state.

The surroundings change all at once, and in a flash, Eli realizes where he is: in the front seat of Axe’s dad’s Mercedes, squeezed in between the door and the steering wheel. The airbag is lying on his lap like a big, flaccid balloon.

The upper body of Axe—or what was Axe just an hour ago—is protruding from the backseat, one arm groping at the airbag, the other one reaching backwards in an awkward angle, trapped in the backseat seat belt, hindering Axe from pushing forward farther. Instead, he bites at Eli like a rapid racoon, snapping his teeth with piercing claps, snarling and drooling.

“Oh, fuck, oh, fuck,” Eli breathes, reaching his arm over his shoulder, fumbling for the handle. He finds it, yanks and tumbles backwards out of the car.

The slight movement of the car is enough for Axe’s wrist to uncoil itself from the seat belt and he lunges halfway out the door, grabbing at Eli’s feet. Eli yelps and rolls to the side, jumping to his feet.

Axe is trying to do the same, raising himself up on his arms, and he would’ve probably made it, if Eli hadn’t grabbed the door and slammed it.

The sound of the inside of the door connecting with the top of Axe’s head is loud enough that Eli feels it in his gut—especially because of the crackling crunch as Axe’s skull apparently caves in.

He sinks to the ground as the door swings halfway open again, and Eli turns around and empties what’s left in his stomach—which isn’t much more than foamy bile—out onto sidewalk. He tries to keep standing, but his knees are buckling, and he grabs hold of the light post he narrowly missed.

While still heaving, he looks down at himself.

I’m okay. He didn’t scratch me. The airbag covered me. Holy fuck, that was close …

The thought of himself lying unconscious in the front seat for—what, minutes?—while Axe made his way through the car, the only thing stopping him from eating Eli’s face clean off being the seat belt.

“Sorry, Axe,” he croaks, looking back over at the burned corpse hanging out the open car door.

Then his gaze is caught by two people coming this way, running. It’s a fat guy wearing nothing but boxers, his hairy man-tits bouncing away and an almost-as-fat woman with messy, curly hair wearing a nightdress with penguins on it.

“Jesus Crist!” the guy exclaims, stopping by the car and clapping both hands on top of his balding head. “Jesus Christ, what happened here?”

“It’s … it’s okay,” Eli tries to tell them, but his throat is still throbbing from the throwing up, and his voice is weak.

“Oh, my God!” the woman squeals, seeing Axe’s blackened body. “Oh, that poor guy! He’s all burned! Jesus, Brian, you need to call the ambulance!”

The guy’s hand goes to where his pocket would’ve been, had he been wearing his pants, but finds nothing. Instead, Eli notices to his horror a flaccid condom hanging out from the boxers.

They were fucking just a minute ago, he thinks to himself, almost retching again at the thought of those two pale, sweaty bodies going at it.

“Where’s the fire?” the guy—Brian—asks, looking at the car. “I don’t see anything burning … how did he end up like this?” He looks at Eli, open mouthed.

Eli just shrugs. At that moment, his mind is blank. He couldn’t explain what has happened if his life depended on it.

“I’m getting my phone,” the woman says, frowning at Eli for one long moment, but not moving.

“Yeah, you do that, hon,” Brian says, not taking his eyes off of Eli. “And call the police while you’re at it.”

“The police?” Eli repeats, automatically beginning to back away.

“You stay here, buddy,” Brian says, jumping forward with surprising agility and grabbing him by the wrist. “I’m placing you under civilian arrest.”

“You’re … you’re what?” Eli exclaims, almost laughing. “Get your fucking hands off me, you fat pig!”

He yanks hard backwards to get free, but Brian’s sweaty grip is too firm, and with another remarkably swift movement, he twists Eli’s arm around to his back, pinning it in a painful lock.

“Ouch! Let go! You’re hurting me!”

The woman has stepped closer. “You need help, hon?”

“You’ve got no right to do this!” Eli shouts. “Let me go!” The thought of him ending up in police custody fills him with a blinding panic.

“I’ve got him, just go call the cops,” Brian sneers, pushing down Eli’s head in an awkward position. “Hurry up!”

The woman turns to leave, and Eli is about to shout something, when his gaze falls on Axe’s arm, lying on the pavement. The hand opens and closes in a jittery way, like a robot coming back to life.

The woman, who seems to be doing her best not to look at the body hanging from the car, passes by close enough that Eli can reach out his leg and trip her—and so he does, hardly thinking.

The woman, obviously not expecting this, screams out in surprise and falls flat on the sidewalk with a thud and a wheezing groan, as the air is audibly knocked from her lungs.

“Oh, shit!” Brian exclaims. “You okay, hon?”

The open door is blocking most of the view from where Eli and Brian are standing, but since Eli is bent over, he’s able to see under the door. And he witnesses Axe drag himself out of the car.

That’s right, Eli thinks to himself, feeling a crazy elation. Get her, Axe!

Axe claws his way atop the woman, who’s still gasping for breath. Then he makes her forget all about her troubles breathing, as he bites down hard on the fleshy part of her backside.

Suddenly, the woman has enough air in her lungs after all, and she screams in pain.

“Jesus!” Brian shouts and lets go of Eli, jumping to the rescue of his girlfriend. “Holy hell, he’s not dead!”

“Get him off!” the woman screams, slapping at Axe with open palms. “Get him off of me!”

Brian bends down and grabs Axe by the shoulders, tugging him backwards hard. But Axe has ground down on the woman’s back-fat with his teeth, and he’s holding on like a crocodile. As Brian yanks him away, the woman’s skin is first stretched, then ripped open with an awful elastic sound.

Her scream grows a couple of octaves higher and Brian roars out too at the sight of his girlfriend’s open back wound from where the blood immediately starts spilling.

Axe is the only one not reacting with horror; in fact, he seems even more motivated at the sight of the bleeding flesh, and he twists out of Brian’s hold and buries his face in the wound.

Brian throws himself at him, trying some awkward judo move to wrestle him off, but Axe is slippery and keeps at it, the blood now covering the sidewalk. The woman’s screams seem to lose power as she’s apparently drifting off to unconsciousness.

Eli suddenly becomes aware that his plan worked; he’s free. But he’s still just standing there, staring at the nightmarish scene. He turns his head and looks around.

A group of people have gathered by the car and more are coming from all directions. They all look mesmerized and horrified. None of them steps in right away. Then, a young man seems to find the courage and steps forward to try and help break up the scuffle.

By now, though, Axe has eaten his way well into the woman’s back, and Brian has received several scratches on his arms and face trying to get Axe away. Eli feels a strange mixture of horror and excitement at the sight.

What have I done? Right after that initial thought, another one comes to him, spoken in quite another tone: Serves you right for trying to call the police on me, you fat fucks.

The young man reaches in and tries to pull away Axe’s head. Axe turns his head and clams down hard, crunching the guy’s fingers, causing him to scream out in pain. Another couple of men enter the scene, and they actually manage to pull Axe off the woman—mostly, apparently, because Axe has lost interest in the dead-or-very-soon-dead woman. They hold him down in a clumsy headlock, one of them pinning his legs and the other holding his head. The one holding his head immediately gets bitten in the armpit, screams out and abandons the plan, freeing up Axe to twist around and bite the other guy, too.

Soon, it’s all just a pile of flailing arms and legs, screaming and shouting, still more people joining in, trying to break up what looks like a brawl, none of them understanding the danger.

They’re all dead, Eli thinks to himself. And it’s because of me. I did this. Then, that other voice comes again: They did this to themselves. They shouldn’t have tried to arrest me.

Eli finally recognizes the voice. It’s been seven months since he’s heard it. It’s the one Claus called The Demon Voice.

“Every drug user has one,” he told Eli. “It’ll tell you whatever you need to hear. It’ll tell you to hurt people you love and people you don’t even know. It only serves you, and it’ll do whatever it can to convince you to do horrible things. The trick is to never listen to it.”

Eli turns on his heel and bolts.

TWENTY-ONE

As Iver enters back inside the ship, he can immediately feel the atmosphere has changed.

Somewhere from below come faint sounds of screaming and yelling, bumps and crashes. It’s almost drowned out by the sound of the ship’s engine, but Iver is used to that and automatically filters it out.

Even though he’s entered the lounge—a large, oval room with plenty of space, dining tables, a bar and even a dance floor—which is usually the most upbeat place to be on the ship, he can sense a brooding panic lurking just below the surface. People are coming and going, some obviously just woken up, others must have been up already, all of them exchanging worried looks and keeping together in small groups, none of them sure what to do about what they’re hearing.

He heads for the farthest exit, crossing the empty dance floor, and he picks up several hushed voices.

“Should we go down there?”

“What is happening?”

“Why have we stopped moving?”

“Does anybody know anything?”

Just as Iver is about to exit the lounge, a big, muscular guy steps out in front of him, cutting him off.

“Hey, you. What the hell’s going on?”

“Uhm,” Iver says. “I’m sorry, but … I don’t know …”

The guy doesn’t let him pass. “Then what are you doing running around with a toddler?”

People have gathered around them, and Iver sees no other way. “Okay, listen to me,” he says, clearing his throat. “There’s been an outbreak of the Rhabdo-virus …”

“I knew it!” someone exclaims, and about a dozen people seem to feel they’ve heard enough, because they immediately scatter.

“What do we do?” a woman asks in a shrill voice. “Why haven’t we been informed?”

“I’m sure they’ll say something over the speakers any minute,” Iver says, even though he suspects that might be a lie. “Until then, I think the best thing you can do is return to your cabins, and keep—”

“Fuck that!” the big guy cuts him off. “I’m getting the hell off of this boat.”

He turns around and heads out onto the deck—Iver doesn’t know if the guy intends to simply jump overboard, but he hopes not. He doesn’t have the time to wait and find out, however, so he excuses himself and pushes through the remaining people, some of them still demanding answers from him.

He manages to exit the lounge and runs down the hallway, headed for the nearest elevator. But he finds two dozen people already waiting outside it, anxiously looking at each other.

Instead, Iver heads for the staircase. Luckily, he knows the ferry inside and out, and he reaches the upper lever within five minutes.

As he steps out onto the platform where the lifeboats are, a gush of fresh wind meets him, causing him to catch his breath.

The lifeboat is already suspended in midair, dangling over the edge of the ship, being lowered by the wires. There’s no one in sight, which means they are operating the lifeboat from inside.

“Wait!” he shouts, running to the railing, waving his free hand, not sure if they can hear him from the inside. “Charlotte! Hold on! It’s me, Iver!”

The lifeboat stops. The side door opens and Charlotte sticks her head out, squinting up at him. “You changed your mind?”

“I did. Let me come with you.”

“Whose baby is that?”

“Some woman. She’s dead.”

“Who is it?” a voice asks from inside the lifeboat.

“Where’s the girl?” Charlotte asks, ignoring the other question.

Iver swallows. “She’s dead. So are probably a hundred other people. It’s breaking out all over deck B as we speak. It’s just a matter of minutes now.”

Charlotte turns pale. “You … you’ve been into contact with any of them them?”

“No,” he says. “I’m fine, don’t worry. So is this guy. Please, Charlotte, let us aboard.”

Charlotte considers for a second, darting a glance down the platform. “Did anybody see you come up here?”

“No.”

“All right. Come on, then. Climb aboard.”

Iver looks down at the nauseating drop below. The water is so far away, falling from up here would be like jumping from a skyscraper. “I … I can’t. Not with this guy in my arms.”

“Get it back up, Tommy,” Charlotte tells someone inside the lifeboat.

“What?”

“Just do it!”

The lifeboat starts rising back up. When it’s close enough, Iver hands over the boy to Charlotte. “Here, take him for me a minute.”

Charlotte looks like he’s offering her a cactus with no pot, but she takes the boy awkwardly in her arms, bringing him inside.

Iver breathes deeply, then steps over the gap and into the swaying lifeboat. Inside, there’s a synthetic smell, the sunlight only making it through a row of narrow plastic windows.

The guy operating the handles controlling the wires is someone Iver’s seen a couple of times before down in the ship’s engine room; his name is Chris or Claus. He’s got black hair and stubble, and he’s a couple of years older than Iver. Iver knows him to be a moody guy who almost never says anything positive. And, as far as he knows, he’s one of Charlotte’s close friends.

“Welcome aboard,” he says, smiling sourly. “Glad you could make it.”

Charlotte hands Iver the toddler again, and the little guy seems thankful to be back in Iver’s arms.

“If he starts crying, you better make him stop,” she says. “I can’t take babies crying.”

Iver just nods. “Thanks for taking us with you.”

“Sit down,” Charlotte says, gesturing towards the seats. It’s not an invitation.

Iver sits down and looks out the window as Chris or Claus begins lowering the lifeboat. He sees the outside of the ferry drift by; now and then he gets a glimpse through the windows. There’re people running on every deck now.

“Listen, Chris,” Charlotte says, turning up the radio she’s been listening to.

“This is your captain speaking,” Sorenson’s voice comes through. “Please remain calm. Wherever you are at the moment, I urge you to return to your cabin, lock the door and stay there. We have a situation which is being dealt with as we speak …”

“Yeah, right,” Charlotte scuffs. “Fucking liar.”

“Please don’t panic,” Sorenson repeats. “And please avoid contact with other passengers. There’s absolutely no reason to try and get off the ferry …”

Charlotte looks over at Chris, then at Iver. “Are people trying to get off?”

Iver stands up and goes to the rearview window. From here, he can see the other lifeboat on this side. There’re people all around it, pushing and shoving to get on it.

“Holy hell,” Charlotte says. “Look at that!”

Iver follows her pointing finger out the front window and he sees someone throwing something out from a window. At least that’s how it looks at first. But as the thing begins flailing its arms on the way down, he realizes it’s a man.

“Oh, no,” he breathes as the man hits the water and disappears.

The jump was maybe twenty feet—probably not enough to render him unconscious. But the stream around the ferry will likely pull him down and drag him all the way to the rear end. By that time, even if he’s still alive, he’ll encounter the ship’s rotor.

The first thing you learn about emergency protocols when working on a ferry, is that you never jump from the ferry and into the water; it’s pretty much guaranteed suicide.

But most people don’t know that.

And, staring out the lifeboat’s window, Iver sees two more jumpers. Then a fourth and a fifth. Soon, the air is full of them.

“Holy hell,” Charlotte repeats.

“Goddamn morons,” Chris says. Even though he’s trying to sound tough, Iver can tell his voice is shaking.

“… I repeat,” Sorenson’s voice goes on over the radio. “Jumping ship is extremely dangerous and should not be attempted by anyone. Return instead to your cabins and avoid any contact with other passengers. Help will reach us soon. There’s no reason to pan—”

Charlotte turns the radio off, muttering: “I can’t listen to that shit.”

Then, there’s a beep from the instruments, and Chris exclaims: “We’re there! I’m putting her down now.”

Iver feels the slight bump as the lifeboat touches down on the water. Chris and Charlotte work together to get the wires free and turn the boat around. Iver realizes now that he would probably never have made it in time, had he been forced to do all of this on his own while looking out for the toddler.

He looks out the window as the lifeboat speeds up, more and more of the ferry coming into view.

The sight is far from uplifting.

People are still jumping from every height. It reminds Iver with a sinking feeling of the footage he saw from nine-eleven. These people don’t jump out to avoid fire and smoke, but dead people trying to eat them. And they don’t hit concrete, but water. But the effect is pretty much the same; only a few of them ever reaches back up to the surface—Iver counts maybe ten or fifteen lucky ones on this side of the ferry—but they will likely drown too before they reach land.

Two other lifeboats are being lowered. That is, people are trying to lower them. But one of them seems to have difficulty even getting going, because too many people are flooding it, causing it to rock dangerously back and forth.

The other one actually begins to lower itself towards the water, but as it passes by an open window, Iver sees a dozen more people trying to jump aboard, only two of them making it, the rest plummeting to the water.

Then, someone else comes out through the window, someone dead. And just as the lifeboat passes the window, the dead person drops onto the roof of it, immediately making its way inside. The lifeboat begins swaying heavily, and people start jumping out.

The other lifeboat comes suddenly into view, as the wires apparently have given in, and the whole thing drops, spilling out people all the way down.

Before it hits the water, Iver has looked away; he can’t see any more of it. He wishes dearly he could have saved some of those people. But had he waited just another minute he would probably have lost his own chance, and both he and the toddler would have died aboard the ferry.

Speaking of, the boy has tucked his face into the space between Iver’s chest and upper arm and seems to be sleeping.

Iver feels a stab in his heart of both sorrow and relief as he realizes he kept his promise to Mille.

And before he can think about it, he bends his head and places a kiss atop the boy’s golden hair.

“We made it,” he whispers. “We’re safe now.”

TWENTY-TWO

It takes Eli less than ten minutes to reach Claus’s place. Running through the streets with the sun now baking down from above makes him sweat profusely and expulses the last alcohol from his bloodstream.

He looks back several times to make sure no one’s following him. The city seems oddly quiet for a late Wednesday summer morning. It’s like people have decided to stay at home, despite the lovely weather.

No wonder. They probably watched the news.

Eli reaches the right address and stops in front of the door. He rests his hands on his knees for a minute, catching his breath. He doesn’t want Claus to see him like this, all flustered and panting, so he makes an effort to steady himself before going inside.

It’s difficult, though; his hands are shaking and he can’t seem to get his pulse down all the way.

Somewhere in the distance, he hears a siren. It sounds like a police car. He feels a stab of panic.

Don’t worry. The Demon Voice is back. They’re not looking for you. They came because of the assholes who tried to stop you.

Eli darts a look around and sees a car coming down the street, going slowly, as though looking for something.

He steps swiftly into the stairwell leaving behind the sunlight and is met by a pleasant, cool atmosphere. He scans the list of names on the wall and sees Claus’s.

“Third floor,” he whispers to himself, then runs up the stairs, his steps echoing.

He reaches the third-floor landing and looks at the door. He’s never actually been in Claus’s apartment; all their meetings took place either at Eli’s home or in a public place.

He takes a deep breath then rings the bell. Immediately after, he looks down at himself and sees his shirt is all messed up. He smooths it out as best he can.

No one comes to the door. Eli rings a second time. Still nothing.

He takes out his phone and sees three missed calls, all from Claus. He calls him up and Claus answers right away.

“Eli?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s going on, man? You scared me half to death.”

“Sorry about that. And sorry about how I talked to you. I was … panicking.”

“Are you okay? Jeez, I get a call from you telling me you’ve almost died and then there’s a bang like from a car crashing. I thought you were in an accident!”

“I was,” Eli admits, swallowing dryly. “Look, it’s a long story. Could I please come in? I’m right outside.”

“Right outside where?”

“Your place.”

Claus sighs. “That’s what I was trying to tell you, buddy: I’m not home. I’m not even in the country.”

Eli gapes at the door. “What? Why? I mean, where are you?”

“I’m on Mallorca with the wife.”

Eli’s insides feel like they all drop a few inches. “Oh, no,” he whispers, closing his eyes. “I … I really needed you …”

“I know, bad timing. Look, why don’t you tell me about it over the phone? I’m sure whatever it is, we can fix it.”

“No,” Eli mutters, shaking his head. “Not this. This can’t be fixed.”

“Sure it can,” Claus says, but Eli doesn’t hear it; he disconnects and puts the phone back in his pocket.

For a long moment, he just stands there, staring at Claus’s door, feeling the last hope leave him.

He thought he was only feet away from the one person who could help him; turns out, that person is hundreds of miles away. Without him, Eli is lost. Without him, there’s only The Demon Voice. And before Eli is even aware of it, his thoughts are searching for the nearest access to anything that might take away his awful feeling of hopelessness.

Axe had a bag of weed in his room; you could go to his place. His parents probably aren’t home.

But Eli isn’t sure smoking a joint will be enough to dull what he’s feeling right now.

There’s also the guy, The Demon Voice suggests invitingly. Remember him? Used to bring you the really good stuff. You deleted his number, but you know how to get it, don’t you?

He does. It would take him maybe half an hour. He only needs to—

A sound from below. The front door is opened, and someone enters. Two persons, as far as Eli can tell. They’re talking together in hushed voices as they come up the stairs. There’s also the panting of a big dog. The newcomers stop at the second floor, right below Eli.

He listens intently.

“It’s here,” one of them—a guy—says. “Let’s just hope he’s home.”

There’s knocking.

Then, waiting silence.

For some strange reason, Eli gets the sense that whoever is on the landing below him, and whoever they’ve come to see, it’s important.

The sound of a lock turning and a door opening.

A man’s voice: “What can I help you gentlemen with?”

“Sebastian, right? You’re a pilot?”

“I’m sorry, who are you?”

“My name’s William. I’m a friend of your brother’s. Can we please come in?”

The guys are let inside, and the door closes. As soon as Eli hears the lock turn again, he jumps down the stairs to the second-floor landing, crouches down and gently flips open the mail slot.

TWENTY-THREE

“Dad?”

Lærke’s voice calls him out of a deep sleep. It takes an effort to open his eyes enough to see her silhouette sitting up in bed next to him.

“Huh? What is it, hon? You gotta pee?”

“No, it’s your phone. It keeps lighting up.”

“Oh. Well, turn it off, then.”

Sebastian sinks his head back down onto the pillow. Lærke places a hand on his ribs and a knee on his thigh as she climbs over him.

“Jeez, hon, could you go around the bed?”

“I already got it,” she says, climbing back over him. Luckily, she’s skinny and weighs barely sixty pounds.

He senses the light from his phone as she activates the screen. The bedroom is almost completely dark thanks to the blackout curtains, despite the burning afternoon sun right outside. The temperature in the room is nice and cool; the air conditioner was one of the best investments he ever made.

He just came back from his latest flight this morning. He went by Heidi’s place and picked up Lærke, then went straight home and jumped in bed, trying to catch up on the sleep he missed. Luckily, he never suffered from jet lag.

Lærke wasn’t tired, of course, but whenever she was with him and he needed a nap, she would lie next to him playing silently on her iPad. He found it adorable, to be honest, and he was glad she didn’t mind him spending some of their precious time together sleeping.

“You’ve got a bunch of missed calls, Dad.”

“Huh,” he grunts. “I’ll call ’em back later.”

“There are, like, thirty-two,” she persists.

“Hon, I’m trying to sleep.”

“… and most of them are from Grandma. There’re five from Mom, too.”

He’s about to get annoyed and tell her to please stop talking—when it suddenly dawns on his sleepy mind what she’s saying.

“Did you say thirty-two missed calls?”

“Yeah! And a whole bunch of texts, too.”

Sebastian sits up. “Give it to me, please.”

Lærke hands him the phone. “Where’s mine?” she asks.

“Where’s what?”

“My phone? Maybe Mom tried calling me, too.”

“I have no idea where your phone is,” he says, squinting at the light from the screen. “Where you last put it, I suppose.”

She gets out of bed and begins rummaging through her suitcase on the floor—it’s always amazing to him how much clothes a ten-year-old needs to bring for a week.

Sebastian scrolls through the list of missed calls, peeking out through one stinging eye. All thirty-two of them have come between 11:04 PM when he went to bed and now, 2:11 AM.

Something bad happened.

The thought comes to him with jarring certainty. People don’t try to reach you that desperately unless they had awful news.

Two of the calls are from private numbers, meaning it’s either from work or some official business. But since he isn’t on call, it’s probably not work. He doesn’t have any flights scheduled for the rest of the week; he made sure of that, since Lærke would be spending the first week of her summer holidays with him.

“Mom called me too,” Lærke—who has recovered her phone—informs. “Should I call her back?”

“No, hold on a minute, hon. Let me handle this, okay? It might be something serious.”

“Like what?” The anxiety in her voice immediately makes him regret his choice of words.

“It’s probably nothing,” he says, sending her a brief smile, but realizing his daughter is too old to be fooled by half-baked lies any longer. “Let me handle it,” he repeats, and she nods and sits down on the bed.

He looks back down at his phone and scrolls through the texts. They’re all very similar and don’t really tell him anything.

Heidi wrote: You up? And then, three minutes later: Call me. Important.

His mom wrote four different versions of: Call me back ASAP.

He notices four messages on the voice mail and decides that might be a place to start before he calls anyone back; he’d like to know what this is about before he has to talk with anyone.

He makes the call to the voice mail and looks at Lærke, realizing she’s staring back at him expectantly.

“Who are you calling? Mom?”

“No, voice mail. Listen, I could really go for one of your ice teas right now—why don’t you go and mix us a couple of glasses?”

Lærke eyes him for a moment; it’s clear that she doesn’t want to leave, that she’s dying to know what’s up. But to his surprise, she gets up and goes to the kitchen.

Good girl, he thinks, just as a female voice tells him how many new messages he’s got.

The first one is from Heidi. “Hey. You’re probably sleeping, but … I think you need to call your mom. She just called me, and … well, shit … it’s bad news, Sebastian. I’m so sorry …”

The message ends.

The next one is from his mother. Right away, he can tell how upset she is from the shallow way she’s breathing. “Oh, dear God … Sebastian, can you please pick up? … It’s Mom again … I don’t know … I don’t know what to do … They called me from the hospital … oh, God … and I can’t even go to see him … they’ve made a curfew, but … but I tried to go anyway … I just had to see him … there were soldiers there, at the hospital … they told me to turn around, or they’d … they’d have to force me to … can you believe it? They wouldn’t let me see him, Sebastian … oh, God …”

His mother breaks into sobbing at this point, and it goes on for ten seconds or so, before the message ends.

Sebastian listens to two other—but very similar—messages from his mother, not getting any the wiser, until the end of the third message, which his mother ends by whispering: “Please call me back as soon as you get this, Sebastian … It’s about your brother …”

Sebastian lowers the phone and stares into the wall. From the kitchen he can hear clanging of ice cubes being dropped into glasses. His heart is pumping, his brain is working hard to fill in the blanks.

He knows about the situation up north, of course; everyone does, it’s all they’re talking about in the media. A very contagious disease of some kind broke out a few days ago and is spreading like wildfire.

His parents, his brother and his aunts and uncles all live in or around Viborg, where it apparently started. Sebastian called his mother yesterday to make sure everyone was okay.

She told him they were. She had kept indoors like the authorities had ordered. But she had called everyone and made sure they were safe.

The only one she couldn’t reach was Janus.

That wasn’t uncommon, though; Sebastian’s younger brother was never easy to get hold of. He had always been the family’s outsider, never listening to advise and always going his own way, even moving away from home at the age of fourteen.

So Sebastian hadn’t given it much thought. He was sure Janus could take care of himself. He might be young and stupid, but he wasn’t reckless. He knew to take the situation seriously and not get himself in harm’s way.

And yet something bad must have happened to Janus.

“They wouldn’t let me see him, Sebastian …”

Why had Janus ended up in the hospital? Did he catch the virus? Or had he been in an accident? Sebastian had seen footage of rioting in the streets of Viborg just last night.

The sound of a car horn blaring a couple of blocks away makes him turn his head and look to the window, which of course tells him nothing about what’s going on outside.

Suddenly, he feels a pang of intense fear. Not so much for himself, but for Lærke. There’s a hundred miles from here to Viborg, and he had assumed that was a safe distance. But just last night the infection had reached Aarhus, which was only eighty miles away. At that speed, most of the country could be taken over within a week, maybe even shorter once the snowball got rolling.

Still, Sebastian had believed the calm faces on the news, telling him in reassuring voices that there was no reason for panic, that the infection would be sealed off and dealt with efficiently, that this would be over in a matter of days.

Now, all of those reassurances sounded empty to him. The life of his daughter wasn’t worth any risk, no matter how small, and as he’s sitting there on his bed in the dark bedroom, he curses himself for not having heeded the warning signs. He should have ignored the authorities and gotten the hell out of here. Maybe even left the country.

Perhaps it wasn’t too late.

Perhaps they could still—

Lærke enters the room, carrying two tall glasses of ice tea, one in each hand.

He forces a smile as she stops in the doorway. “That looks great, hon. Thank you.”

But she doesn’t come to him as he reaches out his hand. Instead, she looks at him and whispers: “Someone’s at the door, Dad.”

TWENTY-FOUR

The next time Dennis wakes up, it’s not a nightmare calling him back, but something a lot less terrifying: he needs to pee really bad.

He gets up from the bunk and leaves the room to find Mom all dressed by the table in the bunker’s dining area. She has put up her black candles, placed them in a half-circle, and is sitting with her eyes closed, muttering her usual midday prayer.

“Is it morning?” Dennis mutters, scratching his hair.

Mom opens her eyes. “It’s almost one.”

“Oh.”

“I have a few chores for you today,” Mom says. “We need to finish the preparations Holger started yesterday. Do you know how we get to the vegetable garden? Did Holger tell you anything about that?”

Dennis shrugs. “No. Can’t we just go outside?”

Mom shakes her head. “It’s completely fenced in. There must be a secret entrance somewhere from underground.”

“Like the one in the courtyard?”

“Exactly.”

“Well, I don’t know where it is.” Dennis sees the idling monitor and recalls the two men who came in the middle of the night and killed all the dead people. “Did they come back?” he asks, looking at Mom.

She shakes her head. “No.”

“Good. I didn’t care for them.”

“Me neither. We might see more people coming by in the days to come. I don’t know how many knew about Holger’s safe place, but apparently, we weren’t the only ones.”

Dennis thinks about that for a moment. “Well, I’m glad we got here first,” he says, then remembering the boys and the pretty girl who were here before them, adds: “I mean, kind of first.”

Mom looks at him. “Are you hungry?”

“Not really. But I need to pee,” Dennis says and heads for the door to the tunnel.

“The bathroom is over there,” Mom says, nodding towards the corner.

Dennis stops and bites his lip. “I’d rather use the one upstairs.”

Mom sends him a curious look. “Why would you go all the way upstairs when there’s a perfectly fine toilet down here?”

“It’s just … the seat is made of metal,” Dennis says, wringing his hands. “It’s really cold and uncomfortable.”

“You’ll get used to it.”

“But I tried to use it last night. I … I couldn’t go, no matter how hard I tried. Can I please use the one upstairs, Mom?”

“It’s better we stay down here for a couple of days,” Mom says. “Just until we’re sure those guys from last night aren’t coming back.”

Dennis gazes towards the bathroom door and shifts his feet. “I just … I just really don’t think I can use that toilet, Mom.”

Mom sighs. Normally, when she tells him no, there’s no debating. But on this particular subject, Dennis suspects Mom might give in. She knows how difficult it is for Dennis to go in public bathrooms and how he used to wet himself when he was younger. He also never learned to pee standing without getting his pants wet.

“Fine,” she says. “You can go upstairs. I’ll go with you; I need to get the vegetables from the kitchen anyway.”

Dennis smiles in relief. “Thanks, Mom.”

“Let me go first,” Mom says as Dennis heads for the door. “You keep close to me, okay?”

Dennis looks at the dagger which is suddenly in Mom’s hand, and he feels an involuntary chill down his back; the sight of the dagger always does that to him.

He only held it once, one time when Mom wasn’t at home and Dennis went exploring in her bedroom. The old chest was very much off limits, but Dennis was simply too curious, so he found the key, which he knew was in the nightstand drawer, and unlocked it.

There it was, all shiny and bronze-colored and deadly.

The dagger was a lot heavier than it looked, and the handle was very cold and smooth. He only had the nerve to hold it for a few seconds before putting it back and closing the chest, making sure to lock it and put the key back.

He had witnessed Mom kill animals with the dagger from time to time, when she needed to make a sacrifice for some important ritual. And now he has also seen her kill people with it. The thought produces a sinking feeling in his gut.

Mom slides the bolt and opens the door carefully, keeping the dagger ready by her side.

The tunnel is empty. Mom steps out and waves Dennis after her.

He follows Mom down to the ladder leading up. She climbs first, unlocks the hatch and pushes it carefully open, checking in every direction before she climbs up into Holger’s bedroom. She’s gone for a few seconds.

“It’s okay,” she says from above. “You can come now, Dennis.”

Dennis climbs up and looks around the room, where everything looks like they left it.

“You wait here,” Mom tells him as they enter the living room. “I’ll make a quick round to make sure.”

“Okay, Mom.”

Dennis stays behind patiently, fighting back the growing urge to pee, as Mom takes a look around the different rooms.

“All right,” she says, returning to the living room, placing the dagger in her belt. “You can go pee now. I’ll get the vegetables. When you’re done, come help me carry them downstairs.”

Dennis nods, then heads quickly to the bathroom and closes the door behind him. He slips down his boxers and takes a seat on Holger’s toilet. It feels different than the one at home, but at least it’s not cold.

Dennis closes his eyes and concentrates hard on relaxing. After a few seconds, he manages to begin peeing and gives off a deep sigh of relief.

As he sits there, listening to the soft trickling sound, he looks around the bathroom. There’s a single, tiny window high up on the wall, and it’s barred by a thick metal grid. A warm, orange sunlight streams in and creates a gridded pattern on the floor.

Dennis follows the shadows with his eyes like he’s solving a maze, when he reaches the wall and sees something strange.

There’s a shoeprint on the floor, brown from dried-up mud.

But it’s only half a shoeprint.

The other half is cut off by the wall. As though a ghost had walked right through the bathroom wall.

Dennis thinks hard to come up with a reasonable explanation for the weird, half shoeprint—so hard he almost stops peeing—but he can’t think of any.

He lets his eyes wander up the wall, looking for anything which might give him a clue. And there, on one of the white tiles, is a greasy handprint. It’s very hard to see, and it’s only because of the sunlight hitting the tile just right that Dennis can make it out.

He is very enthralled by now; he finishes peeing and pulls his boxers back up without it even registering—his attention is completely absorbed by the wall next to the mirror. He walks over there and looks closer at the prints. The hand looks a little bigger than Dennis’s; it’s probably Holger who made it. But why would he put his palm on the bathroom wall?

Dennis places his own hand on the print. And he feels something strange. The tile gives way a little, only a few millimeters, but enough for him to feel it. He pushes a little, and the tile moves back farther.

Dennis’s heart is racing by now.

He pushes harder, and the tile sinks farther in—until it meets some resistance. Dennis applies just a little more pressure, and there’s a click.

The sound makes him flinch, and he jumps backwards. The wall swings slowly out like a door.

“Oh, my God,” Dennis breathes. “It’s another secret entrance!”

He peeks through the opening and sees a narrow staircase leading down to another tunnel. Without even thinking, Dennis slips inside and goes down the stairs.

He walks through the tunnel, which is very similar to the one leading to the bunker, except this one is longer, and the wooden floor is full of muddy shoeprints.

He reaches a ladder leading up to a metal hatch with a heavy bolt lock.

“It’s got to be to the garden,” Dennis murmurs to himself, feeling very excited, both due to the sheer experience of finding the hidden tunnel, but also at the thought of telling Mom he knows how to get to the vegetables.

He needs to make sure before he goes and tells her, though.

So, he climbs up the ladder and unlocks the hatch. With a little effort, he manages to push it open. Bright sunlight blinds him for a moment, and he can smell the vegetables even before he can see them; tomatoes, spring onion, potatoes, different herbs and even strawberries.

Dennis blinks at the light and looks around as he climbs all the way up and gets to his feet.

“Wow!”

He’s standing in the middle of a giant cage, enclosed by a thick chain-link fence on all sides—also overhead. The cage is the size of a quarter of a soccer field, and all around him are rows of vegetables. There’s even a couple of small greenhouses. A few of the rows have already been harvested. A couple of butterflies are fluttering around, enjoying themselves.

Dennis kneels down and plucks a big, red strawberry. The scent of it is enough to make his mouth water even before he bites into it. It’s sweet and juicy.

Then he notices something odd.

There’s an opening in the fence right next to where he’s standing, just above the ground. It looks like the fence might have been cut open with a pair of bolt-scissors. Like someone had—

A sharp, metallic click-clack comes from behind him, which Dennis takes to be coming from the hatch—it’s probably Mom, who found the hidden door and followed him out here.

But as he turns around, Mom is nowhere to be seen.

Instead, Dennis meets a young man’s face staring at him from behind a couple of tall maize stalks. The guy’s head is tilted slightly sideways, and he’s pointing at Dennis with what looks like a black metal rod.

“Don’t move,” he says in a low voice, which Dennis immediately recognizes from the surveillance audio. “And don’t say anything.”

Dennis couldn’t disobey the guy if he wanted to; the sheer surprise has nailed him to the ground, and he can only stand and stare as the guy stands up straight and squeezes through the maize. It’s not until the guy is fully visible that Dennis finally realizes the thing pointed at him is a rifle—probably the exact same one the guy used to kill the dead people in the courtyard.

“What’s your name?” the guy asks, not lowering the weapon. “It’s okay, you can talk.”

Dennis’s tongue has suddenly gone limp. He manages to stammer: “D-Dennis.”

“Okay, Dennis. I’m Silas. If you do like I ask, you’ll be fine. I’m not here to harm anyone. You read me?”

Dennis nods stiffly.

“Great. Now, first off, tell me: how many are inside the house right now?”

“Ju-just my m-mom.”

“She’s the one we spoke to last night?”

“Uh-huh.”

“No one else?”

Dennis shakes his head.

“You sure, Dennis? I don’t want you lying to me.”

“No, I’m not lying!”

“It’s just you and your mom here, then?”

He nods emphatically.

“All right. Who killed Holger?”

The question makes Dennis blink. He really doesn’t want to answer. He’s afraid of what Mom will do to him if she finds out he told on her. “I … I don’t … it was … an accident,” he croaks, the lie all too obvious in his shaky voice.

“Dennis,” Silas says, sounding almost overbearing. “I told you not to lie.”

Dennis just stands there, gaping and shaking his head, unable to speak.

Silas looks him up and down briefly, then goes on: “I’m going to guess you didn’t do it. Was it your mom? She actually sounded like someone who had the balls to do it. Was it her?”

Dennis closes his mouth and manages a faint nod.

Silas raises his eyebrows. “Damn. Takes a special woman to stab someone in the neck. All right, stay right where you are for me.”

Silas lowers the rifle to hip-level, the tip still aimed at Dennis’s chest, then finds a cell phone and calls up someone.

“Yeah, I got one. Told you it’d work.” A quick smirk, then Silas’s expression returns to business. “It’s a boy. Teenager. He claims it’s just him and his mom. Yeah, the mom’s the one we—yeah. And get this, she killed Holger. I know. Right. Sure. See you in a bit.”

He disconnects and slips the phone back into his pocket.

Dennis notices he’s dressed in a hunter’s outfit: all dark green and brown, cap, long sleeves and pants. It looks way too warm for the weather. But that’s why Dennis didn’t notice him amongst the maize.

“Now, Dennis,” Silas says, raising the rifle to his shoulder again. “Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re gonna climb back down the way you came, and I’ll follow right behind you, so don’t do anything moronic like trying to run, okay? I’ll have this pointed at you the whole time, and if you do anything I haven’t told you to do, I’m going to have to shoot you. We understand each other?”

Dennis tries to answer, but his mouth is too dry. He nods instead.

“Good. You’re going to lead me back inside the house, and then we’ll have a little chat with your mama.”

Dennis stiffens even more, his whole body trembling.

Silas cocks his head. “Hey, you look like you’re about to shit yourself. It’s okay, I told you I’m not going to shoot anyone, as long as you do what I tell you. Okay?”

Dennis swallows dryly. “So you … you won’t hurt my mom?”

Silas grins. “Of course not. Trust me, it’s going to be fine. We just want a safe place to stay. I’m sure we can make it work so everyone is happy.” He gestures with the rifle towards the hatch. “Come on, now. Lead the way.”

TWENTY-FIVE

“What was that?”

Dan stops in the middle of the street and looks around. Ozzy stops, too, raising its ears.

“What was what?” William asks.

“There was a sound,” Dan says, listening. “A loud bang somewhere nearby. Didn’t you hear it?”

“No, but I think Ozzy did.”

Dan notices the dog, patiently standing at William’s side, its ears turning like radar discs.

“Was it a gunshot?” William asks.

“No, it sounded more like something crashing. A car, maybe.”

“Oh. Well, that’s not a good sign either. We’d better hurry up.”

William walks briskly towards the building on the other side of the street, Ozzy following suit.

Dan runs to catch up. “You think it’s already here?”

“I think it’s spreading even faster than I thought,” William says, stopping in front of the door. “Number 202, it’s here.”

They open the door and step inside.

William runs his finger down the list of names. “Jensen … Abrahamsen … there, Møller! Sebastian Møller. That’s him. Second floor.”

“Great,” Dan says, darting another look out at the street through the window in the front door. It’s completely empty, both of cars and pedestrians. The whole town seems eerily quiet. Maybe it’s because of the curfew, but he gets the sense that everything is holding its breath, waiting for something bad to happen.

William’s car is parked across the street. In the passenger-side windows Dan can see his dad’s face looking out at him. He insisted on coming along, but Dan convinced him it was smarter that only the two fastest of them went out. Even with his still aching ankle, Dan knows he can outrun his dad, who hasn’t done any sports since high school. But it wasn’t until William told him they were bringing Ozzy, that Dan’s father finally consented to staying in the car with Dorte, Nasira and Ali.

“You comin’?”

Dan realizes William is already going up the stairs, and he hurries after him. They stop by the door on second floor.

“It’s here,” William says. “Let’s just hope he’s home.”

He knocks on the door. They wait for half a minute. Then, someone comes to the door, unlocking it.

A tall guy with black hair—who looks like he was recently sleeping—looks out at them. “What can I help you gentlemen with?”

“Sebastian, right?” William asks. “You’re a pilot?”

The guy frowns. “I’m sorry, who are you?”

“My name’s William. I’m a friend of your brother’s. Can we please come in?”

Soon as his brother is mentioned, something changes on the guy’s face. He steps aside and gestures for them to come in. Then he closes the door behind them.

“You okay with the dog?” William asks. “He’s very well trained.”

“I can tell,” Sebastian says.

Dan looks around the entrance; it bears the signs of a single guy not spending much time at home, the interior is very sparse and unpersonal, save for the occasional kid’s drawing on the wall.

Dan didn’t realize Sebastian was old enough to have kids. As though the thought has caused her to appear, a girl at around ten years of age steps out from the living room, holding what looks like a glass of ice tea.

“Who are you?” she asks, sipping the glass.

“We’re friends of your uncle,” William says, smiling at her. “And that drink looks really good. Do you happen to have another?”

“Sure, I’ll make you one,” the girl says, surprisingly unshy. She looks at Dan. “You want one, too?”

“I would love one.”

“What about the dog?”

“He prefers water, thank you,” William says.

The girl nods, then walks to the kitchen.

Sebastian gestures towards the living room. “Come in and sit down.”

They each take a seat at the dinner table. Ozzy walks around the table once, patrolling the surroundings, then, finding nothing to cause alarm, sits down besides William’s chair.

“I was prepared for bad news,” Sebastian says, folding his hands. “But I wasn’t prepared for two civilians and a dog to break it to me.”

“It’s kind of a long story,” William says. “Well, actually, I can make it very brief.” He takes a breath, then glances towards the kitchen before he looks Sebastian in the eye and says in a low voice: “Janus is dead.”

Dan watches the news sink in on Sebastian’s face. Besides from a few tics at the mouth, he takes it incredibly cool. Even though Dan has just met him, Sebastian already strikes him as a guy with amazing levels of self-control.

“How did it happen?” he asks in a calm voice. “Please skip out any details in case my daughter hears you.”

“It was the infected people,” William says gravely. “They got him when he tried to save his girlfriend.”

Sebastian just looks at him, as though expecting something more, so William goes on.

“She was inside a grocery store. He went inside to get her out, even though he didn’t have to. He was very brave.”

Still, Sebastian doesn’t react or say anything.

“I … I, uhm, was there with him,” William says, hesitation sneaking into his voice. “I should have gone with him to help, but …” He shrugs. “Guess I’m a coward.”

Sebastian nods, not so much to show agreement with that last statement so as to acknowledge what William just told him.

“Where did this happen?”

“In Viborg.”

“Okay, so … why are you here? I’m flattered to think you came all this way just to tell me, but I’m guessing that’s not the whole story.”

Sebastian’s daughter comes into the living room, carrying two tall glasses of iced tea. Dan licks his lips at the sight of the brown liquid.

“Thank you,” he smiles at the girl, taking the glass. It’s all he can do to down it all in one go. It tastes wonderful.

The girl gets a bowl of water and puts it in front of Ozzy.

William gulps down his drink, wipes his mouth and then looks at Sebastian. “We want you to fly us out of the country.”

Sebastian raises one eyebrow. “I’m sure you’ve heard about the borders being closed down? That goes for any air traffic as well.”

“We know, but we need to get out of the country before it’s too late. And we thought flying was our best chance.”

Sebastian leans forward. “Before it’s too late? What does that mean, exactly? What are you expecting to happen?”

William glances at the girl, who’s taken a seat next to her father. “Thank you for that lovely drink. Could I ask you another favor and let us talk with your dad alone for five minutes?”

The girl looks at her father with a do-I-have-to-expression.

Sebastian nods. “Please put your headphones on, sweetheart.”

The girl gets up and goes to the couch at the other end of the room. She picks up an iPad and connects a set of earmuffs to it.

“Okay, listen,” William says, talking fast now. “This thing with the infection—it might well become the end of society as we know it. Those things you see on the news, waddling around in the streets? That’s not people anymore. It’s zombies. Both me and Dan have seen it happen firsthand; someone getting bit, then dying, then coming back to life. Whatever the authorities are calling it, they’re wrong. However they’re dealing with it, they won’t succeed.” William places a finger on the table. “Our last and only hope is getting as far away from here as quickly as possible. For every hour we waste, it’ll only get more difficult. If you love your daughter over there, and if you don’t want her to end up like your brother, then you need to get out of the country.”

Sebastian is quiet for several seconds after William stops talking. He looks from William to Dan and back again. Then over at his daughter, who’s listening to music.

Then, finally, he says: “Tell me what you had in mind.”

William breaks into a wide grin. “I knew you’d get it. I knew you’d go along.”

“I didn’t say I would,” Sebastian points out, still very calm. “I just want to know what your plans are, exactly. How do you picture this going down, provided I agree to do it?”

William holds up a hand. “Wait, there’re a couple more of us waiting in the car. I think it’s best they join us for this—don’t you?”

TWENTY-SIX

Dennis climbs down the ladder very carefully. It’s difficult because his legs are shaking and his palms are sweaty.

He reaches the tunnel and looks back up. Silas is crouched by the opening, pointing the rifle down at Dennis.

“Right, now, move back a little, Dennis. Three steps.”

Dennis obeys.

“Perfect. Stay there.”

Silas climbs down the hatch, using only one hand, the other one holds the rifle aimed at Dennis.

He jumps the last few rungs and lands in front of Dennis, looking around. “Damn … Holger really did a cool job of this. Okay, keep going.”

Dennis walks back through the tunnel. He can hear Silas’s footsteps right behind him.

They reach the steps leading up to the bathroom. The secret wall-door has almost closed itself, only a thin slice of light is coming down.

“Dennis?” Mom’s voice from upstairs. “Dennis, where are you?”

Dennis is about to answer out of pure instinct, when a hand grabs his shoulder hard.

“Don’t say anything,” Silas whispers. “Just go up there and open the door slowly.”

Dennis holds his breath as Silas lets go of him, and he begins the ascent. As he reaches the door, he pushes it open very slowly, revealing the bathroom.

He doesn’t have the nerve to look back, but he senses Silas being right behind him.

“Dennis?” Mom calls again, sounding like she’s in the kitchen. “For heaven’s sake, where are you, boy?”

“You can answer her,” Silas whispers in Dennis’s ear. “Tell her you’re in the bathroom.”

Dennis opens his mouth, and for a few seconds, he’s completely forgotten how to talk. Then, the words come to him.

“I’m … I’m in the bathroom, Mom!”

“Perfect,” Silas whispers. “Just stay right where you are, Dennis. And don’t say anything else. I’ll take it from here.”

A very long, nerve-racking moment passes by in tense silence, before Dennis hears Mom’s steps coming this way, and she appears in the doorway. Her eyes fall on him immediately, a trace of annoyance on her face.

“Darn it, where were you? I’ve been calling for five minutes. There’s a car parked up the driveway, we need to—” Mom interrupts herself as she notices the open wall-door behind Dennis. “What’s that?”

“Hello again, missy,” Silas says, popping his head out from behind Dennis’s shoulder. “I’ve got a Winchester pointed at your son’s spine, so please remain calm.”

A flutter of surprise flies across Mom’s face, and Dennis notices her right hand going for the belt before she can help it.

“Ah-ah!” Silas says loudly. “Hands off that shiny thing. I know you used it on Holger, but you’re not doing it on me.”

Mom takes her hand away from the dagger very slowly, staring at Silas with burning eyes. “What do you want?”

“The same thing we wanted last night. A little chat and a safe place to stay.”

“We’re not interested in—”

“Shut the fuck up!” Silas bellows, causing Dennis to jump in surprise—both because of the sudden change in his voice from almost giddy to hateful, but also because no one talks to Mom that way. “You don’t call the shots anymore, lady,” he growls. “And you’d better get used to that real fast. You do as I say from now on. And I don’t want to hear from you unless I ask you a question. Got that?”

Mom stares at Silas for a few seconds. Then she nods, once.

“Perfect,” Silas says, the lighter tone returning to his voice. “Glad we got that out of the way. Now, before we go out to invite my brother inside, I need to know if anyone else is in the house?”

Mom shakes her head.

“Are you sure about that? If I walk to the front door with Dennis here, I’m not going to be surprised by anyone, am I? ’Cause if I am, I’m afraid I might get scared and blow out your son’s liver. None of us would want that, would we?”

Mom keeps completely still, as she says: “No one else is here.”

“Okay, I believe you. But just in case, I’m bringing Dennis. And you’ll lead the way. Please leave the knife here. Put it on the floor. Slowly.”

Dennis and Silas both watch as Mom takes the knife, kneels down and places it on the floor.

“Good job … uhm. Sorry, I didn’t catch your name?”

“My name is Birgit,” Mom says with an icy calm.

“Nice to meet you face-to-face, Birgit. I’m Silas, and my brother’s name is Jonas.”

A car honks outside.

“Speak of the devil!” Silas grins. “Let’s go greet him.”

TWENTY-SEVEN

“I just don’t see what the problem is,” William says, throwing out his arms. “Of course we can steal a plane; people do it all the time.”

Everyone else around the table looks at him with expressions ranging from mild skepticism to outright disbelief. The rest of the group have joined them and are now taking up every one of Sebastian’s dining room chairs.

Sebastian’s daughter has joined them and is sitting on her father’s lap. Sebastian briefly told her what their guests wanted, and she has been following the conversation with quiet amazement.

Sebastian shakes his head. “I’m telling you, there’s no way. It doesn’t work like in the movies. We can’t just Jack Bauer our way into a locked-down airport, steal a plane and take off without anyone noticing.”

“Okay,” William says. “Take me through it, then. What would you need for it to work? A key?”

“If it’s an old plane, yeah. If it’s a newer one, you’d need an electronic card.”

“What else?”

“What else what?”

“What else do you need to get the plane started? Is there any kind of password or finger scanner or …? I don’t know, anything?”

“No, there’s only the card. As long as there’s fuel in the tank, you could theoretically take off.”

“And how do you get that card?”

“You get it by being a pilot who has access to that particular plane.”

“So, you have a card for the plane you normally fly?”

“I have seven.”

William claps his hands together. “Well, that’s perfect! What are we waiting for, then? Let’s go get the nearest one!”

Sebastian scuffs. “You still don’t get it, buddy. It’s really not that simple. It’s not like a car parked out back. Those planes are inside locked hangars. Well, most of them are, a couple of them are probably parked outside, but—”

“Then we take one of those outside!” William interrupts, throwing out his hands again.

“But,” Sebastian goes on, “like I was trying to tell you, the airfields are being surveyed by cameras. There are round-the-clock guards. We probably wouldn’t be able to even enter the airfield without them knowing.”

“Can’t we just outrun them? I mean, it’s not like they have guns or anything, right?”

“No, they aren’t armed, but …”

“So what can they do? If we just rush in there, get in the plane and take off? Is there any way for them to stop us?”

Sebastian blinks, as though this scenario is so far out, he hasn’t even considered it. “I guess not. But they’ll report us right away.”

“To whom? The police? I think they’re plenty busy already, with all the dead folks eating people and all. One stolen plane probably won’t cause too much concern right now.”

Sebastian folds his arms, looking at William. “You really think we can do this, do you?”

“I can’t see why not.”

“Well, how about once we get in the air? How do you suggest we avoid being forced down again and put in jail?”

“Can’t we just fly straight out of the country? Like, out over the ocean?”

“There’s at least forty miles to the nearest sea from any airfields I have access to, and that’s plenty of time for the military to pick us up on the radar.”

“Okay, then we fly under the radar! Isn’t that where the expression comes from?”

Sebastian shakes his head. “You can’t be serious.”

“I am! I saw a documentary from World War II, and they said the pilots could fly low enough that the enemy’s radar couldn’t pick them up. What was it—below a thousand feet or something?”

“More like three hundred. We’d basically be flying in between rooftops.”

“But it’s possible?”

Sebastian scuffs again. “Jesus, man … yes, it’s possible, but so is surviving being shot—would you run the chance?”

“We’ll just avoid flying over any major cities,” William says. “It’s not dangerous crossing the open landscape, is it?”

“Not if you aren’t worried about stuff like trees and telephone poles, not to mention hills. And by the time we got flying—supposing we disregard any logic and actually go through with this—it’d be dark once we got airborne. The chances of crashing into something are way too high.”

“Couldn’t we just—”

“How about a helicopter?”

The question comes from a completely unexpected angle, spoken in an unfamiliar voice.

Dan turns around on his chair to see a boy only a few years older than himself staring at them from the doorway.

“I thought you said you were only six people in the group,” Sebastian remarks, addressing William.

“I did,” William says, looking at the boy. “Who the hell are you?”

“My name’s Eli,” the boy says.

“Wait, he’s not with you?” Sebastian puts down his daughter and gets to his feet. “How the hell did you come in?”

“Dad, language,” his daughter remarks, but Sebastian doesn’t seem to hear her.

“The door wasn’t locked,” the boy says, looking pretty uncomfortable, like he’d rather not be here.

“Jesus, will you get the hell out of my home?” Sebastian strides around the table.

“Wait!” the boy says, holding out his hands. “Wait, I know where there’s a helicopter we can take!”

Sebastian hesitates.

William gets up from the table, too. “Where is it?”

The boy shakes his head. “I’m only telling if you’ll bring me along.”

“Wait a minute,” Dan hears himself say, as something suddenly dawns on him. “I saw you in the car, the white Mercedes … out on the freeway.”

The boy looks at him with bemusement, but says nothing.

“Why the fuck would we believe you just happened to come upon a helicopter?” William asks.

“I saw it land,” the boy persists. “Just outside town. While I was driving here. I came to visit a friend of mine, Claus. He lives upstairs, but … he’s not home. And then you guys came …” He points at Dan and William. “And I heard some of what you said, so I … I listened through the mail slot.”

“Jesus,” Sebastian mutters. “The nerve on this kid.”

“A helicopter,” William says thoughtfully. “Why hadn’t I thought of that?” He turns to Sebastian, a look of elation on his face. “A helicopter would be better, wouldn’t it? It’s easier to fly low in a helicopter.”

“It is,” Sebastian agrees, still eyeing Eli.

“So, we wouldn’t have any of the problems if we flew in a helicopter?”

“None.”

“Well, that’s perfect, then! You can fly a helicopter, right? A helicopter must be easy compared to a plane.”

“It’s oranges and apples,” Sebastian says, shaking his head. “You’d need a separate education to fly a helicopter.”

“Oh, fuck,” William mutters.

A few seconds of silence.

Then, Sebastian goes on: “Luckily, I do have that education.”

William lights up. He smiles and points at Sebastian. “Oh, you got me!”

Sebastian doesn’t smile back. He looks at Eli. “What kind of helicopter was it? And where did you see it?”

Eli shrugs. “It was on a field, just off the highway. It landed right as I went by. It was one of those medical helicopters.”

William looks at Sebastian, smiling. “Tell me this isn’t a stroke of fate.”

Sebastian looks back at him, his face set in stone. “I don’t believe in fate.” He takes a breath through his nose, then he says: “But I’m willing to at least go take a look.”

TWENTY-EIGHT

“Please take a seat.”

Silas casually points the rifle at the couch, then slings it back over his shoulder.

Now that his brother—Jonas—joined them in the house, Silas seems a lot less tense, and he doesn’t keep the gun aimed at them all the time.

“That’s not a friendly invitation,” Silas says, when neither Dennis nor his mom react right away. “Sit down.”

Dennis willingly sits down on the couch, and Mom follows his example, placing herself calmly next to him. Dennis reaches for her hand, and Mom lets him take it. He’s surprised to find it cool and dry and steady, unlike his own, which is clammy and shaky.

“All right,” Jonas says, pulling out a chair and tipping the pile of books placed on it to the floor. He sits down and crosses his arms. “Let’s work out how this is going to fly.”

“What is ‘this’ exactly?” Mom asks.

“All of us living together. You could call it a commune.”

Silas puts the rifle on the table and leans his elbows next to it, looking at Mom. “Only without the orgies, of course. I mean … unless you want to.” He grins, and Dennis isn’t quite sure why, but he’s pretty sure Silas just made a dirty joke.

Mom doesn’t reply, and Jonas doesn’t smile, either.

“It’ll only be the four of us for now,” he goes on. “But tomorrow or the day after, a few more people will join us. It’s our mom, her new husband and his son. Also, my girlfriend will join us later on. She can’t leave her house right now, but we’ll figure out a way to get her here.”

“That’s eight people,” Mom says, shaking her head slowly. “That’s too many.”

“You’re right, I think six is a much better number,” Silas says, staring at Mom. “Much more sustainable.”

“You’re welcome to leave if you want,” Jonas says. “You’re not our prisoners. But I suspect you prefer to stay?”

Dennis looks at Mom.

Mom shrugs. “We would have nowhere else safe to go. We wouldn’t make it till sundown.”

The thought makes Dennis shudder.

“Right, then we need to make it work,” Jonas says. “And I’m sure we can.”

“Yeah, no problem,” Silas says with a sneer. “You see, unlike you, we don’t kill other people to get their hideout. We want to share, like good boys. By the way, how did you do it? I mean, how did you get in here?”

“I think that’s beside the point for now, Silas,” Jonas begins.

“No, it’s very important,” Silas persists, not taking his eyes off Mom. “I want to know how this sneaky bitch got past Holger’s security. Coming up with my own approach wasn’t exactly easy, but I knew it could be done. So, let us in on the secret, Mommy.”

Mom is quiet for a second or two, as both brothers watch her closely. Then, she begins to talk. She tells them about the secret hatch in the courtyard.

“So, it was just as much dumb luck as strategic planning,” Silas concludes. “You just happened to see them leave.”

Mom doesn’t answer.

“Is the hatch locked from the inside now?” Jonas asks. “I mean, can anyone else get in that way?”

Mom looks at him, then shakes her head once.

“And do you know of any other ways anyone creative enough might find their way in here?”

“No.”

“We’d better check around to make sure we don’t get any surprises,” Silas interjects. “How about weapons? Did Holger have anything to defend this place with?”

Mom hesitates for a moment, then she says: “There are quite a few weapons down in the bunker.”

The brothers exchange a look.

“What kind of weapons?” Jonas asks, addressing Mom.

“Firearms. Knives. Explosives.”

“Holy shit,” Silas whispers, grinning at his brother. “We hit the jackpot!”

“I’m not sure you can get to them, though,” Mom goes on. “They’re locked in a metal cabinet. I have no idea where the keys are.”

“You sure?” Silas asks, eyeing Mom up and down. “You sure you don’t know where the keys are? If I frisk you, will I find them?”

Mom holds his gaze firmly, as she says: “You won’t find anything.”

“We’ll check that out, too,” Jonas says. “But first, we’ll need to make some ground rules, to make sure we can coexist in harmony.”

It sounds like he’s about to go on, but Silas jumps in, clapping his palms together, causing Dennis to jump.

“Right! Now, my biggest problem is the fact that you already killed one guy who you didn’t want to hang around …” Silas points to Mom. “And, honestly, I’m getting a kind of psycho-vibe from you.”

“Silas,” Jonas begins.

“No, I’m sorry,” Silas says, shaking his head adamantly. “We know absolutely nothing about her or what she’s capable of, and given the circumstances, I just don’t feel I can trust her. You got anything to say to convince me otherwise, Birgit?”

Dennis looks to Mom, and Mom looks coldly back at Silas.

“I didn’t kill Holger because I didn’t want him here,” she says, looking from Silas to Jonas and back. “I didn’t do it in cold blood, if that’s what you think. I did it because he threatened to make us leave.”

Silas raises one eyebrow. “Oh, really? He threatened to make you leave after you forced your way into his home?”

“Tell us what happened,” Jonas says, and it sounds more like a request than a demand.

Dennis already likes Jonas a lot better than Silas. The brothers look an awful lot alike, yet Jonas seems to be a little older, his demeanor is more calm, and he doesn’t make that eerie grinning face all the time. Also, he doesn’t act nearly as hostile towards Mom as his brother.

Silas, on the other hand, reminds Dennis of a toy he had when he was small. It was a hard plastic ball full of holes in which you could load a full water balloon. Then you press a button and a hidden timer would start inside the ball, counting down until a nail would puncture the balloon. You then had to throw the ball back and forth, and whoever was unlucky enough to hold it once the timer ran out would get soaked in water.

Dennis never liked that game, and he never played it much—he didn’t have many friends to play with, either, but that wasn’t why he didn’t like the game—it was the unpredictability of the ball. You knew the risk, but you never knew when it would come.

Silas is like that ball.

And the button has already been pushed. The timer is ticking.

“It’s true that we made our way in here without Holger’s consent,” Mom begins, talking in a low, steady voice. “But all we wanted was security. We were forced to leave our own home when the dead arrived. We crashed our car a mile from here, and we just barely made it on foot. We only wanted to stay here for a few days, until the situation got better. And Holger seemed okay with it at first, but either he was lying, or he changed his mind, because suddenly, he held a gun to my son. The dead were still outside, but Holger didn’t care; he told us to leave, or he’d kill us.” Mom shakes her head almost imperceptibly, lowering her voice to a whisper. “Holger was mentally ill, and the situation must have fueled his paranoia. I regret what I had to do, but he left me no choice.”

A moment of silence in the living room as Mom stops talking and looks down at her hands.

Dennis notices the brothers exchange another look.

“That makes sense,” Jonas says, shrugging. “We saw a crashed car up the road. And we knew Holger was kind of nuts.”

“Yeah, but something’s still bugging me about it,” Silas says, eyeing Mom. “I just can’t quite place it.” Then, suddenly, he looks at Dennis. “Is your mama telling the truth, Dennis? The whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help her God?”

Dennis opens his mouth, but he can’t get a word out. So, he just nods emphatically.

“Please leave my son out of it,” Mom says with a sudden firmness.

“What’s the deal with him, anyway?” Silas asks. “I don’t mean to be rude, but is he, like, autistic or something?”

“I had a brain fever when I was little,” Dennis blurts out, surprising himself.

Silas nods. “I see. Sorry about that, kid. Good thing you got yourself a right old tiger mom, huh?” He looks back at Mom, grinning once more.

Mom doesn’t answer.

“Silas,” Jonas says, getting up. “Let’s talk in the kitchen. You two stay right here.”

Silas gets up and brings his rifle. The brothers leave the living room, but they stay within eyesight of Mom and Dennis. Then they begin deliberating in hushed voices, Silas pointing towards the living room now and then.

Dennis glances sideways at Mom, almost afraid to turn his head. “Mom?” he croaks.

“Sssh,” she hushes. “It’s okay, Dennis. Just let me handle this. I promise you it’ll be okay.”

Dennis wants to trust her, he really does, but the situation makes him very nervous.

The brothers keep talking for several minutes. Once in a while, Dennis catches a word. Silas seems to turn a little agitated at times, but Jonas talks him back down.

Finally, after almost ten minutes, they come back into the living room.

“Right, here’s how we’re going to do things,” Silas says. “Since me and my dear brother here can’t seem to reach an agreement about whether to show you guys the benefit of the doubt or not, we’ve decided to err on the side of caution. You’ll both get to stay here, but we’re keeping you locked up for now.” He points at Mom. “You’ll get a room downstairs all to yourself. That way, no one will get hurt.”

“This is a temporary solution,” Jonas adds. “If things go smoothly, we’ll be able to let you out.”

“What does that mean, exactly?” Mom asks, talking slowly and deliberately. “’Go smoothly’?”

“We just need to get to know you guys better, that’s all,” Jonas says. “Until then, it’s better for all of us not to take any chances.”

Dennis looks from Jonas to Mom, waiting for Mom to say something, to protest, but she just stares back at Jonas.

The way he said it, it almost sounded reasonable. But the thought of them keeping Mom locked up like a prisoner makes Dennis’s throat all tight.

“What about me then?” he blurts out.

Both Silas and Jonas look at him.

“That depends,” Silas says. “If you act like a good boy and behave yourself, then we’ve got no problem and you can do pretty much what you want.”

“We could use a couple of hands,” Jonas tells him. “We need to prepare this place for when our family arrives.”

“But—” Dennis begins.

Mom cuts him off by turning her head and looking at him. “You can do that, Dennis. You can help them out.”

Dennis frowns. “But, Mom, what about you?”

“I’ll be fine. You heard what they said. It’s just for a few days.”

“A few days, a few weeks,” Silas says, bopping his hand. “We’ll have to see how it goes.”

Mom doesn’t take her eyes off Dennis. It’s like she’s trying to tell him something without words. “That sounds fair, doesn’t it, Dennis?”

Dennis isn’t sure what the right thing to say is. He feels the brothers watching him closely. So, he just nods quickly.

“Great,” Silas says, clapping his hands together, then picking up the rifle. “Let’s all go downstairs and get you checked in.”

TWENTY-NINE

It’s around dinnertime when Christine begins to feel that something is really wrong.

They’ve been on the boat all day, trying to kill time by playing cards with Mommy. Daddy has kept mostly to himself, helping Uncle Kent whenever he needed it.

Anton wanted to play games on his phone, but Mommy and Daddy took it and said he couldn’t get it back just now. When Anton asked why, Daddy just muttered something about keeping low—Christine didn’t know what that meant.

Christine has been dozing off a couple of times; the low rumble from the boat’s engine is very soothing.

But each time she would awaken with a jerk, sit up abruptly and look around. Each time, Mommy would be there, assuring her that everything was okay.

Still, Christine didn’t feel okay.

She couldn’t shake the image of the old lady right before she plummeted into the water. Or Anton muttering: “She came for me.”

The cabin has only two small windows, both seated in the ceiling, showing a cutout of the sky. Christine would look up now and then to see it change color as the day wore on. Now and then, a seagull or a white cloud drifted by, but mostly, it was just blue sky.

They ate dinner in the cabin. Uncle Kent even joined them. He looked at Christine and Anton only briefly, sending them vague smiles and asking about school.

He didn’t care about the answers, though. Christine could tell his mind was somewhere else.

Then, just as she had noticed the sky turning darker, Christine feels the atmosphere change.

It begins as Uncle Kent comes down into the cabin. He looks at Daddy, who is lying on his bed, his hand resting over his eyes.

“Steffen?” Kent says. “You awake?”

“Huh?” Daddy mutters, looking around. As he saw Kent, he immediately sat up. “What’s wrong?”

“I think we’ve got a problem.”

Christine immediately feels fear in her stomach. She looks to Anton, who looks to Mommy, who looks at Daddy, who looks at Kent.

“What is it?” Daddy whispers.

“Please come up with me.”

Kent turns and leaves and Daddy gets up to follow him.

“Honey?” Mommy says.

“I’ll be right back,” Daddy says and closes the door behind him.

“What’s wrong?” Anton asks Mommy.

“I don’t know. Probably nothing.”

“Is it something with the boat?”

“No, I’m sure everything’s fine.”

“It’s not fine! Kent just said he thinks we have a problem! Stop lying to me, Mom.”

As Mom and Anton begin bickering, Christine uses the opportunity to move to the farthest end of the cabin. She sits down on the bed closest to the rear end of the boat and leans back.

Just overhead, there’s a small tube sticking out from the ceiling. Through it, she can feel a slight breeze of fresh air. She noticed it earlier, but she didn’t tell anyone else about it. Listening intently, she can just make out Daddy and Uncle Kent talking.

“… still pulling right …”

“… how come?”

“… thought it was something to do with one of the propellers, but everything looks fine …”

“… then what?”

“… noticed the rope … you see it?”

“… see what?”

There’s a pause in the conversation. Mom and Anton are still arguing. Christine can tell from their voices they’re both scared. She can’t blame them; her own heart is racing. She concentrates firmly on listening to the tube.

For half a minute or so, there’s nothing.

Then, Daddy’s voice: “Holy shit … been dragging her along all the way?”

“… looks like it …”

“… that even possible? I mean, she should’ve drowned by now …”

“… no idea …”

“… can’t we just cut it loose?”

“… no use … completely tangled up in the rudder …”

“… then what?”

“… don’t know … keep going, I guess … hope for the best …”

The conversation seems to be over.

So does the one Mommy and Anton were having; Anton is sitting with his back turned and arms crossed, Mommy is staring down at the floor.

Christine moves discretely away from the tube in the ceiling.

A minute later, Daddy comes back down. He smiles at them, and if Christine hadn’t heard him talking to Uncle Kent, the smile would’ve looked convincing.

“What was wrong?” Mommy asks.

“Nothing,” Daddy says. “Kent just thought he saw another boat coming this way, but it turned out to be nothing. Just the light reflecting on the waves, I guess.”

Both Mommy and Anton look as though they accept what Daddy just said. The atmosphere turns a little less tense.

“How long before we reach England, Daddy?” Anton asks.

“Oh, just a few more hours. We should probably try and get some rest while we can, right?”

Daddy lies back down, places his hand across his eyes again and apparently goes back to sleep.

But Christine can tell he isn’t sleeping. He’s just lying there, thinking.

She tries to make sense of what she heard him talk with Uncle Kent about. Something about something being dragged along. What could that be?

Then, Christine’s ears pick up another sound. One that cuts through the rumble of the engine. It’s very low and she can only hear it because it’s very close.

She turns her head to look at the wall.

Something is scraping on the other side. Which is very odd, because the outside of the wall is underwater.

And, even more odd, it sounds almost like fingernails.

THIRTY

“Thank God for McD, huh?”

William wolfs down half a cheeseburger, then looks around the car at the rest of them, talking with his mouth full.

“I mean, even when the world’s ending, they’re determined to stay open and serve crappy food.”

Dan can’t help but smile. They’re once again packed into William’s car, but this time with the added passenger Eli, who’s sitting in the trunk next to Ozzy.

They just came out of a McDonald’s drive-thru, and all of them have a brown paper bag. William and Ali are the only ones who seem to have an appetite, both of them digging into their burgers with gusto.

Dan’s father is looking down at his bag, as though hoping to find something down there which might actually be appetizing.

Dorte is just gazing out the window, like she didn’t even notice the paper bag on her lap.

Eli is carefully picking out the pickles from his burger and offering them to Ozzy who swallows them eagerly.

Nasira is eating fries with her usual calmness, taking out one at a time, looking at it, then putting it in her mouth.

Dan has gotten used to her almost eerie calmness by now. At first, he thought it was some sort of coping mechanism; that Nasira was really panicking on the inside but showing a brave face for her younger brother. But she really does seem at peace. In fact, she seems like the only one who’s genuinely okay with the situation.

Dan doesn’t feel particularly hungry himself, even though he hasn’t eaten anything for … how long is it? He can’t even remember.

So, he decides to at least give it a try. He takes out the burger and unwraps it. The smell of it is enough for his stomach to curl up.

The first bite is more of nibble, and it goes down like clay.

The second tastes a little better.

The third follows quickly.

And before he knows it, he’s licking the empty paper, reaching for the second burger.

Five minutes later, he’s leaning back with a heavy sigh, slurping up the last of the milkshake, the empty bag crumbled up by his feet. His stomach looks like he just ate a couple of cannonballs, and it feels great.

“It’s reached Germany,” Dan’s father says, breaking the silence. “So much for the border blockades, huh?”

Dan realizes the radio is going, a female voice telling about infected people having penetrated the border despite the best effort from the German military.

“… several affected individuals showing up all over northern Germany, including Hamburg …”

“Shit,” William mutters. “Hamburg, that’s a pretty fucking big city, isn’t it?”

“Close to two million,” Henrik says, reaching over and turning off the radio.

“All right, Eli,” William says, sipping from his Coke, then burping loudly. “Let’s change the subject. Where exactly did you see the helicopter?”

“Uhm … it was right outside the city limit, I guess,” Eli mutters from the trunk.

“Huh?” William asks.

“Right outside the city,” Dan says.

They drive on for another ten minutes. Dan is close to dozing off a couple of times. He notices William keep checking the rearview mirror to make sure Sebastian is still behind them.

They exit the city and meet a couple of cars parked or crashed by the side of the road. They all notice, but none of them comment.

“We just passed the city limit,” William remarks.

“Okay, then slow down,” Eli says. “It was around here someplace. I think.”

“You don’t sound very convinced,” William says, but lets off the gas anyway.

Dan looks out. The area is flat, desolate, not much else than heather and small spruce trees growing here.

“What side of the road?” William asks.

“I … I’m not sure.”

William sighs.

“Okay,” Dan’s father says. “Everyone please keep an eye out.”

They drive on in silence for another couple of miles. Then suddenly, Ali says: “There!”

Dan looks at the boy pointing eagerly. This part of the moor is more heavily packed with trees. About fifty yards from the road he sees the bright yellow of the medical helicopter, halfway hidden between the trees.

“Yeah, that’s right,” Eli says. “That’s the one.”

William pulls over and parks the car. Dan looks back and sees Sebastian pulling up behind them.

“It looks abandoned,” Henrik remarks. “What’s the plan? Do we go and check?”

“I think we need to make sure no one else is around first,” William says, scanning the surroundings. “Dan, are you up for another excursion?”

“Sure. What do you want me to do?”

“We go out and split up and check the area around the helicopter.”

“What are we checking for?” Dan asks. “Zombies?”

“Anything, really. I just don’t want any surprises. Seems unlikely no one noticed a helicopter sitting out here in the middle of nowhere.”

“Well, it’s actually hard to see from the road,” Henrik remarks.

“I know, but better safe than sorry. You coming, Dan?”

“I could join you,” Dorte offers.

“I think it’s better only two of us go,” William says. “The more people, the more attention we draw if anything is out there.”

He opens the door and gets out. Dan follows his example, and William opens the trunk, letting out Ozzy.

Sebastian gets out of his car and lights up a cigarette.

Dan can hear the girl—Lærke—gasp with indignation from inside the car. “Daddy! You told me you stopped smoking!”

“Sorry, sweetie,” he says, inhaling deeply. “Today doesn’t count, okay?”

She crosses her arms. “I’m telling Mom.”

William gestures to Sebastian. “We’re going to check the area. You okay with staying here?”

Sebastian blows out smoke, coughs briefly, then nods. “Sure. I’ll keep an eye on the road.”

Dan and William split up and go in different directions. Dan walks slowly, looking all around, listening intently for any sounds. It’s already past suppertime and the trees cast long, cool shadows. Birds are singing somewhere, and a bee buzzes by lazily.

He soon loses sight of William and Ozzy and the cars too, as he walks in a broad circle around the helicopter. As he reaches the other side, the trees suddenly stop and offer him a wide view. The moor stretches out for as long as he can see. There are no people in sight, living or dead.

He turns to head back when he hears it.

A moan and a scraping of nails on metal.

Dan’s heart speeds up as he slips past the nearest trees to get a view of the helicopter.

An old, heavyset lady is groping the side of the helicopter, waddling back and forth. Next to her is a taller and younger man wearing a torn-open hazmat suit, also fondling the metal. Judging from the trail running around the helicopter, they’ve been at it for quite some time.

“Someone’s alive in there,” Dan whispers to himself.

Then he catches a movement out the corner of his eye and jumps. William steps into view, a finger placed across his lips, Ozzy right by his side.

Dan points. “There’s a woman and a—”

“I’ve seen them. Ozzy smelled them right away. I tried to get a peek in through the windshield, to see what’s inside, but I’m afraid to get too close and draw their attention.”

“Someone’s gotta be alive in there.”

“I know. They’re probably trapped.”

“You think it’s the pilot?”

“Could be. Or maybe sick people on the way to the hospital. We’ll find out once we get the dude and the fat lady out of the way.”

“How do you want to do it?”

William looks towards the helicopter thoughtfully. “I think we might need to kill them.”

Dan swallows. “Why? And how?”

William looks at him, lifting one eyebrow. “Why? Because how else are you going to get inside the helicopter? Ask them to move aside?”

“No, but we could lure them away.”

“They would just come back; we’re probably the only living people within a few miles. And we need at least ten minutes to get everyone inside and start the thing up.”

Dan bites his lip. “Okay, so how? We don’t have any weapons.”

William shakes his head slowly. “No, and that’s starting to look like a serious mistake to me. Come on, let’s get back to the group. We’ll have a general discussion and decide what to do.”

William says it with a hint of sarcasm, but Dan can’t help notice the way he referred to them all as “the group”; that’s the first time any of them has done that. It kind of makes it official. They are now The Group: the people who ended up together and are now trying to survive the end of the world.

THIRTY-ONE

“This is perfect,” Silas says, looking around the tiny bathroom. “We’ll clear out the shelves and drag one of the bunks in here, and you’ll have everything you need.” He sends Mom one of his awful grins. “You don’t even need to leave to use the toilet!”

Mom doesn’t answer, she just looks right past him.

To Dennis, the room looks far from perfect—more like crammed and claustrophobic.

“We’ll bring you meals, of course,” Jonas says, standing behind them. “And if you need anything, you can bang on the door.”

Mom simply nods.

The thought of Mom living in an underground bathroom for several days makes Dennis want to cry. But he recalls the stern look Mom sent him just before they went down here, and he gets a hold of himself. He can’t believe Mom is okay with this, but apparently, she is. At least she wants the brothers to think so.

Maybe she has got an idea. Maybe she figured out a way to get out already.

The thought gives him a tiny hope, but the bathroom has no windows, only a tiny ventilation duct, which is only big enough for an arm to pass through. Also, the door is made of metal and looks impossible to break down. He can’t see how on earth Mom will get out of here.

“Do I at least get to bring my bag?”

“What bag?” Silas asks.

“The one right over there,” Mom says, pointing towards the table where her brown leather bag is lying. “I have my knitting in there.”

Jonas goes over and takes the bag.

“Better check it,” Silas tells him as he returns with it.

Jonas looks from his brother to Mom. “Is there anything in it I need to check for?”

Mom just looks back at him, expressionless. “You won’t find anything more dangerous than a knitting needle.”

“That can be dangerous enough,” Silas says. “I say we keep the bag.”

Jonas opens the bag and gives it a quick look-through. Then, he hands it to Mom.

Silas squints at this brother. “Okay, so you just overrule my objection, or what?”

“She’s not going to kill anyone with a knitting needle. We can’t keep her locked up without anything to do, that’s cruel.”

“Fine,” Silas says, throwing out his arms. “You bring her dinner then. I’m not getting my eye poked out.”

Jonas shakes his head once, then looks at Mom. “She knows not to do anything stupid like that. Right?” Then, Jonas does something strange: he looks at Dennis briefly, then back at Mom, as though adding something to the question which he doesn’t want to put into words. His expression is calm, but Dennis senses something very serious in his eyes.

Whatever it is, Mom seems to get it. At least, she nods in agreement. “I’m not going to do anything else than what you tell me.”

“Good,” Silas says. “We’ll give you time to prove it. Now, get inside.”

Mom steps into the bathroom, and Silas goes to close the door.

“Do we get to hug one last time?” Mom asks. She looks at Dennis, as though the question is for him. He’s surprised at the question, frankly; Mom almost never hugs him.

Silas is about to say something, when Jonas says: “Sure, get it over with.”

Mom reaches out her arms, and Dennis steps inside the bathroom and lets her embrace him. The warmth from her and the feeling of being held is almost enough to make him cry.

“It’s going to be okay,” Mom tells him. “Don’t be scared, okay?”

“Okay, Mom,” Dennis says, his voice thick with emotion. “I’ll be good, I promise. I’ll do what they tell me.”

Behind him, he can hear Jonas and Silas exchange a few words in low voices. It sounds like they’re planning what they need to do in the house.

Dennis is about to break the embrace, but just before he can do that, Mom grabs hold of him and squeezes hard. Then, she places her lips right up against his ear and whispers hoarsely: “Bring me a strand of Silas’s hair.”

Dennis is dumbstruck at the change of tone in Mom’s voice, as the real reason for her wanting a hug all of a sudden is made clear to him.

To cover the fact that she just whispered in his ear, she places a kiss on his cheek, then lets him go. When he looks at her, her expression is completely clean, like nothing had happened.

“Right, you guys done?” Silas says. “Come back out here, Dennis. Time to go to work.”

THIRTY-TWO

“So you see, it’s a good thing we checked,” William concludes, looking around at the others grouped around him at the side of the road. “Would’ve been a nasty surprise if we had just strolled over there.”

“This also means someone’s still in the helicopter,” Dan adds, scratching his arm. “Someone alive. Or else the zombies wouldn’t still be there.”

“Right,” Dan’s father nods. “That was my first thought, too. We need to help whoever is trapped in there.”

“And we do that by getting rid of the guy and the fat lady,” William says. “Which brings us back to the main question at hand: How do we do that? Any bright ideas?”

Everyone looks at one another.

William goes on: “I’ll start, then. The safest way to take them out would probably be with one of the cars. We could draw them out into the road and just ram them.”

“Do we need to kill them?” Dorte interjects, repeating Dan’s question from a few minutes ago. It’s the first time in hours she actually seems engaged in the conversation, Dan notices; her eyes have even regained some of their clarity. “Couldn’t we just secure them in some way?”

“Using what?” William asks, throwing out his arms. “We don’t have anything to tie them up with. And I also think it’d be too big of a risk to run. I don’t want any of us getting closer to them than necessary.”

“I get that,” Dorte says. “It just seems a little … brutal.”

“Let’s not forget they’re already dead,” Dan says.

Dorte looks at him, then lowers her gaze. “You’re right. Guess I need to stop thinking like a doctor.”

“Please don’t,” William says, sending her a smile. “Having a doctor around will no doubt prove useful. Just not when we’re dealing with dead suckers.”

Dorte returns his smile vaguely before looking down again.

William puts his palms together and looks around at everyone. “So, no one’s got a better idea than Operation Roadkill? Because if not, I call dibs on driving. I don’t want to brag, but me and Ms. Honda over there have already taken out half a dozen dead ones. Hence the bruised fender.”

“I think it’s a decent plan,” Sebastian chimes in. He’s sitting on the hood of his own car with Lærke on his knee. “How do we lure them out here, then? Do we just call to them?”

“That probably wouldn’t do it,” Dan says. “I don’t think they navigate by hearing—or any other of the usual senses, really. The only thing that’ll get them away from there is another prey coming closer than the one they can feel inside the helicopter.”

“Which means,” William jumps in, “we need someone to act as bait.”

Everyone is silent.

“I’d do it myself,” William goes on, “but if I’ll be driving the car, I can’t.”

Dan takes a deep breath. “I’ll do it.”

“No, I’ll do it,” his father cuts in immediately. “You’ve been in enough danger.”

“So have you,” Dan argues. “And it needs to be someone fast.”

His father is about to retort when Dorte interjects firmly: “I’m fast. I’ll do it.”

William looks at her. “You sure?”

“Positive.”

“Okay, because I mean—”

“I’m the only one here who doesn’t have anyone to lose,” Dorte says, staring at William. “End of discussion.”

Dan looks around and realizes she’s almost right—if you count Ozzy and William as a pair—the only exception being Eli, who’s keeping conveniently out of sight by standing a little away and looking at the ground.

William nods. “All right. We have our volunteer. Now, the rest of you should probably go a few hundred yards down road, just to be sure you’re not getting in harm’s way.”

“Hold on a minute,” Sebastian says, putting down his daughter and getting to his feet. “Someone’s coming.”

Dan follows his gaze and sees a big, green, dust-covered SUV coming this way. It slows down and stops by the roadside.

“Looks like they want to talk,” William mutters and steps a little closer as the SUV’s driver side door opens.

A tall, skinny, bald guy in his thirties gets out. He’s dressed in faded jeans and a worn-out shirt, and his hands, which look too big for his boney arms, are black from oil.

“Hi there,” William says. “Need help?”

The guy doesn’t answer right away. His eyes—blue and very deep-set—dart around the faces of the group. Then they go towards the helicopter. The guy obviously spots it among the trees, because his expression changes.

“Hello,” Dan’s father calls out, waving at the guy. “What can we do for you?”

The guy looks back at them, and his eyes grow narrow again. Then he finally speaks, revealing a thick local dialect. “We’ve been driving ’round looking for that helicopter ever since we saw it go down.”

“Okay, well, you found it,” William says. “Take a look and then move on.”

Dan winces at the slight confrontational tone in William’s voice. For some reason, he doesn’t think it wise.

The guy obviously picks up on it, too, because his demeanor grows even more hostile. “I’ve got my wife and daughter here with me,” he says in a strange, baited voice. “We’re gonna take that helicopter and leave the country.”

“Oh, really?” William says. “You know how to fly it?”

The guy lifts one boney shoulder. “I figure it can’t be too hard.”

“Well, you figured wrong,” William says. “Unless you’re a pilot and know what you’re doing, you’ll never get it off the ground. So I’m afraid you need to find some other way to leave the country.”

“There’s no other way,” the guy says, shaking his bald head slowly, not taking his eyes off of William. “They’ve closed all the borders and harbors, in case you haven’t heard. Soon as I saw this helicopter go down, I knew it was our last hope.”

“Sorry to burst your bubble,” William says. “But we came first, and we actually got a guy who can fly it.”

“William,” Sebastian whispers from behind. “Shut up.”

“You do?” the guy says, raising his eyebrows. “Who might that be?”

William hesitates.

“He’ll be here any minute,” Dan hears himself say, drawing the guy’s attention. “I’m really sorry. We’d love to take you and your wife and daughter with us, but as you can see, we’re already too many people.”

The guy eyes Dan for a few seconds. Everyone waits for him to say something. When he finally does, he addresses William again. “So, you’ve got a pilot. You got any weapons, too?”

“We do,” William says quickly—a little too quickly, Dan feels.

“Really?” the guy says. “I can’t see none.”

No one seems to know what to say.

Then, the guy reaches into the car. To Dan, it looks like he’s about to turn off the engine. Instead, he produces a large hunting rifle which he places nonchalantly on his arm, pointed in their direction.

The group pulls back. Nasira steps in front of Ali and Sebastian pulls his daughter behind the car.

“Hey, hey, hey,” William says, holding up his hands. “Don’t get excited now.”

Ozzy growls menacingly by his side.

“Could you please put the mutt in the car?” the guy asks, nodding towards Ozzy.

Dan’s father steps forward. “Look. We all know the situation is desperate, but there’s no reason we can’t make this work for everyone.”

“And how you figure we do that?” the guy asks, not lowering the rifle.

“I don’t know, we could maybe—”

“I’ll tell you how,” the guy interrupts. “I’ll take your pilot and the helicopter and we’ll fly the hell away from here. That’s how we’ll make it work. And I told you to get that dog in the car. Or you want me to put him down?”

William glances down at Ozzy and mutters: “Trunk, Ozzy.”

Ozzy leaves his side only hesitantly to slink back to the car and jump up into the open trunk.

“You!” the guy calls out, pointing at Dan. “Close that trunk!”

Dan does as he’s told.

“Hey, we told you, man,” William says. “The pilot isn’t here yet. And once he comes and sees you brandishing that rifle, he’ll turn back around.”

The guy eyes William intently. “So the pilot isn’t here yet?”

William shakes his head.

“When’s he comin’?”

“I couldn’t tell you. We haven’t heard from him lately. Could be hours.”

“You’re lying.”

The guy says it not like an accusation but like a fact. Dan can’t help but jump a little. William, however, is better at keeping up the bluff.

“No, I’m not. Why do you think we were just standing around when you came? This thing wasn’t easy to find, like you said. The pilot’s probably still driving around looking for it.”

The guy looks towards the helicopter, then back at William for a few seconds. Then, his eyes glide across the rest of the group. “Are any of you the pilot?”

Dan can’t see everyone from where he’s standing, and he doesn’t want to look around, but he assumes the rest of the group also shake their heads.

The guy clicks his jaw. “Figured that much. Okay, listen here, folks. Whichever one of you tells me who the pilot is gets to come with me and my family to safety. It’s a limited time offer, so don’t take too long thinking it o’er.”

“I told you,” William begins. “The pilot isn’t—”

“You shut up, now,” the guy says, discretely turning the rifle towards William. “There’s only one thing I want to hear: Who’s the pilot?”

Dan can’t help but turn his head slightly to look at the group. Everyone is staring back at the guy, their expressions ranging from scared to stone-faced. They exchange quick looks between them, but no one says anything.

“I’m a man of my word,” the guy says. “If one of ya’s tell me who the pilot it, I’ll bring that person along, cross my heart. Offer expires in five seconds.”

Still, no one speaks up.

Dan feels a surge of pride in the group. None of them wants to rat out Sebastian to save their own skin. Of course, like Dorte just pointed out minutes ago, all of them have someone whom they love and don’t want to leave, and that may play into it also. Everyone, except for Dorte and …

Dan’s gaze falls on Eli, who slipped behind William’s car as soon as the guy pulled out the rifle. Now, he steps out tentatively.

No, Dan thinks. No, you don’t!

“Time’s up,” the guy announces.

“It’s him,” Eli says, pointing at Sebastian. “He’s the pilot.”

THIRTY-THREE

It’s eight o’clock in the evening, yet the sun is still scorching hot, the light stinging Dennis’s eyes as he climbs up the hatch to the vegetable garden.

Silas follows right behind him, carrying the toolbox he brought from the bunker. “Take this,” he says, handing it to Dennis.

Dennis takes it, and Silas ducks back down to get the rifle. He climbs up and closes the hatch.

“Bring the box,” he says, walking to the place where he cut open the fence. He crouches down to look at the opening, the rifle resting across his thighs. “I’m not sure we can stretch it together again—it was very tight to begin with. I think we need to sew it up. Put down the box and open it.”

Dennis does as he’s told, and Silas places the rifle against the fence, barrel up. It’s still within arm’s reach, but even if it wasn’t, Dennis wouldn’t dream of going for it. It would be very stupid, as he has no idea how to use it, and Silas could easily out-wrestle him. Even though Dennis is actually an inch taller than Silas and also a few pounds heavier, he’s sure Silas is stronger.

Besides, he’s afraid that Silas might do something to hurt Mom if Dennis acts out of line.

So, he just stands there, under the baking sun and watches as Silas goes to work, using the utensils from the box. He takes out a roll of thin steel wire and a pair of pliers, then he fastens the end of the wire to the top of the opening in the fence and starts to close it by wrapping the wire around the edges and tightening it as he goes along, pulling the edges of the opening together.

Dennis recalls what Mom whispered in his ear. Those seven words burned themselves into his memory.

He didn’t understand it, though. It was so weird that he for a moment considered if he might have misheard her.

But he hadn’t. Mom had really asked him to bring her a strand of Silas’s hair.

Dennis has no idea how you would go about plucking a hair out of someone’s head without them noticing.

He looks at Silas’s hair. It’s dark brown and shiny and long enough to touch the top of his ears. The way he’s sitting, with his back halfway turned, Dennis could actually reach right over and pull out a hair.

Except Silas would most likely feel it—and how would Dennis explain it?

A butterfly flaps against Dennis’s ear, causing him to turn his head. And that’s when he sees the dead person crossing the lawn.

It’s an old guy with a potbelly, which is visible because his shirt is ripped open. His left cheek is mostly missing, causing the eye to sag and revealing the white bone and a row of yellow teeth. He reaches out a hand missing all but one finger as he approaches the fence separating the vegetable garden from the rest of Holger’s lawn.

“Silas!” Dennis croaks, staggering backwards. “Look!”

“What?” Silas says, looking up at him, squinting. “What is it?”

Dennis can only point.

“Oh, we’ve got company,” Silas says in a casual voice and gets to his feet, grabbing the rifle. “You see, Dennis? It was a good thing we went to fix the fence right away, huh?”

Dennis backs away, almost tripping over a row of pea stalks as he stares at the dead guy who now reaches the fence and walks right into it, trying to squeeze himself through. He pushes his face against the metal grid, snapping his teeth and growling hungrily at them, causing the fence to rattle.

Silas doesn’t seem bothered at all; he takes his time placing the rifle at his shoulder, just like Dennis saw him doing on the surveillance camera when he was standing on the truck bed, then he aims it at the head of the dead guy, who’s less than ten feet away—Dennis can even smell him, the stench of meat going bad reaching him on the warm air.

“What was it he said in that movie, American History X?” Silas asks, still pointing the rifle at the dead guy, moving it slightly as the dead guy rocks back and forth, trying to force his way through the fence and get at Silas. “Oh, yeah! ‘Now, say goodnight’ …”

Dennis understands hardly any English, but he doesn’t have time to worry about what Silas just said, because half a second later, the shot rings out with a deafening bang.

Dennis jumps and covers his ears, but it’s too late, the sound has already caused a shrill ringing which seems to reverberate inside his skull.

The skull of the dead guy, however, is suddenly open like a soft-boiled egg, the top quarter missing completely.

The dead guy stands there for a moment, no longer moving, his expression empty. Then his knees buckle and the rest of his body collapses like a house of cards.

“Boo-yah!” Silas cries out, laughing. “I never get tired of that! It’s like being a real-life game of Counter Strike, except the opposite team has no weapons—how cool is that?” He turns to Dennis, and his smile fades. “Hey, you got that scared-shitless expression again, Dennis.”

Dennis can barely hear the words over the ringing in his ears, and he can’t get his eyes off the corpse on the other side of the fence.

“Hey!” Silas walks closer and snaps his fingers in front of Dennis.

Dennis blinks and looks up at Silas.

Silas’s expression is earnest for once. “I’m telling you, man, you gotta man up if you’re gonna make it. The world was never a nice place and it lately turned a whole lot shittier, so get yourself together, okay?”

“O… okay,” Dennis manages.

Silas watches him for a moment, brooding. Then he asks: “How old are you, anyway?”

“Nineteen.”

“Nineteen? Holy shit! You act like a nine-year-old. No offense, I’m just telling you.”

“I had a brain—”

“I know, that brain fever thing. But still, you’re way too soft. I’m not talking about intelligence here; I’m talking about balls.” He pokes a finger in Dennis’s stomach. “Grow a pair, and do it soon. Just friendly advice.”

Dennis nods.

“Now, let’s get on with this before any more of those assholes show up,” Silas says, turning around and going back to work on the hole in the fence. Just as he’s about to kneel back down, a movement catches his attention, and he turns his head. “Oh, fuck. Too late.”

Dennis follows his gaze and sees three—no, four—dead people come waddling through the trees separating Holger’s property from the surrounding fields.

“Well, I can’t work with those pricks breathing on me,” Silas says, picking up the rifle again.

This time, Dennis covers his ears by placing his sweaty palms over them and squeezing firmly.

The shots are a lot less loud this time—partly because Dennis this time was expecting them.

Silas puts down the three front-runners before they can even cross the lawn. Then he reloads the rifle, pulling out shells from his pocket, whistling as he does it.

“Three down, one to go,” he says, raising the weapon again. Then he hesitates. Lowers the rifle slightly. Turns his head and looks at Dennis. “Come over here.”

“Me?” Dennis asks, utterly surprised.

“No, the guy standing behind you.”

Dennis looks back, but sees no one.

Silas sighs. “Jesus, dude. Come over here.”

Dennis really doesn’t want to come closer to the fence, but he doesn’t want to disobey Silas either, so he walks to him, his legs feeling weak.

The dead person is a young woman limping on her right leg, where most of the thigh muscle has been eaten away, making it look to Dennis like a pirate’s leg.

“Stand here next to me,” Silas instructs him.

Dennis does as he’s told, looking at Silas hesitantly.

“You ever used a rifle?” Silas asks.

“No.”

“Well, it’s easier than you think. Here, take it.” Silas offers him the weapon.

Dennis steps back, horrified. “No! I don’t want to.”

“Sure, you do. Consider this your rite of manhood. You’re going to kill the last one.”

Dennis shakes his head frantically.

“Take it, Dennis.”

There’s a tone in Silas’s voice which reminds Dennis of how Mom talks when she’s in no mood to tolerate any backtalk, and even though he wants to back away, he forces himself to stay.

“Please don’t make me,” he pleads, almost on the verge of tears.

The dead woman is limping her way past her fallen comrades and is now headed for the fence.

Silas lowers the rifle, and for a moment, Dennis feels relief rush over him, as he’s sure Silas has changed his mind. Then, he slaps Dennis hard on the side of the face.

“Ow!” he cries, touching his stinging cheek, staring at Silas with hurt and shock.

Silas’s face is expressionless. “You’re going to take the rifle, and you’re going to shoot that thing out there. And if you say no one more time, I’m gonna slap you again.”

Dennis looks from Silas to the rifle and out at the woman, who’s almost at the fence now.

“I … I don’t know how to … to do it …”

“I’ll show you how. It’s very simple. Here, take it and put the heel against your shoulder.”

Dennis reaches out one shaking hand.

“Both hands,” Silas commands. “It’s heavier than it looks.”

He’s right; Dennis is surprised at the weight of the weapon as Silas hands it to him.

He shifts it around like it’s a dangerous snake and lifts it awkwardly, trying to place it like he saw Silas do.

“Christ, you look like a nun handling a dildo,” Silas scuffs, grabbing hold of him and guiding the rifle to his shoulder. “There you go. Push it back firmly, like this, or it’ll slam your shoulder.”

Dennis squeezes the butt of the handle into the soft part of his shoulder, then looks out over the barrel, closing one eye like he saw Silas do. He really doesn’t want to look at the dead woman, so he focuses instead on the tip of the gun, causing everything else to go mercifully blurry.

“Great, now, when you’re ready, pull the trigger.”

Dennis fumbles for a second, then his finger finds the trigger, curling around it, tugging at it gently. It doesn’t move at all.

“Come on,” Silas says. “You’ll tire out if you wait too long.”

“I … I think it’s locked or something,” Dennis mutters, his voice shaky, not daring to take his eyes off the tip of the gun.

“It’s not locked, you just need to pull harder.”

Dennis increases the pressure on the trigger, and to his surprise, it actually moves back a few millimeters.

The woman reaches the fence and walks right into it, beginning to grope at the metal, trying to push her way through.

“Shoot her now, Dennis,” Silas commands in his ear. “Before she does any damage to the fence. Remember to aim for the head.”

Dennis takes a deep breath, holds it, closes his eyes and squeezes the trigger as hard as he can.

The sound is just as deafening, but Dennis hardly notices. He only feels the pain as the gun thrusts itself backwards into his shoulder, causing him to spin halfway around and sending him to his hands and knees.

“Whoops,” Silas says somewhere nearby, grabbing the gun from him before it can touch the ground.

Dennis blinks and looks around, completely baffled, as he gets back to his feet. “Ooh, my shoulder,” he moans, rubbing the sore spot where the gun slammed him.

The woman is still working the fence, biting and clawing at the metal. Dennis can’t see any bullet holes in her.

He looks at Silas, expecting him to stare back at him with menace, but to his surprise, he sees Silas smiling broadly, revealing a row of crooked, but surprisingly white teeth.

“That wasn’t half bad for a first try. I’m afraid you missed the mark. But you might have killed a seagull somewhere. You want to try again?”

Dennis shakes his head emphatically, afraid that Silas will make him do it anyway. But Silas just shrugs.

“I figured as much. I’ll take out this bitch; you’ll get another chance soon enough.”

He slings the rifle up and pulls the trigger almost without taking aim. The woman’s forehead opens like a tin can, spraying a grayish mush in all directions. She immediately stops moving, but stays standing for several seconds with a blank look on her face. It’s not until the ring of the gunshot has died out that she finally sags to the ground.

“Come on,” Silas says. “Let’s get back inside. This fucking heat is killing me anyway.”

Dennis follows Silas back to the hatch, his head feeling weirdly hollow, like his thoughts have all been blown away.

As Silas crouches down to open the hatch, Dennis’s eyes catch the glimmer of a hair stuck to the back of his shirt. Without thinking, he reaches out his hand and plucks it off.

Silas turns his head and looks up at him. “Did you just touch me?”

Dennis is a terrible liar. And he’s even worse at coming up with anything when someone puts him on the spot. He always gives himself away by stuttering, mumbling and blushing. He’s not at all like Mom in that way; she can say anything without revealing anything.

But for some strange reason, at that moment, he’s able to stay completely calm as he discretely hides his hand and simply shrugs and tells Silas: “Sorry. There was a bug.”

Silas eyes him for a second longer, then he waves impatiently. “Come on. You first.”

Maybe I am a little like Mom after all, Dennis thinks to himself as he climbs down the hatch, clutching the strand of hair between two fingers.

THIRTY-FOUR

“You shut the fuck up,” William says, rounding on Eli, and Eli can’t help but pull back.

He’s surprised at himself for having spoken; it happened before he could think. It was The Demon Voice. It simply jumped out of his mouth, made him speak on its behalf.

The guy with the rifle smiles. It’s an ugly smile, one of those only affecting one side of the mouth. “I knew it.”

“He’s lying,” Sebastian says in a surprisingly calm voice, almost a note of humor in it. “The only flying I’ve ever done was as a passenger going on a charter trip.”

His daughter—Eli can’t remember her name—is peering out from behind her dad, her blue eyes big and terrified.

“Really?” the guy asks. “Then why does your friend here say otherwise?” He nods towards Eli.

“He wants to save his own ass, I guess.” Still, absolutely no wavering in Sebastian’s voice or expression. Eli figures keeping one’s cool in stressful situations must be a skill they teach pilots. “But I promise you, I can’t fly that thing over there to save my life.”

“Really?” the guy repeats—obviously, that’s a favorite question of his. He turns towards Eli, giving him an intense look. “Are you lying to me, sir?”

Eli hesitates, unsure what do say. He doesn’t want to rat out Sebastian, but it’s really too late; he can’t backpedal now.

Cat’s already out of the bag, that sinister voice tells him. Would be madness to turn back now.

Eli shakes his head and says in a low voice: “I’m not lying. He’s the pilot.”

He can sense the scowling looks coming from all sides, burning. He feels his cheeks blushing fiercely and he shrinks, wishing he could turn himself invisible.

The guy with the rifle turns back to Sebastian, then comes closer, and the group draws back.

Sebastian, however, stays his ground.

The girl gives off a whimper.

For a terrible second, Eli thinks the guy might hurt them. That wasn’t Eli’s intention at all; he just wants really badly to get out of here. At least that’s the reason he keeps telling himself. In reality though, there’s something with an even harder pull on him.

Ever since he saw the helicopter, he’s been itching to get to it. Once, when he was stoned out of his mind, he saw a documentary about how medical helicopters are operated—and he recalls very clearly all the drugs they keep inside.

Axe and Malthe never did anything harder than weed; they didn’t need to. They didn’t do it to drown out anything, after all.

Eli did.

As soon as the effect started to dwindle and the images of his dead mother began creeping back into his sleep, Eli moved onto harder things.

By the time he met Claus, he was an all-out junkie.

Claus saved his life. He got him clean.

And now.

Now Eli can’t think of much else than the sweet relief waiting just fifty feet away.

Keep cool and you’ll get it.

Amazing how familiar The Demon Voice sounds, Eli muses. How intimate. Just as strong and persuasive as he remembers. It’s like it never really left him, but just went into hibernation somewhere right below his conscious mind. And now, when he needed it, it woke back up.

“It’s okay, honey,” Sebastian says, pulling Eli back to the present. Sebastian is talking to his daughter, who’s clutching his shirt. “He’s not going to hurt me.”

“No,” the guy says, stopping a few steps in front of Sebastian. “I’m not. But I’ll take your wallet.”

Sebastian doesn’t move except tilt his head slightly. “Are you robbing me?”

“Just hand it over.”

Sebastian still doesn’t move.

The guy takes a deep breath. “Look, mister, I’ve had the worst day of my life. And I really don’t want to hurt anybody here. So don’t twist my arm, okay?”

He doesn’t move the rifle, which is pointed casually at Sebastian’s feet. But Eli notices his eyes dart briefly to the girl before returning to Sebastian.

And Sebastian obviously gets the message. “It’s in the car. Let me get it.”

The guy nods.

Sebastian takes his daughter’s hand and they walk around the car to the driver’s door. Sebastian opens it, reaches inside and gets his wallet. He throws it to the guy who catches it in one hand.

The guy opens it and goes through the contents. The one-sided smile comes back as he pulls out a white card. “Sebastian Møller, Sterling Airlines. Sounds like a pilot’s license to me.”

Eli can’t help but draw a sigh of relief. At least the guy won’t suspect him of lying anymore.

“Look, man, let’s make a deal, okay?” Sebastian says.

The smile vanishes from the guy’s face. “I already have a deal.”

“I’ll fly you out of the country, then I’ll take the helicopter back here.”

“No, Dad!” the girl exclaims. “You can’t go with him!”

“You’re not taking the helicopter back,” the guy says. “I’m keeping it.”

“Why? You can’t fly it.”

“You’ll teach me how to fly it.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“We’ll have plenty of time.”

“Please don’t,” the girl pleads, looking at the guy and hugging her father closely. “Please don’t make my dad go, mister. Please!”

The guy looks down at her, and Eli sees—to his surprise—a fair amount of compassion on the guy’s face.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart, but I have a daughter of my own, you see. She’s a little younger than you. I need to get her to safety. You understand, right?”

The girl starts crying.

“At least let me bring her along,” Sebastian says.

They guy looks towards the helicopter and back. He nods in the direction of Eli. “I already promised this young fellow a ride, and counting my wife and daughter, we’re at five people including you.”

“Six people is fine,” Sebastian says. “We can fit in there, all of us.”

The guy considers it a moment longer, then nods. “All right, you can come too, sweetheart.”

The girl sobs and mutters something akin to “thank you.”

The guy turns to the rest of the group. “Now, I need a couple of strong guys to help get my wife and daughter to the helicopter.”

“Why?” William asks. “Can’t they walk?”

“Not currently, no,” the guy says with no further explanation. He points the rifle at William, then at Dan’s father. “You and you. You come with me. Pilot, you go and start up the engine. The rest of you stay right here and don’t do anything.”

Eli notices Dan catching William’s eye, throw out his hands and mouth a soundless question: What do we do?

William just shakes his head. He then follows the guy along with Dan’s father to the SUV.

The guy reaches in through the open driver’s door to turn off the engine. As soon as it falls quiet, Eli can hear a moaning coming from the car.

“Oh, no,” Dan whispers.

“Oh, shit!” William exclaims as he looks in through the backseat window. “They’re dead!”

THIRTY-FIVE

Dennis is sitting on a chair, fondling the hair in his pocket, building up courage, waiting for the right moment to speak.

The living room is dimly lit by the lamp over the dining table and the television screen. Outside, the sun is drawing closer to the horizon, painting the sky red and orange.

Silas is sprawled out on the couch, drinking his fifth or six beer.

Jonas is sitting by the dining table, slowly eating the rest of his late-night dinner while leafing through one of Holger’s notebooks.

Finally, Dennis decides to give it a go.

“Uhm, Silas?”

“Uhm, yes?” Silas replies, mocking Dennis’s tone of voice.

“Can I … Can I please see my mom?”

“Why? Your mother’s fine.”

“I know, but … I’d like to see her.”

Silas shakes his head, still looking at the screen. “I’m not letting her out yet.”

“I know, that’s fine, I just … I just want to go down and be with her for a while.”

Silas doesn’t answer. He’s lost in the news. “Fucking hell,” he mutters, looking over at his brother. “You seeing this? They’re still trying to pacify these motherfuckers. Jesus fucking Christ, that’s so typical of those bleeding-heart assholes in power.” Silas crunches his beer can and lets out a violent burp. “Just fucking shoot them! They’re already dead!”

“It’s just a matter of time,” Jonas says, looking up briefly from the notebook. “Once the problem gets far enough out of hand, they’ll begin putting them down. You’ll see.”

“By then it’ll be too fucking late,” Silas groans, opening another beer. “At least that guy’s got the right idea!”

He points to the screen, now showing a press conference with a man in a suit standing behind a podium. In the background, Dennis sees a flag with red stripes and a blue square in the corner with white stars. He can’t remember which country that flag belongs to, but he manages to read the headline with difficulty: U.S. President issues ultimatum to European Union.

The man behind the podium—the American president, apparently—is talking very heatedly while pointing at something or someone out of view. There are no subtitles, and Dennis has no idea what the president is saying.

“Hoh, did you hear that?” Silas asks, almost spilling his beer. “He’s gonna bomb us back to the Stone Age if we don’t get this thing under control.”

“That’s not what he said,” Jonas corrects him calmly. “He just wants the lazy pricks at the EU to begin taking it seriously.”

“Yeah, or else he’ll ‘deploy weapons of great magnitude to help resolve the European problem’ … he’s talking about the fucking A-bomb, man! He’s gonna flatten the whole goddamn continent!”

“That’s just how he talks,” Jonas says. “He’s always boasting and pounding his chest. He’s just scared this thing will reach America.”

Silas doesn’t reply right away. He drinks most of his beer in one go, then lets out a long burp. “You think the basement is protected against radiation?”

“According to Holger’s notes, it is.”

“Good. Then we’ll be safe.”

Jonas sighs. “There’s not going to be a nuclear war, Silas.”

“We’ll see.”

Another long moment of silence passes. The television switches from the press conference and back to a news studio where three other people are discussing the situation, all of them with grave faces.

“Silas?” Dennis asks.

“What?”

“Can I please go see—”

“No, you can’t! Drink a fucking beer and chill out, that’s what you can do.”

Jonas looks up at them. “Let him go see his mother, Silas. Don’t be a dick.”

Silas chews his tongue for a moment. Then he looks at Dennis. “You know what? My brother’s right. You’ve earned it, Dennis. You’ve helped me all day, and you even tried to shoot a zombie. You can spend a little time with your mama.”

“He did what?” Jonas asks.

“I taught him how to shoot a rifle,” Silas says with a grin.

Jonas doesn’t seem to think it’s funny, but he doesn’t say anything.

“Come on, then,” Silas says with a sigh, getting up from the couch. “Let’s go see how she’s holdin’ up down there.”

THIRTY-SIX

The guy with the rifle rounds on William and points the weapon at his face. “What did you say?”

“I said they’re fucking dead!” William repeats, pointing to the SUV. He’s so angry, he barely takes notice of the rifle aimed at his nose. “Your wife and daughter. They’re both—”

He’s interrupted as the guy kicks him hard on the shin. The pain is immediate and intense. William cries out and falls to one knee. He can hear Ozzy barking from inside the Honda. Had he been loose, he would have been at the guy’s throat by now.

“You shut your fucking mouth, you big city asshole!” the guy spits. “They’re not dead, they’re sick! And they need help.”

“Listen,” Dan’s father chimes in. “I don’t think you fully realize the situation …”

The guy turns to Henrik and snarls: “I know what they said on the news. They’re working hard to find a vaccine, and as soon as they do, everyone will get cured. I just need to get my family out of the country so they’re safe until they can cure them.”

William snorts as he gets back up, his shin still throbbing. “You’re bringing two zombies on a helicopter … you’re even dumber than you look … that’s a recipe for disaster.”

The guy kicks at William again, but this time he’s prepared and moves out of his way—there’s those boxing reflexes again, and he’s thankful for them.

“One more word out of you, and I’ll put you down,” the guy sneers at him through gritted teeth—and William picks up on something other than anger in his voice, something which sounds more like grief.

He knows I’m right, William realizes. But he’s hoping against hope.

The guy opens the door to the backseat, and everyone except Henrik and William—who’ve already seen inside the SUV—pulls back.

“It’s okay,” Henrik tells them with a grim look. “He’s tied them up.”

That’s a gracious way of putting it, William thinks, and he’s very close to laughing shrilly. Of course, the timing couldn’t be worse, so he bites back the noise.

But the sight of the guy’s wife and daughter lying side-by-side on the backseat is like something straight out of a cartoon.

“You,” the guy sneers, pointing at Henrik. “You help me with my wife. And you, smartass—”he points at William—“you take my daughter. And if any of you drop them or hurt them in anyway, I swear to God, I’ll put you down.”

Henrik nods in silent agreement.

“Go on,” the guy says to Henrik. “Take her feet.”

Henrik looks at the guy with an earnest expression. “Listen, I really think you need to reconsi—”

“No more fucking arguing!” the guy explodes, causing everyone to jump. “You do as I say!”

Henrik takes a deep breath. Then he reaches inside the car and pulls out a couple of feet—one wearing a white sock, one bare. Both feet are protruding from a thick, rolled-up carpet which is held together by duct tape. When the carpet is halfway out, the guy steps over and takes hold of it with one arm, still holding the rifle with the other.

They pull the rest of the carpet out, revealing the other end, from which a woman’s head and shoulders are protruding.

Her hair is curly and her skin, which was probably once reddish and freckled, is now grey. She snarls and twists angrily, trying to wriggle free, but the homemade straightjacket the guy has made for her is quite effective.

“Oh, my God,” William hears Lærke whisper, followed by Sebastian telling her to not look.

“What are you waiting for?” the guy snaps at William. “Take out my daughter—carefully!”

William steps over to the open door and looks in at the girl. The only thing positive about his part of the assignment is that the girl is considerably smaller than the woman, and William won’t risk throwing out his back lifting her. The bad news, though, is that the guy apparently only had one spare carpet, because he decided to only use towels and tape wrapping up his daughter, which has left her a fair bit more wriggle-room. She’s lying on her side in a fetal position, looking somewhat like a cocoon ready to burst, thrashing her head back and forth.

William tries not to look at her face—she was no more than eight or nine when she died—and he has to bite down hard before he can reach in and grab her. Her feet are inside the improvised cocoon, so William takes hold of the lower part. He drags her halfway out, then turns her onto her belly and wraps his arms around her waist.

The girl snarls and groans and tries to get at him, but she can’t bend her neck that low.

William lifts her up, realizing she’s even lighter than he thought, and holds her awkwardly upwards, keeping her back turned so she can’t get at him with her mouth. It’s like holding an angry baby alligator.

“This is fucking suicide,” he mutters with a strained groan.

The guy ignores him. “Right, get moving. Keep in front of me so I can see you at all times. And you, pilot! What are you waiting for? I told you to go start it up.”

William concentrates on holding the girl in a waist-lock and keeping her from twisting either way around. So he doesn’t see Sebastian and Lærke start moving towards the helicopter.

He sees something else, though, because of the way he’s facing away from the road, something which no one else probably notices: a movement by the nearest tree. A blond head of hair pops out briefly, then disappears again.

William turns and darts one quick look towards the rest of the group. He sees Dan, Eli, that fucking traitor, Nasira and Ali—but he doesn’t see Dorte anywhere.

She slipped away without the asshole seeing her …

William feels a jolt of excitement and hope. He doesn’t know exactly what Dorte’s plan is, but he applauds her internally for having the guts to do something.

THIRTY-SEVEN

“How did you get it, Dennis?”

Mom looks at the strand of hair between her fingers with wide eyes. They’re alone in the bathroom. Just before he locked the door, Silas said Dennis could spend ten minutes with his mom. Once the time is up, Silas will come back down and get him.

“I took it while his back was turned,” Dennis says, feeling immensely proud.

“Did he notice?”

“No.”

“That’s good, Dennis. Really good. You did great.”

Dennis isn’t used to being praised like this; especially not by his mother. He feels at least three inches taller.

“Thank you, Mom.”

His mom turns her back and rummages through it, producing a tiny plastic bag which she opens and places the hair carefully inside.

“So, what are you going to do with it?” Dennis asks.

“You’ll see.”

“Will it be … some kind of ritual?”

“It’s better if you don’t know,” Mom says plainly, putting the plastic bag under the mattress. Then she looks at him. “You sure Silas isn’t suspecting anything? He didn’t feel you pluck it from his head?”

“I didn’t; I took it from his shirt.”

Mom’s eyes grow a little bigger, then they narrow. “You did what?”

“I … I took it from his shirt.”

Mom looks at him gravely. “That won’t work.”

Dennis feels his heart sink. “Why … why won’t it work, Mom?”

Mom closes her eyes for a moment. “That hair could have come from anybody. We need to be absolutely sure it’s Silas’s hair. Besides, it needs to be fresh. Still alive. A hair from his shirt—even if it really was his—could be weeks old.” She shakes her head slowly, talking almost to herself now. “Had I used this hair, things would have gone horribly wrong …”

She takes the plastic bag out from under the mattress, opens it and fishes out the strand of hair. Then, she drops it to the floor. Dennis watches it fall, feeling like a giant failure.

“I don’t get it,” Dennis says sulkily, his sense of pride deflated like a punctured balloon. “What do you even need a strand of his hair for, Mom?”

Under normal circumstances, a question like that would’ve been way out of line—with Mom having told him already he can’t know—but nothing is normal anymore.

Mom doesn’t seem to mind, either. She simply looks at him and whispers: “It’ll be our way out of here.”

“But how? I don’t understand …”

“Just trust me, Dennis.”

Mom’s tone of voice changes slightly and lets Dennis know that now he is close to being out of line and that she won’t stand for any more questions.

She shakes her head slowly. “I knew from the start they weren’t going to leave. And they’re bad people. Especially Silas. It’s only a matter of time before he’ll do something really bad to one of us.”

Dennis’s belly tightens up from fear. “Like what, Mom?” he croaks. “What will he do?”

Mom shakes her head. “I don’t know. But people like him will do bad things just for fun. You’ll see.”

Dennis can hardly breathe. “I’m scared, Mom. Really scared. I don’t want to go back up there.”

“You need to be brave, Dennis. You’re our only hope.” She locks Dennis’s gaze with hers. “You need to pretend like nothing’s wrong. And you need to bring me a fresh hair from Silas’s head as soon as possible.”

“But … when will I do it? I mean, he’ll notice me doing it …”

Dennis jumps as there’s a loud banging from the door.

“Warden’s here!” Silas’s voice shouts from the other side. “Visiting time is over!”

Dennis can hear the rattling of keys as Silas makes to unlock the door.

Mom grabs Dennis by the wrist and whispers: “He won’t notice it if you’re careful. You’ll find a way. I know you can do it, Dennis. You trust me?”

Dennis takes a deep breath, then nods.

And just as the door opens, Mom whispers to him: “It’s on you now.”

THIRTY-EIGHT

Dorte made her decision as soon as she realized the guy’s wife and daughter are both dead from the virus.

That’s also when she saw the opportunity to slip off into the moor, as everyone else’s attention was aimed at the SUV.

She simply can’t stand by and watch while this guy steals their best—and probably only—way out. Especially not if he’s bringing two infected people with him to wherever he’s going.

It’s also a simple matter of utilitarianism, really: the group with the highest number of healthy people should be the ones getting out of here. Besides, like William said, they came first, giving them the moral high ground.

Of course, the guy cares very little about ethics; as far as he’s concerned, his wife and daughter can still be saved.

Which is also why Dorte immediately realized there’s no way of talking sense to him. She for one knows all too well how irrational you become when you think you’re saving the lives of people you love.

She made a dash for the nearest tree as soon as the guy turned his back to her and everyone else was looking at the SUV. And now she’s in the perfect position to turn the tables on the situation. The guy will come right past the tree as he and Henrik carry the guy’s wife to the helicopter.

Dorte isn’t entirely sure what she’ll do once he’s within reach, though. Her first intuition is to simply jump the guy, trying to blind him or maybe even wrestle him to the ground. A smarter strategy might be to go for the rifle, however; pull it out of his hand and throw it as far as she can, thus levering the playing field and letting the men do the wrestling.

There’s really no more time to think, as the guy and Henrik are already getting closer. Sebastian and Lærke are also headed for the helicopter, but they’re walking farther away.

Dorte gets ready, her thighs tightening, her heart beating fast. Just as she’s about to make a run for it, Henrik accidentally steps in a tiny hole in the ground, almost losing his balance, causing the carpet to slip out of his hands and slump to the ground.

“Oh!” he exclaims.

“Hey, careful!” the guy shouts indignantly, still holding his end. “That’s my wife you’re carrying! Pick her back up and watch it!”

The guy’s wife, however, seems to pay little notice to the accident; she just growls on indifferently, thrashing to get free.

“Sorry,” Henrik mutters, picking the carpet back up.

“Don’t let that happen again,” the guy sneers. “Come on, let’s go!”

Okay, now!

Dorte slips out from behind the tree, revealing herself fully for an instance, and heads straight for the guy. His back is halfway turned and he’s less than ten paces away—farther than she was hoping but still close enough that she’s confident she can close the distance before he has time to see her.

Her eyes are locked on the weapon hanging from the guy’s right hand—she’s decided to go for the rifle, hoping to rip it from his hand before he has time to react. She runs as fast as she can, yet it feels like she moves in slow motion. She doesn’t even notice Henrik seeing her, or how his eyes grow wide before he can help himself. Had the guy been looking at Henrik at that moment, the surprised expression on his face would have no doubt given her away.

But the guy is focused on the uneven ground and his feet, and there’s no way he’s going to see Dorte.

She feels a wild elation as she realizes she’s going to make it—only three more steps and she can grab the rifle.

Then, a voice cuts through the air: “Look out! Behind you!”

Suddenly, everything jumps from slow motion into high speed.

The guy snaps his head around, his eyes locking on Dorte, a brief look of shock flashing across his face.

Dorte reaches out both arms, going for the rifle.

The guy utters a cry of surprise.

The rifle swings upwards, the barrel points right at Dorte, and then there’s suddenly nothing but blackness.

She doesn’t hear the sound of the rifle going off.

She doesn’t see the flash from the muzzle, either.

By the time those sensory inputs reach the appropriate centers of her brain, her brain is no longer located within her skull.

THIRTY-NINE

Dan sees everything happen from where he’s standing.

It’s like being trapped in a nightmare with no way of waking up. In the seconds leading up to the rifle going off, Dan is keenly aware of his surroundings.

Sebastian and Lærke are farthest away, headed for the helicopter.

His dad and the guy with the rifle are following them, carrying the carpet with the writhing zombie woman inside it.

William has only just left the roadside, carrying the guy’s daughter in a clumsy, backwards embrace.

Ali and Nasira are standing on Dan’s right side.

Ozzy is barking from the trunk of William’s car behind him.

And Eli is standing off to the side, looking like he wants to make himself invisible.

Where’s Dorte?

The thought hits him just as he sees her step out from behind the tree.

The determination on her face is enough to tell Dan what she’s doing even before she gets moving towards the guy.

The next thing Dan hears is a gasp coming from Eli, and he turns his head to look at him.

Eli has seen Dorte too, and he’s lifting one hand to point. Then he cries out: “Look out! Behind you!”

Dan turns his head back to look over at Dorte. She’s very close to the guy, almost there, in fact, but not quite. And the guy has already spun his head around and seen her.

Dan wants to cry out.

Wants to shout to Dorte to get out of the way.

But there’s no time.

And then the shot rings out over the moor, hitting Dan’s eardrums like the flick of a finger.

He sees Dorte’s head snap back as her face turns to the sky. He sees the red crater appear under her chin. And he sees her tilt backwards. She lands in the soft heather without so much as a sound.

For several seconds, there’s only a shrill ringing in Dan’s ears.

Then, sounds slowly make their way back. First, it’s Ozzy barking madly from the car. Then it’s Ali crying and Nasira comforting him. Then, a little farther away, Lærke sobbing, too. Then, finally, William’s voice, shouting.

“… fucking asshole! What the fuck are you thinking? You piece of shit, you fucking killed her!”

The guy is just standing there, staring down at Dorte, still holding both the rifle and the end of the carpet.

“I … I didn’t mean to …” Dan hears him mutter. “She attacked me …”

“She was just going for the rifle!” William shouts, his voice breaking. “You didn’t have to fucking kill her, you fucking piece-of-shit psycho!”

The guy visibly fights to regain control of himself as he turns away from Dorte and looks at William. His face has gone pale, and he looks almost seasick.

“She shouldn’t have done that,” he says, swallowing with an obvious effort. “That was her own fault.”

“Fuck you!” William spits. “You carry your own fucking dead daughter!” And he drops the girl to the ground.

The rifle, which is hanging like a dead snake from the guy’s hand, smoking dully, suddenly snaps back to life as the guy swings it back up to point at William’s chest.

The guy screams loud enough for spittle to go flying from his mouth: “You pick her up right now, or I’ll fucking blow your head off, too!”

William just breathes hard through his nose. He looks briefly to Dorte, then back at the guy. “You didn’t have to fucking kill her,” he croaks. Even from this far away, Dan can see the tears forming in William’s eyes.

“Pick up my daughter,” the guy sneers.

The girl is twisting and turning at William’s feet, but William doesn’t move.

“William!” Dan suddenly hears himself call out, and William turns his head and meets his eye. Dan nods. “It’s okay. Live to fight another day, right? That’s what you told me in the bunker, remember?”

William’s face crumbles for a moment, then he gets it back under control. “He fucking killed her, man …”

“I know,” Dan says. “Don’t provoke him to kill you too. We need you.”

William still doesn’t move.

Dan gets the impression that everyone is watching him, including the guy with the rifle, waiting for William’s reaction.

Then William takes a deep breath. Bends down and picks the zombie girl back up.

“That’s right,” the guy mutters. “One more time you mess with me and it’ll be your last.”

William doesn’t answer, he just looks straight ahead.

FORTY

The inside of William’s face is burning. He’s so angry and so upset, it’s all he can do to keep it in. If he got the chance, he would jump the guy in a heartbeat, wrestle the gun from him and beat him to death with it.

But he won’t get the chance. He knows that. The guy is very alert and very careful now, constantly looking around as they move closer to the helicopter.

“What are you waiting for?” the guy asks as he sees Sebastian and Lærke stopping at a distance from the helicopter. “You get in there and start it up!”

“I need to check something out here, first,” Sebastian says, his voice still surprisingly calm. “It looks like this thing had a rough landing; if the rotors aren’t working properly, we’ll never get her off the ground.”

“All right, well, make it quick,” the guy obliges begrudgingly, waving the gun like it’s a conductor’s staff. “But no funny business, or you know what’ll happen!”

Sebastian just nods once, then goes to the back of the helicopter. Lærke stays put, as Sebastian obviously instructed her. As Sebastian passes by William, he darts him a quick, knowing look.

And that’s when William recalls the fat lady and the guy on the other side of the helicopter—he had completely forgotten about them.

Listening, he can actually hear them both groan softly. The sound is drowned out by the maneuvering of the guy’s wife and daughter, and the guy hasn’t heard it.

That’s our last chance, William thinks, feeling a jab of hope. If I can find some way to lure him to the other side …

Just as he thinks it, he realizes he won’t need to lure the guy anywhere, because the fat lady comes waddling into view, passing around the front end of the helicopter, as she’s obviously sensed a much larger meal on this side.

Lærke is the first one to notice her, and she gives off a whimper.

The guy doesn’t hear it. He’s fumbling with the sliding door, trying to get it open. “How the hell does this thing work?” he grunts, and tells Henrik: “Let’s put ’er down for a second.”

Henrik looks all too willing to oblige, and they lay the carpet down carefully on the ground.

Then the guy sets down the rifle, leans it against the helicopter, the barrel pointed at the sky, allowing him to attack the door with both hands.

William can’t believe it. For the second time, the guy is about to be ambushed from behind. And this time, Eli, that fucking piece of low-life shit, is too far away to warn the guy.

The fat lady is headed right for him, and the guy still hasn’t seen her. The lady has stopped groaning, almost as if she knows to be quiet.

Henrik sees the woman, suppresses a yell of surprise and steps sideways to get out of Dodge.

“Where the fuck are you going?” the guy snarls. “I need your help here!”

“I … uhm,” Henrik fumbles for an excuse. “I thought I’d help out the pilot.”

The guy doesn’t reply, just mutters something to himself and yanks the handle hard, causing the entire helicopter to sway. “Is this fucking door locked, or what?”

Just as the woman reaches out for the guy, he apparently senses her, because he suddenly stops, grabs the rifle and jumps away.

He looks back and sees the lady taking up pursuit. “What the fuck! Where did you come from? Stop! Stop, I said!”

The woman doesn’t obey, she just keeps coming at him. And now the other zombie appears behind her, also going for the guy.

The guy puts the rifle to his shoulder and shoots the lady right in the face. She doesn’t go down gracefully like Dorte; she collapses with a moan and a thud, landing like a sack of potatoes. Then the guy reloads, takes aim again and puts down the dead guy in the hazmat suit.

William’s stomach drops.

The guy rounds on William, panting. “Why didn’t you warn me?”

William scowls at him. “Didn’t see them coming.”

“The fuck you didn’t,” the guy sneers back. He turns to look at Sebastian, who’s standing by the rear end of the helicopter, hands at his sides. “You didn’t need to check anything, did you? You knew they were there! You all knew! You were hoping they would take me out. Well, lucky for me I was just too fast—again!”

William bites down hard to keep in what he wants to say.

The guy goes back to the helicopter door, pointing the rifle at Henrik. “You stay right fucking there and warn me if anyone else tries to sneak up on me! Got that?”

Henrik nods.

The guy grabs the handle once more, tearing at it with fury.

This time, the door gives way without resistance, sliding open all the way, revealing a woman crouched down, holding what appears to be a metal rod in a ready-to-strike baseball position.

The guy hasn’t even got time to raise his arms before she swings at him, clubbing him right on the jaw with a sickening crack, dropping him to the ground.

FORTY-ONE

“Holy shit,” William mutters. “I completely forgot someone was in there …”

The woman—mid-forties, heavyset, dark hair, a very worn expression on her face—puts down the rod and looks out at them. “I saw and heard everything,” she says in a tired voice.

“Well … thank you,” Henrik mutters.

William drops the zombie girl for the second time and steps over the guy to pick up the rifle. It’s the first time he’s ever held a gun, and it’s surprisingly heavy. It also gives him an immediate sense of power. He looks back towards the road and waves at Dan and the rest. “It’s okay! You can come over now!”

The woman climbs out of the helicopter, stretches her legs and her back and gives off a sigh. “You don’t by chance have anything to eat?”

“If you don’t mind McDonald’s, I didn’t finish my cheeseburger,” Henrik says.

She looks at him. “Honestly, I would eat anything right now.”

“Let me get it for you.”

“How long were you in there?” William asks as Henrik leaves.

“Most of the day,” the woman says, looking up at the sky while rubbing her eyes. “I tried to get out a couple of times, but”—she gestures towards the corpses of the zombies—“they wouldn’t let me.”

Sebastian takes a peek inside the helicopter. “Looks like quite the party you had.”

The woman just shakes her head.

Sebastian reaches in, pulls out a roll of extension cord and begins to tie the guy’s hands behind his back.

“How did you end up in the helicopter?” William asks.

“I was flying my dad out for medical tests. He’s … he’s still inside.”

“Oh, sorry about that,” William says, as he stretches his neck to see an older guy hanging off of a gurney, obviously dead. “What happened?”

The woman shakes her head again, and William takes it to mean she’s not in the mood for reiterating right now.

Dan, Nasira and Ali join them. A bit farther back is Eli, looking like he can’t decide on whether to run or stay.

“Thank you,” Dan says to the woman.

“I’m the one who should be thanking you,” she says. “I’m Josefine, by the way.”

Henrik comes back with his paper bag and his Coke. The woman grabs the Coke, rips off the lid and downs every last drop. Then she digs into the bag and begins chowing down the burger.

“It looks okay to fly,” Sebastian says—he’s been checking out the helicopter front and back. “As far as I can tell, nothing essential is damaged.”

“It wasn’t a real crash, I guess,” Josefine says with her mouth full. “It was hard enough for everything to go flying, thought I thought we would all die.”

“How many were onboard?” Henrik asks.

“Besides the four of us, just the pilot. He got out and fled.”

“Leaving you with your dead dad and a couple of zombies outside,” William remarks. “What a hero.”

“My dad wasn’t dead,” Josefine says, and she pauses chewing for a couple of seconds. “Not at that time.”

William looks inside the helicopter again, and this time he notices the dried-up blood staining the gurney and the floor. There’s a deep cut at the base of the neck of the old guy. Right below lies a bloody scalpel.

“Holy hell,” he whispers, looking at Josefine. “Did you … did you do that?”

“William,” Henrik says. “I don’t think she wants to talk about that right now.”

“I did,” Josefine says plainly. “My dad would have wanted it.”

And that seems to be all that’s needed to be said; no one else asks any further questions, and Josefine calmly resumes eating the burger.

“Okay, you just earned cart blanche to join our group,” William says. “We need people like you onboard.”

Josefine scoffs. “People like me?”

“Yes. People with balls. No offense to the rest of the group …” He looks around and shrugs. “But I don’t think any of us could have … yeah. Anyway, my point is, you’re more than welcome to come with us.”

She looks over at him, sucking ketchup from her fingertips. “You’re taking the helicopter? Are you a pilot?”

“I am,” Sebastian says.

She looks at him. “Where are you going?”

“We didn’t decide yet,” William says. “But we’re open to suggestions. For now, just the hell out of here.”

Josefine seems to consider it. “What about him?” She nods towards the guy on the ground. He’s still unconscious, but has begun moaning and moving his head a little, like someone trying to wake up from a deep slumber. The lower left side of his face has turned a nasty purple color and swollen to the point where it looks like the guy is hiding a tennis ball inside his cheek.

William dearly hopes it’ll hurt like hell once the asshole wakes back up.

“I say we leave him,” Henrik says. “He can get free once he wakes up. By then, we’ll be gone.”

“What about his wife and daughter, then?”

They look over at the two zombies still wrapped up in the self-made straightjackets.

“We leave them too,” William says.

Josefine nods. “I don’t suppose I can bring my mother?”

“Sorry, but we’re completely full,” Sebastian says. “Even with these nine people, it’ll be a tight fit.”

“Whoa,” William says. “Nine?”

Sebastian shrugs and looks around. “I count nine of us.”

William laughs and points the rifle over at Eli, still standing a fair distance away, looking like he just peed himself. “You want to take this piece of shit along? After what he did to Dorte?” William looks at Eli, baring his teeth in a snarl. “What the fuck are you even still doing here, asshole? Get the hell away from here!”

“I … I want to come with you …” he croaks.

“Yeah? Well, that’s not going to happen. We don’t want fucking traitors around.”

“I’m sorry,” Eli says, moving in place. “I … I didn’t mean for that to happen … I didn’t think he’d kill her … I just … I just really wanted to get on the helicopter …”

“Sure, you wanted to save your own sorry ass,” William spits. “And your selfishness killed Dorte.”

“I didn’t kill her!” Eli protests, his voice shaking as though he’s about to cry. “I didn’t pull the trigger! He did!” He points to the guy still lying unconscious on the ground.

“Fuck you!” William shouts. “I’ll pull the trigger on you if you don’t fuck off!”

“William,” Henrik says again.

“No, don’t you start!” William says, snapping his head around to look at Henrik. “Don’t you go good cop on me. We can’t trust him. He’s not coming. End of story!”

“I didn’t say we could trust him,” Henrik says, keeping his voice calm. “I’m just saying, we could fly him somewhere safe, then part ways with him. Do you really want to just leave him here? He’ll probably die.”

“Serves him right for what he did,” William says, grinding his teeth as he realizes to his horror just how close to tears he is.

“I’m the one who told you about the helicopter!” Eli argues. “If it wasn’t for me, you’d have no way out of here either!”

William is about to approach Eli, when Henrik steps in front of him.

“Listen, you’re better than this,” he says in a fatherly voice, ignoring Eli completely. “If we leave him to die, wouldn’t that make us murderers?”

William is still pointing the rifle at Eli, but the barrel is shaking so much now, he would probably miss the shot if he fired.

“All right,” he finally says. “All right, we’ll have a vote. We’re a democracy, right? Every opinion matters. By show of hands, who wants to bring this piece of shit along with us?”

To William’s utter surprise, Dan puts up his hand almost immediately.

So does his father.

And Nasira. And a moment later, Ali.

Neither Sebastian, Lærke nor Josefine raise theirs, filling William with a sense of relief.

“I agree with William,” Sebastian says. “With very limited space, we should only bring people we can trust. It’s a matter of survival.”

“Thank you,” William says, looking around. “Well, looks like we have a tie.”

“I think Dorte’s vote should count, too,” Henrik says.

William looks at Henrik like he just made a bad joke. “Seriously? I think her vote is pretty fucking obvious.”

Henrik shrugs. “You tell me; you knew her. What would she have voted? To leave this guy to die? Or to bring him along to safety?”

William opens his mouth to say something, then changes his mind. Instead, he shakes his head, squeezing his lips together. “That’s not fair …”

“What would she have voted, William?” Henrik persists.

William shakes his head even more vigorously. “She was trying to help us,” he says, his voice suddenly raw. “She risked her life for us. She barely knew us, and she did it anyway.”

“Yes,” Henrik says, nodding. “She was very brave. And we’ll remember her for that. But we won’t sacrifice anyone else in her name. That wouldn’t be what she wanted, would it?”

William finally lowers the rifle to his side, fighting back tears now and making no particular effort to hide the fact. “I … I knew her since high school … I had a crush on her for the longest time …”

Henrik puts a hand on his shoulder. “I’m very sorry.”

“It’s all fucked up,” William whispers, lowering his head. “Everything is turning to shit … we’ll all be dead soon … it’s just a matter of time …”

He expects Henrik to say something, but instead a soft female voice comes from behind: “That’s true.”

They all turn their heads to look at Nasira. She’s standing there, holding Ali’s hand, smiling that soft smile at them.

“We will all be dead sooner or later. That’s true. That’s always been true.”

William scoffs. “You’re not good at pick-me-ups, Nasira.”

Her smile doesn’t falter. “What I mean is, death is coming for all of us. We don’t control that. God’s taken that choice out of our hands. Instead, He gave us control over how we choose to live. The test is to do the right thing.”

A moment of silence. Then, Josefine raises her hand. “I’m changing my vote.”

“You can’t,” William objects.

She goes on: “I’d be okay with taking him somewhere safer, then dropping him off. I believe he didn’t intend for anyone to get hurt.”

“I am changing my vote, too,” Lærke says, looking up at her father. “Dad?”

Sebastian raises his eyebrows. “Well, shit, I guess I am, too.”

They all look at William.

He wipes his nose and shakes his head. “You’re all insane. You want to bring someone who betrayed us once?” But his voice is weak, defeated; he can hear it all too well.

“I think we need more than a majority to make this choice,” Henrik says. “I think we should all agree, or it’s a hung jury.”

William looks around at them, then throws out his arms. “I’m sorry, but I don’t want to bring that Judas along just because I’m afraid of being judged by a god when I’m dead.” He glances at Nasira. “Sorry, but that seems hypocritical to me. My vote is still no.”

Nasira just smiles at him with understanding.

No one else seems to know what to say.

Suddenly, Dan steps over to William. He speaks to him so low that none of the others can hear—not even Henrik. “Back at Sebastian’s place, you told me about his brother—what was his name?”

William glances over at Sebastian, then whispers: “Janus.”

“Right. You said he went and tried to get his girlfriend out from a grocery store, but they both died. And he called you a coward for not going with him.”

“What’s your point?”

“Would you do it now?”

“Would I do what?”

“Would you go with him into that store if you had another chance to do it?”

William looks at Dan for the longest time. Then, finally, he nods.

“So you regret you didn’t try and help him?”

Dan asks the question with no judgement, and William takes no offense, simply nods again.

“There you go,” Dan whispers. “We all make mistakes when we’re scared.”

William looks down. Then back up at Dan. “I knew I shouldn’t have picked you up. I knew you’d be nothing but trouble.”

Dan smiles. “Sorry.”

William smiles back. “No, you’re not.” He turns to Henrik and says: “I change my vote.” Then he looks over at Eli. “But if you do anything like that again, I promise you, I’ll personally kick you off the damn helicopter.”

FORTY-TWO

“Everybody, please gather around!”

William waves the group closer together in front of the helicopter.

Dan looks back over at the road as he hears a car passing. Luckily, though, it just speeds right by.

William’s car is still parked by the roadside. He decided to leave it with the keys still in the ignition, donating it to whoever might come by and need it.

Sebastian’s car, on the other hand, has been driven onto the moor and is parked behind a couple of trees, so that it’s not immediately visible from the road.

Sebastian decided to hide it on the off chance he’ll come back here and need it. Not that he thought it likely, he added.

Dan can’t see why they would want to return. In fact, he’s itching to get out of here.

The green SUV is also still parked by the roadside. Inside it is the guy, who has regained consciousness and, judging from the way the car is swaying, is trying to get free from his restrains.

William found a packet of shells for the rifle when they put the guy in the back of the SUV. They decided to take along both the rifle and the ammo.

“Had this been in the US,” William had remarked with a wry smile, “we’d all be carrying a semiautomatic and a couple of hand grenades. Instead, we’ve only got a sorry hunting rifle.”

Now, as they huddle together, William looks at Sebastian, who’s wearing the pilot’s helmet.

“Our pilot has got some instructions before we take off.”

Sebastian clears his throat. “Yes. I’ll show everyone their place in a moment. We don’t have enough seats for all of us, so we’ll need to be creative. Once we get airborne, it’s important you don’t unbuckle unless I tell you to. Don’t stand up. Don’t touch anything. There will be a fair bit of noise, and we’ve only got two headsets, so if you want to tell me anything you think is important, tap whoever’s got the headset on the shoulder, and we’ll pass it on.” He puts his hand on the helicopter. “Besides that, everything looks fine with our flight. She’s got an almost full tank, which is very lucky. All that’s left is to decide where to go.”

“How far will a full tank get us?” Henrik asks.

“Five hundred miles if the wind is good.”

“What’s the wind got to do with it?” William asks. “It’s not exactly a sailboat.”

“No, but the weather still makes a big difference in how much fuel we use.” He reaches inside, pulls out an old-school paper map, unfolds it and holds it so everyone can see. “We’re right here.” He points to a spot at the lower part of Denmark, then draws a circle around it with his fingers. “And this is approximately how far we can go. Basically, we don’t have that many options. We can head south and reach some of the mainland countries; Germany, Poland or the Netherlands. Or, we can go north and reach Sweden or Norway. We could also go west and head for England, but that’s a risky move, as it’s just on the edge of how far we can go, and we might end up in the ocean.”

“Okay,” William says thoughtfully. “That narrows it down. Three choices. Up, down or left. Left being the most risky one, but maybe also the most attractive one.”

“How’s that?” Henrik asks.

“Well, I mean, England is an island, first of all, which means the zombies probably haven’t reached it yet. So we’ll have time to find a way to get farther away, and they have big airports over there with connections all around the world. Maybe, we could even catch a flight to the States or Canada. That would put us halfway around the world, and out of any danger in case the Americans decides to make Europe into a radioactive parking lot.”

“What are you talking about?” Josefine asks, frowning.

“You didn’t get a chance to check Facebook?” William asks.

She shakes her head. “My phone broke when we crashed.”

“We don’t know anything yet,” Henrik interjects before William can say anymore. “But there’re rumors going about.”

“Rumors?”

“Well, some politicians are calling for the UN to consider certain … emergency protocols if the authorities can’t get the contagion under control.”

A moment of silence passes through the group.

Sebastian clears his throat. “I think there’s also a fair chance the English airports have been shut down by the time we get there. If we get there. I personally don’t think it’s worth the risk.”

“All right,” William says. “England’s out of the picture for now. Let’s talk south, then.” He points to the map. “I say that’s the least attractive choice. We’ll be moving away from the oceans and farther inland. We’ll also place ourselves among all the big cities of Germany, France and Poland. Not to mention—once again—that the whole of central Europe might soon become a war zone.”

“We could make a short stop for gas somewhere in Germany,” Josefine suggests. “Then head on south. Head for Spain, or maybe even Africa.”

“Most of northern Africa is desert,” Sebastian remarks. “Which means tough climate and not many natural resources. And the cities there are packed with people. If the infection reaches that continent, it would be a bad place to be.”

“I also think Germany will be overrun by zombies and fugitives within a day or two,” William adds.

“How about east?” Henrik says, pointing to Russia on the map. “Why did we disqualify that right away? I mean, most of Eurasia is empty wastelands, but the climate is decent. We could head out into the middle of nowhere and wait out the situation.”

“I like that,” William says. “That’s a far-looking, low-risk plan.”

“I’m not sure it’s doable, though,” Sebastian says. “It’s simply too far away.”

“We can stop in Sweden and get more gas,” William suggests.

Sebastian shakes his head. “We’d have to make more than one stop. You’re forgetting how large Russia is. Even to get past Moscow, would take up five or six full tanks. By that time, the helicopter will need a service check. And we’d be running low on food and water. And how far into the wasteland could we go before we run out of places to stop for fuel?” He shrugs. “I think we’d end up stranded.”

Another moment of silence.

“Okay, then north is the last option,” William concludes. “Norway or Sweden?”

“It would make little difference which one we choose,” Henrik says. “They’re basically the same peninsula.”

“Then what’s the long-term plan?” Josefine asks. “Do we just find a cottage way up above the artic circle and try to survive the winter?”

“Hey!” William exclaims, snapping his fingers and looking at Josefine with elation. “You just said it. The arctic climate! That might be exactly what we need.”

Everyone looks at him uncomprehending.

“How so?” Sebastian asks.

“The freezing weather might stop the zombies. Don’t you see? They’ve got no pulse, no heartbeat or metabolism or anything; Dorte told us that. Wouldn’t that mean they’ll basically turn to ice if they venture into a climate with temperatures below thirty?”

“That … that might happen,” Henrik says.

“But we would have no way of knowing for sure,” Josefine adds. “And if they don’t, wouldn’t we be trapped if we go to the northern most part of Norway and Sweden? I mean, there would be nowhere else to go besides the Arctic Sea.”

The group falls silent once more. They all look at the map, then at each other.

“Wait, what’s that?” Dan asks, pointing to a small group of islands between Iceland and England.

“That’s the Faroe Islands,” Sebastian says.

“Why don’t we head there?”

“Uhm, because that’s well beyond five hundred miles,” William reminds him.

“Yes, but with a stopover in Norway, we could reach it—couldn’t we?”

Sebastian eyes the map, considering it. “I guess it could be done, yes. But talk about being stranded—isn’t a small island in the middle of the North Atlantic the most stranded place to be?”

“Stranded,” Henrik agrees, “or isolated?”

“I think I see where you’re going with this,” William jumps in. “The Faroe Islands are small enough to defend. There aren’t many people up there, and it’s far enough away that not many others will be able to make it there, even if they wanted to. It’s fertile enough to grow crops and civilized enough that they have all the machines and technology we’d need.” He talks faster and faster. “Looking at it long-term, I think it might be our best bet. And besides, if things turn too hot, we would still have the helicopter and we could get out of there again.”

Yet again, the group falls silent, but this time, it’s different. This time, they all look at each other with careful optimism, waiting to see if anybody comes up with an objection. Once nobody does, William claps his hands together.

“Perfect. It’s settled, then.”

FORTY-THREE

“Everyone ready?” William calls out. “Let’s get boarded. Please get to gate 6 and have your passport ready.”

They’ve spent ten minutes making the helicopter ready, pulling out Josefine’s dad and placing him next to the still-tied-up zombie mother and daughter. Josefine kissed him on the forehead, which made Dan choke up.

For the first time in several hours, he thinks of his mother. The only consolation is that she didn’t end up a zombie, didn’t get eaten alive like so many others. She ended things on her own terms.

They pulled out both gurneys and some additional stuff which only served to take up space. The inside of the helicopter feels a little less crammed now, and they’ll just be able to fit inside all nine of them. Sebastian has made improvised seat belts for all of them, using nylon straps secured to the walls.

“Wait, we’re missing someone,” Dan’s father says, just as Dan is about to climb up. “Where’s Nasira and Ali?”

Dan looks around and sees them standing off to the side. Nasira is bent over and talking to Ali, her hands placed on his shoulders, and Ali is staring up at her with wide, terrified eyes.

“Nasira!” William calls out. “It’s time to go!”

She doesn’t react to William’s call right away. Instead, she pulls her brother into a tight embrace, and Dan can see him beginning to cry against her shoulder.

Oh, no, Dan thinks with a sinking feeling in his gut. Something’s wrong …

Then, Nasira takes Ali’s hand and walks over to them.

“What was that about?” William asks, frowning. “It looked like a goodbye.”

“It was,” Nasira says. “I’m not coming with you. But Ali is.”

“Why?” Dan blurts out before William can. “Why aren’t you coming, Nasira?”

She looks at him, her dark eyes shiny with tears, but her lips still smiling at the corners. “Because of this,” she says calmly, holding up her hand and spreading out the fingers to reveal a thin cut on the inside of her ring finger. The skin is turning pink around the cut.

“Oh, shit!” William backs away a couple of steps, grabbing Dan by the shoulder. “Is that from a zombie?”

“It is,” Nasira says, still very calm.

“How did you get it?” William asks, glancing over at the two zombies. “I didn’t see you go anywhere near them?”

“I didn’t. I got it yesterday. In the car. Right before Henrik came and saved us. The girl scratched me just as I was trying to close the window.”

“Shit!” William shouts. “And you’ve had it the whole time? And you didn’t tell us? Jesus Christ!”

“What’s the problem?” Henrik asks, joining them. “Why are you shouting like that, William?”

“She’s infected!” William exclaims, pointing accusatorily at Nasira. “She’s been infected the whole damn time!”

Dan sees his father looking at Nasira, then down at her hand, then back up at her face. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he says.

“Sorry?” William says. “She’s been lying to us.”

“Please, let me explain,” Nasira says. “I know I’ve been wrongfully keeping the truth from you, and I’m sorry for that. But I always intended to tell you when the time was right.”

“The time was right the moment you got the scratch!” William shouts.

“William,” Henrik says, his voice unusually demanding. “Please, calm down. Nothing’s happened.”

“How do you know? How do you know she didn’t infect anyone else?”

“I didn’t touch anybody except my brother,” Nasira goes on. “And I was very careful so as to not scratch him. I’m the only one sick. You can believe me.”

“The hell I can,” William mutters, turning away.

Dan and his father look at Nasira and Ali crying by her side.

“You understand, don’t you?” she asks, looking at them in turn. “I just wanted to spend a little more time with my brother in this lifetime.”

Dan feels a lump form in his throat the size of an orange. He tries to say something, but can’t, so he simply nods.

“Oh, Nasira,” his father says. “I’m really very sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Nasira says. “Just promise to take care of Ali.”

“I will,” Henrik says right away. “We all will.”

“I knew you would,” she says, smiling. “He doesn’t understand, he’s too young, and he’s already lost both his parents. So please bear with him through the grief.”

“We will,” Dan’s father repeats, this time his voice is choked.

Nasira nods, smiles, then looks down at Ali and tells him something in Arabic. He begins to cry even more and clutches her.

“I told him it’s time to go,” she says to Dan and his father.

The rest of the group has joined them without Dan even noticing. Apparently, William has told them the bad news, because they’re all just staring at Nasira.

Josefine steps forward, holding out her hand at Ali. “Come with me, Ali.”

“Please, go with Josefine,” Nasira says, gently nudging Ali forward.

“Wait,” Dan hears himself say—at first, it’s not loud enough for anyone to hear, so he repeats it: “Wait!”

Nasira looks at him and smiles. “It’s okay, Dan. There’s no need to—”

“When did you say you got that scratch?”

“Yesterday.”

“Around noon?”

Nasira thinks for a moment. “Yes. But what does it matter?”

Dan shakes his head firmly. “That can’t be from a zombie, then. You wouldn’t still be alive.”

William looks over at him. “You sure about that?”

“A hundred percent. I’ve seen … I’ve seen people die from scratches that small.” The image of Jennie pops into his head, and he needs to take a deep breath in order to go on. “They didn’t even live half an hour. The fever came within ten minutes or so.” He looks at William and the rest of them. “Think about it; you’ve probably all seen people die. How long did it take? Certainly not a day and a half. Plus, Nasira isn’t even spiking a fever yet!”

They all look at Nasira.

She looks at Dan, and for once, the smile on her lips wavers. “I’m certain this scratch was made by a dead person; I felt it happen. Her nail grazed me.”

“That does look like the cut from a fingernail,” William adds.

“Well, it can’t be,” Dan persists. “It just can’t. It makes no sense.”

“Maybe it is,” his father says, looking at Nasira thoughtfully. “And maybe something else is going on here.”

“Like what?” William asks.

Henrik is silent for a moment. “Nasira believes in God,” he says. “Very much so. Maybe her faith is somehow … I don’t know, protecting her, slowing the infection down. Hell, maybe it’s even fighting it off.”

William immediately shakes his head. “That’s just silly. How would faith fight off a virus? I hate to be the buzzkill here, but I heard about a study on prayers, where they tested praying for sick people, and it made no difference.”

Dan’s father ignores William and looks instead at Dan. “You told us how this whole thing started. It wasn’t a medical experiment gone wrong or a super virus made in a laboratory … it was voodoo. Voodoo is a belief system.”

Dan nods slowly, looking at Nasira, his heart pounding away in his chest. “I think … I think my dad could be right. Dorte told us this wasn’t traceable in any way in the body. I’ve thought about that a lot. I don’t think this is a physical disease; I think it’s a spiritual one.”

“Oh, come on,” William blurts out.

“How else would you explain it?” Dan says, turning to William. “You heard what Dorte said.”

“Okay, so, spiritual or not,” William says, running a hand through his hair. “What do we do?”

“I say we bring her,” Dan says right away.

“What?”

“We need to find out what happens to her.”

“Dan’s right,” his father agrees. “Nasira might give us the answer to this. Maybe even a cure.”

“I agree this could be something important,” Sebastian chimes in. “But what if she dies while we’re in the air? It’ll take us at least six hours to reach Norway, and once we’re over open water, there’ll be nowhere to land.”

William is about to say something when someone screams behind them.

Dan whirls around and sees Eli standing by the carpet with the rolled-up zombie woman inside it. Somehow, she’s managed to squeeze out one arm and has clawed her way over to Eli. She’s now holding on to his ankle as he kicks at her frantically to get her off.

“Let go! Let go of me!” he screams.

“Goddamnit,” Dan’s father utters.

“Help me!” Eli screams as he falls on his ass and tries to crawl away backwards, only managing to drag the woman and the carpet along. “Someone please help me!”

Dan automatically steps forward, not even sure what he’s going to do to help Eli, when William comes rushing in from the side. He stops a few paces away, aims the rifle and pulls the trigger.

The head of the woman bounces off the ground, and then she lies completely still. Her hand lets go of Eli’s leg and he’s free to squirm away, panting and sobbing.

William steps over to the girl and begins reloading the rifle. From the SUV, Dan can hear the man roaring and throwing himself against the inside of the door, causing the car to sway back and forth.

“Don’t you do it! Don’t you fucking do it! You get away from her! You get away from my dau—”

The guy is cut off as William pulls the trigger again, executing the girl with a single, well-placed shot.

Inside the car, the guy’s shouting turns to inarticulate cries of anguish.

William turns to the group with a grim look on his face. “It’s better this way,” he mutters. “They won’t cause trouble for anyone else.”

No one disagrees—except for the guy in the SUV.

William hands the rifle to Dan, then walks over to Eli, who’s still sitting on the heather, breathing fast, staring at the dead woman who almost got him.

“Hey, you,” William says, stopping in front of him. “Show me your ankle.”

Eli looks up at him, squinting, his lips quivering. “Wh … what?”

“Take off your shoe. Show me your ankle. Are you hurt?”

There’s no compassion in William’s voice; he’s obviously not asking out of concern for Eli’s well-being. Eli is wearing black, worn-down Converse canvas shoes, the kind with high shafts, covering the ankles.

Eli shakes his head and wipes snot from his upper lip with the back of his hand. “She … she didn’t scratch me … nothing happened …”

“Show me your ankle,” William repeats calmly. “Or you’re not coming on that helicopter.”

“Come on,” Eli says. Then, when William doesn’t budge, he looks around at the rest of them, apparently looking for support. They all just stare back at him in silence. “Are you really going to make me do this?” Eli says, something like hurt in his voice now. “Can’t you just take my word for it?”

“Your word isn’t worth much,” William says plainly. “That shoe comes off, or you stay here.”

Eli scowls at him for a moment, the shock of being grabbed by the zombie completely gone from his face now. Then, with brisk movements, he unties the shoe and pulls it off.

“There! You see? No scratch marks.”

“Hold on,” William says, as Eli is about to put the shoe back on. “Let me see …”

Eli holds out his foot with a sigh of annoyance, and William steps closer, leaning in to study it.

“Turn it over,” he mutters.

Eli does so.

“Dan, come over here,” William says without taking his eyes off the foot. “Tell me if you see anything.”

Dan steps over and takes a look. There are no marks of any kind that he can see.

“I think it’s clean,” he says.

“Clean is the last word I’d use,” William says, wrinkling his nose. “It smells like shit. When’s the last time you showered?”

“Fuck you,” Eli mutters.

“But I don’t see any scratch marks, either,” William says, addressing the group. “I think he’s okay.”

“Great,” Eli says. “Can I put my fucking shoe back on now?”

“You can. Now, let’s get out of here before more trouble finds us.”

FORTY-FOUR

Dennis used to be a heavy sleeper before all of this happened. He would usually be gone the minute his head hit the pillow. Now, every time he lies down, it’s a struggle to even drift off.

And tonight is no different; in fact, tonight is worse. Because tonight, he doesn’t even have Mom sleeping next to him.

Instead, he’s lying on a couch in Holger’s upstairs bedroom. Like the rest of the house, this room is crammed with unusual stuff like pieces of machinery, tools, piles of books and weird posters all over the walls. There’s a slanting window showing him a rectangular cutout of the black night sky. Dennis tries to identify any constellations to get his mind off of things—but he only knows Orion and the Big Dipper, and he can’t see either of them from this angle.

His digital Spiderman watch has a nifty button that lights up the screen, and Dennis keeps checking the time every five minutes or so. The clock is getting close to midnight.

Is Mom sleeping right now?

He tries to imagine her, down in the bunker, lying on the bed. But he has a hard time picturing Mom sleeping. Instead, he sees her pacing back and forth, waiting impatiently for him to bring her what she needs.

A strand of hair.

From Silas.

Dennis has no idea how he’ll be able to get it without Silas noticing. He was planning to wait until Silas was asleep, but wouldn’t you wake up if someone pulled out one of your hairs?

Dennis’s own hair is golden and buzzcut and a lot shorter than Silas’s. He picks one out at the top of his head and gives a short, hard tug. The pain isn’t too bad. In fact, he could barely feel it.

But will Silas?

And if he does feel it, what will he do to Dennis?

Still, Dennis knows there’s no way around it. Mom needs him. He can’t fail her. He needs to try.

Dennis takes a deep breath, and at that exact moment, the television turns off downstairs. He’s been listening to the hum of it all evening, but now the house falls completely quiet.

A voice from downstairs: “Going to bed.” Silas.

Another voice replies: “Did you check the windows?” Jonas.

Dennis holds his breath and strains to hear.

“Uh-huh. You sleeping downstairs?”

“Nah, I think I’ll crash here. Hey, since you’re up, could you grab me another beer?”

“You getting hammered might not be the smartest move.”

“Fine, I’ll get it myself.”

“We’ve got a lot of work cut out for us the next couple of days.”

“Sure, Mom. You sleep tight now.”

“Asshole.”

Snorting laughter. Then, footsteps across the floor. A door opens and closes again. Silence.

Dennis just lies there for a couple of seconds, his heart throbbing in his throat.

From what he just heard, Jonas went to bed—probably in Holger’s bedroom. But Silas stayed up. He wanted another beer. And he’s going to sleep on the couch in the living room.

If Silas gets drunk, maybe he’ll sleep heavier. Maybe this is the chance Dennis needs.

He waits fifteen minutes, waiting for Silas to hopefully drift off. He tries to prepare himself. Tries to come up with an excuse in case Silas wakes up and sees him reaching for his hair.

He can’t use the bug thing again; Silas will see right through that. The more he thinks of it, the more he realizes there is no good excuse for him to be sneaking up on Silas while he sleeps and trying to pluck a hair from his head. If he does wake up, Dennis will simply have to take the trash.

Maybe Silas will beat him up. Maybe he’ll even kill him. Most likely, though, he’ll lock him up with Mom. And honestly, that would probably be the best thing to happen to him right now—even if he had to take a beating first.

Besides, that way he could bring the hair to Mom. As long as Silas doesn’t notice it, and a hair shouldn’t be difficult to hide in your hand; Dennis has already succeeded in it once.

The thought of being with Mom again gives Dennis just enough courage to get up and leave the room. Luckily, neither the door nor floorboards creak as he slips out to the stairs. He walks down one step at a time, touching the banister lightly with his fingertips and listening intently for any sounds.

Halfway down, the staircase turns, and by crouching down, Dennis can peer through the banister and get a view over the living room.

The room is dark except for a single point of light which immediately draws his eye. On the couch facing the turned-off television lies Silas, his head resting on the armrest. The light comes from his phone, which he’s browsing, the display lighting up his greasy forehead.

He reaches out one hand and, without taking his eyes off the phone, grabs a beer can from the coffee table. He chugs down several big gulps, then lets out a burb and resumes scrolling on the phone.

Dennis feels pretty safe from where he’s crouching, the banisters are mostly hiding him, and even if Silas gets up and looks over here, he’ll have time to slip back upstairs before he sees him. So, he decides to stay where he is and wait.

Turns out, he only needs to wait a few minutes.

Silas suddenly mutters: “Well, fuck you too, bitch,” then turns off his phone and throws it haphazardly onto the table.

Then he yawns and turns onto his side, facing the back of the couch, folding his arms across his chest.

Dennis’s eyes are used to the dark by now, and he can make out a lock of Silas’s thick, brown hair dangling over the armrest.

Dennis can’t believe his luck.

It’s almost like the hair is inviting him.

Dennis waits another ten minutes or so—although it feels more like ten hours. He wants to make sure Silas is sound asleep. Soon, he begins snoring.

Okay, it’s time. I can do this.

He gets up from his crouched position, his knees aching from sitting there so long, and begins slowly moving down the last steps.

He manages to reach the living room floor without making any noises, and he makes his way towards the couch, making sure not to touch any of Holger’s stuff.

The living room is completely quiet besides Silas’s snoring, and Dennis hardly dares to breathe. One step at a time, he edges closer to the couch, moving in from the side. His eyes are so focused on Silas’s hair that he doesn’t notice much else.

That’s why it’s not until he’s within reach of the couch that he sees the rifle leaning against the table, its barrel pointing up to the ceiling.

Dennis feels his gut tighten at the sight of the weapon. It’s like it reminds him just how risky this is. He has no way of knowing how Silas will react if he wakes up. Maybe he’ll simply grab the rifle and shoot Dennis dead, not even asking any questions.

Maybe I should take the rifle?

The thought almost makes him jump. It’s crazy, of course. He wouldn’t have the nerve to use it on anyone, not even Silas. He’s not a killer.

So he decides to press on as planned. He fixes his gaze back on Silas’s hair. And just as he manages to force his hand to move forward, Silas’s phone lights up on the table and sends out a deafening BLEE-BLEEP!

The sound really isn’t that loud, but Dennis reacts to it like it was a gunshot. He drops to his hands and knees just as Silas gives off a grunt and begins to move.

Dennis makes himself as small as possible, not daring to move a muscle, holding his breath, listening to Silas turn around on the couch.

Turning his head ever so slightly, Dennis can make out the coffee table and the gun resting against it out of the corner of his eye. He expects Silas to reach out a hand and take the phone, but no hand comes into view.

Instead, Silas smacks his lips, clears his throat, and then falls silent again. A few seconds later, he begins snoring again.

Dennis’s heart is pounding so hard in his chest, his vision is going blurry and he feels light-headed, as though he could faint any minute.

It’s okay. He didn’t wake up. Not really. It’s okay. He’s gone back to sleep.

He tries desperately to reassure himself, and it slowly works, his heart rate falling gradually to a steadier level. The sweat is prickling all over his back, and his hands are shaking now. He waits another couple of minutes for his body to relax a little.

Once he feels relatively okay again, he dares to look up. Silas’s hair is right in front of him, still hanging over the armrest, even though Silas is now facing the other way.

Dennis lifts up his hand and carefully touches the hair, trying to single out a strand. It’s hard because his hand is shaking, and he bites down hard in an effort to make it stop.

Surprisingly, it actually works. Dennis manages to grab a single hair and hold it tightly.

Here goes …

He holds his breath and yanks at the strand of hair.

He hears the tiny pluck as the hair comes off.

And then it’s in his hand.

There are no other sounds.

Silas doesn’t even move or pause snoring.

Dennis can hardly believe it.

I … I did it … I did it!

The initial elation is quickly subdued as he remembers the fact that he’s still only ten inches away from Silas and that he could wake up any moment.

Dennis turns his head and looks back over at the staircase. It seems awfully far away. Also, it’s no good going back upstairs, Dennis realizes with a sinking feeling, as he finally sees the glaring hole in his plan: he needs to bring the hair to Mom right away. She told him it needed to be fresh. He can’t hold on to it until tomorrow and then find a way to get it to her; that would be too late, and all the trouble he has just gone through will be for nothing.

The trouble is, Mom is locked in the bunker, and Silas has the key.

The thought of the key makes Dennis instinctively look to the coffee table. And there, between the beer cans, is the large keychain he saw Silas use to lock the door to Mom’s room.

Suddenly, plucking a hair off Silas’s head seems like an easy task compared to picking up a rattling keychain lying on a table right in front of Silas’s face.

But Dennis knows there’s no other way. He’s in it now, and he needs to push on.

He shifts the strand of hair carefully to his left hand, freeing up his right. Then he makes a crab-like step sideways, moving closer to the table without getting up from his kneeling position.

It’s enough to get him within reaching distance of the keys.

It also places him in plain view of Silas’s face. He glances sideways and sees Silas sleeping with an open mouth, one hand resting under his chin like a toddler. Dennis is close enough to smell the beer on his breath.

It’s okay, he’s deep asleep. Just do it.

Dennis focuses on the keys and reaches out his hand, moving over the beer cans and stopping for a moment to hover over the keychain.

Then, like a crane, he lowers it ever so slowly. His fingertips touch the metal, and he curls them around the ring. He then pulls it back up just as slowly. As the keys lift off the table, they come together and give off a low clinging rattle.

Dennis pauses for half a heartbeat, not daring to turn his head around and look at Silas. But once he hears him continue snoring, Dennis is able to move again, pulling back his arm. He doesn’t dare put the keys in his pocket, so he simply holds them out like a grenade with the pin removed as he clumsily gets to his feet. He moves carefully backwards a few steps, then turns around and begins walking away, when—

Suddenly, a noise cuts through the silence. It’s a weird sound, bumpy and scratchy at the same time, and it comes from behind Dennis, so at first, he takes it to be Silas falling to the floor for some reason. But as he spins around, he sees Silas still lying on the couch.

The noise comes again, and this time, Dennis can tell it’s coming from the other end of the living room—from outside the window. Now there’s the sound of nails whining against glass and a guttural groan, too, and the pieces fall into place in Dennis’s mind.

It’s a dead person outside. They’re trying to—

His thoughts are cut off as Silas jumps to his feet with surprising speed, grabbing the rifle and aiming it wildly in the direction of the noise.

“Oh, fuck me,” he mutters, as he realizes there’s no immediate danger, and he lowers the rifle again while turning around. “What a way to wake up …”

He doesn’t see Dennis right away, but when he does, he freezes. For a couple of seconds, they just stare at each other, Silas’s eyes scanning up and down Dennis, stopping at the keychain hanging from his hand. His expression turns dark with comprehension.

“Where the fuck are you going?”

FORTY-FIVE

Dennis tries to speak, but only manages a croaking groan.

“Huh?” Silas asks, moving closer. “I didn’t catch that?”

The rifle in his hand is pointed down at an angle, aimed at Dennis’s knees. He instinctively moves backwards, bumps into a chair and knocks over a pile of books which goes crashing to the floor.

Silas doesn’t even flinch; he just stares at Dennis and keeps moving closer.

“I asked you a question, Dennis. Where are you going with my keys?”

Dennis can’t speak. He gapes and shakes his head, trying to force out the words, but nothing comes. He wants to turn and run, but he can’t. Instead, he stumbles over the books and bumps into the wall.

Silas stops a few paces away, places the rifle at his shoulder and aims at Dennis’s chest. “Start talking, Dennis.”

“No, no, no, don’t shoot! Please don’t shoot! I’m sorry!” Dennis blurts out, dropping the keys and holding his hands up in front of him, as though they could stop the bullet. “I’m sorry, Silas! I didn’t mean to steal the keys!”

“Then why did you?” Silas asks calmly, not lowering the rifle.

“Please don’t shoot,” Dennis pleads, as his lower lip begins trembling and his eyes fill up with tears. Silas is going to kill him now, he knows that, and he can’t help the tears from coming. “I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry!”

“Aw, stop crying,” Silas sneers. “That’s fucking pathetic, you big pussy.”

Dennis tries to stop, but that only makes it worse. He loses control over his bladder, and warm urine starts spilling down his shorts and runs down his leg.

“What the fuck?” Silas exclaims as he sees the pee. “Are you fucking pissing yourself? Jesus Christ, how old are you, man? Three?”

“I’m sorry,” Dennis sobs. “Please don’t kill me.”

“Then tell me why you stole my fucking keys!” Silas shouts, stepping forward and jabbing the barrel into Dennis’s collarbone, forcing him up against the wall. “What were you planning, you fucking little thief? Huh? You were gonna make a run for it while we slept? Run away like a big cry baby, huh?”

“N-no!” Dennis sobs. “I just … I just … g-got scared, and … I … I wa-wanted to see my m-mom …”

“You wa-wanted to see your m-mom?” Silas mocks him, disgust in his voice. “And you took it upon yourself to make it happen, did you?”

Light comes into the room as the bedroom door is opened. Dennis turns his head to see Jonas standing there, only wearing boxers.

“The fuck is going on?” he asks, looking from Silas and Dennis to the window where the dead person is still scraping the glass.

“Please don’t let him k-kill me, Jonas!” Dennis blurts out.

“We had a couple of nightcrawlers,” Silas tells his brother, ignoring Dennis. “The one outside and this one here. He snuck down here and took my keys. Says he wanted to go see his mama.”

“I … I got scared when I heard that thing outside,” Dennis pleads, looking from Jonas to Silas. “Please don’t shoot me!”

Jonas moans and rubs his eye. “Put the fucking rifle away, will you? He’s scared shitless.”

“I know he is, because he just pissed himself, that disgusting little fucktard!”

Jonas comes closer. “Let him go, Silas. He’s not right in the head, don’t you get that? He’s, like, a retard or something. You can’t treat him like that.”

“Oh, but he can fuck around with me? Steal my keys and whatnot?” Silas finally moves the rifle to turn on his brother.

“You’re drunk,” Jonas says, sounding very tired. “It’s been a long fucking couple of days. Can’t we just get some goddamn sleep?”

“Don’t you think that’s what I was doing before this prick came snooping around? You think we should just go to sleep and let him do whatever the hell he wants just because he’s a retard?”

Jonas looks briefly at Dennis. “Let him go sleep with his mom. Just lock them in there together. I don’t get why you didn’t do that in the first place.”

Silas grinds his teeth and glances at Dennis. “I don’t like them being together. I think they’ll get up to something if they get the chance.”

“What are they going to do? Build a lasso out of the bedsheets and strangle us the next time we come down there? Get a grip, man.”

Silas doesn’t answer; he just keeps eyeing Dennis. Dennis is trembling all over, following the conversation closely. He’s starting to feel a faint hope that Jonas might actually talk Silas out of killing him. But the way Silas is staring at him right now makes him second-guess that possibility; there’s rage in Silas’s eyes.

“Besides, we’ve got a bigger problem,” Jonas goes on, gesturing towards the window. “Those things out there might draw others’ attention. We should get rid of them.”

Silas doesn’t answer, he just keeps staring at Dennis, his lips moving almost imperceptibly.

“Silas?”

“What?”

“Are you going to kill that thing outside, or you want me to do it?”

Silas suddenly turns on his heel and marches to the window. He pulls aside the curtains, reveals a fat lady squeezing against the glass. Before anybody has time to react, Silas has unlocked the window, grabbed the handle and swung it open. The bars still stop the dead lady, put she immediately reaches her thick fingers through.

“Silas!” Jonas begins, but he’s cut off as Silas aims the rifle right between the lady’s eyes and pulls the trigger.

Dennis closes his eyes a second too late, and he sees the lady’s head flip backwards as she falls to the ground and disappears out of sight.

Silas closes and locks the window. “There,” he says, looking at Jonas. “You happy?”

“That wasn’t exactly what I meant,” Jonas mutters. “But I guess it’ll do. Can I go back to bed now?”

“Sure.”

“What about him?” He nods towards Dennis.

“I’ll take him downstairs,” Silas says, suddenly sounding reasonable. “He’ll stay with his mom from now on.”

“Good,” Jonas says and yawns. “See you in the morning.” He goes back inside the bedroom and closes the door.

As soon as Dennis is alone with Silas, he feels the atmosphere change. But Silas doesn’t even look at him; he just picks up the keys and strides towards the kitchen.

“You comin’?” he calls over his shoulder.

FORTY-SIX

They’ve been flying less than twenty minutes, but to Eli, time is no longer important. For all he knows, he could have been in the helicopter for hours or even days, listening to the deep whooping and feeling the pleasant rumbling from the floor and wall.

He’s sitting all the way in the back, legs crossed, leaning against the wall, secured in place by a strap around his waist. A vacant smile is resting on his face, his eyelids keep closing halfway, then opening again.

In front of him is the Arabic girl and her brother, both of them sleeping, leaning against each other. Farther off sits Dan and his father, and next to Eli is William and his dog—

What was its name again? Cooper? Izzy? No, it was some other Rockstar …

Eli’s memory isn’t working. He’s very tired, exhausted really; he hasn’t slept for over twenty-four hours, and he’s sure he will drift off any minute. But part of him doesn’t want to go just yet. That part wants to keep enjoying the effect of the drug coursing through his body.

He managed to grab the bottle as they boarded the helicopter without anybody noticing. It had fallen to the floor, so he simply needed to bend down and scoop it up, covering the gesture by pretending to check his shoelaces—which was a pretty fucking stupid misdirection, now that he thinks of it, something you’d do to trick a child.

Oh, well, no matter. It worked.

He got the bottle. Percocet, the label read. Eli had tried them before. They killed not only physical pain, but the emotional kind, too.

How many did I take?

He has no idea. The bottle is more than halfway empty, so he probably shouldn’t take anymore.

Which is fine. He’s gotten what he needed. Relief. Sweet, blissful relief. And The Demon Voice is completely gone.

Eli leans his head back and breathes deeply, resting his attention on the simmering sensation in his arms and legs.

How could he ever have believed it was possible to live without this feeling? This is obviously the greatest thing a human being could experience; the absolute peak state, free from even the slightest discomfort, where nothing existed but peace and pleasure. Come to think of it, Eli suspects it could be the meaning of life itself.

He rubs his legs absentmindedly, enjoying the feel of his palms against his bare shins. Funny how one of them feels a little thicker than the other. Also, there’s a faint throbbing in one of them.

Eli looks down dreamily. The skin on his left leg is weirdly reddish, the coloring growing more prominent towards the shoe. It’s also swollen visibly.

Oh, that’s right, Eli thinks. The scratch.

He’s about to untie his shoe to look at it—more out of curiosity than concern—but then remembers he’s not alone. Some of the others might notice him doing it.

They can’t know about the scratch. William said he’d kick me off the helicopter.

Eli sniggers as a funny image drops into his mind: A cartoon helicopter flying across the sky, and a cartoon version of himself being booted out the back hatch. He’s looking at the camera with big, startled eyes and there’s an exclamation point hovering above his head.

There was nothing funny about the scratch when he got it, though. He remembers feeling terrified. Now, looking back, he doesn’t really get it, though. Why would he freak out over something like that? Sure, it means he’s going to die, but aren’t they all? This is the end of the world, after all. The Zombie Apocalypse.

“They didn’t even live half an hour. The fever came within ten minutes.”

Dan’s voice suddenly reverberates in his mind. And, now that he thinks about it, he actually does have a fever; he feels warm, and sweat is trickling down his back and forehead. He hardly feels it, though. The Percocet has made sure of that. Also, the way his leg is looking, Eli is sure it would hurt like hell had he not been medicated out of his mind right now.

Eli realizes he’s actually worried. The fear is trying to come creeping back. He automatically reaches for his pocket and takes out the pill bottle. He pops it open discretely and takes three more, swallowing them in one gulp.

There. I’ll feel better in a minute, he assures himself and closes his eyes.

His mind drifts back to when he had just gotten the scratch, back to when the zombie woman had caught his foot. He still can’t believe he got away with it. That William actually fell for the trick. In the moment, Eli had thought it would never fly. But he did it anyway, hoping against hope.

It was so simple.

Elegant, really.

When William demanded he show them his foot, Eli had simply showed him the right one. Not the left one, which of course was the one the woman had grabbed.

William probably hadn’t had time to notice, it all went by so fast. And none of the others protested, either.

Eli smiles, feeling satisfied with himself. The effect of the three additional pills feels like it’s kicking in already. He’s drifting off further into the pleasant mist of peace deep inside his mind, where he’ll be beyond any intruding thoughts.

Eli decides he’s fought it off long enough and simply lets go.

It feels like sinking into black water, or rather, like the black water rises up and engulfs him very gently, drowning out everything else.

But Eli doesn’t stop there.

He drifts off farther down than he’s ever gone, down below the normal drug-induced slumber, sinking even past deep unconsciousness, reaching a coma-like state, and still he’s drifting, on and on, deeper and deeper, headed for the deepest level, approaching the depth you don’t ascend from ever again.

Eli stops breathing. It happens very quietly. No one else in the helicopter notices.

For about sixty seconds, nothing happens.

Eli isn’t there. He’s gone. Obliterated. The idea of Eli has been erased completely.

Then, there’s something.

It’s like the Big Bang, defying all logic, breaking all the natural laws as something appears out of nothing.

A spark in the darkness.

And then, Eli is suddenly there again. Except it’s not him, not really, not all of him, at least. And the thing that once was part of Eli begins slowly to rise up from where nothing is supposed to return …

FORTY-SEVEN

Dennis has got a bad feeling. Something tells him Silas is still furious, even though he doesn’t show it anymore.

But he has no other choice than follow Silas down to the bunker.

As they walk through the tunnel, Silas doesn’t look back or even speak once. He uses the key to unlock the metal door, and they enter the lit-up bunker.

Silas goes to unlock the door to the bathroom. But just as he puts in the key, he stops. He steps back and waves the rifle at Dennis. “You open it.”

Dennis hesitates for a moment, then walks to the door and turns the key. He opens the door.

Mom is sitting on the bunk, wearing her white gown, her hands folded in her lap. It looks like she was just sleeping. She smiles briefly as she sees him. “Hello, Dennis.”

“Mom,” he croaks, almost beginning to cry again. “I’m sorry, Mom … I messed it up …”

“Don’t start crying again,” Silas warns him from behind. “I can’t take any more of that. Just get in there.”

Dennis walks to Mom and embraces her clumsily. She holds him and places a kiss on his temple.

“It’s okay, Dennis. Say, why are you wet?”

“I … I, uhm …”

“He pissed himself,” Silas says from the doorway. “Some brave boy you raised, lady.”

Dennis looks back at Silas, who’s scowling at them from the doorway. Then he notices Mom’s face. Her expression is like ice, as she says in a low tone: “He’s done things you can’t even imagine.”

“Oh, really? Like what? Tie his own shoelaces? No, that’s probably too difficult for him.”

Mom doesn’t answer; she just strokes Dennis’s hair. Dennis looks at Silas, waiting for what comes next. To his relief, it looks like he’s lost interest in the conversation, and for a second, he actually seems about to slam the door.

Then it’s like he notices something with Mom. He squints. “The fuck are you doing? Are you knitting a doll?”

Dennis notices the knitted doll lying next to Mom on the bed. There’s a ball of yarn, too, and the knitting needles are still attached to the almost-finished legs.

Mom doesn’t reply, just looks at Silas.

“What’s that you’re wearing, anyway?” Silas goes on. “A nightgown? Who the fuck wears a nightgown nowadays? Whaddya think this is, the eighteen hundreds?”

Silas snorts a brief laughter. Mom still doesn’t answer.

“You know,” Silas goes on, eyeing Mom intently now. “It actually suits you. Makes you look almost attractive, some might say.”

Still, Mom doesn’t say anything.

Dennis is puzzled at the weird change in Silas’s demeanor. He’s trying hard to figure out why he’s suddenly talking like that.

Then Silas does something which for some reason terrifies Dennis to his core: he licks his lips.

“You know, Dennis,” he says, waving the rifle again. “I think I’d like a moment alone with your mom. We need to hash something out between us. You know, boring grown-up stuff.”

“No,” Dennis says, shaking his head. “No, I don’t want to leave.”

“It wasn’t really a request,” Silas says, aiming the barrel at his face. “Get out of here. Now. It’ll only be a couple minutes.”

Dennis shakes his head again, embracing Mom tightly, squeezing her. For some reason, he’s scared out of his mind to let Silas alone with Mom.

“It’s okay, Dennis,” Mom says, her voice still surprisingly calm.

“No, Mom! He’ll just hurt you!”

“Nah, I wouldn’t hurt a pretty lady like your mom,” Silas says, sounding almost playful now, which only scares Dennis even more. “Now, get the fuck out of here, Dennis, before I hurt you instead.”

“No!” Dennis cries out, shaking his head again.

“It’s okay, Dennis,” Mom says again, freeing herself of his grip and catching his eye. “Look at me, Dennis. It’s perfectly fine. I’ll be just fine. We’re just going to talk, like Silas says.”

“Yeah, just talk,” Silas repeats. There’s something slurry in his voice now, like he’s got too much saliva.

“I don’t want to leave you, Mom,” Dennis says, the tears spilling over again. “I don’t want you to be alone with him.” Then, before Mom can say anything, it just spills right out of him in a sobbing whisper: “I had it, Mom. I had the hair. But I lost it again. I’m so sorry. I messed it up. I’m so sorry, Mom.”

“Ssssh,” Mom says, placing a finger on his chin, gently closing his mouth. And when she speaks again, her voice is as warm as Dennis has ever heard it be. “Trust me now, Dennis. It’ll be fine.”

And she smiles at him.

And Dennis almost believes her.

“Last time, Dennis,” Silas says. “Get out of here. And stop crying, that’s such a fucking turn-off.”

Dennis hardly hears him; he keeps looking into Mom’s eyes as he gets up and backs out of the bathroom. Mom keeps smiling at him, even when Silas grabs Dennis by the shoulder and shoves him aside, stepping into the bathroom instead.

And just before Silas slams the door, Dennis gets one last glimpse of Mom, and she’s still smiling at him.

Then, she’s gone.

And Silas locks the door from the inside.

And Dennis is alone in the bunker.

He walks around restlessly for what feels like most of the night. In reality, though, only six minutes pass; he can tell so from the digital clock on the wall.

He listens for sounds from the bathroom, but he hears none.

Then, finally, the door is unlocked and swings open.

Silas comes out, carrying the rifle in one hand and tucking his shirt into his pants with the other, as though he had just changed it. But it’s the same he wore when he got into the room, Dennis remembers.

What has changed is the demeanor on Silas’s face; he’s looking far less playful or mean. Rather, there’s something relaxed and almost tired over him. His hair is also different, and sweat is beading on his forehead. He avoids Dennis’s eyes as he waves the rifle.

“Right, you get in there now.”

Dennis doesn’t need a second invitation; he slips past Silas and into the bathroom. He notices the air in the room being hotter and moister than before. There’s also a salty smell.

Mom is sitting almost exactly like before, her hands folded across her lap. But her dress sits differently on her, and she somehow seems smaller. She doesn’t look at Dennis right away.

Dennis knows something bad has happened to Mom, that Silas did something very mean to her. He can sense it, even though he’s not sure what. She has no visible cuts or bruises, so he probably didn’t beat her up.

“Sleep tight,” Silas says, closing the door and locking it.

Dennis just stands there, staring at Mom. “What … what happened, Mom?”

“Nothing,” Mom says, still avoiding his eyes. Her gaze is distant, and so is her voice.

“Mom?” Dennis says, his voice beginning to shake again. “Please tell me what he did to you.”

Mom shakes her head slowly. At first, Dennis takes it to mean no, she’s not going to tell him, but then she finally meets his eyes, and Dennis is taken aback at how completely changed his mom’s eyes are. All the loving warmth is gone. Left is only icy rage.

“He did nothing to me compared to what I’m going to do to him,” she whispers, the words snaking out over her lips like snakes.

Then she seems to notice how scared Dennis looks, because she tries to smile. “It’s okay now. I’ve got it. You hear me? I got what I need.”

Dennis frowns. “What … what do you mean, Mom?”

She holds up her thumb and forefinger with the tips pinched together. Dennis sees the strand of brown hair glistening between Mom’s fingers.

Dennis stares at his mom as comprehension dawns on him. Mom must have plucked the hair from Silas while he was doing whatever he was doing to her—and he must have been too busy to even notice.

“We’re getting out of here, Dennis—tonight.”

Dennis shakes his head. “But how? I don’t … I don’t get it, Mom … how can a strand of hair get us out of here?”

Mom smiles, and the smile is even more scary than the one Dennis saw on Silas’s face, because it’s completely devoid of anything Dennis relates to his mother.

“Trust me, Dennis,” she says. “Just trust me.”

FORTY-EIGHT

Knut parks the car in the slot closest to the water. At this time of the evening, there are no other cars taking up the harbor, which is just perfect; it means no disturbances.

Knut whistles as he gets out and puts on his beanie, covering his bald head, the binoculars already hanging from around his neck.

Even at eighty-nine, Knut is very active, and bird watching has recently become his biggest passion. Last night, walking along the harbor, he’s almost certain he spotted a ferruginous duck, which is very rare to this part of Sweden. He didn’t have his binoculars, so he couldn’t confirm it, which is why he’s come back, hoping to see it again.

He breathes in the chill summer night, taking in the smell of salt from the calm ocean in front of him and the hum of Göteborg behind him.

Amazing that the duck would come this close to a big city, but that will only make it that much more of a sensation if he sees it again; he might even make it to the local news.

The thought makes him pull up the binoculars and begin scanning the beach head, then the water. The lights from the city reflect in the low waves, creating a mesmerizing flowing pattern.

A few seagulls are circling around a fair distance out, and a couple of crows are rummaging through some garbage thrown on the beach. But no sign of the rare duck.

Knut is intent on spending most of the night here, if that’s what it takes to spot the shy duck. He’s about to walk farther down the harbor, when he suddenly sees it.

Bopping away calmly on the water only fifty feet from the shore is the ferruginous duck, beautiful with its brown colors.

“My, oh my,” Knut whispers, his breath almost fogging up the lenses. “Got you, buddy.”

He can’t believe his luck.

And there’s another one! It emerges from the water only a few yards farther out, probably after a dive for food.

“So, you brought a mate,” Knut smiles, focusing on the second duck. “Can’t wait to meet—”

He freezes as he catches the second duck in clear view—and realizes it’s not a duck at all. The first duck realizes the same and immediately takes flight.

“Oh, no,” Knut mutters. “Don’t scare it away!”

But it’s too late. He groans and focuses again on the newcomer. It’s a person’s head. A girl, judging from the hair clinging to her face.

Someone decided to go for a late-night swim, Knut thinks with disappointment. Typical teenagers. She’s probably been out drinking, too.

He scans the beach again, expecting to find other young people fooling around, but finding nothing. The girl is apparently alone, which strikes him as odd.

He puts down the binoculars and looks out with his naked eye. Despite his age, Knut’s eyesight has remained fine, and he can tell the girl is making her way towards the beach—and that she’s wearing regular clothes instead of a bathing outfit.

What the heck?

She’s already close to the shore, most of her upper body showing now, and the way she walks makes Knut frown. What he at first took to be the uncertain waddling of a drunk person looks more like someone in distress.

Her right arm looks hurt.

“Goodness,” Knut mutters to himself. “Better make sure she’s okay …”

He leaves the parking lot and makes his way across the sand, his boots sinking in slightly as he jogs towards the girl.

“Hello!” he calls out and waves, as the girl apparently doesn’t see him—she’s headed at an angle away from him.

As he calls out, she hesitates, turns her head, looks in his direction, then changes her course.

“Are you okay?” Knut asks her. “What were you doing out there?”

The girl doesn’t answer, but she reaches out her arms and gives off a low moan, a gesture Knut interprets as a plea for help. And he instinctively responds by opening his own arms as they close the distance between them.

Just before they meet, Knut sees the girl’s wounded arm and realizes just how badly mauled it is; large chunks of flesh have been torn off and the bone is clearly showing.

His first thought is that something out at sea attacked her, even though sharks are a rare sight around here. Then, just as he embraces the girl, he gets a glimpse of her face, and a rapid train of thought flies through his mind, ending up at those horrible images he’s seen on television all day from Denmark.

The virus, Knut just has time to think before the girl bites down hard on his collarbone, sinking her teeth deep into his jacket.

He yelps and jerks back, the girl ripping part of his jacket clean off, spitting it out and lunging at him again.

Had he not been standing in sand, Knut might have been able to successfully move out of her way. But the soft ground under his boots allows him only to wobble backwards, almost losing his balance, arms flailing, as he tells the girl to get away, to get back, to not touch him.

She doesn’t listen, though, but just comes at him quicker than he’s seen her move before, and she manages to grab his wrist and pull his hand to her mouth.

“No!” Knut shouts, pulling back his arm hard enough to rip it free, but also hard enough to lose his balance.

He falls flat on his back, knocking the air from his lungs, and the girl wastes no time, throwing herself right on top of him.

Knut fights to get his breath back, fights to keep the girl’s snapping mouth from biting him and her hands from clawing him. It’s impossible, of course, and within half a minute, the girl has torn open his jacket and covered his chest and face in scratch and bite marks.

So this is how I go, Knut thinks with surprising clarity. He’s always imagined dying in his sleep or maybe one day finding a lump somewhere and getting a cancer diagnosis. Being torn apart on a beach at night never entered his imagination.

Then, just as he’s about to stop fighting, he finds some sort of hidden strength and throws the girl off with a strained groan, hard enough for her to roll around a couple of times. It buys him just enough time to get to his feet. He’s hurting all over, and his eyesight is fuzzy, and behind him he can hear the girl getting to her feet, too, and taking up pursuit.

But Knut locks in on his car, determined to not die just quite yet.

Impossibly, he actually makes it back to the Saab, opens the door and gets in with a wince of pain. Just as he slams the door, the girl reaches the car and squeezes up against the window, clawing at it, smearing it in blood, his blood.

“Not like this,” Knut mutters, barely realizing he’s talking, and turns the key.

He backs up, causing the girl to tumble forwards, then drives out of the parking lot and across the harbor, heading for the city.

“Not like this,” he repeats, his eyelids getting heavy as the lights of the city merge into a screen of floating colors.

Knut gives one last sigh and sinks up against the door, letting go of the wheel as his foot goes limp and pushes down the accelerator.

Just wanted to see the duck, is his last thought as he drifts off and the car rams into a storefront, sending glass flying everywhere, waking up everybody within three blocks.

Back down at the harbor lot, the thing that once was Mille Klitgaard has already forgotten all about Knut, who’s blood is still fresh on her lips. Her attention is instead on the thousands of living people all within walking distance, and she’s waddling slowly but determined towards Göteborg—Sweden’s second largest city.

DAY 6

The following takes places on

Thursday, July 31

ONE

“Don’t get sand on it!”

“I won’t, I promise.”

“Good, ’cause if you do, we’re not doing it.”

“Don’t worry, love. I’ll be careful.”

“And don’t use your teeth to open it! Don’t you know you can’t do that?”

“Why not?”

“Because you’ll just tear a hole in it. Then it won’t be much use, will it?”

Ricky sighs and hands over the condom packet to Grace. “Right, I think you better do it, then.”

“I think so too,” she says, smiling at him.

He can’t help but admire how pretty she is, lying there on the blanket in the dim afterglow of the evening, wearing nothing but her top and panties. Coming down here to the beach was her idea, but fooling around was his, and he still can’t believe she said yes—she’s usually very shy whenever they’re out in public. Luckily, he keeps a blanket in the trunk and a rubber in his wallet.

“You’re sure no one’s around?” she asks again, working the packet.

“I’m sure,” he says, darting a look down the coastline. There are no more cars, and the last of the bonfires have been put out. Out at sea, the lights from a single boat blink in the darkness. “All the old folks have gone home by now. There’s a boat out on the water, but they can’t see us up here. We’ve got it all to ourselves.”

He leans in and kisses her cheek.

“I can’t see what I’m doing,” she sniggers, pushing him away.

“Maybe we should just take the chance,” Ricky suggests, kissing her again. “You’re on the pill, aren’t you?”

“No, I’m not, and I’m not having your baby just because you can’t wait a minute. Darn it, this thing is really tough to get open …”

“I told you it was.”

“It’s because you’ve drooled all over it, innit? Made it all slippery.”

“I’m about to drool all over you,” he says playfully, spreading her legs apart.

She laughs, but this time she doesn’t push him away.

Ricky is about to lean in, when a sound cuts through the evening silence. It’s a drawn-out, crunchy sort of sound. Like something heavy being dragged across the sand.

“What was that?” Grace says, sitting up.

“Huh,” Ricky says, looking down over the beachhead. “I don’t know, I think … hey, look. The boat. It’s landed.”

Grace follows his finger as he points. The lights atop the boat are still blinking. “Oh, bugger. You think they’re coming up here then?”

“Dunno, looks like they might.”

“We can’t do it then,” she says, pulling up her trousers.

“No, wait,” Ricky protests. “Come on, love …”

“I’m not doing it with some sailors watching!” she says firmly.

Ricky sighs and pulls up his own pants. He looks down at the boat again, wishing ill on whoever is on it. Then he notices something strange.

“Hold on,” he mutters.

“Wha’?” Grace has already stood up and is putting on her shoes.

“That’s weird, innit? The way it’s tilting sideways?”

She looks down at the boat and shrugs. “No idea. I’ve never parked a boat. Or landed it. Or whatever you call it.”

“Me neither, but I sure don’t think that’s how you do it,” Ricky says, almost talking to himself him. Looking at the boat, he gets an eerie feeling that something isn’t right. It looks like it’s just been sailed straight onto the beach at full speed. It’s halfway free of the water and leaning heavily to the right. Also, judging from the foam spurting from the back, the propeller is still running.

Then he finally realizes what sparked his worry; something only his subconscious caught at first glance.

“Bloody hell,” he says. “The lights. Look at the lights. They’re blinking S-O-S!”

“Wha’?” Grace asks, looking from him to the boat. “You sure?”

“Positive,” Ricky says, jumping to his feet. “They’re in trouble, Grace. We need to help them. Call 9-9-9.”

“I can’t! I left my phone in the car.”

“Then use mine.” Ricky pulls it out and throws it at her.

“What are you going to do?” she asks, catching the cell phone clumsily.

“I dunno!” he says and runs down the beach.

He reaches the boat and stretches his neck to see in through the front windows, but he can’t make out anyone in there. Instead, he jumps up, grabs the railing and pulls himself aboard. He then walks around to the side, still glancing in through the narrow windows. He can’t see anyone, but the inside of the boat looks like there was a big scuffle; things are thrown around, and—Ricky gasps as he sees the blood staining the wall and the floor.

Oh, bollocks! Something seriously bad happened here …

“Ricky!”

He turns his head to look back and sees Grace coming this way, waving his cell phone.

“They’re coming! The police are on their way!”

“Good!” he shouts back. “But stay away, Grace!”

“Wha’?”

“Don’t come over here!”

She stops a fair distance away, looking very worried.

Ricky is just about to jump off the boat and run back to Grace when he hears something from downstairs. A bump and a groan.

What was that?

Then he hears someone crying. It sounds like a child.

“Hello?” he calls out. “Anybody in there?”

He waits for an answer. Several seconds pass by. Then, finally, a thin girl’s voice calls out from inside the boat: “Hjælp!”

Although the word isn’t in English, Ricky doesn’t need a translation to guess what it means.

“Hold on!” he calls out. “I’m coming!”

He goes to the back of the boat and climbs onto the deck. Then he opens the door to the inside. A stench of sweat and blood comes out at him immediately.

He sees the stairs leading down to the lower part of the boat. From down there he can hear the groans and the scuddling even louder.

What is that? Some kind of animal?

Ricky steps inside and closer to the stairs. He crouches down and looks through the opening in the floor.

And then he sees what’s making the noise.

Three people—two men and a woman—all of them squeezed into the corner, pushing and shoving each other, groping at a cupboard. The wooden surface is completely covered in scratches, telling Ricky that the three of them have been at it for quite some time.

Their clothes are ripped in several places, and they all have big, bloody and gaping wounds. The woman is even missing an arm; the bloody stump makes it look like the darn thing was chewed right off.

“Bloody hell,” Ricky breathes, as the pieces finally fall into place.

The horrible thing that’s spreading through Denmark. A virus, the media is calling it. Zombies, others are calling it.

Whatever it is, these folks obviously suffer from it. And something—or someone—is trapped inside that cupboard.

“Hjælp!” the voice calls again, confirming Ricky’s thought. “Vær sød at hjælpe os!”

Ricky wants to help the kid badly, but he has no idea what to do.

Then one of the men somehow manages to pry the cupboard open half an inch and squeeze his fingers through the crack.

A scream from inside the cupboard as the kid inside it pulls the door back, starting a tug-of-war with the man.

“Hey, you!” Ricky shouts—and before he even knows what he’s doing, he grabs a bottle from the floor and throws it at the back of the man. “Look here! Over here! Look at me!”

The woman is the first to turn around, followed by the other guy. Ricky lets out a gasp at the sight of their white, bulging eyeballs. Then, just as they begin coming towards him, the second guy loses his grip on the door, and the cupboard slams shut. The guy seems to realize it’s a lost cause, and he turns around and joins the others in waddling towards Ricky.

Ricky sees none of this, though, as he’s already busy getting the heck out of Dodge. He jumps to his feet and runs outside. He scuddles around to the front end of the boat and jumps down into the sand, just as the zombies come out onto the deck.

“Ricky!” Grace shouts at him. “What happened?”

“Get away!” Ricky yells, waving at her frantically. “Run, Grace! Run to the car!”

He looks back to see the woman fall into the water with a splash. She gets back up and begins making her way towards the shore. The men also waste no time walking around the boat, but simply walk right into the railing and tip over it.

Ricky is backing farther up onto the beach, not daring to take his eyes off the zombies. Luckily, they’re moving very slowly, and he’ll have no trouble outrunning them. But he needs to make sure the kid is all right first.

He puts his hands to his mouth and shouts out at the boat: “It’s fine! You can come out now!”

He realizes that the child probably won’t understand him.

But then, in the next instance, he sees a boy’s head popping up onto the deck. Followed by a girl. They’re holding each other and looking around like a couple of small, scared animals. As far as Ricky can see, though, both of them are unhurt.

What has played out on that boat while it crossed the sea from Denmark is almost too awful for Ricky to imagine. They must have brought the disease with them—perhaps unknowingly—and once it broke out, the children managed to hide in the cupboard while the grown-ups attacked each other.

Blimey … those poor kids. How long have they been trapped in that cupboard? Listening to their parents eat each other alive?

A hand on his shoulder makes Ricky scream out and whirl around, only to see Grace staring at him, her eyes wide and shocked.

“You okay, love?”

“I’m fine, nothing happened to me,” he hears himself say. “Let’s get the heck out of here.”

They run to the car. Ricky fumbles out the key, unlocks the doors and throws himself behind the wheel.

Grace takes the passenger seat and buckles up. “Hurry, love,” she tells him, breathing fast. “They’re coming.”

He jams the key into the ignition and looks out to see that she’s right; both men are waddling towards the car. The woman, however, has strayed from the path and is headed somewhere else. Ricky follows her direction and sees another car parked a little farther down the beach. An elderly couple is standing by the car.

“Oh, damn,” Ricky breathes. “Get away from there!”

He honks the horn, and the old couple apparently hear it, because they turn their heads in this direction. They do not heed the warning, though, as they begin walking towards the woman, probably because she looks very much like someone in need of help.

“Is that … children?” Grace asks, pointing towards the boat.

Ricky follows her finger and sees the boy and the girl jump onto the beach and make a run for it in the opposite direction.

“Good,” he whispers, feeling a modicum of relief. “Clever little ones. They’re making a run for it.”

One of the men—who’s dragging a little behind the other thanks to a large chunk of his calf missing—apparently senses the kids, because he stops, turns around and takes up pursuit. The kids are headed for the place where Ricky and Grace were lying on a blanket just a few minutes ago, getting ready to make love. They’re running fast—hopefully fast enough that the guy won’t catch up with them.

Ricky will never know, though, as all three of them soon disappear out of sight behind the hills.

“Ricky!” Grace’s shrill voice pulls him back.

The second guy has made it to the car and bumps into the car right beside Ricky, causing the car to sway. He groans and fumbles across the window, leaving sticky marks of blood.

Grace screams and Ricky twists the key, waking the engine with a roar and putting the car in reverse. He backs up fast enough to make sand go flying, and for a moment he’s afraid they’ll get stuck. Then the car lurches backwards, causing the zombie to fall over.

Ricky backs up, stops and puts it in drive, then guns it and heads for the road leading away from the beach.

In the rearview mirror he sees the guy getting to his feet again, now all covered in sand. And farther behind he can see the old couple’s car. The old couple is also still visible, though both of them are lying on the ground, the woman crouching over them. From here, it looks to Ricky like she’s performing CPR on them, but he knows that’s far from the truth.

“Oh God,” Grace keeps repeating, twisting in the seat. “Oh God, what just happened?”

Ricky turns onto the road, and as soon as the sand turns into asphalt, he stomps down the accelerator even further.

Two black-and-white police cars pass them, sirens blaring.

“They’re here already,” Grace says, sobbing now, but a tone of hope in her voice. “I can’t believe how fast they came. They’ll fix it, right, Ricky? They’ll stop those awful people.”

“They will,” Ricky nods, looking in the rearview mirror to see the police cars drive down to the beach. “They will,” he says again, but he’s afraid that it’s already too late. He’s afraid the police can’t stop it. Afraid that the undead have reached Great Britain.

TWO

Dennis sits on the lid of the toilet and watches in silence as Mom makes the final preparations.

Even though he’s seen her do her rituals plenty of times, they still fill him with unease. The fact that this time Mom is doing it in a bathroom, doesn’t make it any less eerie.

She has put the mattress aside, leaning it against the wall and clearing a spot on the concrete floor. Here, she has strewn ground-up clay and chalk in a meticulous pattern forming a circle with spikes. At the point of every spike stands a white candle burning. Black feathers line the circle as well.

Mom has turned off the lights, so the flames from the candles are the only things illuminating the crammed room; the air smells of smoke, and Dennis does his best not to cough.

Mom has also drawn lines on her face with blood from a tiny puncture wound on her finger that she made with a needle. It reminds Dennis of Indian warpaint.

In the middle of the circle is the doll Mom has spent all day yesterday knitting. To Dennis, it looks like something a kid would play with, except for the fact that it has no face or clothes.

Mom is sitting cross-legged on the floor, eyes closed, the book open on her lap, and she’s reciting the verses in a quiet murmur. Dennis only understands a few phrases here and there, the rest is just gibberish.

This part of the ritual—the citing from the book—is always the longest and most drawn-out, and Dennis keeps finding himself nodding off.

Then, suddenly, he hears tiny crackling sounds as the flames of the candles begin flickering. He sits up. This means the ritual is coming to an end.

Mom puts aside the book and carefully picks up something from the floor. Dennis can’t see what it is, but he knows: it’s the string of hair Mom plucked from Silas’s head without him noticing.

She holds it between two fingers and slowly puts the end of it into one of the candles. A brief flare-up as the tip of the hair melts away. All the other candles react as well, their flames growing taller, reaching for the ceiling, then shrinking back down again.

Mom picks up the doll and places it against her forehead, then her chin, then her lips, as she whispers softly. Dennis picks up some of the words, and they give him goosebumps.

“… we call on thee, oh spirits of the beyond and the ever dark, call on thee to let thy force serve this totem of good and ill, call on thee to close the bond tightly, tightly enough that it shall never be untied but for thy will …”

She places the melted end of the hair on the chest of the doll, squeezing it with her thumb. Then, pursing her lips, she turns the doll over, breathes deeply and exhales onto the back of the doll’s head.

It’s not like she’s blowing hard, simply letting her breath out. But the room reacts as though a storm sweeps through it. The candles flicker and go out one after another, the powder on the floor is blown in every direction, the feathers go flying, and Dennis can even feel the air getting sucked out of his lungs.

Then, as the last candle gives in, it’s over.

Everything falls very quiet. The darkness is thick as tar. Dennis reaches automatically for the light switch, flicking it. The spots in the ceiling reveals the room.

Mom is sitting there with her eyes closed, hugging the doll, a feather coming to rest on her shoulder.

Dennis holds his breath, his heart pumping away in his throat.

Mom blinks her eyes open, as though awakening from a deep sleep. She looks around like she can’t quite remember what’s been going on. She holds out the doll in front of her, turning it over slowly, eyeing it closely, like she’s trying to make out some miniscule detail on it that no one else can see.

Finally, a smile comes to her lips. “It worked,” she says, looking over at Dennis. “It worked.”

“Great,” Dennis says, forcing a smile. “So, now what, Mom?”

Mom holds Dennis’s gaze. The smile is still on her face, but it’s turned into something a lot less joyful, something more like a grimace, the dark red lines of blood on her face suddenly looking evil.

“Now?” she whispers. “Now we’re getting out of here.”

THREE

Nasira isn’t exactly sleeping, but she isn’t exactly awake either. She’s somewhere in between, resting in a peaceful state of non-thinking.

The low hum of the helicopter and the vibrations going through her back and legs are very soothing. Ali is leaning against her, sleeping and breathing deeply. Once in a while, he’ll jerk and lift his head, as though having a bad dream.

Nasira suspects he’ll have a lot of bad dreams in the years to come. Her heart mourns for him and the losses he’s suffered at such a young age. And at the same time, she trusts that he will be okay.

She checks on her finger now and then, examining it closely, bending it carefully. It still only hurts a little bit, but the red color is slowly making its way up her palm. The virus—or whatever it is—is definitely advancing, and it will eventually kill her; Nasira bears no illusions about that fact. She isn’t secretly wishing for it to reverse or for a cure to suddenly come by. Her calmness doesn’t stem from a vain hope of rescue; it stems from complete acceptance. Dying, it turns out, is surprisingly easy once you’re okay with it.

A movement to her left causes her to turn her head. And what she sees doesn’t make sense to her at first.

Eli, who’s been sitting at the far end, slumped over in a deep sleep, has pulled off his improvised safety belt and is crawling ahead on all fours, making his way with clumsy movements, like a toddler.

He’s headed right for her, and when he lifts his head and reveals his face, Nasira sees his eyes and immediately realizes that Eli is dead.

She doesn’t scream out right away, though a sharp bolt of shock shoots through her body. Instead, she reacts by reaching out her arms and grabbing him by the shoulders. She has seen enough of the dead people to know that he’s drawn towards the nearest prey, which happens to be her, and that he will be going straight for her throat or whatever else part of her he can sink his teeth into. Her intention is to push him away, but Eli—to her surprise—doesn’t push back. Instead, he moves sideways a little, getting out of her reach. It’s almost like he tries to get past her instead of attacking her.

Nasira glares at him in stunned wonder for a couple of seconds, as Eli simply crawls past her, meticulously making his way around. Then, with sudden speed, he lunges at Ali.

“No!” Nasira cries out.

She grabs Eli by the shoulders again and tries to force him back, but he’s coming on surprisingly strong, reaching out his arms and clawing and biting at Ali. He still shows no interest whatsoever in Nasira—it’s like her arms are more like branches of a tree to him, mere obstacles, not something to eat.

Ali wakes up and screams at the sight of Eli trying to get at him, Nasira holding him back and just out of reach.

“Someone, help!” she shouts, as Eli twists and almost slips free of her grip. She clutches his shirt and feels the fabric begin to tear. “Wake up!”

FOUR

Dennis sits up abruptly as he hears a gunshot coming from somewhere upstairs. Another one follows. Then a third, and a fourth.

He looks at Mom, who’s sitting calmly on the bed, the doll resting in her lap. “Why are they shooting?”

“I think their guests are coming,” Mom says, looking up into the ceiling as though she has X-ray vision. “They probably need to clear the courtyard of dead people, so their guests can enter the house.”

A few more gunshots, then silence.

“Who are the guests, Mom?”

“Their family, I guess.”

A minute or so passes by. Dennis waits anxiously. Then he hears the faint sound of the metal door to the bunker opening and closing. Steps approach the bathroom. There’s a rattling of keys. The person outside whistles merrily as he unlocks the door.

It swings open and Silas stands there, wearing the same clothes from yesterday, his hair all messy, a steaming cup of coffee in his hand.

He smiles in at them, showing his crooked teeth. “Morning. I see you’re up already. Good. We’ve got company and I want you to come meet them.”

Dennis just stands there, saying nothing, glancing at Mom.

She gets to her feet slowly and deliberately, making no effort to hide the things on the floor or the doll in her hand.

“What the hell?” Silas says, seeing the orange powder and the candles and the feathers. “Did you guys have a party in here or what?” He glares at Mom. “What the fuck did you do to your face? Holy shit, I knew you were loco, but this is just …”

Silas stops talking as he notices the doll in Mom’s hand. He looks at it for several seconds. Then his eyes narrow.

“Is that … a fucking voodoo doll?” He looks up at Mom, grinning. “Are you fucking kidding me? Did you spend all night making that thing? Who is it supposed to be—me?” He breaks into laughter. “Goddamnit, lady. You’re out of your fucking mind! Don’t tell me you really believe in that kind of shit?”

Mom doesn’t answer him. Instead, she raises the doll, grabs its left arm and pulls it down with a snap.

Dennis stares at Silas.

For two or three long seconds, nothing happens.

Silas just stands there, his eyes gleaming with amusement, the stupid grin growing wider on his face. “Hate to burst your bubble,” he says. “But I think—”

Then, suddenly, his left arm—the one holding the cup of coffee—flings itself towards the floor. The cup flies from his hand and explodes into a million pieces as it hits the concrete. The movement is violent enough to thrust Silas sideways, and he bangs into the doorframe.

He grabs it, clutching it like a drunk and barely manages to stay on his feet. He glares at his left hand like he’s never seen it before. “What the fuck?” he breathes. Then he looks up at Mom. And his face turns into a mask of shock, disbelief and rage. “You fucking bitch …”

He steps forward, but Mom is ready. She stabs a finger hard into the solar plexus of the doll. Silas manages to take two more steps, reaches out his arms to grab Mom by the throat, and then—

Then he’s shoved backwards with the force of a small car hitting him, sending him flying backwards out of the bathroom, a loud, strained “huuuaaaaaah!” escaping him as the air is punched from his lungs. He lands on the floor and tumbles several times over before coming to rest against one leg of the dinner table in the middle of the room. He immediately scrambles to get back up, but he only manages to fall over again, tipping over a chair with a bang. He dry-heaves and gasps for air, clutching his chest.

Mom steps out from the bathroom with the calm of a priest approaching the altar. She looks to the side and picks up the rifle which Silas has placed leaning up against the wall as he unlocked the door. She hands it over to Dennis, saying in a stern voice: “Take this. Don’t use it.”

Dennis takes the rifle with trembling hands, pointing the barrel to the floor and being careful not to touch the trigger.

Silas tries again to stand, but only gets to his hands and knees. He looks up at them, his eyes bulging from their sockets, a vain throbbing across his forehead.

“You’d better calm down,” Mom tells him. “Or you’ll faint. Breathe through your nose.”

Silas closes his mouth and heaves in air through his nostrils. He slumps forward with relief, his breath slowly returning to normal.

“You … you goddamn … bitch,” he croaks hoarsely. “What the … hell … did you …”

“Save your breath,” Mom tells him calmly. “You’ll need it for climbing the stairs. Now, get to your feet.”

Silas shakes his head, his greasy hair waving back and forth. “No way,” he hisses through gritted teeth. “I’m not doing anything you tell me, you goddamn psy—”

Mom places two fingers gently on each side of the doll’s head, then pulls it upwards. This time, it’s not a sudden jerk, but a slow movement.

Half a heartbeat later, Silas’s head begins lifting towards the ceiling. At first, it looks like he’s simply stretching his neck. But the expression on his face reveals right away that he’s not doing it on his own.

“Wait! Stop that! You stop—aaaargh!”

He clasps both hands to his head, like he’s trying to stop it from drifting away. It doesn’t work, however. To Dennis, it looks like an invisible rope has been tied around Silas’s neck and is now hoisting him upwards.

Silas has no choice but to follow along, scrambling to his feet, lifting his chin as his head keeps rising until he’s standing on his tiptoes.

“Stop it! Stop it!” he croaks. “Okay! All right! I’ll fucking do it!”

Mom lets go of the doll’s head, and Silas immediately sinks back down onto his heels, groping his neck.

“Fuck me … you almost tore my goddamn skull off,” he sneers, panting from the pain.

“Next time, there will be no ‘almost,’” Mom tells him coolly, nodding towards the door to the tunnel. “Now: upstairs.”

FIVE

Dan is jerked awake by a scream cutting through the noise of the helicopter.

He sits up, registering a sharp pain from his neck caused by the awkward position he’s been sleeping in, but pays no heed to it. He looks around and immediately sees where the scream came from.

Eli is leaning over Nasira, trying to get at Ali, and Nasira is doing her best to keep him back, but there’s only so much she can do as she’s still wearing her safety belt, holding her tight to the wall. Eli, on the other hand, is completely free, and the way he’s thrashing, it’s a matter of seconds before he’ll wriggle past Nasira and reach Ali. Ali is screaming and trying to get his belt open, but it doesn’t work.

Dan instinctively reaches for his own belt.

“Oh, shit!” William exclaims from the other side of Dan. “What the hell’s he doing?”

“He’s dead!” Dan hears himself shout, tearing at the buckle, which proves difficult to open. “We’ve got to help her!”

“What’s going on back there?” someone in front shouts—it sounds like Sebastian.

Josefine—who’s seated opposite Dan—is also awake now, shouting pointlessly at Eli to stop.

There’s no time, Dan thinks desperately, staring at Ali who’s given up trying to get free and is instead pushing blindly against the belt, reaching out his arms for anyone to help him.

Nasira is shouting in Arabic, pushing back Eli, but his shirt is tearing open across his chest, revealing his pale skin with blue bloodlines, enabling him to lunge at Ali.

Dan prepares himself to watch the boy getting eaten alive.

Then, there’s a sharp metallic click from where William is seated, followed by a command: “Get him!”

Something brown and black flies by Dan’s head as Ozzy throws himself at Eli, catching his arm in midair and pulling him back violently.

Eli is thrown onto his back, his legs sprawling as the German shepherd lands atop him, still clamped down on his upper arm, growling furiously. Eli is surprisingly oblivious to the dog tearing his arm to shreds; he simply tries to get back up, using his free arm.

Ozzy thrashes and pulls at his arm. Instead of dragging Eli back, though, the result is that a large chunk of muscle is torn loose. Eli hardly notices; instead, he uses the opportunity to once again lunge himself at Ali before Ozzy has time to let go of the bloody chunk and bite down on him again.

Dan looks down and realizes his belt is open—his hands must have continued working the buckle while he was staring at Ozzy fighting with Eli.

He jumps to his feet and is about to go for Eli, when someone grabs him by the back of his shirt.

“No, Dan!” William shouts. “What are you doing? You’ll get yourself bitten!”

Dan tries to tear loose, but William holds on firmly. Dan sees Ozzy bite down on Eli’s leg and tug him back. But Eli once again escapes as Ozzy simply manages to tear off most of Eli’s calf muscle. Eli throws himself at Ali, the only thing stopping him now is Nasira’s arms, desperately shielding her brother. But Eli isn’t intent on being cheated out of his meal this time, and he begins to fight past Nasira with eager movements.

“Let go of me!” Dan hears himself shout, swatting at William’s hand. “I’ve got to help him!”

“Get back!” his father’s voice hisses in his ear as he rushes past Dan, shoving him aside.

Dan stumbles and leans against the wall to avoid falling over. He wants to scream out, but he can only watch in stunned horror as his dad joins the fight at the back of the helicopter.

What plays out is both terrifying and fascinating. Dan has never seen his father like this, his movements swift and confident, his expression stern. He’s brought a jacket which he throws over Eli’s head, blinding him. He then moves around him, using the few seconds before Eli can get the jacket off to reach around him and pin his arms to his body in a tight embrace. He then lifts the boy off the ground, causing his legs to kick comically in the air, reminding Dan of Fred Flintstone’s feet as he drives his non-motoric car.

Ozzy—who’s been attacking Eli several times by now, leaving nasty bite wounds all over his legs and arms—immediately jumps up and clams down on Eli’s knee.

“William!” Dan’s father roars. “Get him off! Call him back!”

“Ozzy, release!” William shouts. “Release!”

Ozzy only very reluctantly opens his jaw and lets go of Eli’s leg. Eli writhes and thrashes under the jacket, throwing his head back and clipping Dan’s father on the chin, sending him stumbling up against the wall.

Dan steps forward instinctively—noticing that William has let go of him—but his father sees him and, regaining his balance, roars at him to stay back.

Dan stops, torn between obeying his dad and stepping in to help him.

“Josefine!” his dad shouts, nodding towards the sliding door. “Get it open!”

Josefine has already unbuckled and is getting to her feet.

“What are you doing?” Sebastian shouts over the roar of the engine, twisting in his seat to look back. “No, don’t do that! Don’t open! It’s too dangerous!”

“Open it!” Dan’s father demands, looking at Josefine. “But be careful. Stay out of the way!”

Josefine nods once, grabs the handle and pulls aside the door. As soon as it opens, Dan feels a hard tug pulling him against the door. The cool night air comes rushing into the helicopter, pressing against Dan’s eardrums, filling everything with the salty smell of the sea. Dan sees the black water below them, stretching out like a wavy blanket in all directions.

“Step back!” his dad shouts at Josefine—unnecessarily so, as she’s already moved out of the way.

He pushes himself off the wall and staggers a couple of steps towards the opening, his hair flapping in the wind. Eli is thrashing like an alligator in Dan’s father’s arms, looking like he might slip out of the jacket at any moment.

Dan’s dad loses his balance for half a second, leaning dangerously close to the open door before pulling himself back and regaining balance. He seems to consider the situation for a moment, standing there, holding onto Eli tightly as the dead boy slips down another couple of inches, his arms getting a little more free and immediately begins to claw at his dad’s waistline.

He can’t get close enough to drop him, Dan realizes with a sinking feeling. Not without falling out himself.

Then, his father makes a decision. Instead of stepping closer to the opening, he pulls Eli back and simply throws him at the open door.

It would have probably worked, if Eli hadn’t at the exact same moment slipped free of the jacket. Instead of plunging to the sea below, he lands on the floor right in front of the open door, grabbing hold of the frame, only one of his chewed-up legs actually makes it outside, and he’s able to fight the wind and pull it back in, beginning to haul himself back up to his feet.

“Shit!” Dan hears his father exclaim, hesitating in front of Eli, not wanting to step any closer, and now he has nothing to fight Eli with, as the jacket has zipped out of the open door. He looks around but finds nothing within reach he can use.

Then, just as Eli manages to get back up and is about to lunge at Dan’s father, William steps in from the side, holding onto the frame of the door and swinging his leg soccer-style, landing his foot squarely under Eli’s chin.

Eli is thrown backwards out of the door and disappears.

William leans forward and bellows out into the night: “Told you I’d kick you off the fucking helicopter, asshole!”

SIX

Dennis follows Mom who’s following Silas who’s walking slowly through the tunnel, rubbing his neck.

As he reaches the ladder, he stops and glances back. “What now?”

“Now you wait here. Step aside. Farther.”

Silas backs up against the wall.

“Dennis,” Mom says, not taking her eyes off Silas. “You climb upstairs. Make sure Jonas isn’t in the bedroom.”

“O… okay,” Dennis says.

“And if you try anything,” Mom goes on, addressing Silas as she holds out the doll and gently places two fingers on its head. “I’ll twist this all the way around.”

Silas doesn’t say anything, he just stares at Mom and breathes through his nose, obviously suppressing his anger.

“Go now, Dennis.”

Dennis slips past her, placing the rifle over his arm like he’s seen Silas carry it. Then he scales the ladder and pushes open the hatch. Daylight comes streaming down at him as he pokes his head up into the bedroom and looks around. Jonas is nowhere to be seen.

“He’s not here, Mom.”

“Good. Climb up all the way. Stand in the corner and aim the rifle at the hatch. Silas will come up in a second. If he tries to make a run for it, you shoot him.”

Dennis feels his already tense body tighten up even more. He tries to swallow, but his throat is clenched up. He climbs up into the bedroom and scuddles to the farthest corner. Then he loads the rifle—just like Silas taught him—places it at his shoulder and aims it at the opening in the floor. Listening intently, he can hear voices coming from somewhere in the house. At least three. He’s afraid that someone will step into the room at any moment.

“You ready, Dennis?” Mom calls from below.

“Yes, Mom.”

“You climb up now,” Mom tells Silas.

“Look,” Silas says, his voice changed now. It’s lower, less hostile, solemn even. “I get that you’re upset about us being here and … treating you like we did. But this isn’t going to work. You’re a smart woman, you know I’m right.”

“I do?” Mom asks calmly.

“Sure. Even if you use that thing to kill me, who’s going to protect you from my brother? Dennis? That boy couldn’t even kill a zombie. Jonas will kill both of you in an instant if it comes to that. Then what have you gained?”

“Climb the ladder.”

“I’m serious, lady. You need to think this through.”

“And you need to climb upstairs. Now.”

A moment of silence. Then Dennis hears Silas scaling the ladder. He appears, looks around and sees Dennis, sending him a sneer as Dennis points the shaky barrel at his chest.

“You wouldn’t kill me, Dennis—would you?”

“Stay back,” Dennis croaks.

“Get away from the opening,” Mom says from downstairs.

Silas hesitates for a couple of seconds, looking at Dennis like he’s trying to calculate his chances. Dennis’s finger is curled around the trigger, both his arms are trembling, sweat running down his back.

Then Silas decides to obey Mom, and he steps back.

Mom comes up through the hatch. She nods towards the door. “You go in there and call to your brother. Ask him to come.”

Silas walks to the door and opens it casually. “Hey, Jonas!”

A moment later, apparently coming from the kitchen: “Yeah?”

“Could you come in here, pleeease?”

Silas draws out the last word in a mock manner, making it sound like he’s being sarcastic. He looks over at Mom as he does it, smirking.

Mom looks back at him betraying no emotion. She doesn’t say anything, either. She simply holds up the doll in front of her and wraps her finger gently around the neck of the doll.

“What is it?” Jonas calls from the kitchen. “I’m about to help get Dad upstairs.”

Silas looks from Mom’s face to the doll, his smirk withering away. Then he barks: “Just come in here, damnit!”

Dennis can hear Jonas sigh, then tell someone: “Wait here a minute.” Footsteps approach through the living room. Jonas appears in the doorway and throws out his arms. “What is it? Seriously, dude, we need to …” As he notices his brother’s face, Jonas stops talking. “What? What is it? Why are you just standing there?”

Before Silas can answer, Jonas turns his head and looks at Dennis.

“What the fuck?” He glares back at Silas. “How did he get the rifle, you moron?”

Mom has been standing off to side, hidden behind the door, but now she steps to the side, revealing herself by closing the door behind Jonas.

Jonas looks from Mom to Silas to the doll in Mom’s hands. He shakes his head. “What the hell is going on here?”

Mom doesn’t take her eyes off Jonas as she addresses Silas: “Tell your brother what I have here.”

“It’s a voodoo doll,” Silas says in a sour tone. “I know it sounds fucking insane, but it works, believe me.”

“A … voodoo doll?” Jonas repeats, looking like he can’t decide whether to laugh or get angry. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“No, I’m not. Don’t make her use it. She could kill me with it.”

Jonas glares at his brother. “Did she threaten you to say that?”

Silas shakes his head. “I wish.”

“You don’t honestly expect me to believe this shit?” Jonas exclaims, and this time he really does laugh shrilly. “Did she outsmart you using a fucking doll?”

“Step back a little, Jonas,” Mom says before Silas can answer.

Jonas looks at her, then back at Silas.

“Do it,” Silas tells him gravely.

Jonas takes two steps away from his brother.

Mom places her hand under the doll, its feet resting on her palm. Then, grasping the doll carefully around the waist with her other hand, she lifts the doll up a couple of inches.

A second later, Silas starts swaying and puts out his arms as though fighting to keep his balance. Then, to Dennis’s amazement, an invisible force lifts Silas up from off the floor and hovers him a foot above ground.

“Holy fuck!” he groans, flailing his arms. “Okay, all right, put me down!”

Mom holds the doll a moment longer, staring at Jonas. “Do we understand each other?”

Jonas makes a visible effort to pry his eyes off of his levitating brother and looks at Mom. Dennis can see his lips move before the words finally come out in a whisper: “Yeah … sure, we understand each other.”

SEVEN

William slides the door shut and makes sure it’s locked. The roaring wind is cut off right away, leaving only the less intrusive hum of the engine, which doesn’t hurt his ears nearly as much.

“Shit,” he mutters, wiping sweat from his upper lip. “Everybody okay?”

Ozzy whimpers and licks his hand, and William crouches down to check on him. He finds nothing except blood in his mouth—but that all came from Eli.

Eli, that fucking asshole …

The mere thought of him makes William clench his teeth. He turns around to check on the others.

Josefine is standing by Nasira, who’s still sitting with Ali, now holding him in a tight embrace, comforting him as he cries into her shirt.

William sees the scratch marks on Nasira’s arms left by Eli as he tried to claw his way past her.

“Oh, crap,” he mutters, low enough that no one else hears him. “At least now we know for sure she’s infected.”

Then, something comes to mind, and he steps over there.

“Hey, maybe you shouldn’t touch him.”

Nasira looks up at him. She’s still out of breath, and even though her usual expression of peace and calm is somewhat gone, she doesn’t exactly look like someone who just fought off a dead person, either.

“It’s just …” William says, pointing to her arms. “You don’t want to infect him.”

Nasira looks at the fresh wounds and then gently pulls free of Ali. When he tries to resist, tries to hold onto her, she tells him something softly in Arabic.

The boy looks up at her through tears, comprehension dawning in his dark eyes.

Holy shit, that poor kid, William thinks. Lost both his parents, and now he can’t even hug his soon-to-be-dead sister …

Josefine begins to dab at Nasira’s arms with a piece of cotton soaked in Chlorhexidine.

The boy’s face is too painful to look at, so William turns around and sees Dan hugging his father instead.

“That was really brave of you, Dad.”

Henrik runs a hand through his hair and lets out a long, deep breath. “Yeah. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“You saved all our asses,” William says, smiling. “Well done.”

Henrik smiles back tiredly. “You and Ozzy did most of the work, really.”

“Good boy,” Dan says, crouching down and hugging Ozzy.

To William’s surprise, Ozzy doesn’t mind. He’s usually not fond of strangers petting him. But apparently, he has a soft spot for Dan. Which isn’t really that odd, since William has one for him, too.

“Everybody all right back there?” Sebastian shouts.

“We’re good!” William calls back. “Just needed to deal with a passenger who was flying without a passport. Goddamn piece of shit. He was infected after all.”

“He might not have known about it,” Dan remarks.

“I bet you he did. He showed me the wrong foot.”

Dan and Henrik both look at him in surprise.

William throws out his arms. “I thought about it just now. It’s the only thing that makes sense. I should have asked him to pull off both shoes, but I didn’t. That lying little scumbag.”

“Well, at least now he’s gone,” Henrik says, then taking a step sideways to keep his balance as the helicopter dips a little.

“You sure you’re all right, Dad?” Dan asks. “You came really close to him.”

“I’m telling you, I’m fine,” Henrik says, holding out his hands and rolling up his sleeves. “See?”

“Better check all over,” William says. “All it takes is one little wound.”

“Look, he didn’t bite me; I think I would have felt it.”

Still, Henrik pulls out his collar and lets Dan check his throat and chest. Then he examines his arms, even checking under his wrist watch. Then, finally, Henrik pulls up his shirt and—

William’s heart drops.

Dan gasps.

“Oh, no,” a voice from behind them—Josefine—says.

“What?” Henrik asks, looking down at himself, still holding up his shirt. When he sees the four long, shining red lines running across his navel, he simply says: “Oh.”

“He … he got you, Dad …” Dan whispers, and the pain in his voice is simply too much for William. He covers his face in his hands and turns away.

EIGHT

“So what’s going to happen?” Jonas asks as they all move into the living room.

The brothers are keeping a fair distance from Mom, and Dennis is standing close to her, the rifle now pointed to the floor once more.

“What do you think is going to happen?” Silas sneers at him. “She’ll fucking kill me using that nasty doll, that’s what.”

“I’m not going to kill you,” Mom says. “I just want you to leave. Stand there, both of you.” She points to the middle of the room. “Dennis, you come over here.”

Dennis positions himself next to Mom in the corner, just as someone steps into the living room. It’s a guy a little older than Mom. He’s almost bald, a greasy band of hair still resting above his ears, and his cheeks are red and shiny. He’s not really fat, but sports a heavy gut and jowl.

“What’s the holdup?” he asks, lighting a cigarette. He takes a deep drag and lets out the smoke through his nose. “I thought we were taking your dad upstairs. Why you just standing there?”

“Otto, for Christ’s sake!” a shrill female voice exclaims. “Put out the fucking cigarette, will you? No smoking inside!”

“Get used to it, Sussi!” the guy shouts back. “I can’t very well go outside anymore, can I? Or you want me to get fucking eaten? Jesus Christ …”

“At least don’t smoke when your brother’s here!”

“Aaw, he already got lung cancer,” the guy sneers. “Can’t give him something he already got, can I?”

“Otto,” Silas says.

The guy turns his head and looks at him, taking another drag at the cigarette. “Yeah?”

“Shut the fuck up. We’ve got trouble.”

“What trouble?”

Jonas points over his shoulder.

Otto steps sideways and looks. As he sees Mom and Dennis holding the rifle, his eyes grow big, then narrow. “Oh, fuck me …”

“Hello,” Mom says to the guy, as though he was a colleague she had just bumped into at the office. “You’ll be leaving again. If you make any fuss about it, we’re going to have to hurt the boys here. I assume you don’t want that to happen.”

“Who the hell is that?” the female voice says, and a big, fat lady with thin hair dressed in a tight summer dress which reveals every layer of fat underneath steps into view. She sees Mom and Dennis and shows a row of tiny teeth in a pig-like sneer. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? Stop pointing that gun at my nephews!”

She’s about to march right into the living room, but the guy—Otto—grabs her by her wrist and yanks her back.

“Stay here, Sussi!” he hisses. “You wanna get us all killed?”

“Who the hell does she think she is?” the woman shouts, flinging out her free arm—the one Otto isn’t holding—causing the fat-flaps to go flailing. Her eyes, which are deep-set above the round cheeks, are shooting lightning at Mom. “Jonas and Silas give her shelter, and this is how she repays the favor!?”

“That’s not exactly what’s been going on here,” Jonas says. “And trust me, she means business. So you need to just do what she tells you.”

“Yeah, she already killed Holger with a knife,” Silas adds, darting a sour look back over his shoulder at Mom.

For a few seconds, everybody is just looking at each other. As though what Silas said needs to sink in.

Dennis is doing his best not to shake, as the rifle has grown really heavy and his arms are starting to hurt with the effort of holding it steady.

Then he hears a buzzing sound, and an electric wheelchair comes rolling into the opening to the kitchen. In it sits a guy who at first glance looks to be a hundred years old. His hair is grey, his skin is wrinkly, and he’s very thin, almost to the point where he looks shrunken. There’s a clear plastic tube running up the guy’s nose, attached to a metal tank sitting on the side of the chair, and he’s wearing white hospital clothes.

But as soon as he speaks, Dennis can tell the man isn’t that old after all. Despite him obviously being sick and his voice sounding winded and raspy, there’s something about the way he talks. Something which almost reminds Dennis of how Mom talks.

“This wasn’t exactly the welcome we were hoping for, was it, boys?”

“No, it wasn’t,” Silas says. “Sorry for messing it up, Dad. I should have been more careful.”

Hearing Silas—a grown man—talking like a boy who accidentally spilled his milk is baffling to Dennis. Until now, he’s been acting like a big bully, but now, addressing his old, sick father, there’s respect in his voice. Fear, even. Dennis should know what fear sounds like.

The man and the woman—Otto and Sussi—also look at the old guy and wait for him to go on.

“So,” the father says, tilting his head to look past the twins and over at Mom. “There’s no way we can make this work then?”

It sounds more like a statement than a question.

“The only way that’ll work,” Mom says, keeping her voice calm as ever, “is for you and your family to leave.”

The old guy chews his cracked lower lip for a couple of seconds. His teeth are so yellow they look like corn kernels to Dennis. “I hope my boys didn’t do anything to insult you or your son. I tried my best to raise them properly, but I’m sure you know boys nowadays. They can get carried away. Personally, I blame social media.”

It sounds like the man is about to say something else, but he’s interrupted by a dry coughing spell. Once it subsides, he lifts one boney, yellow-nailed hand to his face and wipes the corner of his mouth with it.

“I don’t think social media could take the blame for your boys’ behavior,” Mom says, a tone of anger in her voice.

To Dennis’s surprise, the man in the wheelchair simply nods. “I understand. Please accept my sincere apologies. If I still had the strength, I would bash some sense into them right here and now.”

Dennis notices both twins—especially Silas—shift their weight around a little uneasily at that.

“That wouldn’t be necessary,” Mom tells him. “All I need from you is to leave. Now, please.”

The words are polite, but Dennis can tell Mom’s patience is running thin. Apparently, the man picks up on it as well.

“I can tell you’ve made up your mind, ma’am. I honestly don’t blame you. These are trying times to say the least, and we all need to do what we can to survive.” Another brief coughing fit. “Well, I guess we’ll get out of your hair, then.”

“No, Dad!” Silas exclaims. “We can’t just go. I told you, this place is too perfect. It’s got everything we need to—”

“It doesn’t matter how perfect it is,” the father interrupts him, barely raising his voice. “Because you screwed it up. You were supposed to make a deal with Holger, and …”

“But Holger was dead!” Silas cries out. “Instead we find this crazy bitch, and she wouldn’t even let us in to talk, so we had to find another way. I’m telling you, Dad, she fought us every step of the way. Didn’t she, Jonas?”

Silas looks at Jonas, but Jonas just sends him a scolding look, whispering under his breath: “Don’t cut him off, you imbecile.”

“If you speak one more time while I’m speaking,” the father says to Silas, his voice still low but somehow also menacing, “I’ll get up from this stupid chair and I’ll put you down myself. You hear me, boy?”

Silas looks down at his feet.

Even though Dennis doubts the father would have the strength to do it, the threat is more than enough.

“Like I was trying to say,” he goes on. “You were supposed to make a deal with Holger or whoever else was here. But as always, you go and make fools out of yourselves, acting like goddamn kids. It’s despicable. And it’s no wonder this lady doesn’t want us around.” He breaks into yet another round of coughing. Then he says: “Now, we’ll leave like she asks, nice and quiet.” Silas looks up and seems to be about to say something, when the father beats him to it: “And if I hear another word out of any of you, you know what’ll happen.”

Silas doesn’t say anything.

Instead, Otto steps forward and looks at Mom. “Are you … are you sure we can’t make a deal here, ma’am? I think we could all benefit from each other.”

“Don’t insult her intelligence, Otto,” the father bites. “She’s not a moron. She knows she can’t trust my boys—they made sure of that.”

Otto still looks at Mom expectantly. She shakes her head once, putting out the last hope in the guy’s eyes.

“You’ll leave first,” Mom says, nodding towards the newcomers. “Take the car you came in. Then, once you’re out of the driveway, these two will follow you in their own truck.”

Otto and Sussi look at each other, then at the man in the wheelchair, and they begin to move back out into the kitchen.

“There’s one more thing before you go,” Mom says, addressing the father.

He looks at her, lifting his bushy eyebrows slightly.

“Your boys took something of mine. Something very valuable. Could you please tell them to hand it over?”

The father turns his palm upwards. “Sure. Whaddiya take, boys?”

Jonas glances at Silas.

Silas clears his throat. “I took her knife. The one she used to kill Holger with.”

“All right. And where is this knife?”

“It’s in my jacket. Out in the hall.”

“Go get it then.”

Silas is about to move, when Mom stops him with a single word: “Stay.” She holds up the doll, and Silas glances at it, then back at his father.

“What the hell is that?” Sussi blurts out, squinting. “Is that … a doll?”

“It’s a voodoo doll,” Jonas says. “And it works. So don’t do anything stupid, or she’ll hurt Silas.”

A couple of seconds of stunned silence pass over the living room. Otto is the first one to break it.

He scoffs. “That’s a fucking joke, right?”

“No joke,” Jonas says grimly.

“I mean, it has to be,” Otto goes on. “That shit ain’t real. It’s only in the movies.”

“She already showed us,” Silas growls. “Trust me, it’s real.”

Otto and Sussi exchange looks of disbelief and bemusement and confusion.

“Well,” the father says, coughing a little. “With dead folks walking around everywhere, I don’t suppose a voodoo doll is that hard to believe.” He turns his head. “Otto, can you go get the knife and hand it to the woman?”

Otto nods.

The father looks at Mom. “Will that work for you, ma’am?”

Mom nods.

Otto turns around and walks out of sight. Dennis can hear him go to the hall. Half a minute passes by. Everybody is watching each other, saying nothing.

Otto comes back into view, holding the dagger in one hand, turning it over carefully. “I suppose this is the one?”

“It is,” Mom says. “Please give it to me.”

Otto hesitates for a moment, eyes the dagger, his eyebrows raised. “This really is a slick knife. It’s like, medieval or some shit.”

“Eighteenth century,” Mom corrects him, holding out her hand.

Otto looks at her, then at the knife one last time, before he trudges across the room, passing Silas and Jonas and stopping a few steps away from Mom. Dennis notices they’re the same height, although Otto is obviously a lot heavier.

He holds out the dagger, offering Mom the butt end, saying in a light tone, almost smiling: “Here you go, ma’am.”

Mom takes a step forward and reaches for the knife.

And that’s when a lot of things happen in very fast succession, almost too fast for Dennis to take it all in.

Just as Mom’s fingers touch the knife, Otto pulls it back, turns it around and swings it at her. He’s aiming high, most likely for her face or neck, but Mom pulls her head back just in time, the blade missing her by inches. Sussi screams. Otto steps forward and swings the dagger back the other way. This time, Mom hasn’t got time to pull back, so she raises her hand holding the doll, and the dagger cuts her wrist open. Mom screams and the doll falls to the floor.

“No!” Silas bellows. “Careful, Otto!”

Jonas steps forward, as though wanting to interfere, as Otto takes another swing at Mom. This time, Mom seems better prepared, and instead of stepping back, she ducks down and comes up from below, catching Otto’s wrist with both hands. She twists it back at a painful-looking angle, and Otto gives a grunt of pain.

Then, just as Jonas reaches Otto and grabs him on the shoulder, something else happens behind him, causing him to turn around.

Silas is suddenly flung to the floor. It doesn’t look like he falls, more like some invisible giant grabbed him and threw him down. He crashes against the floorboards, all wind audibly knocked from his lungs, and he curls up in a fetal position.

“Holy shit!” Otto exclaims, then immediately turns his attention back to Mom, but the second-long distraction is all Mom needed.

She twists the dagger from his hand, draws it back and plunges it deep into his blubbery neck. Sussi screams again. Jonas roars and pulls Otto back. Dennis sees the dagger slide back out, the blade now glistening with blood. More blood begins spurting from the slit in Otto’s neck, and he gives off what sounds like a mix between a cough and a retch, a pink mist of bloody spittle spraying from his lips as he falls backwards, Jonas being the only thing stopping him from plummeting to the floor like Silas just did, as Jonas catches him and lies him down gently.

Mom picks up the doll and steps back, her eyes darting briefly to Dennis, checking if he’s all right, then back at the scene unfolding in front of them.

Sussi throws herself down next to Jonas, who’s crouching over Otto, trying to stop the bleeding, but the blood is pumping way too fast, making its way out between his fingers, quickly forming a pool on the floorboards. Otto is staring up at the ceiling, grunting and rattling, oblivious to Sussi repeating his name over and over.

Silas is still huddled on the floor next to him, holding his chest while moaning.

The old guy—the father—is the only one who hasn’t moved. He’s sitting in his wheelchair, watching everything with a calmness which to Dennis is both surprising and disturbing.

NINE

They’re still flying. It’s been half an hour since they kicked Eli off the helicopter.

William is surprised at how well Dan handles it. Henrik, too, for that matter; knowing you’ll be dead within an hour can’t be easy.

Yet both of them are sitting calmly next to each other. Henrik has his arm around Dan’s shoulders, and Dan is leaning against his father, crying softly.

William doesn’t want to witness any of it. He’s sick of watching good people die. But at the same time, he feels like he owes it to Dan to be there. Soon, Dan won’t have his father anymore, and even though William can never replace a dad, he’s determined to do his best in helping Dan.

Henrik’s face is beginning to turn a little red, but otherwise, he still looks relatively okay. His free hand—the one not holding Dan—is resting gently on his navel area, holding the bandage that Josefine put on. It’s already soaked through with fresh blood.

They came together after the incident, huddled at the front end of the helicopter, talking for the first time like a real group; William didn’t need to act as spokesperson, didn’t need to ask anybody to gather round, it just happened. And everybody spoke their minds, one at a time.

Sebastian told them they were too far out over open water to turn back now. It would be safer to keep flying.

Josefine said she would take care of Henrik’s and Nasira’s wounds, clean them up and bandage them.

Nasira told them that if she began to feel seriously ill, she would jump out.

Henrik told them the same thing.

They all agreed to keep flying.

So that’s what they did.

And now they can do nothing but wait.

There are still hours till they reach the place in Norway they’re headed for, the place where Sebastian knows they can get more fuel, and the day is still just dawning outside. It’ll be a long day.

Which one of them will go first? William wonders. Nasira or Henrik?

Looking at Nasira, she looks exactly the same, except for the tiny bandages covering her arms, which are wrapped around Ali, who’s sleeping against her chest. Her eyes are open, glancing up at something only she can see, and that look of deep peace has once again settled on her face.

William finds himself studying her, and he’s surprised he hasn’t noticed until now just how beautiful she is; she looks like that princess from Aladdin.

The thought of the virus raging through her, slowly killing her, and the image of what will become of her when it finally finishes her, makes William’s stomach curl up. How can something this beautiful turn into something so horrible? William doesn’t consider himself a romantic person, but he can’t help but think of a lovely flower rotting and becoming compost.

Will they really do it?

The thought pops into his head unbidden. He considers for a moment what they’ll do if either Henrik or Nasira has a change of heart and refuses to jump off the helicopter once their time runs out.

And he feels ashamed of himself. He’s certain it won’t come to that. To his astonishment, he realizes he trusts them both. These two people he’s only known for days.

“It’s not fair,” he hears Dan whisper between the sobs. “It’s not fair, Dad. First Jennie. Then Mom. And now you. It’s just not fair.”

“I know,” Henrik says, his eyes closed, rocking Dan gently back and forth. “I know it isn’t fair.”

“I wish we’d never gone into that house. I wish someone else had stumbled upon that old lady. If we’d just stayed home that day, Jennie would still be alive, and so would Mom.”

“I know,” Henrik just repeats softly.

“It’s all my fault.”

William feels his throat close up as Dan begins crying deeper.

“Oh, no, no,” Henrik says, still rocking him, his eyes still closed. “None of it is your fault, Dan. You don’t decide who lives and who dies. None of us do.”

“I can’t … I can’t go on without you, Dad …”

“Sure you can. You’re the strongest person in the world.”

William nods in agreement, even though none of them notice. The way Dan has dealt with losing both his sister and his mom within a few days from each other, and still he’s kept on fighting, trying to help people, trying to survive—William’s not sure he could have done the same.

It’s funny how that first impression Dan gives off—the shy, timid teenager with those big, blue, serious eyes—it tells you nothing of the strength of his character.

Maybe Dan hasn’t always been like this, maybe the events over the past week have shaped him in record time. But still, it must have always been there, on the inside. Isn’t there some saying about hard times showing you who you really are?

TEN

It takes Otto less than a minute to die. But to Dennis, that minute feels more like an hour.

Otto doesn’t close his eyes when it happens, but simply stops groaning.

Jonas—whose hands are covered in blood all the way to the elbows—leans back with a trembling sigh, announcing: “He’s dead …”

“No!” Sussi cries, leaning over Otto. “No, no, no!”

Silas has managed to sit up, but he’s still clutching his side, obviously in pain.

Sussi jumps to her feet and glares at Mom, who has drawn back farther, holding out both the doll and the bloody dagger. Sussi’s face is a mask of rage and tears as she spits: “You killed him!”

“He tried to kill me,” Mom says, but Sussi doesn’t hear her.

“You killed him!” she screams and lunges at Mom.

Mom doesn’t move, but readies herself to use the dagger once more.

If Jonas hadn’t jumped up and caught Sussi in that instant, Mom would likely have killed her as well. But Jonas grabs her around the waist and drags her back.

“Get her outside,” the father tells Jonas, barely looking at him. His eyes are resting on Mom, his expression betraying no emotions. “And you,” he says, addressing Silas, still without taking his eyes from Mom. “You pick yourself up and go help your brother.”

Silas gets to his feet, slowly and methodically, groaning. “Fuck, I think I broke a couple of ribs …”

The sound of the crying woman grows more distant. Dennis can hear Jonas take her outside and slam the front door behind him.

Silas looks down at Otto. The blood has stopped gushing from the wound and, judging from the color of Otto’s face, there’s no more blood left inside him.

“You fucking killed him,” Silas whispers.

“If anybody killed Otto, it was Otto,” the father says coolly. “That was a stupid thing he attempted.”

Silas rounds on him, flinging out his arms. “So, you’re just gonna let her get away with it?”

“Go help your brother.”

“Otto was your fucking brother!”

“You don’t talk to me like that.” The father barely raises his voice, yet Dennis immediately feels the threat of violence behind the words. “Now, go help your brother.”

“What about Otto?” Silas says, pointing at the corpse. “Do we just leave him like that?”

“What use is he to us now? He’s dead.”

Silas bites down hard, apparently choking back words. Instead of saying anything to his father, though, he turns around and stares at Mom, and then, to Dennis’s surprise, he notices tears forming in Silas’s eyes. “He was my uncle. I grew up knowing him. And you killed him like a fucking pig.”

“Silas,” the father says, his tone lower now. Warningly.

Silas ignores him, taking a step towards Mom. Mom raises the dagger again.

“You think you can just keep getting away with killing folks, but you’re wrong, lady. This time, you fucked with the wrong people.”

“Silas!”

Silas stares at Mom a moment longer, then turns around and marches out of the living room.

The father’s eyes follow him, then drift back to Mom.

Dennis expects him to say something, but he doesn’t. They just stare at each other for the longest time. Instead, it’s Mom who breaks the silence.

“Like I said. You and the woman take the van. Your sons will follow you in their own car.”

“I got that,” the father says. He glances down briefly at Otto. “Will you bury my brother? He wasn’t the brightest, but he deserves that much at least.”

Mom seems to consider for a moment. Then she nods once.

“Thank you,” the father says, breaking into another coughing fit.

Jonas reappears in the opening to the kitchen. He looks from Mom to his father. “We’re ready, Dad.”

“All right. We’ll be going, then.”

He turns the wheelchair around, then remembers something.

“Oh, by the way …” He nods towards the doll in Mom’s hand. “That thing. What are you going to do with that?”

“I’ll destroy it,” Mom says. “As soon as you’re out of here.”

“And that won’t hurt Silas?”

“I’ll remove the charm first.”

“Good.” The father thinks for a moment, then adds: “You know, he’s a good boy. I realize he doesn’t always act like it, but he’s my son and I love him with all my heart. If anything were to happen to him …” The words hang in the air for a moment.

“Are you threatening me?” Mom asks, a hint of cold in her voice.

The old man shrugs. “I’m only saying, self-defense is one thing. Killing someone who isn’t trying to kill you, that’s something else.”

Mom doesn’t answer.

“Right then,” the father says. “We’ll get out of your hair.”

He rolls along, and Jonas follows him through the kitchen.

Dennis looks to Mom, and she gestures for him to stay put as she goes to the kitchen. She looks out the window, and Dennis can hear the sound of the cars starting.

“They’re leaving,” Mom says, and Dennis takes it to mean he can join her.

They both watch from the kitchen window as the cars drive out from the courtyard. First the van, then Silas and Jonas in the truck.

Silas is driving. Just before they leave, he turns the car around so that he can see the windows.

He stares at Mom, showing his teeth in what Dennis first takes to be a smile, but then he realizes it’s a hateful sneer, as Silas slides his finger across his throat very slowly.

Then he speeds up, making the gravel go flying, and the truck roars out of the courtyard.

Dennis glances up at Mom. “What did that mean, Mom? That thing he did with his finger?”

Dennis isn’t the smartest kid, he knows that, but he isn’t so thick that he didn’t understand the meaning of Silas’s gesture. He just wants to know if Mom understands too.

“It was nothing,” Mom says, but her eyes are suddenly distant. “Go upstairs for a minute, Dennis.”

“Why?”

“Just do it, please.”

Dennis can’t help but notice the strange tone in Mom’s voice. When she asks him to do something, she usually never says “please.” And the way she’s just staring out the window … something about it gives Dennis a bad feeling.

Yet he senses Mom is in no mood for further questions, so he hurries out of the kitchen and runs up the stairs. He stops at the top of the steps, unsure where to go. Then he heads into the room from which he can see the driveway and the road beyond.

Looking out and squinting his eyes, he can still make out the two cars driving in the distance, the midday sun gleaming in the metal.

He watches them grow even smaller, and he feels relieved at the thought of Silas not being here anymore. But surprisingly, he feels a little sad, too.

It’s very strange, but even though Silas was mean to him and did something bad to Mom last night, there was also something else about him. Like the way he taught Dennis to shoot the rifle. Despite how uncomfortable Dennis had been, afterwards, he felt something he never really felt before. It was pride. Silas had even praised him.

“That wasn’t half bad for a first try.”

Dennis remembers the words vividly. Not the greatest compliment in the world, but still more than even Mom had ever given him.

And why had Silas wanted to teach him how to shoot in the first place? Because he wanted to use him as a bodyguard? Not likely. He did it, Dennis felt sure, just as much to help Dennis.

“Grow a pair and do it soon,” Silas had told him. “Just friendly advice.”

Dennis hardly ever got any advice from anybody, mostly just looks of disgust or mean comments which he had learned a long time ago to ignore. Dennis had no friends, and that was okay.

But for a moment yesterday, he had felt like Silas was his friend. No, more than that. He had felt like he was his big brother. Someone besides Mom who would look after him if it became necessary.

Maybe Dennis is reading too much into it, but that was how it felt. And as Dennis is standing there, feeling an ounce of unlikely gratitude towards the guy who held them hostage, the truck with Silas and Jonas in it suddenly turns sharply to the side, crashes into the ditch and goes flying into the air, completing three or four somersaults before finally coming to rest several yards from the road.

Dennis gasps.

He stares at the car, which has landed upside-down. It’s too far away for him to see any details, but it doesn’t look good.

The other car, the one with Sussi and the father, stops, backs up and stops again. A person—must be Sussi—comes out and runs to the crashed car.

Dennis turns away from the window and runs downstairs.

“Mom! Mom!” he shouts, running to the kitchen, but Mom isn’t there.

“What is it?” Her voice comes from the living room.

Dennis runs back in there and sees her sitting on the couch, her hands resting on her knees, almost like she’s about to begin one of her prayers.

“The car!” he croaks. “Silas and Jonas … they … they crashed, Mom!”

Mom just looks at him, no discernable surprise on her face. “Oh.”

“Just up the road,” Dennis goes on, pointing. “Not even, like, two miles from here.”

“That’s unfortunate,” Mom says, her voice cool as ever. “They should be more careful.”

“But … shouldn’t we … help them? Maybe they’re hurt!”

Mom’s eyes grow narrow. “Why on earth would you help them?”

“Well, because … I don’t know … maybe they’re hurt!” he repeats, as he can’t find any other good reason.

“They were bad people, Dennis,” she tells him, shaking her head. “Whatever happens to them, they deserve it.”

“But, Mom—”

“And even if we wanted to help them, we couldn’t leave this house; it’s too dangerous.”

“But—”

“No more ‘buts,’ Dennis.” Her tone is final, her eyes digging into his. “They’re gone now. It’s over.”

Dennis can only blink for several seconds. His heart is pounding away. He senses something Mom isn’t telling him, something he should be able to figure out.

But failing to do so, he just keeps standing there, blinking.

“Go and get some rest, Dennis,” Mom tells him, her voice very soft now. “We both need it.”

Dennis hesitates for a moment. He wants to ask something, but is unsure what. So, finally, he turns and walks back over to the stairs. Just before he goes upstairs, though, he glances back at Mom. She’s sitting in the exact same way, her eyes closed now, her lips moving soundlessly.

And then he sees it.

The doll.

It’s lying on the couch next to Mom.

Its head is turned all the way around.

ELEVEN

Dan is resting his head against his father, feeling the warmth coming off his body.

He knows it’s the fever.

It’s all still unreal.

He gets it—intellectually at least.

His father is infected.

His father will be gone in a few minutes.

Gone forever.

Dead.

Irrevocably.

It’s fairly simple, really. As simple as anything. You’re either there or you’re not. It shouldn’t be hard to understand.

And yet it hasn’t dawned on Dan. He hasn’t understood any of it.

A part of him still hasn’t caught up with the fact that Mom is gone. Or Jennie, even though he watched her die.

Emotionally, they still feel alive to him. They’re still very much present in his memory. He can see their faces clearly, hear their voices. How can they no longer be in the world when they’re so vividly there right inside his mind?

Apparently, that part of him is a very slow learner. It’ll likely take years before it really catches on. Maybe it never will. Maybe that part of him will keep thinking that Mom and Jennie are alive somewhere.

And now, to make everything all the more unreal, his father will be going away too. In a short time, he’ll only exist within Dan’s memories too.

What kind of world does this to anybody? What kind of awful crimes has Dan committed against anybody to make fate feel like he deserves this?

And what about Mom and Jennie? What did they do to deserve to die? What could possibly be the reason for the world to decide they no longer belonged here? How could it discard them so easily?

None of it is real.

None of it makes sense.

None of it is fair.

He feels his father move slightly.

“Dan? You awake?”

No, Dan thinks.

“Yes,” Dan says.

“It’s time. I can feel it.”

No, Dan thinks.

“All right,” Dan says.

“You ready to say goodbye?”

Never, Dan thinks.

“I guess so,” Dan says.

Dad pulls him in tighter, placing both arms around him, hugging him like he hasn’t done since Dan was very little.

And Dan takes it in like a little kid who has had a fall and needs to be comforted. He squeezes Dad, breathes in the smell of him, feels the realness of him.

“I love you, Dan.”

“I love you too, Dad.”

The hug seems to go on forever, and in a way it does. In a way, time doesn’t exist in that hug.

And yet it ends.

After a long, long time, Dad slips out of Dan’s arms, leaving them to slump down into Dan’s own lap, and Dan doesn’t move them, can’t move them. He can’t open his eyes either. He hears William’s voice, and Josefine’s, both speaking softly to Dad.

“Come on, now.”

“Here, take my hand.”

Then there’s only the sound of the helicopter, and Dan lets that sound fill up everything, floats away into it, and somewhere nearby and very, very far away, a door opens and then closes again a moment later, and then there’s nothing.

Nothing at all.

TWELVE

Iver must have been sleeping, because he’s suddenly jerked awake as the lifeboat comes to a sudden halt. The soothing sound of the waves caressing the outside of the hull is for a moment drowned out by a harsh scraping of sand.

“Damnit,” Chris growls from the front end of the boat, where he’s operating the controls. “I told you to give me a heads-up before we got too close to the shore!”

Charlotte is standing at the other end of the boat atop the three-step ladder which allows her to look out the rear window. “It’s not exactly easy to see how deep the water is,” she bites back at him. “Besides, nothing happened.”

Iver feels his buttocks ache from sleeping sitting upright. The toddler is resting on his lap, wrapped in a blanket, his thumb securely lodged between his lips.

“We could have easily capsized,” Chris grumbles and gets up.

“But we didn’t, did we? Let’s get out of here.” She looks to Iver. “Good, you’re up. Bring the kid.”

“Where … where are we?” Iver says, straightening his back. “Frederikshavn?”

“Frederikshavn?” Charlotte shows her teeth in a sneer. “Are you crazy? Why would we go back there? That place is overrun by now.”

“Okay, well, where are we then?” It’s not until now that Iver notices the sunlight streaming in from the window above. “Wait, is it morning?”

“That’s what you call it when the sun rises, yeah,” Chris says and opens the door, letting in more of the light.

“How long did we sail for?” Iver asks, getting to his feet, careful to place the toddler against his chest.

“Almost seven hours,” Charlotte tells him with a grin. “Welcome to Anholt.”

“Anholt?” Iver has heard the name before—it’s a small Danish island—but he couldn’t place it on a map. “Where’s that?”

“Well, where are islands normally located?” Chris asks, right before he jumps out of the boat, audibly landing in water.

Charlotte flashes her phone in front of his face for a second. On the screen is a map of the Kattegat, the sea between Denmark and Sweden. Right in the middle is a red arrow pointing to a tiny dot.

“We couldn’t go to Denmark, and we couldn’t go to Sweden, either,” she says, putting her phone away with a shrug. “We were headed for Sweden at first, actually, but then we heard over the radio that the infection had reach them, too, so we changed course.”

“Okay, but … why Anholt?”

She shrugs again. “Seemed like the obvious choice, really. Little over a hundred residents. Twenty-five miles of water all around. We can ride out the shitstorm here.”

“But … but what about … I mean, our families? My mom is in Oslo, I can’t just stay out here until—”

“Look, you’re welcome to take the boat and go wherever you please!” Charlotte says, throwing out her arms. “Just expect to meet dead people trying to eat you, because they’re all over the place! Denmark, Sweden, Germany … they’ll be in Norway by this afternoon, I promise you that. If you want to survive, I strongly recommend you come with us.”

She leaves the boat before Iver has time to reply. The toddler moves in his arms, and Iver looks down to see him yawning.

“You waking up?”

The boy looks up at him, blinking sleepily. To Iver’s surprise, he doesn’t start crying right away. Instead, he smiles tentatively at him.

Before they went to sleep, Iver and the boy shared a pack of crackers and a bottle of water. There are still crumbs at the side of the boy’s mouth, and Iver brushes them away before he steps out of the boat.

The sunlight is blinding, shining down from the vast blue sky overhead. It’s probably only nine o’clock, yet the air is already warm.

Iver squints and looks around. The boat has landed on a beach very close to the sand. A few miles down the coastline, he can make out a lighthouse, and in the other direction there seems to be a harbor in the distance.

Chris has already made his way onto the beach, carrying a big bag over his shoulder. He’s holding a lit cigarette between his lips.

Charlotte is standing in the water, bending over to wash her face.

Iver steps down the ladder and into the water, immediately soaking through his shoes and socks. It’s lukewarm, so he doesn’t mind. He carries the boy to land. As they pass by Charlotte, she remarks: “We decided not to land at the harbor.”

“Why not?”

“We didn’t want to risk the people living here deciding they didn’t want any newcomers.”

“Why wouldn’t they want that?”

Chris takes a deep drag, then answers: “They might have already taken precautions to defend the island. That’s what I’d be doing if I lived out here and the world was turning to shit all around me.”

To Iver, that sounds like something soldiers in an American movie would do, not regular old Danish people living on a peaceful island. But he doesn’t say anything.

The toddler begins whimpering.

“What’s up with him?” Charlotte asks.

“I think he might be hungry,” Iver says.

“Here, I brought some food,” she says, reaching into her bag and pulling out a packet of beef jerky.

Iver looks at it. “Uhm, thanks, but … I’m not sure he can eat that.”

“Why not?”

“He hasn’t got too many teeth.”

“Oh. How about a banana, then?”

“I’ll give it a try. Thanks, Charlotte.”

Iver takes the banana and begins peeling it. As soon as the toddler sees it, he reaches for it and takes a big bite.

“Huh,” Iver says and can’t help but smile as the toddler wolfs down another bite, hardly wasting any time chewing. “Guess bananas are a hit with toddlers.”

THIRTEEN

They’ve only walked inland for twenty minutes when Iver sees the blue coastline in the horizon, past the green meadow.

“Wait, is that …?” He stops and looks back towards the beach. Between the dunes he can also see water. “Is that the other side of the island?”

“It is,” Charlotte nods, passing him.

“But you can literally see from coast to coast,” Iver says, pointing.

“Of course you can,” Chris says, glancing back. “I told you, it’s a very small island. Only a couple of miles wide.”

“Huh,” Iver says, wiping the sweat from his forehead. The day is already getting hotter. The toddler is resting against his chest, wrapped in Iver’s shirt, which he has turned into a makeshift carrier. The little guy has been quiet until now, looking out over the landscape.

Iver’s back is beginning to ache, and he hopes they won’t have to walk much longer. Neither Charlotte nor Chris have said anything about where they’re going, and Iver is weary of asking, as everything he says is met with a snarky remark.

So, he just keeps on walking.

As they pass the next one of the small hills covering the open fields, a gravel road appears in front of them. A few hundred yards up road is a house. A small car is parked in front of it.

“Looks like they’re home,” Charlotte says, taking a swig out of her water bottle. “Do we go talk to them?”

“We have no choice,” Chris says, patting his backpack. “We need to make friends with the locals, or we’ll run out of food by tomorrow.”

Plus, we have a baby to look after, and we can’t do that on our own, Iver thinks to himself. Both Charlotte and Chris have obviously written the toddler off as Iver’s responsibility. Which is fine with him—he wouldn’t trust the little guy to either of them anyway.

They walk onto the road and begin heading for the house. Farther down the road Iver can see more houses, and it looks like they turn into a village.

A rumble of an engine comes from behind, and Iver turns to see a few cars coming. “Look out,” he tells Chris and Charlotte—unnecessarily so, as they have also heard the cars. They step to the side of the road.

The cars pass them by, slowing down only enough for the people inside to glare at them with no attempt of hiding their interest. Iver sees an old guy, two old women, a younger man with a beard, two little boys and a teenage girl. It looks almost like a big family road trip.

“Well, now the locals know we’re here,” Chris says as the dust settles and they walk on. “I bet you they could tell right away we were outsiders.”

“They didn’t look very welcoming,” Charlotte remarks. “And they didn’t stop and ask if they could help us, either. You think they already know about what’s going on?”

“About the ferry?” Chris shrugs. “Maybe. But they definitely know what’s going on in mainland Denmark. And they probably figured out it’s only a matter of time before outsiders will try to come here for refuge.”

The toddler starts moving against Iver’s chest, whimpering.

“You thirsty?” he asks, offering him a sip of his bottle. But the toddler turns his head away. “No, you’re probably hungry. Sorry, but I’ve got no more bananas.”

He walks on as the toddler keeps whimpering, catching up with Charlotte and Chris as they reach the house.

Just as they step into the driveway, the front door opens, and an old guy—around Iver’s grandpa’s age—comes out. He’s holding a shotgun.

“Whaddya want?” he asks, not raising the weapon, but squinting at them suspiciously. “Why are you here?”

“We’re survivors of a shipwreck,” Chris says, holding up his arms. “We only want help and—”

“What shipwreck?” the guy says, his eyes growing even smaller. “We didn’t hear of any shipwreck. You were on the ferry, weren’t you? And I bet you’re all infected too!”

“No,” Charlotte says, stepping forward. “Please, sir, we’re not infected. We have a baby with us, and he really needs—”

“I don’t care about your baby!” the guy snarls, raising the shotgun, causing Charlotte to stop dead in her tracks. “Get the hell away from my house! And get off my island!”

A car comes rolling up and stops right beside them. The window rolls down and an old lady pops her head out. “What in God’s name is going on here?”

For a moment, Iver is sure the woman is about to yell at them too. But she looks at the old guy scornfully.

“Why are you pointing that thing at these kids, Fred?”

“They’re carrying that nasty disease!” the old guy cries out. “They’ve come here to take over my house! It’s just like they said at the meeting they would!”

“That’s not what they said at all! Were you even listening?”

The old guy bares his teeth—or what’s left of them—in an angry snarl. “Don’t you get smart with me, Agnete! I know what these punks are after! They’re nothing but trouble, and they’re not welcome on my island!”

“It’s not your island, Fred,” the woman says, and then she looks at Iver. “Oh, goodness! You have a baby.”

Iver nods. “I think he’s hungry. I tried giving him something to eat, but—”

“You get the hell off my property!” the old guy bellows, stabbing at them with the shotgun like a prodding rod used on cattle. “I’m not telling you one more time!”

They move out of the driveway and closer to the woman’s car. She uses her hand to shield her eyes as she looks at them one at a time. “Where are you from? The ferry?”

“No, we—” Chris begins.

“Yes,” Iver says. “We were aboard the ferry.”

Chris sends him a burning look.

“But we got off in time,” Iver goes on, ignoring him. “And none of us are infected. We would have been long dead by now if we were.”

“Don’t you believe them, Agnete!” the old guy shouts from his doorway. “You’ll regret it if you do! They’re only after your food and your house! You won’t be able to feed four mouths for long!”

“Go inside, Fred!” Agnete calls to him.

Fred mutters something, then slams the door.

“I see you’ve met my neighbor,” Agnete says, raising her eyebrows. “Don’t let him bother you; we’re all a little on edge now, with what’s happening across the water.”

The toddler gives off a whimper, and Agnete looks at him.

“Poor boy! We need to get him out of the sun. Hop in!”

She rolls the window back up with no further questions. Chris and Charlotte and Iver exchange looks of surprise.

“Did she … did she mean all of us?” Charlotte asks.

When they hesitate, the old woman waves at them impatiently.

“I guess so,” Chris says, shrugging.

Iver opens the back door, unties the toddler and gets in. Charlotte gets in next to him and Chris takes the front seat. The inside of the car is perfectly clean, not a trace of dust or dirt, and it smells of lavender. An old folk song is playing softly on the radio, and the air conditioner makes for a pleasant, cool atmosphere.

Agnete puts the car in motion and looks around at them. “You’ll have to excuse old Fred. He’s not been in a particularly friendly mood lately. His wife died just a few months ago. Took a real toll on him. And now this.”

“Oh,” Charlotte mutters, apparently not knowing what else to says.

“Thank you for helping us,” Iver says.

“Don’t mention it,” Agnete says, sending him a brief smile. “We all need to help each other in times like these. I suppose a lot more people will be coming soon.” Then, before anyone can reply to that, she looks at Iver in the mirror. “Is he yours?”

“Oh, no,” Iver says, shaking his head. “No, I’m only eighteen,” he adds, as though that explains anything.

“Well, I was only seventeen when I had my first son,” the woman smiles at him. “Whose is he then?”

“He’s … uhm … his mother …” Iver looks at the toddler, then back up at Agnete. “She didn’t make it.”

“Oh, poor thing,” the old woman says, and Iver can’t tell if she means the mother or the toddler. “Well, we’ll take good care of him now.”

Iver feels a deep gratitude and sense of relief.

They reach the next house, surrounded by trees and located right at the edge of the village, and the woman pulls into the driveway and parks the car.

“Okay, here we are. You mind helping me bring in the bags from the trunk? I just came back from the meeting in the town hall, and they dealt out supplies. I took as much as I could carry.”

“What meeting?” Chris asks.

“They called us in this morning,” Agnete says, unbuckling. “They’re going to try their best to organize things so we can all get through this together.”

“They?” Chris asks. “Who are ‘they’?”

“The police, the firefighters and the chairman of the civic association. Come on now, we can talk once we get inside.”

FOURTEEN

Iver isn’t particularly surprised to find that Agnete’s house is just as neat and tidy as her car.

There are a ton of trinkets everywhere, and nothing is out of place. No trace of any mess, neither in the kitchen nor the living room. Even the shoes in the scullery are lined up in a perfect row.

Those supplies in the trunk, which according to Agnete was “as much as she could carry,” turns out to be four large shopping bags stuffed with groceries and household items. Chris and Charlotte take two each and bring them into the kitchen.

As soon as she’s placed the car keys neatly on the shelf next to the fridge, Agnete takes the toddler from Iver.

“Oh, hello there, you pretty thing. You look hungry. Here, let me fix you something.” She opens the fridge, and says to Iver: “Could you grab me a bottle in the top cupboard over there?”

Iver—rather confused—opens the cupboard and sees four baby bottles lined up. He takes one and hands it to Agnete, who’s opening a carton of full fat milk, which she pours into the bottle.

“You’re probably used to baby formula, but wait until you try this, little buddy. This is how we fed you in the old days, and I promise you, it’s even better!”

Iver watches in silent awe as the old lady prepares the bottle by unscrewing the top, filling it with milk, screwing the top back on and heating it in the microwave, all of which she does one-handed while holding the toddler on her hip with the other. The boy seems to have taken to her right away, probably because he can feel she’s a natural at dealing with babies. While the microwave is running, Agnete speaks to the toddler and caresses him.

“You’re really good at that,” Iver says, smiling.

“Well, I raised seven children of my own, so I should have picked up a thing or two along the way.”

“Seven?” Iver says.

“Uh-huh. All of them boys. Can you believe that? Me and Henning desperately wanted a girl, but no such luck.”

“Where’s your …?”

Agnete guesses the rest of the question. “Henning died ten years ago. It’s just me know.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I’ve got a large family, and they often come over to visit, bringing along my grandkids.”

Explains why she has baby bottles in the cupboards, Iver thinks to himself.

“You want us to put the things away?” Charlotte offers, pointing to the bags on the counter.

“No, no, let me do that,” Agnete says. “You guys hungry? I was about to eat. There’s leftover lasagna in the fridge, you can heat it in the oven.”

At the mere thought of lasagna, Iver’s stomach gives an audible growl, and he immediately realizes just how little he’s eaten since he got on the ferry last night.

The microwave pings, and Agnete takes out the bottle. She sits down at the kitchen table, places the toddler on her arm and offers him the bottle. The guy’s obviously no stranger to the procedure, and he immediately latches on and begins gulping down the milk.

“Thank God we met you,” Iver says, sitting down across from Agnete as Charlotte takes out the lasagna and starts up the oven. “I would have no idea how to handle that little guy.”

She sends him a smile. “You know his name?”

“You know, I don’t. I didn’t even know his mother.”

“Huh. Well, we might need to give you a name, then,” she says, stroking the boy’s cheek with her finger. She looks at Iver. “I didn’t catch your names either?”

“I’m Iver. That’s Chris and Charlotte.”

“Nice to meet you all,” Agnete says.

“You too,” Charlotte says, wrenching out a smile.

Chris comes over to the table but doesn’t sit down. He looks at Iver as though he wants him to say something.

Iver clears his throat. “So … are you okay with us staying here for now?”

Agnete looks up at him. “For now? What do you mean? You plan on going anywhere else soon?”

“No, it’s just … taking in three people and a baby, it seems a little … much to ask.”

“The way I see it, an old lady living alone isn’t doing anybody much good. I figured we could both benefit from each other’s company.”

“Sure,” Iver says. “Thank you.”

The toddler stops drinking and leans back his head with a sigh, his eyes closing, opening, then closing again.

“Goodness, you really were hungry,” Agnete chuckles. “You drank the whole bottle. Here, let me tuck you in so you can take a nap.”

She gets up and shuffles to the stairs. Iver follows her and watches from the doorway as Agnete carries the toddler into what is clearly a child’s room. There’s even a crib, all made and ready, which she places the toddler in. He’s gone to sleep before she can even put the blanket over him.

She comes back over and closes the door, smiling at Iver. “He’ll probably be out for a few hours. Now, let’s go down and eat. We can talk over everything while we do.”

FIFTEEN

When Dan finally returns to what he once knew as the real world, the first thing he notices is the daylight streaming in at him.

Then he realizes that he’s still in the helicopter, but that the sound of the engine has stopped and that the surroundings are quiet.

Finally, he becomes aware of William’s face looking down at him, smiling tentatively.

“You still with us?”

Dan blinks.

“You were gone for most of the day; you didn’t even wake when we landed. We decided to let you sleep for as long as you needed. Here, lemme give you a hand.”

William pulls him upright and sits down next to him in the open door.

Dan looks out of the helicopter. It has landed on what looks like the top of a mountain range. The view over the open landscape is breathtaking under the blue sky. In the distance, Dan can make out a city, and somewhere nearby is the sound of the ocean.

The rest of the group is either standing or sitting around in the grass, eating and talking together in low voices. One by one they notice him.

They’re all there.

All except one.

Dan doesn’t want to think about it. He can’t. Not yet. It’s still too unreal.

Instead, he looks at Nasira. Her arms are covered in bandages, and where her skin is visible, Dan can tell it’s turning red. But other than that, she looks fine. Obviously still no fever.

Ozzy comes over and licks Dan’s hand. Dan strokes his head for a moment.

“What time is it?” he asks William.

“Almost six. You hungry?”

Dan checks in on his stomach, but finds nothing much. “Not really.”

William hands him what looks like a gas station sandwich. “You should probably eat something anyway.”

“All right.” Dan takes it, unwraps it and begins eating methodically. His head feels as empty as the rest of him.

The others have gone back to eating and talking.

“I think I had a dream,” Dan says.

William looks puzzled for a moment, like that was the last thing he expected to hear. “Oh?”

“I was back at the house.”

“Your house?”

“No. The one where it all started.”

“Oh,” William says again. “Well … I can’t imagine that was a pleasant dream.”

“It wasn’t a nightmare.”

“No?”

“No. I was just … there.”

William looks at him curiously, clearly unsure about what to say.

“I stood in the basement,” Dan goes on, speaking very slowly and deliberately. For some reason, he feels it’s important to get the words just right, to express exactly what the dream had shown him. “It was the same room. The room that Jennie died in. Everything looked like I remember. Nothing happened in the dream. I didn’t feel anything, either. I just … stood there. Looking around.”

As Dan stops talking, William shrugs and smiles. “Sounds like a pretty boring dream to me.”

“It was very … significant.”

“How so?”

Dan shakes his head slowly. “I don’t know.”

William looks at him for a moment, waiting to see if Dan is going to say anything else. When he doesn’t, William clears his throat and says: “Look, man, I can’t tell you how sorry I am. About you losing … well, everyone.”

Dan looks at William, still feeling nothing in particular. He takes another bite of his sandwich. It’s chicken and curry, his favorite, he notices as he chews slowly.

William has finished his sandwich and is rubbing his palms against his thighs. “You know, your dad was the one who pressed the issue the most. About bringing Eli along. I’m not saying it was his fault or anything, I’m just saying … don’t blame yourself.”

“I don’t blame anyone,” Dan says, surprising himself with the words.

Nasira gets up and comes over to them, Ali following along. She looks at Dan and smiles. “I’m sorry, but I couldn’t help hear what you’re talking about. I wanted to offer you my condolences.”

“Thank you,” Dan says, not even sure whether that’s the right answer; no one’s ever condoled him before.

“I know it’s no consolation right now,” Nasira goes on, “but I still believe we made the right choice.”

William frowns. “How can the right choice lead to Dan’s father dying?”

Nasira looks at him, her smile not faltering. “I don’t know the master plan, none of us do. But I do know that even though Henrik’s dead, his soul is unstained. That’s what doing the right thing means. That even if you die, you’ll be saved.”

“I don’t know,” William says, shaking his head, looking out over the hilly landscape. “I’m starting to think, in a world like this, where everything is turning to shit, doing the right thing may not be the right thing to do anymore.”

Nasira shrugs. “Maybe you’re right. Or maybe this is the kind of world where doing the right thing matters the most.”

She looks at Dan, and he looks back at her, and he suddenly gets why Nasira can be so peaceful even though she’s dying. Dan isn’t dying, but he’s got nothing left to lose, either, and somehow, that’s liberating. Apparently, once everything has been stripped away from you, there’s no more reason to be afraid.

Dan takes another careful bite.

“How are you holding up?” William asks Nasira.

She glances down at her arms, then shrugs. “I feel pretty much the same. Except maybe a little warmer than usual.”

“Well, we’ve got no thermometer, so …” William reaches out his hand and places his palm on Nasira’s forehead. She closes her eyes. William takes his hand away again. “Yeah, you feel a little warm. Not feverish yet, though. Amazing how slowly it goes with you.”

The thought of Nasira not getting sick at the same rate as everyone else Dan has encountered sparks something deep inside his mind, something he can’t quite reach. It reminds him of the dream he just had.

Sebastian comes over to the helicopter. It’s only now Dan notices he’s holding a pair of binoculars. “I think they’re getting ready. We should probably head down there.”

“Great,” William says, getting to his feet.

Ozzy immediately jumps up and looks at him, excited for whatever is going to happen.

“Head down where?” Dan asks, putting the last of the sandwich in his mouth.

“Oh, right, I didn’t tell you the plan,” William says, waving him along. “Come see, you’re gonna love this.”

Dan gets up, wondering for a moment if he remembers how to walk, but his legs take care of it for him, and he follows William over to the place where Sebastian was just sitting a moment ago, on a big boulder lodged in the ground.

William looks back over his shoulder, briefing him as they walk. “We heard on the radio that Norway is infected, too. The authorities are already closing down everything. So, after we got the food, we decided to head up here, away from any larger cities.”

There’s a steep drop on this side of the mountain, which Dan couldn’t see from the helicopter, and a few hundred yards below runs a road. It leads to some sort of complex surrounded by a fence. Inside lie a couple of big buildings and in the middle a large, square space with a giant H painted on it.

“Is that … an airport?” Dan asks.

“It used to be a military air base but it’s now privately owned,” Sebastian says, joining them. “I know the guy who runs it. They just use it as a midway point where they can refuel.”

Dan looks at Sebastian, then at William. “So, why are we here?”

“Because we need fuel,” William says. “And we can’t get it anywhere else, now that they’ve locked down all the regular airports.”

“So, are we going to … steal the fuel?”

“I believe it’s called heisting,” William says, smiling.

“We can’t get into the base without security noticing,” Sebastian says. “They’ve got at least two armed guards, and we don’t want to get into a gunfight. So, we’re going to take it from the fuel truck which drives from here to town several times a day. That’s how you normally fuel a helicopter, anyway.”

“It’s gonna be cool,” William says. “We’ll wait for it to come by and hold it up while Sebastian flies the helicopter down there. You know, like when they robbed that train in Breaking Bad?”

Dan shakes his head. “I didn’t watch that show.”

William looks at him, dumbfounded. “Seriously? Dude, if Netflix survives the end of the world, we’re gonna watch Breaking Bad together.”

SIXTEEN

Although Iver feels very hungry and the lasagna is delicious, he has a hard time eating.

Images keep popping into his mind of what he saw aboard the ferry. The dead people coming back to life. Open flesh wounds. Blood everywhere.

Both Chris and Charlotte seem to have an easier time getting their stomachs to cooperate, as they shovel food down their throats.

“I’m glad you like it,” Agnete remarks with a smile.

“It’s great, thank you,” Charlotte says, her mouth full.

Chris doesn’t seem to pay any attention. He swigs down half his Coke, lets out a discrete burp and looks at Agnete briefly before resuming eating: “So, what was the meeting about?”

Agnete puts down her knife and fork and dabs her mouth with her cloth. She takes a moment, apparently using her tongue to remove any bits of lasagna from her front teeth. “They told us to prepare for the worst. They said a lot of survivors from the mainland would probably arrive within the next few days. Maybe some of them would be infected, and if that was the case, they urged us to not come into contact with them.”

Charlotte looks up from her plate. “And if they weren’t infected? What were you supposed to do then?”

“Even if they weren’t infected, they still advised us not to take anybody in. They said it was a matter of securing our own survival, and that resources could begin running low if the worst happened and society didn’t recover from the pandemic any time soon.”

“Pandemic,” Chris snorts. “Like we’re talking about the fucking flu here. When will these people wake up?”

Agnete looks at him earnestly. “What is it, if not a pandemic? You guys have seen it firsthand.”

“It’s zombies,” Chris says, slashing the air with his fork. “Clean and simple. It’s dead people wanting to eat living people.”

Agnete looks to Charlotte, who nods her agreement, then to Iver, who simply shrugs.

“I’m afraid he’s right,” he mutters. “At least from what I’ve seen, it’s not just a virus. It’s something … much worse.”

“So all the talk about a vaccine?” Agnete asks. “The prime minister promised just yesterday they would find a cure within days?”

“That’s bullshit,” Chris says, eating even faster. “She’s telling people that in order to keep them from panicking. Meanwhile, she’s probably already been escorted to some military-guarded island somewhere with all the other world leaders where they’ll ride out the storm while the rest of us eat each other.”

“That’s a very bleak outlook indeed,” Agnete says.

“It’s likely the truth,” Chris says, shrugging.

Iver clears his throat. “What else did they tell you at the town hall?”

Agnete looks at him. “They told us to help each other as best we could. That we might want to barricade our houses and prepare not to go outside in case any infected made it to the island.”

“Finally, some sound advice,” Chris interjects.

“They reminded us it’s still illegal to hurt any of the infected, unless they directly attack us, but they said those of us who have firearms might want to get them ready.”

“Do you have any?” Charlotte asks, a hopeful tone in her voice.

“I still keep Henning’s old hunting rifle,” Agnete says. “But it hasn’t been fired for ten years. I’m not even sure it works anymore.”

“Sure it does,” Chris says, looking up. “It probably just needs a good cleaning. I can do that no problem; I know a lot about rifles.”

Agnete smiles, but doesn’t answer right away. “That’s nice of you to offer,” she says. “I had hoped it wouldn’t have to come to that.”

“It probably will,” Charlotte says bluntly. “Sooner or later someone will bring the infection—or whatever we call it—to this island, and we’ll have to defend ourselves.”

Agnete nods, says nothing, then resumes eating slowly.

Iver feels like he needs to say something. “So … should we make a plan for what we’re going to do?”

Chris nods as he swallows the last mouthful of lasagna. “I say we begin right away with boarding up the windows and any other ways in. That’s first priority. Once the house is secured, we’ll need to ration the food and get our weapons ready. Since we only have one firearm, we’ll need to make clubs and maybe spears. Also, we’ll need to—”

“Goodness gracious!” Agnete exclaims. “Clubs and spears? You can’t be serious?”

“I am,” Chris says grimly. “I am very serious.”

“You sound like you assume we’re going to war here.”

“No, war is very different,” Chris says immediately. “Trust me, I’ve been stationed in Syria for two years. What we’re dealing with here is a lot simpler. It’s also a lot more dangerous.”

Iver is surprised to learn that Chris is a soldier. From what he knows about him—which isn’t a lot—he took him to be the typical wannabe tough guy who doesn’t have any real friends and acts like he doesn’t need them either. He lives alone and spends him free time gaming online. Also, he looks way too scrawny to have served in the military. And Iver didn’t take him to be much older than himself. But looking at Chris now, Iver gets the feeling his plain looks might be deceiving. And quite a few things actually make sense now. Like the way he just seems to have shut off his emotions from the minute they got in the lifeboat. Or how he seems oddly prepared—even anticipating—a situation like this. Or how Charlotte went straight to him when she learned about the threat on the ferry. She probably already knew about his past in the military.

“I’m with Chris,” Charlotte says, confirming Iver’s suspicion. “We need to take every precaution we can think of. This might not be over any time soon.”

Agnete looks at them in turn, then glances over at the far end of the living room. Iver follows her gaze and sees an old piano standing there. On it sits a black-and-white wedding photo.

“All right,” Agnete says, nodding. “We’ll do it your way. I suspect it might be—”

“Sssh!” Chris suddenly hisses, looking like he’s listening for something. “What’s that?”

They all keep quiet for a moment. And they all hear a deep, faraway blaring of a horn of some sorts.

Agnete gasps. “That’s the air raid siren. They said they would sound it if any infected were spotted anywhere on the island …”

Agnete has barely finished the sentence before Chris is on his feet, pointing at them in turn. “Quick, Charlotte, go lock the front door and check for any other ways in! Iver, go upstairs and look out the windows; if you see anyone approach the house, you yell out!” Lastly, he turns to Agnete. “Where’s that gun?”

SEVENTEEN

The climb down isn’t as bad as William thought it would be, even while holding the rifle in one hand.

He looks back up to check on Josefine. She’s making her way down the hill very carefully, choosing every step with great care.

“You afraid of heights?” he calls to her.

She glances down at him, then focuses on her feet again. “Do I look like I’m afraid of heights?”

“You need me to give you a hand? I can wait for you.”

“Just go on,” she tells him, waving a hand. “I’ve got this.”

William nods, then continues the descent. Josefine is already growing on him. She’s the type of person he likes to have by his side during the apocalypse; clever, determined, no BS.

Ozzy is following close to William. He obviously has no trouble with heights, and four legs seem to be quite the advantage when scaling steep hills.

William reaches the road and looks back up. Josefine is only a few yards behind, and from the top he can see Sebastian and Dan silhouetted against the blue sky. He waves, signaling everything is okay, and they wave back.

“Right,” he says to himself, looking around. “That rose hip seems like the obvious choice.”

A large bush is growing by the side of the road, the pink flowers in full bloom. He walks closer and bends down, trying to look through the branches, but they’re way too thick.

“Perfect.”

Josefine has reached the road. She dusts off her knees and hands and looks at him. “Is that where you’ll be sitting?”

“I think so. Are you okay with your part?”

“Sure. Damsel in distress. I’ve got this.”

William is about to say something when there’s a whistle from above. He looks up, and Sebastian lifts one hand.

“Right, it’s coming,” William says, getting the rifle ready. “Ozzy, heel.”

Ozzy is already by his side, and William walks around the rose hip and crouches right on the other side. He peeks over the branches and sees Josefine walk a little down the road. She then places herself at the roadside and begins waiting.

Ozzy is panting in William’s ear. He feels the excitement rise up through his legs.

Thirty seconds later, he hears the roar of the truck’s engine. Then he sees it coming towards them and ducks down. Spotting through a tiny hole in the branches, he can just make out Josefine. She steps out onto the road and waves both arms.

The trucker sees her and lets off the gas.

“It’s happening,” William breathes. “Get ready, buddy.”

Ozzy whimpers with suppressed excitement. Holding up and robbing a truck was never part of Ozzy’s training, so he probably has no idea what’s going to happen, but he’s obviously very aware that the situation is getting highly intense, mirroring William’s excitement and getting himself ready for whatever will go down.

The truck slows down further and comes to a halt in front of Josefine. She has shifted her weight onto her right foot and has lifted the left one slightly off the ground.

“Could you please help me?” she calls out, still waving at the truck driver. “I think I’ve dislocated my ankle!”

The driver—a skinny, buzzcut guy not much older than William—leans out the window and asks in Norwegian: “What’s the problem?”

“My ankle!” Josefine says, pointing. “I went hiking and I had a fall. I need a lift to town, could you please help me?”

The driver darts a look in the mirrors, as though to check if anyone else is around. Then he looks back out at Josefine. “Are you hurt besides your ankle?”

Josefine shakes her head.

“All right, come on then. Jump in. I’ll take you to the hospital.”

Josefine begins to walk over to the truck.

No! William thinks. No, make him come out …

For a moment he’s afraid that Josefine has forgotten the plan and is about to blow it. But then she pretends like her ankle gives way and sinks to the ground with a scream of pain—a very convincing one at that. She shakes her head and looks up at the truck driver. “I can’t! I can’t walk! Please come help me!”

Yes! That’s it.

The driver seems to chew on it—quite literally, as his jaw moves—then he pulls his head back in, unbuckles and opens the door.

“Yatzy!” William whispers. “Get ready, buddy.”

The remark is quite unnecessary, as Ozzy is already shivering with readiness.

William pulls back the hammer, carefully locking it in place. He doesn’t really like the thought of pointing a loaded rifle on an innocent guy, but Sebastian told him there’s a tiny chance the guy might be packing himself, so they can’t take any chances.

As he jumps down from the truck, however, William becomes convinced the driver isn’t carrying any weapons. He’s very short and even skinnier than William took him to be, his arms and legs both wiry and sunburned. He’s wearing cargo shorts way too wide for him, and they’re strapped in tightly with a way too heavy belt. His shirt—a black tank top with a Guns N’ Roses logo—reveals his ribs and collarbone.

At least he’s got great taste in music, William thinks to himself, clutching the rifle.

Josefine reaches out her hand as the trucker comes closer, but then he suddenly stops a few paces away.

“You out here all alone?” he asks, looking down at her.

Josefine nods.

“Did you see anybody else around?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“So you haven’t heard about the train?”

“What train? Please, can you just help me? My ankle is really hurting.”

The driver takes her hand and pulls her up. He places her arm over his boney shoulders and together they walk back to the truck. He helps Josefine into the passenger seat and, just as he closes the door and is about to walk around the front of the car, Josefine leans over and presses the horn.

The driver jumps in surprise and looks up at her through the windshield. “Why’d you do that?”

William knows why. It was the signal he needed. And he’s already jumped up and is running towards the driver, the rifle swinging back and forth, Ozzy quickly gaining a lead.

William stops about twenty feet away, places the rifle against his shoulder and gives off a short, loud whistle. The sound serves both a command for Ozzy to stop—which he does—and for the driver to turn around—which he also does.

His eyes grow big and round at the sight of William and the German shepherd both staring at him. He instinctively holds up his hands.

“I’m not going to shoot you,” William tells him, straining to hold the gun level, but it’s difficult because of the adrenaline. “We just need your fuel. If you stay calm and don’t do anything stupid, you’ll be perfectly fine and we’ll be out of here fast.”

The driver swallows and nods, his eyes darting from the rifle to the dog, as though he’s not sure which to fear the most. “All right. No problem, man. Please keep the dog away from me, okay? I hate dogs.”

Ozzy growls, almost as though he understands what the guy just said, and the guy steps backwards.

“Don’t move,” William says. “Ozzy won’t do anything I haven’t told him to, so don’t worry.”

Josefine comes back out from the truck and joins them.

“Good job,” William tells her.

“You too.” She looks up the hill. “You think they heard the signal?”

Just as William is about to answer, the sound of the helicopter’s engine starts up with a series of deep whoop-whoops.

He glances at her with a smile. “I guess that’s a yes.”

The driver—still holding up his hands—looks to the sky, squinting against the sun. “Who’s … who’s up there?”

“Our friends,” William tells him. “We’ve got a helicopter. Whaddiya think we needed the fuel for? Drinking?”

The driver ignores the rhetorical question and looks at William with an expression of even greater fear. “Look, it’ll take some time to fuel a helicopter …”

“We know that. We’ve got the time.”

“But we can’t stay out here for that long! Haven’t you guys heard of the train?”

“What train?” Josefine asks.

He looks at her, then back at William. “The train from Oslo! The one with the infection!”

William glances at Josefine and she glances back. The sound of the helicopter overhead has grown so loud it’s becoming difficult to hear each other.

“We didn’t hear about that!” Josefine shouts to the driver. “Tell us about it!”

The driver moistens his pale lips with his tongue. “The virus! It came into Norway from Sweden this morning. It reached Oslo almost right away. People panicked.”

“We know about that!” William shouts, as the shadow of the helicopter passes over them. “What did you say about a train?”

“They just said it over the radio half an hour ago!” the driver goes on, now shouting at the top of his lungs. “They tried to shut down all traffic going out of the city, but someone went crazy and hijacked a train full of people. They rode north and they’ve just been spotted by someone only five miles from here!”

William feels his pulse rising even higher as the helicopter descends and the beat of the rotor begins tapping at his eardrums. “Where are they headed?” he shouts.

The driver shakes his head. “That’s the thing, they aren’t headed anywhere—the train had stopped! People were climbing out the windows, all of them infected! They said every last person on that train had likely been infected, and there were several hundreds of them!”

William’s stomach drops. He can’t help but glance around.

“The train tracks run past this hill right on the other side!” the driver goes on, pointing. “If it’s true what they said on the radio, the area could be swamped with infected people right now!”

William knows the guy isn’t lying—he noticed the tracks from the air right before they landed.

The helicopter is close enough now that the wind is throwing around dust and pebbles, pulling at their clothes and Josefine’s hair.

Then—just before it touches down—William sees the figure coming down the road. It’s a young woman with long, beautiful hair, wearing a red summer dress which has been torn open on one side, revealing a small, firm breast with pale tan lines showing where the girl’s bikini used to sit. Normally, William’s eyes would have been drawn to the girl’s chest, but he hardly notices. Instead, he stares at her face, which is mostly missing. In its place is a red, bloody mask of exposed tissue. He can make out the gristle from the nose and the white teeth and jawbone. One remaining, cloudy-white eyeball stares right back at him.

Then the helicopter cuts the girl from view as it lands on the road between her and the truck.

EIGHTEEN

Iver scales the stairs three steps at a time reaching the second floor in a matter of seconds. He surveys the landing, quickly getting an overview of the three small rooms, the toddler sleeping in the one on the right.

Iver runs to the one on the left and looks out the window. From here, he can see Fred’s house and the fields beyond it. And farther off, the coastline where they landed.

He can also see the figures coming this way.

There’s at least a dozen of them. They’re walking in an uncertain, wobbly way—one of them actually falls down, then gets back up and walks on.

Iver squints his eyes, feeling his heart rate rise as he tries to see the figures more clearly, even though he already knows who they are.

Then he notices he’s standing right next to a telescope on a tripod—probably one that Agnete uses to admire the view—and he puts his eye to the ocular and searches for the figures.

It takes him a few seconds to find them. When he does, his breath escapes him; they look even worse than he remembers.

They’re all dead, of course, all of them sporting visible bite wounds. But they’re also drenched. Not like someone who’s been out in the rain, but like corpses that have been soaking in a lake for days—which really isn’t that far from reality. Their skin is grey and green and purple and swollen up like a sponge. Their hair is hanging like dead seaweed and their clothes are still dripping. Most of them are covered in sand, too, as they all seem to have taken a fall since they waddled ashore. Iver suspects that if the sea around Denmark had had sharks or other big predatory fish, they would probably have eaten off the zombies.

He pulls away from the telescope and tries to estimate how far the undeads are out. Two miles? Maybe three.

And with their current speed, they’ll probably reach Fred’s house within ten minutes. Some of them seem to be branching off in different directions, apparently sensing other targets—at least five of them are headed this way.

Iver runs back downstairs, almost crashing into Charlotte, who’s running past the stairs in her effort to close all windows.

Agnete comes out from another room carrying a long, slim wooden suitcase. Chris rips it from her hand and puts in on the table, shoving aside the dishes.

“Like I said, it’s very old and—” Agnete begins.

She gets cut off by Chris, who’s already opened the suitcase and is pulling out the rifle: “How many rounds you’ve got?”

“Rounds? Oh, you mean bullets? Only these.” She presents a plastic bag, which Chris takes and empties out onto the table. Iver counts four cardboard boxes.

“They’re all unopened,” Chris mutters. “And they contain fifty each, giving us two hundred rounds. They’re only .243, but that’ll do.” He looks at Agnete. “You’ve got any cotton buds? And I need a clean cloth, too.”

Agnete rushes out to the kitchen as Iver begins taking the rifle apart with practiced movements.

Iver steps over to him.

“Well?” Chris says, not looking at him. “Judging from the scared shitless expression on your face I assume you saw them?”

Iver nods. “Twelve,” he mutters. “Maybe more. They’re coming this way. Fifteen minutes out, tops.”

“Direction?”

“Huh?”

“What direction are they approaching from?”

“Uhm, the same way we came from.”

“North,” he says right away. “Did you see any boats?”

“No,” Iver says, frowning. “No, I didn’t.” It’s only now he connects the dots. “They looked like they swam here. Do you think they came from …?”

“The ferry,” Chris finishes, sending him a brief glance. “They can survive under water. Now we know. And we can probably expect a shitload more of them to arrive before nightfall.”

Iver swallows dryly. An impulse shoots through him to run up to the kid’s room, grab the toddler and leave the house. But where would he go? Even if he could find a boat and leave the island, the question would still be the same: where to go?

Charlotte comes into the living room, panting. “Done. I’ve checked everywhere, both down here and upstairs.”

“Good,” Chris says, still working the rifle. “I’ll have this ready in five minutes. Until then, see if you can find anything else that’ll serve as weapons. Anything that can punch or stab or cut. Preferably something long, so we don’t need to get too close to them.”

Agnete comes back into the living room with a cloth and a glass of cotton buds. She looks at them earnestly. “I think … I think you might want to check the garage. That’s where I keep my gardening tools.”

“Perfect,” Chris says. “Do that. Hand me those.” He takes the cleaning supplies from Agnete.

“Oh, I just remembered,” Agnete says, rushing to the bookcase. On the top shelf is a radio which she turns on.

“… approaching town from the north and the northeast end of the island,” a man’s voice says gravely. “I’ll repeat that. This is Chairman Viggo Andersen, I’m speaking to everyone on Anholt. The infected have reached our island. They’re approaching town from the north and the northeast end. There are a few dozen of them, and more seem to come from the sea all the time. Like was said at the meeting earlier today, remember whatever you do, to not let any of them inside your houses. I cannot stress this enough. Do not get into direct contact with these people. They are highly contagious. If you’re not already, then get inside your house as fast as possible, no matter where you are on the island. Lock the doors, secure the windows. Don’t do anything else until we’ve got the situation under control …”

Chris scoffs. “Might take some time.” He looks at Iver and Charlotte. “What are you waiting for? Get on with it.”

“Come with me,” Charlotte says, grabbing Iver by the wrist and pulling him along.

They run down the hallway and out through a door leading to the garage. As Charlotte hits the lights, Iver immediately sees the row of tools hanging on the wall. Normally, the shovels and rakes and hoes would remind him simply of gardening. But right now, to Iver they look more like a weapon display in a war museum.

Charlotte, sending him a quick sideways look, seems to be thinking something similar. “Okay,” she says, breathing deeply. “There’s plenty we can use. We’d better take them all.”

She steps over and takes down the shovel. Iver follows her example. His first choice is the rake. He weighs it in his hands, imagining swinging it at an oncoming zombie. His stomach tightens at the mere thought of the teeth connecting with the skull.

“Hey!”

He blinks and looks at Charlotte, who’s standing with her arms full. She nods towards the remaining tools on the wall. “Are you just going to stand there? Or are you going to take the rest of them?”

NINETEEN

“Did you see her?” Josefine shouts.

William doesn’t waste any time answering; he just runs towards the helicopter, ducking down as he’s seen people do in movies to avoid the worst of the wind from the rotors.

The sliding door opens, revealing Dan.

“Close it!” William bellows, waving frantically at him. “Close the door!”

Dan gets the message—even though he looks puzzled—and shuts the door again.

William runs around to the other side of the helicopter. The girl has moved faster than he thought: she’s already reached the helicopter and begins groping the metal. Her golden hair is thrown around wildly, tufts of it sticking to her face—or, rather, what used to be her face.

“Hey!” William shouts, kneeling down without even thinking about it first, and taking aim at the girl’s head. “Hey, you!”

She doesn’t really react to his voice; maybe she can’t hear him over the still roaring rotors. But she’s making her way slowly sideways towards him, so William concentrates on his aim.

Ozzy is whimpering in his ear, perched at his side, ready to jump at the slightest command.

“Stay, Ozzy,” William mutters out the corner of his mouth, closing one eye. “I’ve got this …”

The girl takes another few steps in his direction and finally gets close enough to sense William. She turns on him, and for half a second, William is taken aback at the sight of her up close. Then she reaches out both arms and comes at him swiftly.

He pulls the trigger.

The girl’s head isn’t flung back like he expected it would. Instead, she just jumps slightly, and William is certain that he missed.

But then he sees the crater right below what’s left of her nose—it’s easy to miss in the already bloody mess. Next, the girl’s legs give way, collapsing her to the ground where she stays completely still.

“Fuck, yeah!” William shouts, punching his fist to the air. He gets to his feet, then doubles over again immediately and with no warning whatsoever pukes up the sandwich he ate just half an hour ago.

He stares in amazement at the pile on the ground. His first thought is that the sandwich was bad and disagreed with his stomach. But then he realizes he’s trembling all over and that his knees are threatening to buckle beneath him.

Apparently, his body is reacting to the shock of shooting the girl even before his mind has had time to catch up.

Maybe it shouldn’t be so surprising; he never shot anything besides clay pigeons before. And whatever the dead thing in front of him had turned into, it had not that long ago been a human being. A young girl. A pretty one, probably. Someone he might strike up a conversion with if he met her in a bar.

And now he just blew her brainstem to jam.

The thought causes him to retch again, and he has to force himself to stand up straight.

He glances sideways at Ozzy who’s looking at him with curious concern. “Guess I’m not the ruthless zombie killer I thought I was,” he mutters, wiping his mouth.

He turns around and sees Nasira, Ali and Dan standing there, looking at him.

“Well done,” Nasira says gravely.

“Thanks,” William says. “I just—wait! The truck driver!”

He begins running back around the helicopter and almost collides with Sebastian and Josefine.

The fuel truck is still there, but the driver is nowhere to be seen.

“He took off,” Sebastian says, reading the question off of William’s face. “Soon as he saw the girl coming.”

“I was afraid he would take the truck,” William says.

“Didn’t even cross his mind,” Josefine says, pointing over her shoulder. “He just ran right down the road, probably headed for the base down there.”

“Might turn out to be a clever move,” William says, glancing around. “That girl probably came from the train. Which means a lot more of them can show up any minute.”

“Let’s get moving, then,” Sebastian says, running to the helicopter. “Someone go back up the truck. I need it next to the helicopter, right side facing her.”

“I’ll do it,” Josefine says.

William eyes her with surprise. “You know how to drive that thing?”

“I worked as a bus driver not that long ago,” she tells him, then heads for the truck.

William follows Sebastian, who’s already busy prepping the helicopter for the refueling. Dan, Nasira, Ali and Lærke are watching him anxiously.

“You guys,” William says, pointing at them. “You go keep an eye in every direction. Spread out, but don’t go too far. If you see anything or anyone, shout as loudly as you can. Got that?”

They nod in unison, then walk off in different directions.

William wipes sweat from his upper lip. He can still taste the puke in his throat. “Don’t we need to shut it off before we fuel it?”

Sebastian shakes his head without looking at him. “As long as we’re careful, this will work fine.”

“How long will it take to fill the tank?”

“Six minutes, give or take.”

William darts a look around, up and down the road, up the hillside and down the valley. Then he looks down at Ozzy, who’s eyeing him intently, as though he’s thinking the same thing.

They’re sitting ducks out here.

Just waiting for a horde of predators.

And six minutes is an awful long time.

TWENTY

The first dead person appears within thirty seconds.

Dan is the one to spot him as he comes stumbling down the hillside.

It’s a heavy, bearded guy wearing a torn Hawaiian shirt. Someone chewed away one of his man boobs, revealing the ribcage underneath. His beard was once grey but now it’s red as the guy has obviously been busy eating other people.

The hill is a little too steep for someone with limited motor skills, and the guy is falling more than he’s walking. It doesn’t seem to bother him, though, as it gives him a very speedy decent.

“There’s one coming!” Dan shouts back at the others, forming a funnel around his mouth with his hands.

Both the truck and the helicopter are still running and he’s not sure either Sebastian or William hears him. Josefine is standing a little farther down road, and Nasira and Ali went in the other direction.

“I see one over here, too!” Josefine calls out. “No, wait—three of them!”

Dan looks in her direction and sees a zombie kid—not much older than ten—and two grown-ups coming down the hillside in the same tumbling fashion as the Hawaiian shirt guy.

Then Ozzy barks, and Dan turns his head to see another two dead people approach the helicopter from above.

There are too many, Dan thinks, and then William shouts something and points up the hill.

Dan looks up, shielding his eyes to see the hilltop. What he sees takes his breath away.

A literal army of zombies is streaming out over the top, like lemmings headed for the abyss, their figures silhouetted against the blue sky. There are men, woman, children, teens and seniors. They pay no attention to the steep drop, but simply roll, stumble or tumble downwards.

“Get back over here!”

William is flailing his arm and waving the rifle back and forth, his words just barely audible over the whooping of the helicopter.

Dan puts two fingers in his mouth and whistles sharply at Josefine. He didn’t need to, though, as she’s already running back this way.

Dan runs to the helicopter and sees Nasira and Ali coming from the other way. Lærke is tiptoeing next to Sebastian, who is operating the thick hose running from the truck to the helicopter’s trunk.

“What do we do?” William shouts, apparently addressing Sebastian while looking up at the dead people approaching.

“I still need three minutes!” Sebastian shouts over his shoulder. “Keep them back!”

“There are too many!” Josefine shouts as she joins them. “We need to get inside the helicopter!”

“We’ll never get off the ground!” Sebastian shouts. “You’ll draw them all right to us!”

“We already are by standing here!” William chimes in, looking close to panic now. “Look, they’re thirty seconds away! We either bolt or I start shooting!”

“Don’t!” Sebastian cries out, rounding on him. “Don’t shoot! You risk blowing us all to hell!”

“What do we do then?” Josefine shouts. “Somebody come up with something fast!”

No one seems to have any ideas. Dan realizes with a sinking feeling in his gut how unprepared they were going into this. They only had a plan for getting the fuel—not defending themselves against hundreds of zombies.

Then the first dead ones arrive at the road, falling flat on the asphalt or landing clumsily on all fours, getting to their feet and making their way to the helicopter from all angles.

Ozzy can’t seem to take the waiting any longer, and he lunges himself at the closest one—the guy in the Hawaiian shirt. Even though it’s a big guy, the German shepherd knocks him over and bites down on his shoulder.

But it’s of little use; three other zombies simply waddle right by and head on towards the helicopter.

Nasira steps forward then, letting go of Ali, who cries out in Arabic. She runs to a woman old enough to be her grandmother and shoves her hard in the chest, causing her to go tumbling. Even before she can make it back up, Nasira shoves the next one sideways, making him trip over his own feet. None of the zombies seem even remotely interested in her—it’s like she doesn’t exist to them—and she runs right up to a third one, kicking his leg hard out from under him, and he lands flat on his face.

Ozzy is as busy as Nasira, jumping each of the zombies one at a time, wrestling them to the ground, winning a few seconds with every takedown, as the zombies move cumbersomely to get back up.

“Here!”

William’s voice in his ear, as something hard is shoved into his chest.

Dan looks down at the large wrench Sebastian used just a minute ago.

“Make yourself useful!” William shouts.

For a second Dan thinks he wants him to help out Sebastian somehow, but Sebastian doesn’t seem to need any help, as the pilot is actually moving away from the helicopter, now brandishing a five-foot pole with a hook at the end—Dan saw him use it to open the hatch on the truck. He jumps forward and goes to work on the oncoming deads, catching them by their collars or necks and yanking them to the ground.

William has also joined the fight, turning over the rifle and using it as a baseball bat, swinging at the zombies. At first, he simply knocks them over, using the same strategy as the rest of the group, but within a few hits, he seems to gain confidence and starts swinging wildly, connecting with their heads and cracking open skulls.

Josefine must have been inside the helicopter briefly, because as she rushes past Dan, he sees she has armed herself with the heavy metal bar she used to knock out the guy who tried to steal the helicopter back in Denmark.

Dan stares at the scene in front of him for another second. He can’t help but marvel at the sight of the group all working together, moving in between each other, pivoting back and forth, knocking over or tripping zombies like bowling pins, everyone having each other’s backs.

Then he gets moving, jumping forward to club a boy not much older than himself who’s about to grab Josefine from behind. The wrench hits the boy’s jaw and dislocates it both audibly and visibly, sending the boy spinning halfway around before he falls over, his teeth spilling out over the road.

Dan doesn’t let himself think, but runs ahead to take a swing at the next one coming. This one is a tall, gangly guy. Dan aims high for his head but connects instead with his protruding Adam’s apple, crushing it and causing the guy to give off a strangled croak as he stumbles backwards, knocking over a woman trying to pass him, both of them falling down.

Dan spins around as he senses someone coming from behind. A guy looking like a grown-up Harry Potter thanks to his dark hair and round glasses reaches out his hands to grab him, and Dan swings the wrench blindly, hitting only the elbow of the guy. He backs up and takes another swing, but the guy is too close now, and Dan doesn’t get enough speed behind the wrench to knock him over, so the guy uses the chance and lunges at him.

Dan has time to think, even as he’s still backing up: This is it.

Right before the Harry Potter zombie can grab him, though, Ozzy comes flying from the left, jaws open wide, bloody foam spraying from his mouth, and he clamps down on the guy’s neck, knocking him over.

Dan blinks and looks around.

He feels dizzy, feels like things are moving in slow motion, like twenty minutes has passed when in reality it’s probably less than twenty seconds.

Everyone is still standing, swinging, jumping around.

But it’s getting increasingly difficult. More and more deads are joining the fight, cluttering the road, shoving each other to get ahead, slowly but steadily closing the half circle they’ve formed around the helicopter.

We can’t hold them off any longer …

Then, a shrill girl’s voice cuts through the noise: “Dad! It stopped!”

Dan turns his head and looks at Lærke, who’s standing by the hose connected to the helicopter.

Sebastian hears her, knocks over one last zombie by jabbing the rod in its eye and wrenching it to the side. He looks for the others and bellows: “We’re ready! Everyone onboard! Onboard now!”

Lærke and Ali, who are standing right next to the helicopter, both climb in through the open door as Sebastian dismantles the hose and lets it drop to the ground.

Josefine is the next closest, and she lowers her weapon and makes a run for it. So does William, calling for Ozzy as he runs. The dog is busy tearing at the neck of some poor woman, but he reluctantly lets go and heads back. Nasira, however, is far away, almost lost from sight in the crowd of dead people whom she’s still knocking over left and right.

Ali screams for her, and she hears him, looking in their direction.

“Come on!” Sebastian shouts, grabbing Dan hard by the arm as he passes him. “We need to go!”

“But Nasi—”

“It’s too late!”

Dan turns around and jumps up into the helicopter. Sebastian is the last one in, and William slides the door closed right behind him.

Unfortunately, a young guy manages to stick his hand inside right before the door can close all the way. His fingers grope eagerly at the air.

“Fuck!” William shouts, pushing hard at the sliding door. “Get him out!”

Josefine begins knocking the arm briskly with her metal bar, but that only causes it to wriggle even more.

Ozzy lunges at it, biting down on the hand, thrashing his head back and forth, and Dan sees the fingers being torn open like overcooked hot dogs bursting on the grill, one of them is even torn right off.

But the dead guy doesn’t mind—he just keeps trying to grab something and now he’s also shoving his head into the crack, as several more hands squeeze past him.

William is shouting, Josefine is shouting back, Sebastian is shouting too, and Ali is crying and calling his sister’s name.

Dan doesn’t hear the words; he’s suddenly thrown back to when he and Thomas tried to get away from Jennie by breaking through the hatch in the ceiling. He recalls how the zombie girl stuck her arm through the hole and no matter what Thomas did to it, she didn’t retract it.

“It won’t work,” he says, so low that no one hears him.

“Break it!” Sebastian shouts, making his way to the pilot’s seat.

“I’m trying!” Josefine shouts, shoving at Ozzy who’s still working the bloody hand.

“I can’t hold it!” William shouts, as the door starts slipping open farther due to the dozen hands wriggling themselves through the opening. The collected moaning choir of the zombie army now surrounding the helicopter drowns out the sound of the rotors, and Dan can feel how the machine starts swaying back and forth.

They’ll make their way inside within a minute. Or maybe they’ll tip the helicopter right over on its side.

“It won’t work!” Dan shouts.

Then he suddenly finds himself acting. He pushes Josefine aside, grabs the metal bar from her hands, steps over to William and jams the bar down hard into the slit of the door, jamming it from going either way.

“What are you doing?” William shouts. “I can’t fucking close it now!”

Dan ignores him, turning to Sebastian. “Get it off the ground! Now! Get it into the air, or we’re all dead!”

Sebastian looks at him for half a second, then sits down and starts operating the instruments with quick, certain movements.

Ten seconds later, the sound of the rotors grows more intense and Dan feels the helicopter begin to sway more violently.

“Fuck!” Sebastian shouts. “They’re all over the skids! Hold onto something, it’s going to be a wobbly takeoff!”

Everyone grabs something within reach, and Dan notices the door giving way a few more inches as the zombies apparently sense their prey trying to get away.

Then the helicopter gives a lurch and rises a few feet from the ground. Half the hands fall away instantly, the rest of them holding on desperately, digging their nails into anything they can reach.

But as the helicopter bobs and weaves and lifts farther up into the air, more and more of the zombies lose their grip and disappear.

Dan turns and looks out the window. Looking down at the sea of dead faces staring up at them, a forest of arms reaching hopelessly for the helicopter, he realizes they’re already twenty feet up.

Only two zombies are still holding on: the one whose arm is stuck in the door, and an old woman holding onto his shorts with vehement determination.

Then the guy’s belt gives way and the shorts slips off, sending the old woman sprawling down into the horde of zombies. The guy wasn’t wearing any underpants, and Dan can see his flaccid penis dangle between his pale legs as he tries desperately to grab hold of something with his free hand.

Now that the helicopter is freed from most of the dead weight, it rises faster, quickly leaving the ground and the zombie army behind. But the guy still caught in the door swings back and forth, causing the helicopter to sway dangerously.

“He’s still there!” Sebastian shouts. “I can’t fly with him hanging off the side! You need to do something!”

Dan grabs the metal bar and yanks it free. Then he pulls the door back, and the zombie falls. Dan slams the door shut.

“Holy shit!” William exclaims, looking out the window. “He landed on his fucking head! Serves him right!” He looks at Dan, grinning, then high-fives him hard. “You’re the fucking man, you know that? You just saved all our asses!”

Dan smiles vaguely, then looks over at Ali, who’s crying in the corner, Josefine holding him.

“Not all of us,” he mutters.

TWENTY-ONE

No one says anything for a few seconds, everyone in the helicopter is just looking at each other as they realize Nasira is gone.

Then, something occurs to Dan. “Wait a minute … she might not be dead.”

William and Josefine both look at him.

He throws out his arms. “I mean … the zombies aren’t interested in her.”

Ali looks up too, sniffing and eyeing Dan with what looks like a glimmer of hope.

“You just might be on to something,” William says, then shouting to Sebastian: “Can we wait up here a few minutes? Just until they all leave? We might be able to see Nasira down there!”

“Why would you want to see her?” Sebastian calls back.

“Because she might still be okay! She was already infected, so she won’t get eaten!”

Sebastian thinks for a moment, then nods. “I’ll keep her steady. But we shouldn’t waste too much fuel.”

Dan looks out the window and down at the road now more than three hundred feet below. The horde of undeads looks even more terrifying from up here. They’ve already begun to scatter, though, most of them headed down the road towards the base, but a few others are waddling off in different directions, apparently sensing some other source of fresh meat nearby.

As the crowd begins to thin out, Dan starts to notice the ones not moving; a dozen or so were killed in the fight and are lying on the asphalt.

“I don’t see her anywhere!” William calls from the other window. “Any of you guys spotted her?”

Josefine shakes her head.

Dan scans the ground carefully with his eyes. He ditched his contact lenses already back at Holger’s place, so his sight isn’t too good. But he catches a movement a little way up the hill. A figure with black hair is waving up at them. Both arms are covered in bandages.

“There she is!” he shouts and points. “On the hillside!”

“Goddamnit, you’re right!” William says. “We need to pick her up!”

Ali is too short to look out the windows, so instead he looks from Dan to William, hope beaming from his face.

“I’ll put ’er down on the top of the hill,” Sebastian says. “Nasira will have to climb up.”

As the helicopter heads for the hilltop, Dan can tell Nasira figures out the plan, because she begins scaling the hill.

They touch down almost at the same place they landed before, just as Nasira makes it to the top and runs to the helicopter.

William opens the door, and Ali almost jumps out into his sister’s arms. Josefine and William haul them both inside and William slams the door again.

“Go!” he calls out to Sebastian—needlessly, as the helicopter is already rising again.

Dan looks at Nasira hugging Ali tightly. She’s even more badly hurt now, her clothes torn and more bloody scratches covering her face and arms, most of the bandages have been ripped off. But her eyes are perfectly alive as she looks at them and says: “Thank you for waiting.”

“How are you feeling?” William asks, eyeing her wounds.

She shrugs. “A little bruised up, but not much different than before.”

William looks at Josefine, then at Dan, then back at Nasira. “I think we need to have a difficult talk here.”

She nods. “I know what you’re going to say, William. And I will be sure to let you know if anything … changes. Like, if I feel a fever coming on.”

William nods. “Good. It’s just that … maybe you’d want to … I don’t know, get off before we reach the ocean? Once we head out to sea, there’s no other way to leave the helicopter than … you know.”

Dan can tell William tries not to look at Ali while he talks, but Ali still gets the message and looks up at Nasira, horrified at the thought of her jumping into the ocean.

“I know,” Nasira says simply. “Maybe you’re right, William. Maybe I’ll get off before then.” She looks at Sebastian. “How long before we reach the ocean?”

“It’ll be at least an hour.”

She looks around at the others. “Are you all okay with me coming along until then?”

Dan nods, and so does Josefine.

She smiles. “Thank you.” Then she hugs Ali again, and he presses himself against her.

One more hour, Dan thinks to himself, feeling a lump in his throat. They have one more hour together.

TWENTY-TWO

It takes the zombies a little longer to reach the house than Iver feared. Probably because they seem to ignore the gravel road and simply trudge along the heather-covered fields, often getting their ankles entangled and toppling over.

He, Chris, Charlotte and Agnete are all gathered in the living room, where they can now see the oncomers from the windows facing the terrace and Agnete’s back garden.

Iver is both relieved that the toddler is sleeping and doesn’t need to experience any of this, but at the same time he feels anxious at the thought of the little guy sleeping alone up in his room.

The air raid siren is still going, wailing outside the house like an elephant in pain. The sound is starting to get on Iver’s nerves.

The radio is still going, but turned down very low, as per Chris’s order. He said the chairman couldn’t really tell them anything new about how to handle the zombies, but it could still be useful to hear of anyone seeing them approach from other directions. Right now, though, the chairman is just reciting the officially issued statements about how to handle the infected should you come into contact with them—which basically boils down to “run away as fast as you can.”

“I’ll have to remind you,” the chairman says. “It is still legally considered murder if you shoot one of the infected, unless of course it’s in self-defense …”

“All right,” Chris says, finishing up the rifle and placing it on the table. “We need to move a few things around. Give me a hand, Iver.”

Iver obliges as they push back the couch and lift the table closer to the windows. Agnete watches in silence, offering no objections.

“Now this one,” Chris says, pointing at the piano.

Agnete still doesn’t object, but she hurries to take the wedding photo.

Luckily, the piano has wheels, and they’re able to roll it to the east-facing side of the room, where it blocks off the windows.

“Now we only need to worry about this side,” Chris says, taking the roll of rope they brought from the garage. “Open the window, Charlotte.”

“What?” Iver exclaims.

Charlotte looks hesitantly at Chris. “Why would we open it?”

“Because I can’t shoot them through the glass now, can I?” Chris snarls. “Open it as far as the lever will go, then put it in the holder.”

The window is top-hatched and swings outward when opened. The lever can be placed in a holder, causing the window to act almost like a trap—the kind you’d use to catch a cat by luring it under a box being propped up by a stick. And that, Iver realizes, is exactly how Chris intends to use it.

As Charlotte opens the window, Chris ties the end of the rope to the lever. Then he hands the other end of the rope to Iver.

Iver just looks at it.

“Take it,” Chris says. “This’ll be your job. Your only job.”

“What … what exactly do I do?” Iver asks, taking the rope reluctantly.

“Nothing until I say so,” Chris says, picking up the rifle. “You just stand over there. You hold the rope, you keep your mouth shut and you stay ready. As soon as you hear me shout ‘close,’ you pull the rope. Got that?”

Iver nods and takes up position at the place Chris appointed.

“What do you need me to do?” Charlotte asks, reminding Iver of an eager cadet addressing the sarge—he almost expects her to smack her heels together and do a salute.

“You take the rake,” Chris says, nodding toward the arsenal of gardening tools propped up against the wall. “If any of them should make it close enough to actually reach inside, you shove them back out. I doubt it’ll come to that, but we’re covering all bases here.” He turns to Agnete. “And you, when I shout ‘ammo,’ you bring me the next box of bullets—okay?”

Agnete takes a deep breath and nods.

“Good.” Chris looks around at them. “Everyone clear on their tasks?”

They all exchange looks, nodding.

“Now, you all need to be prepared for the noise,” Chris goes on. “Once I fire this thing, you won’t hear much else than a ringing to begin with. But you’ll get used to it.”

“Here they come,” Charlotte says.

Iver looks out and sees the first zombie cross the hedge separating Agnete’s garden from the outside. It’s only waist high, so the dead guy simply walks right through it and begins to cross the lawn.

Iver clutches the rope, feeling his palms go sweaty and his pulse throb in his throat.

Just focus on what Chris said, he tells himself. Listen for that word. Whatever happens, just listen for that word.

Iver can’t help but feel grateful that Chris is here, despite how he’s been acting so far. He’s probably the last person on earth Iver would hang out with voluntarily, but in a situation like this, he’s exactly the kind of guy you want around. Someone who knows what to do. To take control of things.

Chris leans over the table, taking his time getting his posture right and positioning the rifle. He closes one eye and looks out the window through the rifle’s scope.

Then, unexpectedly, a bang rings out.

For a second, Iver is sure Chris fired the rifle right away, but then he realizes the sound wasn’t loud enough. And besides, it came from the outside.

“Sounds like old Fred just started the party,” Chris mutters.

Iver looks out, but he can’t see Fred’s house from here.

“Oh, jeez,” Agnete whispers. “Poor Fred, all alone over there. I hope he’ll be okay.”

“I’m sure he can handle himself,” Chris says as a second shot rings out.

The dead guy is approaching the terrace, and another one—an older lady—is crossing the hedge, closely followed by a teenager still wearing his backpack, like he’s a regular tourist who just came to visit the island.

“Right, here we go,” Chris says. He takes aim, cocks the rifle and says loudly: “Opening fire!”

Then he pulls the trigger.

The shot rings through the room for several seconds, bouncing between the walls and slamming against Iver’s eardrums. He thought he had prepared himself, but the noise is still a lot louder than he anticipated. It leaves him, just like Chris said, with a shrill ringing.

The guy outside the window is stopped dead in his tracks and collapses on the edge of the terrace.

Chris reloads the rifle and takes aim at the old lady who’s coming up next.

Another roaring bang, and she goes down right next to the first one.

Chris reloads swiftly.

The teenager has picked up speed, and just as Chris fires a third time, the boy trips over his own feet and lands face-first on the grass.

“Damnit,” Iver can hear Chris growl through the piercing dial tone in his ears as he reloads again, the empty cartridges rolling around the table.

The teenager is getting back up, and Iver just has time to notice whisks of grass stuck between his teeth before another movement catches his eye.

From the other side of the terrace, the one only visible to Iver due to his position next to the opposite window, a figure suddenly comes into view. It’s a bearded guy with most of the skin on his scalp missing. He comes in from the side and is headed straight for the window.

Iver looks at Chris, but he’s busy aiming at the teenager, and from where he’s sitting, he can’t see the bearded guy who’s now mere inches away from the open window.

TWENTY-THREE

Dan is back there again. At that cursed house where it all began. He’s standing in the basement. Looking around. He’s alone. It’s dark, but he can still see everything.

The flayed animals nailed to chairs.

The blood pools on the concrete floor.

The remains of the ritual which took place here.

He looks down and sees something right between his feet. It’s just lying there. A tiny brown leather pouch on a string. Like some kind of weird necklace.

It looks insignificant.

But it’s not.

It’s very important.

Dan can somehow sense it.

Then, as he’s still staring at the pouch, the view changes around it. Everything except for the pouch morphs into something else.

Now, while Dan is still seeing the pouch, it’s no longer resting on the concrete floor, but against the chest of a guy his own age.

The boy is standing in a window, looking down at Dan with big, frightened eyes. And Dan realizes he’s now at Holger’s place.

He’s back in the moment right before they had to leave the safe house. The boy has just tipped Holger’s dead body out of the window.

And now he’s just standing there, frozen in time, as Dan stares at the strange leather pouch hanging from his neck.

Then, gently, the dream begins to fade and break up. It drifts back into obscurity. Reality comes creeping back in.

Dan blinks and opens his eyes. This time, he wasn’t sleeping, not really, only nodding off.

He looks around and sees the others resting too. William is sitting with Ozzy between his feet, petting his head while staring at the floor. Josefine seems to be sleeping, leaning against the wall. And Ali is sitting on Nasira’s lap; both of them have their eyes closed.

Dan unbuckles and gets up to look out the window. They’re still over land, a band of desolate mountains passing below. In the horizon is the blue sea.

Dan has this weird feeling that’s left over from the daydream. It’s like something big has shifted inside him. Something which has been there all along but has now finally dropped into place. If he could only recall it, but it’s already slipped back down deep into his unconscious. He sits down next to William.

William looks at him, smiling tiredly. “What’s up?”

Dan leans close enough for him to hear: “Do you … do you believe in fate?”

William raises his eyebrows. “Not really, no. Why? Do you?”

“I didn’t use to, but … with everything that’s happened, it’s hard not to.”

“Guess you’re right.”

They sit in silence for a little while. Dan tries to hone in on the feeling in his gut. Tries to shine a light on it, to see it clearly, to remember. But whatever it was, he’s lost it.

Then Sebastian calls out: “Okay, we’re getting close to the coast now. I’ll find a place to put her down.”

Nasira opens her eyes, revealing that she wasn’t sleeping, and as her eyes meet Dan’s, she sends him a reassuring smile.

Then Ali sits up and they begin speaking in Arabic together.

Dan feels the helicopter begin to descend, and a few minutes later they touch ground once more.

Sebastian turns in his seat, looking back at them. “I don’t mean to be insensitive, but I think we should make it fast. I didn’t see any dead ones from the air, but we never know. I’ll keep the engine going.”

Nasira nods. She unbuckles and goes to open the door, Ali following her. As she climbs out, he comes with her, clutching her hand.

“Is it okay if I step out for a minute?” Dan asks Sebastian.

He nods. “Sure. Just don’t lose the helicopter from sight.”

Dan jumps out.

Nasira and Ali have walked a few yards out onto the grassy hilltop. Right on the other side of the hill is the ocean, gleaming green under the setting sun, a couple of seagulls soaring through the air.

Dan can’t bring himself to watch as Nasira kneels down and hugs Ali, telling him goodbye. Instead, he goes to look out over the ocean. He can smell the salt as he sits down in the grass and stares into the waves softly crashing against the shore.

He looks away and sees William and Josefine both coming out of the helicopter. Sebastian joins them as well, stretching his back, Lærke close by his side.

Then, suddenly and without any obvious preamble, the feeling comes rushing back in—or rather, the memory. It’s like a déjà vu, only much stronger.

An image.

The leather pouch.

The boy.

And then Dan finally gets it.

TWENTY-FOUR

“Chris!” Iver shouts, his own voice sounding like it’s far away. “Look out! From the right!”

Chris notices the guy the second he steps into view, and he swings the riffle thirty degrees to the right, almost pulling the trigger, as the guy presses his face up against the glass.

Charlotte screams.

Chris hesitates.

“Shoot him!” Iver yells.

“I can’t!” Chris shouts, keeping the barrel aimed at the guy’s head. “I’ll break the window!”

The guy ducks down as he realizes he can’t push through the glass and leans inside. Chris shoots, and the guy’s skull caves in as he collapses over the windowsill, blood spilling from his open head wound and onto the floor.

“Oh, dear God, dear God,” Iver can hear Agnete chant somewhere behind him.

“Get him out, Charlotte!” Chris roars. “Use the rake, for fuck’s sake!”

Charlotte just stands there, staring at the bloated, bleeding corpse reaching in through the window.

“Charlotte!” Chris roars. “There are more of them coming! Get him out of my line of fire! I can’t take them out!”

Iver looks out and sees four or five zombies crossing the garden.

Charlotte is still just standing there.

Iver—hardly realizing what he’s doing—runs over to Charlotte, grabs the rake from her and jabs at the guy with it. But he’s too heavy. Out the corner of his eye he notices two figures come onto the terrace. He ignores it and focuses on getting the dead guy out of the window. He places the rope between his teeth, enabling him to use both hands on the rake. With the added leverage, he’s able to shove the guy’s torso back out the window.

The moment he drops, Chris fires three times in rapid succession, only pausing a few seconds in between to reload.

The empty cartridges topple onto the floor, and the zombies collapse out on the terrace.

“Shut the window!” Chris shouts. “There are too many of them!”

Iver looks down at his hands, wondering for half a second where the rope went, then realizes it’s still in his mouth. He takes it out and yanks it hard, pulling away the lever and causing the window to drop shut. He jumps over, twists the handle and backs away just as the next dead person reaches the window and begins fondling the glass.

Iver looks at the zombie—a middle-aged, balding guy with tattoos all over his arms—and then at the others.

Agnete is at the far end of the room, both hands pressed over her mouth, as though to keep back screams.

Charlotte is still standing in the same spot, staring wide-eyed at the window.

Chris gets to his feet and places the rifle over his shoulder. “Goddamnit, you moron,” he growls at Charlotte. “You had one job!”

Charlotte doesn’t seem to hear him. Her lips move, but no words come out.

“Apparently, this won’t work,” Chris says. “There’s a blind angle I hadn’t considered.”

“So, what do we do?” Iver asks, noticing his hearing returning slowly to normal. “About those outside, I mean?”

Four zombies are already crowding the terrace, and more are crossing the lawn.

“Nothing for now,” Chris says grimly. “Except maybe pray the glass will hold.”

Charlotte makes a weird noise. Her shoulders begin bobbing and her mouth quivers.

“She’s in shock,” Chris says, sounding more annoyed than anything. “I thought she would do better under pressure.”

Iver instinctively goes to Charlotte and takes her by the shoulders. She collapses into him and begins sobbing and shaking. He helps her down onto the couch.

Then another sound reaches him: the sound of the toddler crying from upstairs.

Iver looks to Agnete. “Could you … help her? I’ll go see to the baby.”

Agnete looks like she pulls herself together, then she nods and comes over to hold Charlotte, who’s bawling like a baby now.

Iver rushes past Chris, and he hears him sigh and mutter under his breath: “Trapped with an old lady, a baby, a crying girl and a faggot. Just my fucking luck.”

TWENTY-FIVE

“Is he coming or what?” Sebastian asks.

William can see Dan sitting down cross-legged. Nasira and Ali are still hugging and saying goodbye.

“Give him a minute,” Josefine says. “He just lost his father. He probably needs a minute.”

“I know,” Sebastian says. “I just don’t want to hang around here. It’s not safe.”

“I’ll go get him,” William says. He walks over to Dan with Ozzy at his heel and sits down beside him. Dan doesn’t seem to notice; he’s just staring out over the water.

“That’s quite the view,” William says.

Dan looks at him, blinking. “I think I get it now.”

“Get what?”

“What the universe is trying to tell me.”

“Oh. And what is that?”

“We need to go back there.”

William frowns. “Back where? To Denmark?”

“Back to the house where it began.”

“And … why would we do that? That’s ground zero. That’s exactly the place we’re trying to get away from.”

“I know. And I think that’s what we’re doing wrong.”

William is about to answer when Sebastian cuts in: “What are we doing wrong again?”

William turns to see Sebastian, Lærke and Josefine have joined them.

Dan looks up at Sebastian, shrugging. “We’re running away.”

“Of course we are,” William says, smiling and throwing out his arms. “That’s the only sane thing to do.”

Dan shakes his head slowly. “We can’t run from this. It’ll go on to destroy the world if we do.”

William and Sebastian exchange a look.

“Maybe the authorities will get it under control,” Sebastian suggests.

“Of course they won’t,” Josefine says in a tired voice. “They’ll try all the wrong things with all the right intentions, and they’ll only kill themselves trying. And when that fails, they’ll turn to bombing the living hell out of everything. Even if they should succeed in stopping this thing, they’ll destroy the planet in the process.”

“Maybe it won’t come to that,” Sebastian begins. “Maybe—"

“She’s right,” Dan says softly. “They can’t stop it. Because they don’t know how. But we do. I do. I was there. I saw how it began. That’s also how it needs to end.”

Sebastian squints his eyes. “I’m sorry, but I’m not following you, Dan.”

“Are you … talking about voodoo?” William guesses.

Dan nods, looking out over the ocean again. “This is not a virus. It’s not even a disease. It’s a curse. Black magic. Something affecting the soul. No vaccine will ever cure that. No weapon will stop it.”

A moment of quiet.

“So …” Sebastian goes on. “We need to find, what—a counter-curse?”

Dan says, still not looking at them: “First we need to find the person who started it.”

“But she’s dead,” William interjects. “You said so yourself. It was the woman in the house, right?”

“Someone else was there, too,” Dan says. “Someone we’ve already met.”

“Who?” William asks.

“The boy.”

“What boy?”

“The one at Holger’s place.”

They’re all eyeing him intently now, even Nasira has picked up on the conversation and is coming back to listen, Ali holding her hand, sniffing and wiping his eyes.

“You mean the boy and his psycho-mom?” William asks. “The one who killed Holger?”

“Yes. I saw his pouch—he had this little, weird leather bag thing around his neck—I saw that in the house. I only just remembered. He must have been there before whatever happened there went down, and also he must have been back later to get the pouch.”

Sebastian and William and Josefine and Nasira look at each other in turn. Then all of them look back at Dan.

“You sure it was the same pouch?” Josefine asks.

“Positive,” Dan says. “It’s very unique.”

“Sorry, buddy,” William says, “but don’t you think that’s a little … I don’t know, thin? I mean, so what if that guy was there? You think he can do anything to stop this?”

“I think his mother can,” Dan says. “I bet you she’s into voodoo just like the woman who lived in the house. She may have even helped do the ritual on the little girl.”

They all still look at him with skeptical faces, and then he finally turns his head, and William is surprised to see Dan’s eyes are blazing as he looks at them one at a time.

“Look, I get this sounds like a stretch, I really do. But I feel it in my gut. I was there. So were my sister and her boyfriend. They both died at that place. So no one else can verify what I saw. But what if I’m right? What if this woman was in on it? What if she knows how it got started?”

“All right, let’s say you’re right,” Sebastian says calmly. “I still don’t see why that’s any reason you want to go back?”

“Because she might know how to stop it.”

“If she knew that, don’t you think she would have done it?” William says. “I mean, she’s obviously a cold-blooded psycho, but why would she create a zombie and just unleash it on the world?”

“She wouldn’t,” Dan says, breathing deeply. “It was an accident, obviously. That ritual was meant to heal the girl—she must have had some sort of accident, and she was probably already dead when they did it. But it went off the rails and she turned into a zombie and killed her grandmother—the old woman who lived there. Maybe the other woman and her son were still there when it happened, maybe they’d already left and didn’t realize it until it was too late. Either way, they didn’t mean for this to happen.” Dan breathes through his nose. “I’m telling you, we need to go back there and talk with that woman.”

No one says anything for a moment.

“It makes sense how you put it,” William concedes. “But what do you hope will happen if we go back there? That she agrees to try and—what, uncurse all the zombies?”

“I don’t know,” Dan admits. “I just know that’s what we need to do—go back there and talk with her.”

“If voodoo really has some sort of power to stop the pandemic,” Josefine says, “then why don’t we find some priest who knows all about it?”

Dan seems to consider for a moment, then he shakes his head. “He would have no way of knowing what exactly went down. It didn’t go according to plan, remember? If anybody without full knowledge begins messing around with it, they could make it worse.”

“Worse than the world ending by zombies?” William says, then regretting the comment right away as no one else smiles. He clears his throat. “Okay, look, if you really want to talk with that woman, I think there’s a way of reaching her without going back there.”

Dan looks at him. “How?”

William takes out his phone and shows it to him. “We call her up.”

Josefine frowns. “You have her number?”

“Nope,” William says, “but I have the number for the satellite phone in Holger’s bunker.”

TWENTY-SIX

William turns on his phone, finds the number and hands it over to Dan.

Dan looks at the screen, biting his lip, feeling suddenly hesitant. “What do I … what do I say?”

“I don’t know,” William tells him. “You’re the one who wants to speak with her.”

Dan glances around at the others; all of them are watching him, none of them have any answers.

Dan realizes it’s on him.

This is his hunch.

This is his job.

He closes his eyes for a moment, steadying himself inside. For no discernable reason, Thomas appears in his inner vision. Thomas was determined. He was tough. He knew what to do. Even when he was facing death, it didn’t stop him from doing what needed to be done.

Dan must cultivate some of that strength himself now—heaven knows he needs it.

So he breathes deeply and makes the call, placing the phone to his ear.

“It might take a while before it starts ringing,” William says.

And it does—for almost twenty seconds, Dan doesn’t hear anything. Then there’s a faint static noise. And finally, the phone starts ringing.

After the third ring, the static stops as the call is apparently answered.

For a moment, there’s only silence.

Dan imagines the woman standing there, holding the phone to her ear, waiting suspiciously without saying anything.

Then, completely unexpectedly, a meek boy’s voice says: “Hello?”

In a flash, Dan sees the boy in the window again. And he searches his memory.

What was his name? I know I heard the woman call it out. What was it?

Then it comes to him.

“Is this Dennis?”

A brief pause. Then, timidly: “Uhm, yes. Who’s this?”

There’s something about the boy’s voice which triggers another tiny piece in Dan’s memory. Mille, telling him over the phone, “I think he’s intellectually disabled or something …”

“Hi Dennis. My name is Dan. I need to talk with—”

Dan cuts himself short. He was just about to ask to speak with the boy’s mom. But something made him stop.

“It’s the kid?” William whispers, looking at Dan.

Dan nods, just as Dennis says in his other ear: “Uhm, I didn’t catch that last part? Hello?”

Dan doesn’t answer right away.

“Ask him to put her on the line,” William suggests, growing impatient. He’s obviously interpreting Dan’s hesitation as a lack of courage.

But Dan is actually hesitating because he’s internally changing his approach. He had prepared himself to speak with a very clever and calculated woman. He had been racking his brain for some way to persuade that woman to meet with him, even though she would have absolutely no reason to do so and would probably be very suspicious of him even asking. He was facing a near impossible task.

Instead, he’s got a young boy with some sort of mental disability. He must be at least Dan’s age, but from how he talks, he sounds more like Ali’s age. And that might be exactly the advantage Dan needs. What was it Mille told him? Something about the boy being like a slave to his mother …

“Hello?” the boy asks. “You still there?”

“Yes,” Dan says. “Sorry about that, Dennis. What I was saying is, I need to talk with you.”

William eyes him, mouthing: “What?”

“Uhm, okay,” Dennis says. “About what?”

“About something very important. You can’t hang up the phone until you’ve heard what I have to say. Will you promise me that?”

This time, there’s a longer pause. Long enough that Dan begins to wonder if Dennis will answer him or simply end the call. He might have blown it. He might have asked for too much. Might have made Dennis suspicious.

But then Dennis says: “Sure, I guess.”

TWENTY-SEVEN

Dennis is sitting by the table in Holger’s bunker, doing a drawing with the marker he found.

Dennis has always enjoyed drawing. He’s even pretty good at it; one of the only things he’s good at. And it calms him down whenever he’s worried or has too much stuff on his mind.

Like he does now.

Mom is upstairs in the house somewhere. Dennis didn’t feel like being with her. Which is a strange, new feeling to Dennis.

So he went down here to be by himself and draw. It helps him not to think about Silas. Or what Mom did to the doll.

Suddenly, there’s a loud ringing, causing Dennis to jump and drop the marker. He looks around and expects to see some kind of alarm. Instead, his eyes fall on a big, weird telephone sitting in a station on the wall.

Dennis gets up and goes over there as the phone chimes a second time.

Very hesitantly, like he’s about to touch a sleeping snake, Dennis puts his hand on the handset.

It rings a third time.

Dennis picks it up out of the dock.

It’s big and clumsy compared to a regular phone, and it even has a short antenna. A number is shown on the narrow display. Dennis doesn’t know it. He hesitates a moment longer.

Then he holds the phone to his ear. “Hello?”

A moment of static silence. Then a voice comes through. “Is this Dennis?”

Dennis—surprised to hear his own name—blinks. He must know the person on the other end, since the person knows him, but he can’t place the voice. Then he says: “Uhm, yes. Who’s this?”

A brief pause.

“Hi Dennis. My name is Dan. I need to talk with—”

It sounds like the voice is cut short, and for a moment, Dennis thinks the connection might be lost. But he can still hear a faint static crackle.

“Uhm, I didn’t catch that last part?” he says. “Hello?”

No answer, only more static noise. Dennis looks at the phone. There’s still light in the display. He feels a little nervous at this strange call. He feels almost like he shouldn’t be taking it. That if Mom had been here, she would have ripped the phone from him and slammed it down. Whoever was calling probably wasn’t someone he ought to be speaking with.

But he can tell the voice on the other end belongs to a boy his own age, and the boy sounds friendly. Besides, Dennis is very curious.

He puts the phone back to his ear. “Hello? You still there?”

“Yes,” the voice answers. “Sorry about that, Dennis. What I was saying is, I need to talk with you.”

Dennis feels a jolt of excitement.

“Uhm, okay,” Dennis says, placing his weight back and forth on his feet, trying hard not to sound too interested. “About what?”

Another brief pause.

“About something very important. You can’t hang up the phone until you’ve heard what I have to say. Will you promise me that?”

Dennis bites his lip. Both the anxiety and the excitement rise in his chest. He feels even stronger now that this is not a conversation he should be having without Mom knowing. And he’s about to tell the boy on the other end just that, when for some strange reason, Dennis suddenly hears Silas’s voice: “Grow a pair, and do it soon. Just friendly advice.”

Dennis straightens his back a little, then says, mustering as much confidence as he can: “Okay, I guess.”

Pause.

“Thank you, Dennis. Are you still in Holger’s house?”

“Uhm, yes.”

“And your mother? Is she there with you?”

“She’s upstairs right now. I’m down in the bunker. Do you want me to go get her?” The thought of handing the weird call over to Mom is both a relief and a bit disappointing to Dennis, and he can’t really tell what answer he’s hoping for.

“No, that’s all right. Actually, I need to talk with you about your mother.”

Dennis blinks. “Oh. Okay.”

“Your mother practices voodoo, right?”

Suddenly, Dennis feels suspicious. How can the boy on the other end know where he is? How does he know about the bunker? How did he even know Dennis’s name?

“Listen, I … do I know you?”

“You don’t,” Dan says. “But we’ve seen each other, very briefly. I’ll explain it in a moment, okay?”

“I think it’s very weird that you know my name and all … Are you … are you a friend of Silas and Jonas?”

“No. I don’t know those people.”

“Are you sure? Because if you’re trying to trick me …” Dennis can’t finish the sentence, his heart is throbbing so hard in his throat, he’s almost out of breath.

“Listen, Dennis, you can trust me, okay? I’m not trying to trick you, I promise. I just need to speak with you for a couple of moments, that’s all.”

Dan is talking in a calming manner, but Dennis feels very tense now. Suddenly, he regrets even picking up the weird phone. “I … I don’t know if I should be talking with you. I think I’ll go get my Mom now.”

“Please wait, Dennis. Like I said, this is very important. The future of the world might depend on it.”

That last part makes Dennis hesitate again. “How so?” he asks tentatively.

This time, the pause is a little longer. Like the guy on the other end is contemplating how to put things. Dennis clutches the phone. When Dan finally speaks, his tone is very intimate.

“I know how it all began. I know you and your mother were somehow involved. It’s okay, I’m not blaming you. I’m just saying, I know you saw how it all went down—didn’t you?”

Dennis’s mouth is suddenly drained of any saliva. He gapes like a fish on land. A new, strong impulse to disconnect the call, and it’s all he can do not to. Something in the guy’s voice makes Dennis stay on the line.

“You don’t need to answer,” the guy goes on. “The reason I’m calling is because I need your help, Dennis. I want to stop this thing. And I can only do that if you help me reach your mom.”

“Okay, I can go get her right—”

“Not by putting her on the phone, no. If you do that, she’ll just hang up on me. She won’t trust me.”

Thinking about it, Dennis realizes the guy is most likely right. And maybe Mom would be right not to do so—Dennis still isn’t sure.

“Instead, I need you to let me in. I’m coming back to Holger’s house. I’ll be there tomorrow. You need to unluck the hatch that you and your mom came in through. Can you do that?”

“I … I … can’t,” Dennis says, shaking his head. “Mom would kill me.”

“That’s why you need to do it without your mom noticing. I know this is a lot to ask, but—”

Dennis shakes his head even more violently. “No! No, I’d never do that. I’d never trick Mom like that!”

Dan keeps his voice calm. “I understand, Dennis. But you need to trust me. The reason I ask you to do this, is because your mom won’t let me in no matter what I tell her. Only you can let me in. Once I’m in, I can make your mom understand why I need her help. I believe she might be the only person in the world who can find a way to stop what’s happening before it’s too late. I give you my word that I won’t hurt you or your mom. I swear to that. Do you believe me, Dennis?”

Oddly, Dennis finds that he does.

And then, suddenly, finally, it falls into place.

“You … you are … it was you … in the car! I saw you from the upstairs window. You and your friends were the ones who stayed here before me and Mom came!”

He expects Dan to deny it or at least sound guilty, but he simply says: “You’re right, Dennis.”

Dennis frowns. “So how do I know you aren’t just coming to take the place back from us? Maybe … maybe you and your friends are making some sort of clever plan to throw me and Mom out of here!”

“We have no intention of doing that. You need to trust me.”

“How can I trust you when I don’t even know you?”

A longer pause again. Dennis is about to ask if the guy is still on the line, when he finally speaks.

“I will be the only one coming into the house. And I won’t bring any weapons. I’ll let your mom decide what to do with me. If she wants to kill me and throw me out the window like she did with Holger, then I won’t be able to stop her.” Dennis can hear the guy take a breath before he goes on: “That’s how you know we aren’t coming to take the house back. That’s how you know you can trust me, Dennis.”

TWENTY-EIGHT

Iver sits on the chair in the corner and watches the toddler play. He can’t help but smile.

The little guy is exploring the room, investigating every piece of toy in turn, now and then looking up at Iver and smiling tentatively, as though to ask: “I can play with this one too?”

There really are a lot of toys; Agnete had him drag out a veritable suitcase from a closet in her bedroom, which turned out to contain everything from teddy bears to race cars.

They’re in the upstairs bedroom, and Iver is thankful for the second floor; up here, the they can’t hear the zombies working the downstairs windows. Which means with a little luck, they’ll actually be able to sleep.

The thought makes Iver yawn, and he checks his watch. It’s eight o’clock. The sun is beginning to move towards the horizon, sending that last blaze of orange light in through the windows.

If Iver only looks at the little guy shuffling around playing with the toys, he can almost fool himself into believing the world is a safe place.

He called his mom earlier, when he finally was able to get reception. She had been worried sick for him ever since she heard about the ferry. He assured her he was fine. She was too, in fact; on her way to Finland on a bus with Aunt Ada. The Finnish government were setting up safe camps up north, where they would be able to house several thousand people and where the infection shouldn’t be able to get in.

Iver hopes very much that will hold true.

He can still taste the dinner that Agnete made for them. He feels tired enough that he could lie down right now and sleep.

“You’re not tired at all?” he asks.

The boy looks over at him with a questioning look.

“When do you usually go to bed?”

The toddler holds up a play phone, smiling, as though saying: “I think it’s for you.”

Iver holds out his hand, and the toddler comes waddling over, placing the phone in his palm.

Iver pretends to dial a number. “So, who should we call? Your mommy?” The word slips out before he can think, and he can feel the blood drain from his face. The boy doesn’t seem to notice, though; he just looks up at Iver with anticipation, waiting to see what will happen.

Iver clears his throat and holds the phone to his ear. “Hello? Yes, this is Iver. What’s that? Oh, okay.” He hands the phone to the boy. “They want to speak with you.”

The toddler smiles widely and takes the phone without taking his eyes off of Iver’s face. Iver can tell from looking into his eyes how he’s trying hard to figure out what he’s supposed to do. Then he places it against his ear.

Iver smiles and nods. “That’s right. That’s how you do it.”

“’ello?” the boy says, surprising Iver in how accurately he mimics the word. “’ello?”

“You’re so clever,” Iver says, feeling a lump form in his throat. Before he can help himself, he reaches out a hand to stroke the little guy’s golden hair.

“’ello?” the boy says again, turning to waddle back over to the toys, the phone still held against his ear.

Iver watches him and forces back tears pressing behind his eyes. The thought of the little guy never getting to see his mom again is too much to bear.

“What are you going to call him?”

Iver snaps his head around to see Agnete standing in the doorway. The old lady has come up the stairs very quietly. She’s looking at the toddler, smiling, holding a bottle of milk.

“I … I don’t know,” Iver says, discretely wiping his eyes in his sleeve. “He already has a name. I can’t just … rename him.”

“Well, we’ll have to call him something.” Agnete comes into the room. “Hold on, I just got an idea.” She hands Iver the bottle, then goes to the toddler and kneels down. She checks the inside of his shirt collar at the back of his neck, pulling out the little white flap with the wash instructions. “There you go. Adam.”

Iver can see the name written in black marker on the flap. “Why … why would they write his name there?”

“It’s something you often do when they begin in day care. So the childminder can tell the clothes apart if she needs to change it.”

“Oh. So his name is Adam?”

The boy looks over at him.

“Adam?” Iver repeats. “You know that name?”

“Adum,” the boy mimics.

Agnete chuckles. “Well, Adam, it’s time for bed now.” She takes the bottle from Iver, then places a hand on his shoulder. “Chris wants to have a word with you downstairs.”

“He does? Oh, okay. Well, what about …?”

“I’ll tuck him in. You just tell him good night.”

Iver gets up, and Adam looks at him. “Well, good night, little guy. I mean, Adam. Good night, Adam.”

He turns and leaves, closing the door softly behind him, then walks downstairs.

As soon as he reaches the living room, the sound of the hands groping the windows become audible.

Chris is sitting on a chair, his elbows resting on his knees. The rifle lies on the table next to him.

“You done playing with the baby?” he asks, not looking at Iver.

Iver ignores the snarky tone. “What do you want to talk about?”

Chris leans back and sighs. “Sorry. It’s been a long fucking day.”

Iver nods and comes closer. “I know. Where’s Charlotte?”

“Sleeping. She’ll be taking the first shift.”

“I see.”

Chris is quiet for a while. Iver waits for him to say something.

“It’s a shame we didn’t have time to find anything to block the rest of the windows with,” Chris says.

“I know.”

Another pause.

“Look, I get it,” Chris begins. “About the boy. Why you want to protect him. He’s the future and all that. I was dating this chick, and she had a kid too. A one-year-old. I really grew to like the little guy.” Chris throws out his hand. “Hell, I guess I’m technically still dating her. I just assume she didn’t make it. I tried calling her from the lifeboat, but … she didn’t pick up.”

“Oh.” Iver is too surprised to say much else. “Was she … aboard the ferry?”

“Nah, she lives in Copenhagen.”

Iver heard the news about Copenhagen being overrun already the day before yesterday.

“I’m … I’m sorry,” he says.

“Yeah, me too.” Chris sighs again, then glances over at Iver. “You think I’m an asshole.”

It’s a statement, not a question.

“Well, I wouldn’t—”

“It’s okay. I don’t mind. We had this saying in my unit: Assholes outlive everyone else. I think that’s true. Especially in situations like this.” He nods towards the windows. The drapes are pulled shut, but Iver can still make out the contours of the deads outside. There seems to be more of them than when Iver left.

“How many are out there now?” he asks.

“Too many,” Chris says. “And I think more will be coming throughout the night.”

He gets to his feet, takes the rifle and places it on the floor. “Give me a hand, will you?”

Iver follows his lead as they tip over the table, putting in on its side. Chris then picks up a screwdriver Iver didn’t notice until now and begins dismantling one of the legs.

“What are you doing?” Iver asks.

“Pull the curtain aside on the left-hand window,” Chris says. “You’ll see.”

Iver frowns. Then he goes to the window. The figures outside begin to crowd around him and move more eagerly, as though they can sense him coming closer.

He glances over at Chris, who’s busy unscrewing the legs from the table. Then he takes hold of the curtain and pulls it aside just a few inches.

It’s all he can do to ignore the blind, dead faces staring in at him, growling and biting at the glass, staining it with drool and blood.

Then he notices something even more terrifying: the starshaped crack in the glass. As the undead press up against the window, it produces a harrowing whine, as though threatening to break any second.

Iver lets go of the curtain with a gasp and steps back. He glares at Chris. “They … they broke the window!”

“They sure did. I think one of them tripped and banged his fucking head against it. I think that’s how it happened.”

“But … but we need to do something!”

“Whaddaya think I need this for?” He pads the now legless table. “Help be lift it.”

Iver grabs hold of the table and they lift it over to the window, placing it on the sill.

“Now,” Chris says, putting his hand in his pocket and producing a bunch of screws. “As soon as we pull the curtain aside, they’ll begin flipping out. So we need to be quick. Let me just get these ready.” He drives a screw halfway into each of the top corners of the table. Then he nods at Iver. “Right. I’m ready when you are.”

Iver looks at the curtain, feeling his heart pump away in his chest. Then he grabs it, counts out loud to three and yanks it aside all the way.

There are even more out there on the terrace than he thought. At least twenty that he can see. They’re standing in rows, pressing and shoving to get in front of the others, to get to the broken window.

Then Chris cuts the view as he pushes the table up against the window, holds it with his shoulder and drills the screws into the frame, fastening the table against the glass.

“There,” he says, stepping back. “Will take them a little longer before they can make their way through that.”

Iver looks over at the next windows—the table is only covering one and a half of the four windows. “What about those?”

“Those will probably crack sooner or later, too,” Chris says, picking up the table legs. “And I’m afraid we don’t have enough tables to cover the whole house.”

“And when they do?” Iver insists. “What happens when one of the windows breaks?”

“Then we’ll have a real fucking problem on our hands. Unless we start shooting the fuckers before that.”

“Okay, so why don’t we?” Iver asks, flinging out his arms. “Why haven’t we already?”

“Because there’s too many of them and too few bullets,” Chris says plainly. “Killing them off as a precautionary measure is a luxury we can’t afford. If we did that, then we’d have no ammo left for when we really need it.”

Iver stares at Chris as he picks up the rifle, then sits back down, casually placing the weapon across his lap.

“I feel like there’s something you want to tell me,” Iver says, squinting.

“You’re not as dumb as I thought.”

“Fuck you.”

Chris smiles. “Take a seat.”

TWENTY-NINE

Soon as he disconnects, Dan turns around to look at the others. They’re all staring back at him. For a long moment, no one says anything.

Then William clears his throat. “Were you serious just now? About you going back there?”

Dan shrugs. “I have to, yeah. It’s the only way. I know it. I can’t explain why, I just do.”

Talking with Dennis has only confirmed the feeling in his gut. Dan never really believed in anything. Not in God, not in fate, not in karma.

But these last days have drastically challenged his perception of the world and what operates behind the scene.

Losing your entire family in a matter of days is bound to change how you view things. It’s like he can see things more clearly now. Like there’s suddenly nothing in the way of him receiving the message something has been trying desperately to send him ever since he stepped into that last house on the paper route.

Of course, there’s a chance Dan is making all this up; he’s well aware of that. It could be simply his grief. He could be losing his mind. Hell, he might have already lost it.

But it doesn’t feel like it.

And besides, what has he got left to lose? His life? That strangely doesn’t seem all that important any longer. It’s such a fickle thing anyway, life; one second it’s there, and the next it can be going, slipping away from between your fingers like smoke, revealing the fact that you never had any real say in the matter to begin with.

“Dan, look,” Sebastian says, sighing. “I’m sorry, but we can’t do that. We’ve got a good chance to get away here. It would be madness to turn around.”

The others nod in silent agreement, watching Dan for his response. And he realizes just how much of a say he really has over the group. He’s never known that feeling before. He’s always been one of the quiet guys at the back. But here he’s the one who’s lost the most, who’s been fighting for the longest, who’s got the most experience.

And that gives his words weight.

That makes the others care for what he has to say, even if might sound crazy.

Dan is keenly aware of this strange new feeling of being taken very seriously, and the last thing he wants is to abuse his power. So he says: “I understand. I would never ask any of you to risk your lives for me. If any of you want to come with me, I’d appreciate it. If not, I’m totally fine with it. Really.”

The rest of the group exchange looks.

Sebastian looks back at Dan, places both hands on Lærke’s shoulders and shakes his head. “I’m sorry, buddy. I couldn’t go even if I wanted to.”

Dan nods.

Nasira steps forward and holds out both palms. Dan hesitates for a moment, then he takes her hands. She bends forward and kisses his knuckles, then whispers under her breath: “God is speaking to you. You’re right to listen.” She looks up at him, and for the first time, Dan sees tears in her eyes: “May He be with you and protect you. May His light guide you and help you see.”

“Thanks, Nasira,” Dan says.

She lets go of his hands and steps back over to Ali.

Josefine throws out her arms. “I’ve seen too much death. I’m sorry, I just can’t go back there.”

“I understand, Josefine,” Dan says.

Farthest to the right is William. As Dan turns his head to look at him, he sees William staring at him with lips pressed firmly together. “You’re really going, aren’t you?”

Dan nods.

“And I can’t say anything to change your mind, can I?”

“No. I’m sorry, William.”

“Fuck your sorry,” William says, a sudden sneer in his voice. “You’re out of your goddamn mind. What do you think this is? A fucking movie? You think you’re Frodo? Going to save the world all on your own?”

“I don’t think—”

“You’ll get yourself killed!” William shouts, pointing south. “We just barely got out of there! The whole stinking country is crawling with zombies by now! There’s no way in hell you’ll even make it across the border before they eat you alive!”

William’s lips are quivering. His eyes are turning moist. Dan wants to look away, but he can’t.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, his own voice trembling now.

“You will be,” William says, nodding fiercely. “You will be sorry when you get yourself killed. And I’m not coming with you. You hear me? I’m not sacrificing myself because you suddenly got some stupid divine inspiration and want to die as a martyr.”

“I understand,” Dan says, feeling suddenly like he too is on the verge of tears. And he realizes then that he had hope, secretly, that William would come with him. After what they’ve been through together, he thought there was at least a small chance that William would understand what Dan was feeling, that he could somehow pick it up on an emotional level even if he couldn’t grasp it intellectually.

But of course William doesn’t share Dan’s insight. How could he? From William’s point of view, there are no good reasons to do what Dan is suggesting.

Dan takes a deep breath. The thought of going alone is almost too scary to handle. And yet it doesn’t change his decision, not for a second.

William turns away, probably wanting to hide his tears, and Dan lowers his head.

Ozzy comes over to him then and begins licking his hand, whimpering uneasily. Like he’s saying goodbye.

“Ozzy,” William says, glancing over his shoulder. “Come on, buddy. We’re leaving.”

He begins to walk back to the helicopter, but to Dan’s surprise, Ozzy doesn’t follow right away. It’s the first time he’s seen the dog not obey William. He just keeps licking Dan’s hand.

William stops and looks back: “Ozzy!”

Ozzy turns around and slinks over to William, ears low.

Dan looks at the rest of the group and holds out his hands. “I guess this is goodbye.”

They nod sporadically, apparently not knowing what to say or where to look.

Josefine steps forward with a backpack and the metal rod she used as a weapon earlier, putting both of them on the ground in front of him. “Here. It’s your share of the rations, plus a little extra of mine. There’s food for four or five days.”

“Thank you,” Dan says.

“Good luck,” Sebastian says.

“You too,” Dan says.

And that seems to be it.

They all turn around one at a time and go back to the helicopter where William and Ozzy are already waiting. Except Nasira, who kisses Ali, then begins walking towards the ocean. Ali makes one last weak objection before Josefine takes his hand and leads him along with the rest of them.

Dan watches Nasira disappear from sight without looking back.

He then picks up the backpack and puts it on. He takes a deep, shaky breath, filling his chest and feeling the gnawing sense of dread grow more intense as he turns south and looks over the landscape.

In front of him is at least fifty miles to travel. Then there’s the Skagerrak, the strait separating Norway from Denmark. And beyond that is another sixty miles to Holger’s house.

How Dan will get there, how he will overcome that immense challenge of travelling by foot through land filled with living deads, much less crossing the water, he has no idea. All he knows is he has got to try.

So he begins walking.

THIRTY

Iver sits down on a chair across from Chris. Without the table between them, it feels weird. He crosses his arms.

“I’ve got a mission for you,” Chris says, pulling out his pack of cigarettes. He takes his time lighting up one. Then he inhales deeply and lets the smoke seep out through his nostrils.

“I’m not sure Agnete is happy with you smoking in here,” Iver remarks.

“Consider it the price of protection,” Chris says, taking another drag. “Now, listen. If we’re going to make it, we need at least one of three things. If we can get all three, then we’re golden. If we only get one, we might just make it anyway.”

“And what are those three?”

Chris holds up his fingers and counts it out. “More shooters. More guns. More ammo.”

“What about food?”

“Fuck food. There’s plenty of that on this island, and most of it is in cans and the like, so it won’t spoil anytime soon. But without weapons, we can’t get to all that food.”

“So you want to leave the house?” Iver asks, raising his eyebrows. “And what—go rob the neighbors?”

“At some point, we’ll have to leave the house,” Chris says. “Our supplies won’t last forever, and I’m afraid Just Eat will go belly up pretty soon. I’m not saying we go rob anyone, though. I don’t think it’ll have to come to that. I think most of the people on this island will be dead within a week or so, because they slip up somehow and the zombies will get to them. And once they’re dead, it’s not really stealing, is it?”

“That’s a fairly grim outlook,” Iver says.

“It’s also very realistic. Most of the folks around here are seniors. Judging from the amount of gunshots I’ve heard since we came here, not many of them are armed, either. They won’t be able to fight off the zombies for long.”

“You just said we needed more shooters and more guns.”

“Exactly. And since both are scarce, we better act fast to find them.”

Chris takes a break from talking and inhales deeply on the cigarette.

“So, you need me to go out and scout for anyone with a gun?” Iver asks.

“No, that would be suicide. The island is crawling with zombies by now. I’m sure they’re standing around pretty much all the houses. But there is one guy we know off who can handle a gun. And he’s probably still alive, because I heard him fire a shot just twenty minutes ago.”

Iver heard the gunshot too, while he was upstairs with Adam. “You’re talking about Fred?”

“Bingo.”

“So what, I go over there? Convince him to come stay with us?”

“That would be the ideal. If he won’t, then at least find out if he has any spare weapons.”

“If he has, he probably won’t give them away.”

“So you’ll have to steal them. And take as much ammo as you can carry. Just make sure it’s a fit for the weapons, or it would be a waste of time.”

Iver shakes his head slowly. “If I go over there and steal his weapons and his ammo—even if I could—that would leave him in a pretty bad situation.”

Chris shrugs. “He will probably die anyway.”

“You don’t know that. And even if he does, I’ll still be speeding it up by stealing from him.”

“Which brings us back to what I said at the beginning.” Chris leans forward. He hasn’t looked directly at Iver since they sat down, but now he pins him down with his piercing grey eyes. “The boy. I get why you want to defend him. And if you really do, then you can’t just sit around and wait for a miracle.” Chris raises his hand and points in the direction of Fred’s house without taking his eyes off of Iver. “There’s one old guy over there. We are five people here. Four of us are young. Who do you think should make it?”

“That’s … that’s not up to me to decide,” Iver says.

“But it is. You can stack the deck in our favor. If you convince that old prick to come over here and join us—great! That increases our odds dramatically, and his too. If you get a gun or a bag of ammo, then that’s also a big help. But if you do nothing, then more and more windows will start to crack, and once we run out of ways of barricading them, you’ll wake up one night to find one of those fucking things out there chewing on your face. Or even worse, on the face of that little boy up there.”

Iver feels his chest tighten. He’s well aware that Chris is manipulating him, but the mere thought of the boy dying is so horrible, he can’t bear to think about it. Besides, he can’t really see the flaw in Chris’s logic, either. Even though he’s a cold-hearted bastard, he’s probably right that help won’t come from the outside any time soon, and they need to secure their own survival.

“If I bring back a gun,” Iver says, “who will use it? Charlotte?”

Chris shakes his head. “She’s never fired a gun.” He takes one last drag on the cigarette, then puts it out against the sole of his shoe while looking Iver squarely in the eye. “But I can teach you to do it. If you have the nerve?”

THIRTY-ONE

Nasira is ready.

As ready as she’s ever been.

Ready to see her mom and dad again, along with all the other family members she’s lost back in Iraq.

Hopefully she won’t see Ali for many years to come.

She’ll miss him, of course, but that’s okay. She knows he’s safe with the people now taking care of him.

Nasira keeps walking down the hill even as she can hear the helicopter lift off behind her. She walks against the setting sun dipping towards the ocean. She listens to the seagulls crying. She feels her breath going in and out.

She feels the infection, too. It’s more present now. Filling every corner of her body.

Except it’s not an infection, not really. It just appears that way. Just like the waves on the ocean seem to be separate things when really, they’re all just water.

This thing which is slowly taking over her body is something else entirely. It’s evil. Nasira can feel it push against her spirit. Trying to exterminate her.

She’s still not spiking a fever, and she could probably keep it off for a few more hours.

But there’s no point anymore.

It’s time.

She won’t let the thing take her over. Won’t let it use her body after she’s left it.

She reaches the point where the hill is suddenly cut off by a steep fall. She walks close to the edge at peers down. Far, far below the waves are crashing against the cliffs.

Nasira looks around and sees a rock protruding from the ground. She goes to sit down. Folds her legs. Turns her face against the sun and closes her eyes.

She wants to feel it just a little longer. Wants to take in the beauty of this world for another minute or so.

So she sits there, doing nothing but feeling and breathing and living and dying.

The sound of the helicopter grows distant and then dissipates, leaving her with the sound of the evening breeze and the waves below.

She feels grateful that she got to live a life in this world, flawed as it may be. And she feels even more grateful that by the end of it, she got to know God intimately. That He revealed Himself to her when she needed Him the most. Assuring her there was no reason for fear or grief or regret.

Only love.

Only love.

Nasira gets to her feet. She’s smiling as she begins walking, eyes still closed, towards the edge.

THIRTY-TWO

As soon as the daylight turns to twilight, Iver gets up and gets ready.

He brings the shovel as his first-choice weapon and one of the table legs as his backup, sticking up from the backpack like a baseball bat.

Agnete agreed reluctantly to let him take the table leg, as she realized the table would probably never be used to serve dinner at again.

“All right,” Chris coaches him in the kitchen. “Remember the plan. You jump out as soon as I draw them away. When you come back, you call me a couple of minutes in advance, and we’ll do the same to let you back inside.”

“Got it,” Iver says, focusing on his breathing.

“You’ve got your phone?”

He pats his pocket. “Right here.”

“It’s fully charged?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And what is your primary objective?”

“To convince Fred to come over here.”

“And if that fails?”

“Then I’ll try to bring back weapons and ammo instead.”

“Perfect,” Chris says. “You ready?”

“As ready as I’m going to be.”

Chris nods. “You tell me when.” Then he walks into the living room. Iver can see him take up position by the terrace door. He looks back out at Iver.

“Okay,” Iver says. “Go.”

Chris pulls the curtain aside, revealing the horde of zombies outside. He taps the glass with his fingers, immediately causing the undead to get riled up and begin pushing up against the glass.

Iver climbs up onto the kitchen table and places his face close to the glass in order to look outside. He sees a couple of zombies disappear around the corner of the house, drawn by the raucous from the other side.

Then he pulls the hasp, swings open the window and climbs out. He looks back briefly to make sure Agnete closes the window behind him.

Then Iver runs out to the gravel road. His head is on ball bearings as he begins jogging towards Fred’s house, his eyes wide and scanning every direction. From the town farther down the road he can make out figures in the dusk, waddling around between the houses. And in the horizon, from the direction of the ocean, still more are coming, swarming the island like a Biblical plague of locusts.

He clutches the shovel and keeps running, focusing on the task at hand. If he lets his mind think too much about the fact that he’s running around out in the open in the middle of an island with probably several hundred zombies roaming free, he’ll just panic.

Fred’s house comes up ahead, a single lamp burning by the front door, but all the windows are dark. The old guy might have gone to bed. Or maybe he’s just trying not to draw attention to his house. Iver can make out the zombies crowding the garden, though, so turning the lights off apparently isn’t enough to trick them. They seem to be able to sense living people from very far away.

There are also quite a few dead zombies on Fred’s lawn—probably ones Fred has shot from inside the house.

Iver looks back to make sure no one is following him. When he looks ahead again, a figure comes waddling out in front of him from behind a bush by the roadside.

Iver yelps and runs around the dead woman grabbing for him. He’s way too fast, though, and makes it past her fairly easily. Still, the way she appeared out of nothing scares the crap out of him, and he becomes even more aware of his surroundings as he jogs on, quickly widening the gap to the old lady.

A few moments later he hears a groan from the other side of the road, and as he peers out into the murky landscape, he can make out three silhouettes coming for him. He speeds up and passes them by.

I’m good, he tells himself. I’m good. As long as I keep running, they can’t catch up with me, and I’m good.

Which means, of course, if he makes a stupid mistake like falling or twisting his ankle, he’ll lose his advantage—and maybe his life as well.

I won’t fall. I’ll be careful. And I’ll be good. Just need to keep focusing.

He reaches Fred’s house, and the zombies groping the windows begin turning around one at a time as they sense him coming closer. The last thing Iver wants is to stop moving, but he forces himself to do so anyway. He stands right outside Fred’s driveway, holding the shovel ready, peering all around, while particularly keeping an eye on the oncoming group of zombies from Fred’s house. There are ten or twelve of them.

As soon as they’re close enough that he can smell the sweet, salty and rotten reek coming off of them, he begins moving again, walking quickly farther down road.

“That’s it,” he whispers, still making sure that every direction is clear. “You follow me now …”

He leads them maybe fifty yards down road. Then he steps out onto the roadside, and as soon as they follow his lead, he runs to the other side of the road and heads back towards Fred’s place, leaving the group of zombies behind.

He reaches Fred’s house once more, his breath coming faster now, sweat beading his forehead and upper lip.

He stops for a moment in the driveway, holding his breath and listening. He can’t hear any groans or footsteps nearby. He’s bought himself maybe three minutes before the group will make it back here. Which means he needs to hurry.

As he heads for the front door, the driveway is suddenly lit up by a strong searchlight from atop the garage door, effectively blinding him.

Iver stops and shields his eyes. At first, he figures the light has been automatically triggered by a sensor picking up his movements. But then the garage door begins rolling up, revealing a black Peugeot and, in front of it, Fred pointing at him with his shotgun.

“What did I just tell you? Get the hell off my property, you scavengers!”

“Don’t shoot!” Iver says, holding up his hands, dropping the shovel. “I just came to talk!”

Fred looks at him intently. “Who the hell are you?”

“My name’s Iver. I’m staying at Agnete’s place. We met earlier today.”

“Oh, it’s you,” Fred growls. “Well, it makes no real difference who you are; you’re still not welcome here!”

“Listen,” Iver says, looking to the sides, shielding his eyes. “Could you please turn off the light? I can’t see anything around me.”

“If you’re uncomfortable with the light, I suggest you get the hell out of here. Those dead fuckers will show up any moment now.”

“I’m not armed,” Iver tries. “I just want to come in and talk for a minute.”

“We’ve got nothing to talk about,” Fred says, taking a few steps out of the garage. “You’ve got nothing I want, and I’ve got nothing you can have. So scram!”

Iver darts another glance around, but his surroundings have turned to a black mush, which could contain everything or nothing. He listens but can’t hear anything.

“Please,” Iver says, trying one last time. “We’re stronger if we stick together. We can help each other …”

Iver stops talking as he seems to hear a noise coming from the right. He looks at the spot right beside the garage, but he can’t make out anything out there. Maybe it was just his imagination.

He looks back at Fred pleadingly. “Look, we’ve got a weapon, too, and if we join forces …”

Once again, Iver cuts himself off as he notices a movement from up ahead, just above the spotlight. A dark shadow moves across the garage roof. The light cast up from below reveals the face of a teenage girl as she leans forward to look down at Fred.

The girl then looks at Iver and places a finger over her lips in an unmistakable shushing gesture.

Iver is so surprised to see her that he doesn’t know what to do.

Fred seems to think he’s simply looking up at the light: “You listen to me, boy. I’ve taken care of myself my entire life. I’m not about to stop doing that now, especially not by shagging up with a bunch of goddamn kids. Now, I’m not telling you again—”

Fred’s final warning is cut off as the girl jumps down from the garage. She apparently aims to grab the weapon from Fred’s hands. She misses, though, instead connecting with Fred’s shoulder and knocking him to ground while landing on her back next to him, audibly punching the air from her lungs.

Fred gives a roar of pain and surprise as he makes it back to his knees with surprising speed for an old guy, scrambling for the gun.

A yell of attack as a guy comes rushing in from the right—from where Iver heard the noise just a minute ago. Iver just gets a brief glimpse of a buff dude wearing a tight T-shirt clutching his well-trained body. He goes for the shotgun, stretching out his tattoo-covered arms and throwing himself at it.

But Fred gets to if first. He picks it up by the barrel, pulls back out of reach of the guy, flips the shotgun over and fires it before the guy can make another attempt.

The shot rings out into the night—not quite as deafening as the shots Chris fired inside Agnete’s living room, but still ear-piercing.

The guy’s head is flung back and for a moment Iver gets a clear view of his face. Or rather, the place where his face used to be. Then he collapses onto the concrete, his arms and legs giving off a couple of spasms before lying still.

Iver picks up the shovel.

The girl—who has just managed to get back up, heaving for her breath—now begins wailing at the sight of the dead guy.

“Nooooooo! Lasse! Noooooo!” She turns to Fred, her face a mask of rage. “You piece of shit! You killed him!” She launches herself at Fred like an animal.

Fred has gotten back up and is prepared for her. Iver is sure he’ll shoot her too. Instead, he flips the shotgun back around, connecting the butt end with the girl’s jaw, sending her back down for the count.

A dead man comes waddling out of the darkness and enters the scene, headed for Fred and the girl.

Iver is about to cry out in warning as a hand grabs his shoulder. He instinctively thrusts himself forward, a set of teeth clapping right next to his ear, missing it by mere inches. He wheels around, swinging the shovel blindly. The blade hits the zombie’s skull, knocking it over.

Another figure comes out of the dark before the first one can get back up.

Iver turns around and sees Fred take aim and fire the shotgun a second time, removing the top of the head of the oncoming zombie, and it collapses atop the dead guy.

Two more come into view.

Fred goes for his pocket and pulls out two new cartridges, then seems to realize there’s no time, and instead heads for the garage.

Iver has no other choice than follow him. One side is blocked by the house, and the others are completely obscured. Running out into the darkness will likely mean running straight into the arms of a dead person.

Fred goes for a switch on the wall, flipping it, and the door starts coming down.

Iver bolts for safety, jumping over the corpses, swinging the shovel at a dead woman trying to cut him off. He strikes her on the throat with a crushing blow, sending her stumbling backwards, but only causing her a minor inconvenience, as she immediately comes at him again. Iver dodges her and is about to run into the garage when he sees Fred pointing the shotgun at him.

“You stop right there! Get the hell back!”

Iver looks back and sees at least a dozen zombies coming into the driveway from every direction, closing him in.

“I can’t!” he cries out at Fred. “There’s nowhere to go!”

“Not my fucking problem!” Fred roars as the door comes down from above, cutting him from view.

Iver spins around and takes a swing at the closest dead person, knocking him over. In an instant, he realizes he’s done for. He’s pinned between the house and the soon-closed garage. There are too many zombies for him to outmaneuver them and make it to safety. And he can’t take out all of them with a shovel.

Then Fred cries out from behind: “You get out of here!”

Iver turns around again to see the girl who’s crawled for safety, sitting on her hands and knees below the garage door. It presses down on her back from above, but as it meets resistance, it stops, still four feet from the ground. Iver can see Fred struggle with the girl from the inside, trying to push her out, but she claws back, fighting to get in.

Iver doesn’t waste a second. He drops the shovel and throws himself down half a second before the closest zombie can grab him. He rolls under the door and into the garage, the table leg falling from his bag. He grabs it and gets to his feet.

Almost immediately, the zombie he just narrowly escaped—a young boy—comes crawling under the door.

Iver takes a running swing at his head hard enough to send painful shockwaves up through the table leg and into Iver’s hands and arms. The skull cracks open and the boy falls to the ground. Iver uses the table leg to try and shove him out as the next zombie comes crawling under the door.

Fred is still struggling with the girl. She has grabbed onto the shotgun and refuses to let go, her face screwed up into a determined sneer, despite Fred roaring at her and punching her arm.

Then she screams out in pain as someone begins attacking her legs, dragging her backwards. Fred is pulled along, his hands slipping outside for just a moment.

Then he rips the shotgun free and backs away. The girl is dragged out of the garage, her nails clawing at the concrete as she screams. Fred takes aim and fires the gun at the zombie who has made it under the door and is getting to its feet. He only hits it in the shoulder, though, sending to the ground, but it immediately begins getting back up.

“It’s too late!” Iver hears himself cry out. “We need to get inside the house!”

Fred looks down at the zombies squeezing under the door, then obviously decides Iver is right and turns on his heel and runs for the door leading into the house.

Iver beats him to it, bursting into Fred’s scullery and holding the door open for him. As soon as Fred is inside, Iver slams the door and turns the key.

From outside, the girl is still screaming. But only for a couple of seconds. Then eager hands begin groping at the door.

Iver steps back and looks at Fred.

The old guy is standing there, panting and resting one hand on his knee, the other holding the shotgun. He stares from the door to Iver, his upper lip curling into a snarl.

“Now look what you’ve done, you little shit! I just lost access to my car!”

Fred looks livid, and for a moment, Iver prepares himself to fight, as he’s sure Fred will take a swing at him—or maybe even turn the gun on him.

Instead, he turns around and goes into the hallway.

Iver just stands there for a long moment, shaking all over, listening to the zombies moaning outside the door.

Then he follows Fred.

THIRTY-THREE

William buckles up and makes sure the belt is tight. Then he takes the pieces of napkin he has kept in his pocket, squeezes them up into little balls and stuffs them in his ears.

Might as well try and get some sleep.

He leans up against the wall as the helicopter gets ready to take off. The roar of the engine, the slowly rising whoop-whoop of the rotors gaining speed, even the vibrations against his back is soothing.

Outside, the evening is growing darker, the sun is painting the sky and the ocean red.

A wet snout nudges his knee.

William opens his eyes and looks at Ozzy. The dog is staring up at him, giving him a very meaningful look.

“Don’t you start,” William mutters. “We’re not doing it. We’re not getting ourselves killed for that little prick.”

Ozzy slants his head to the side, as though trying to understand.

“Look, he already caused us too much trouble. If it hadn’t been for him, we would still be safe and sound at Holger’s place.”

William realizes he’s talking out loud and glances around to see if anybody else has noticed. They haven’t; they’re all either sitting with eyes closed or looking out the windows. Besides, no one can hear him over the roar of the rotors, which have almost reached full speed now and are ready to lift them off the ground.

William ignores Ozzy and looks around at the rest of the group. They are only five people left now, counting William.

Sebastian, Lærke, Josefine and Ali.

Five people making it out alive. Not bad. There are probably more, of course. Maybe hundreds. Maybe even thousands.

All are fleeing in different directions, hoping to reach safety somewhere, hoping to find a somewhat normal life until this thing is sorted out.

Will it ever, though? You don’t really believe that. The authorities won’t be able to stop it. And there won’t be a cure. Dan was right about that.

Ozzy nudges his knee again.

“Stop that!” William exclaims, pulling his leg away.

Josefine, who’s sitting opposite him, holding Ali, opens her eyes and looks over at him and mouths: “What?”

William shakes his head: “Nothing.”

Just my stupid dog trying to tell me something …

William doesn’t want to think about it. He doesn’t want to think about Dan walking back to Denmark on foot, alone. It’s his damn choice. And William has made his own.

“I’m not going with him,” he tells Ozzy. “I’m not.”

Ozzy just keeps looking at William like he’s trying hard to make him understand something important.

“I’m not doing it,” William says again, turning his face away and looking out the window.

“You guys ready?” Sebastian calls out from the pilot’s seat. “Let’s get out of here. Next stop, Faroe Islands!”

Ready, William thinks to himself. And he wants to call it out. But the word that comes from his mouth is slightly different: “Wait!”

THIRTY-FOUR

Iver walks through Fred’s house, which isn’t nearly as neat and tidy as Agnete’s was. In fact, it bears clear signs of an old guy living alone.

He reaches the living room and finds Fred sitting in his armchair, the shotgun resting across his lap. He takes off the cap, drops it to the floor and rubs his bare scalp, giving off a deep sigh. “For God’s sake, what a mess.”

The curtains are drawn on all the windows, but Iver can hear the zombies outside.

“I’m sorry,” he says, stepping closer. “I obviously didn’t mean for anything like that to happen. I just came over here to talk.”

Fred scowls at him, saying nothing, then looks away, muttering: “You’re lucky I don’t throw you out the window.”

“I didn’t attack you,” Iver says, pointing back. “They did. They caused all this.”

“You were the one who got me to open the garage door in the first place.”

“You didn’t need to do that.”

“If I hadn’t, you would have broken a window to get in here.”

“Of course I wouldn’t,” Iver says, feeling oddly offended. “Like I said, I just came to talk, not put anybody in danger.”

“I don’t care what you came for,” Fred says, leaning forward. “I want you out of here!”

“Well, that’s not possible right now,” Iver says, nodding towards the windows. “Unless you’re going to force me to leave?”

The question hovers between them in the dimly lit room for several seconds.

Iver is still holding the table leg, hanging by his side. There are only a few steps from him to Fred’s chair. He’s not sure he can close the distance before Fred can turn the gun on him and fire, but he doubts the old guy will do that. He’s just bluffing, and Iver is calling it.

Finally, Fred sighs again. “They came by here just ten minutes before you showed up. They drew a bunch of dead guys with them. They wanted to come in. They’d come from the mainland, they said, seeking refuge. Well, they didn’t find it here, I told them. They should try another house. Apparently, they decided to wait around instead, looking for the opportunity to surprise me.” Fred glances at Iver. “You gave them that opportunity.”

Iver throws out his hands. “I had no way of knowing.”

Fred gets up from the armchair with a groan. He shuffles to a liquor cabinet, looking suddenly a lot older as he takes out a glass and a bottle. “You drink?” he asks, not looking at Iver.

“No, thank you.”

“Of course you don’t,” Fred mutters. “Young people nowadays. You think you’re so damn important.”

Iver pretends not to hear. He puts the table leg on Fred’s dining table and sits down on a chair. The muscles in his legs are happy to get a break after running around outside.

Fred shuffles over and slumps back down into the chair. He pours himself a drink while murmuring: “I’m almost glad you’re not here to see this, Grethe. Things are really turning to shit. We’ll probably all be dead soon. At least that means I’ll get to see you again.”

Iver recalls Agnete telling them something about Fred having recently lost his wife, and he feels an unexpected stab of sympathy for the old guy.

He takes out his phone and is about to call up Chris, when Fred asks: “Whaddya doing?”

“I’m calling the others to let them know what happened.”

“No,” Fred says, shaking his head slowly. “You’re not calling anybody.” He comes over, puts his glass on the table, then holds out his hand. “Give me that.”

Iver frowns. “Why?”

“Because I don’t want you calling them and planning something stupid.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, them coming over here, maybe.”

“Look, that’s not happening. I just want to let them know—” Iver stops talking as he notices a scratch on the inside of Fred’s wrist. “How did you get that?”

“Get what?” Fred looks down. “Aw, that’s nothing, just a scratch.”

“Yeah, but from what? It’s fresh, which means it just happened.”

“I don’t know. Must have got it from that crazy bitch. She probably scratched me when she jumped on me.”

Iver looks at Fred thoughtfully, recalling him fighting to get the girl out from under the garage door. She could very well have clawed him there.

But there was also that moment when Fred’s arms went outside. It was only a second before he pulled them back in.

But a second was enough.

“Why are you eyeing me like that, boy?” Fred growls. “I told you, I’m fine. Now hand me that phone.”

“I didn’t say you weren’t fine,” Iver says calmly, handing Fred the phone.

Fred puts the phone in his pocket, eyeing him closely. “What did you say then?”

“Nothing. I just wanted to know how you got that scratch.”

“And I told you.”

Iver nods. “Can I go to the bathroom?”

Fred takes the glass from the table and is about to take a swig, then hesitates. “Why?”

Iver throws out his arms. “Do I really need to answer that?”

Fred chews on his tongue. Then he nods. “Fine, go. But don’t take too long.”

Iver gets up and leaves the living room. Just before he walks out into the kitchen, he glances back to see Fred slump down into the armchair. He looks very tired. Exhausted, actually. He seems to be muttering to his dead wife again.

Iver closes the door almost all the way, then he quickly goes to the windows. Even through the curtains, he can hear the dead people groping the glass. It sounds like there’s a lot of them. There’s no way he’s getting out this way.

Instead, he runs down the hallway to the bathroom. There’s only one window in here, but a couple of hands are groping it.

“Fuck,” Iver mutters, closing and locking the door. He goes to the mirror and looks at himself. “Think, goddamnit.”

The version of Iver looking back out at him seems ten years older than the one he saw in the mirror just yesterday. His face is pale and there are dark rims below his eyes. His hair is also all messed up.

He has no way of calling Chris. Even if he could find another phone, he doesn’t recall his number. And getting his own phone back from Fred would be near impossible.

Which means he needs to find a way out of here. Even if he could open one of the windows without Fred noticing, he would have no one to help him distract the zombies.

But is Fred really infected? Or is Iver just overreacting?

That scratch on the old guy’s wrist looked not-good at all. In fact, the more Iver thinks about it, the more he feels certain it wasn’t done by the girl. The way the skin had reddened and was swelling up just slightly around the scratch told him it might be infected.

If he is infected, how long will it take him to die? Iver asks his mirror image. Probably not long. Half an hour? Twenty minutes?

The people on the ferry turned within moments. But they were a lot more badly wounded than just a scratch, so it was likely a matter of minutes rather than seconds before Fred would die and wake back up. But maybe—

A sudden banging on the door makes Iver jump. “Jesus Christ, what?” he calls out.

“Let me in!” Fred growls from the other side. “Now!”

“I’m not done in he—”

“Open that damned door or I’ll shoot my way in!”

Iver flushes the toilet then goes to open the door. He’s barely turned the key when Fred comes bursting in, shoving him out of the way.

“Hey!”

Fred heads for the toilet, using the shotgun as a cane for support as he kneels down and vomits into the bowl. He spits and wipes his mouth in his sleeve. “Goddamnit. Knew I shouldn’t have finished that lamb.”

“You feeling sick?” Iver asks, standing there, noticing his heart beating right below his chin as he eyes Fred intently.

Fred glances sideways, as though he forgot Iver was there. His face is pink and sweat is beading on his forehead. “Just had some bad meat for supper, that’s all.”

Iver can smell the puke and something salty, too. It’s fever, he realizes. Fred is burning up.

“Say, you look a little hot—you need me to get you anything? A glass of water?”

Iver goes to leave, but Fred flips the shotgun on him. “You stay right here. I don’t want you out of my sight.”

Iver holds out his arms. “Why? What do you think I’d do?”

“You’d let those dead fuckers in here,” Fred says, burping. “You’d let them fucking have me just so you could get out of here and save your own ass. Don’t you think I’m not on to you, boy.”

“You’re crazy,” Iver says.

Fred burps again, then waves the gun. “Close that door. Lock it. Throw the key over here.”

Iver closes the door slowly. He puts his hand on the key and is about to turn it. But something makes him hesitate. A sudden feeling that if he locks that door, he’ll never get to leave the bathroom. From outside the window, he can hear the zombies groping the glass.

Fred begins to heave, but fights back the vomit. “What are you … waiting for? Throw that … damn key … over here!”

“I can’t lock it,” Iver hears himself say, rustling the key. “It’s jammed.”

“You’re lying!” Fred shouts, then turns his head to puke some more.

Iver decides to chance it.

He rips open the door.

Fred notices and—turning his head to vomit on the floor—shoots the gun still pointed in Iver’s direction.

The sound is like an atomic bomb going off, immediately eradicating Iver’s hearing, the hailstorm of bullets shattering the cupboard just over his head, causing pieces of wood to fly out like confetti.

Iver bolts out the door, ducking down even though it’s way too late to do so, slams the door behind him and runs down the hallway, headed back towards the kitchen. There are no obvious hiding places here, Iver realizes as he looks around, panting.

His ears are still ringing, but he picks up Fred roaring something from the hallway, and as Iver spins around, he sees the old guy come tumbling out of the bathroom, flailing the gun.

Iver runs into the living room, closes the door and tips over the nearest bookcase. It lands with a crash in front of the door, books flying everywhere.

Iver spins around and looks out over the room. Every window is guarded by at least three zombies, and there are no other doors.

The knob begins moving behind him, and Fred starts banging the door.

“Let me in, you little shit! Open that door or I’ll blast it open!”

Fuck!

Iver looks around the living room, trying desperately to summon one last clever idea as the seconds tick by and Fred is still shouting threats from behind the door, kicking it and causing the bookcase to wobble.

What do I do? What do I do?

THIRTY-FIVE

It’s been around twenty minutes since Dan heard the helicopter leave.

Now, the hilly landscape is silent except for a late bird singing now and then. The evening is growing darker around him, and his senses are getting more sensitive. His eyes keep scanning ahead and his ears are prickling for any sounds in the bushes.

So he picks up right away at the sound of running steps approaching quickly from behind, and he spins around, holding up the rod.

Out of dusk comes a big, furry beast which Dan takes to be a wolf, and he screams out.

Just as he’s about to run for his life, the animal gets close enough for him to recognize Ozzy.

The German shepherd runs up to him, sits down and begins barking. He’s looking at Dan, but Dan gets the feeling it’s not him he’s barking at.

He’s calling out, Dan realizes, still too stunned at the sight of Ozzy to say or do anything.

Within a few minutes, he can hear footsteps approaching. Then William appears, jogging along, panting. He’s wearing a backpack and holding the rifle. When he looks up and sees Dan, he stops and rests his hands on his knees, catching his breath.

“Good boy, Ozzy,” he pants.

Ozzy stops barking and begins instead to lick Dan’s hands eagerly.

“I … I thought you weren’t coming,” Dan says tentatively, afraid that William will tell him he’s not really coming, he just forgot to say or give him something. Maybe the extra backpack is for Dan. Maybe William will just throw it to him and run back to the helicopter.

But William sends him a look Dan can’t mistake. “I wasn’t. But I can’t let you have all the fun to yourself, can I?”

Dan breaks into a smile which feels wide enough to split his face in half. Then he drops the metal rod and throws himself at William, hugging him tightly.

“Hey, hey,” William says, patting him awkwardly on the shoulder. “Let’s turn down the bromance, okay?”

But Dan doesn’t let go, and after a few seconds, William hugs him back. Ozzy slinks around them and whimpers happily.

“All right,” William says, finally breaking up the embrace. “We’d better get going, don’t you think?”

“Thank you,” Dan says, picking the rod back up and discretely wiping away tears.

“Don’t mention it.”

They begin walking south, Ozzy running up ahead and scouting, constantly looking around and sniffing the air.

“He’ll pick up the scent of any dead assholes way before we can see or hear them,” William says. “He’s very good with his nose.”

“I’m glad to have him,” Dan says.

“Yeah, me too. Thank God this thing doesn’t seem to affect animals.”

They walk on a few minutes in silence.

“What made you come along after all?” Dan asks.

William shrugs. “You already talked me into stupid shit in the past. I figured I’d do you one last favor.”

Dan smiles. “No, really. Do you believe me? Do you believe we can turn it around?”

William doesn’t look at him right away. “Let’s just say I want to believe you.”

Dan nods. “That’s all I can ask for, I guess.”

It’s silly, really, but Dan can’t help but feel the night has gotten a little less dark now that William is walking next to him.

“So,” William says after another moment of silent walking. “What’s the game plan here? We’ve got no map. We’ve got no vehicle and no way of crossing the water. How do you plan on getting back to Denmark?”

“I don’t know,” Dan says honestly. “I figured for now I’d simply follow the coastline. That way at least we can be sure we’re headed south. And once we meet a city, we might be able to steal a boat.”

“Why not? We already stole a helicopter. You know how to sail a boat?”

“I tried it once, on a vacation.”

“What if there aren’t any boats? What if people already took all the boats to sail the hell away from here?”

“I don’t know,” Dan says again. “I guess we’ll just have to take it one step at a time. Don’t you?”

William looks down at his feet, as though taking the question literally, then he sends Dan a smile. “I guess that’s as good a plan as anything. You got the ring?”

“What?”

“Sorry, bad joke.”

“Oh.” Dan smiles. “Lord of the Rings, right?”

“Yeah. I love that movie.” William looks at Dan earnestly. “Don’t tell me you didn’t watch it.”

“I did.”

“Good. You liked it?”

Dan shrugs. “It was okay, I guess.”

“’Okay, you guess’? Jeez, dude, it’s only the greatest movie ever made!”

“I thought that was Godfather.”

“That one’s good, too.”

“I didn’t watch that one, though,” Dan admits.

William sighs deeply. “You’re hopeless. What did you watch, then?”

Dan shrugs. “I didn’t watch that many movies, really. I’m more into books.”

“I figured,” William says. “What’s your favorite book of all time, then?”

Dan thinks for a moment. “The Stand, I think.”

“What’s that one about?”

“The end of the world.”

“Oh. Very relevant. Zombies?”

“No, it was a flu. People just died. They didn’t come back.”

“That would actually be preferable. How’d it end?”

“Good, I guess.”

“They found a cure?”

“No, but … there was hope. They began building a new and better society. I remember feeling uplifted when I finished.”

William breathes deeply. “Guess that’s not a bad thing. To end with a little hope.”

Dan looks at him and smiles again. “I guess so too.”

THIRTY-SIX

Dennis opens the hatch carefully and peers up into the vegetable garden.

It’s dark now, except for the moonlight beaming down over everything, making the plants look silvery.

“Grrrraaaaahh …”

Dennis snaps his head around, almost dropping the hatch onto his own head. He stares at the couple on the other side of the fence. It’s a man in a police uniform and an Asian woman with most of her hair torn off. They’re groping the metal fence, trying to rip it open, to bite their way through, but it doesn’t work.

Dennis thought he was prepared to see them up close, but it’s still very different from when he was watching them on the monitor down in the bunker just a minute ago.

“Okay,” he tells himself. “You can do this.”

He peels his eyes off the dead couple and opens the hatch all the way so he can climb up. The smell of the tomatoes is almost strong enough to cancel out the smell of blood and flesh and infection from the dead people.

Dennis closes the hatch gently, then stands up straight and looks at the gun in his hand.

It’s a lot heavier than it looks to be in the movies. It’s also very cold.

It’s a Glock—it doesn’t say so anywhere on the gun itself, but Dennis is pretty sure of it. He spent twenty minutes Googling images of guns and he found a close match which told him the name and the specifics of the gun he’s now holding.

Then he found a video on YouTube teaching him how to put bullets into the gun. And how to fire it. The guy told him repeatedly not to keep the gun loaded before you actually needed to shoot it, and to never point it at anything you didn’t intend to kill or destroy.

Dennis glances over at the dead people and swallows dryly.

They’ve been there for most of the day. On the other side of the house are more of them, but these two seem to favor this side, where the vegetable garden is.

Dennis knows that a lot more will come.

It’s fine. They can’t get inside the house.

But still, he needs to practice, needs to learn. He needs to be able to kill them.

Things don’t seem to be going back to normal anytime soon. In fact, they keep saying on the television how the dead people are taking over country after country. They showed a time-lapse map over Europe for the last five days, and Dennis felt goose bumps crawl up his spine as he watched the animation swallow up all of the countries around Denmark. The news reporter said in a grave voice that if things went on like this, by tomorrow, most of Europe would be infected.

So, Dennis needs to prepare himself. He will probably have to fire a gun sooner or later. Either to protect himself or Mom.

Silas was right when he told him he had to grow a pair—Dennis isn’t exactly sure what “pair” refers to, but he gets the gist of it.

Dennis digs into his pocket and takes out the bullets. They shine in the moonlight. He takes his time loading them into the gun’s clip one at a time, ignoring the groans and moans from the dead couple and the rustling of the fence.

It was surprisingly easy to sneak out. Mom didn’t even notice him leave the bunk room. If he’s lucky, she might not even hear the gunshot.

Dennis loads the gun and holds it like he practiced down in the bunker: arm straight, grip firm, barrel pointed down.

Then he takes a deep breath to steady himself and looks at the dead couple again.

Which one?

Dennis has no good way of deciding, so he simply whispers an “eenie-meenie-miney.”

He ends the last “moe” on the guy.

Okay. It’s going to be him.

Dennis steps a little closer to the fence. It’s not easy getting his feet to cooperate; just being here, in the middle of the night, outside the bunker, alone, right in front of two living dead people should be enough to make Dennis pee his pants.

He wants nothing more than to run back down to the bunker, put the gun back into the metal cupboard and crawl back to bed.

He could do it. He could call off the whole thing. Abort mission. Mom never had to find out what he’d been up to.

No, Dennis thinks to himself, clenching his jaw. No, I need to grow a pair.

People are coming to this place. People who he might or might not be able to trust. And if it turns out he can’t, he wants to be ready to defend himself and Mom.

So, he takes one more step forward, leaving only five feet between him and the fence.

The dead guy and the dead woman begin to tear at the fence more eagerly, moaning with hunger, trying desperately to squeeze through and get to him.

Dennis feels his legs begin to buckle and makes an effort to tighten the muscles in his thighs, keeping his stance firm.

He then raises his arm up to eye level, keeping it straight all the way, placing his other palm on his knuckles, which are white from clutching the handle of the gun.

“Breathe in, aim,” he recites, closing one eye. “Focus on the sight, let the target go blurry.”

Not having to look directly at the guy’s face actually makes it a tiny bit easier, Dennis finds, as he stares intently at the tiny bump at the end of the pistol.

“Breathe out, pull the trigger.”

Dennis breathes out, but his finger doesn’t follow through with the last part.

“Breathe out, pull the trigger,” Dennis whispers again.

Still, no reaction from his finger. It’s like it suddenly has its own will and refuses to carry out the order.

“Do it,” Dennis urges himself. “Pull the trigger. Pull it!”

Nothing happens. Except his arms start to shake. The guy moves a little back and forth, and Dennis has to move the gun along.

“Just do it,” he croaks. “You have to grow a pair. Do it. Pull the trigger, damnit!” Then, feeling a sudden rage, he cries out: “Pull the damn trigger, you imbecile!”

The gun kicks back hard as the shot blares out into the night. The recoil isn’t as hard as the rifle, but still hard enough that Dennis almost slaps himself in the face.

He lowers the gun and stares at the guy.

His right eye is gone, together with a big chunk of his temple. He opens and closes his mouth a couple of times, then collapses.

Dennis watches him go down.

“I did it … I did it …”

He can barely hear his own voice over the ringing in his ears. A mixture of wild excitement rushes up into his chest. To Dennis’s astonishment, the dread of seeing the guy he just shot is drowned out by the elation that he was actually able to do it.

Without thinking, he raises the gun again and takes aim at the woman.

“Breathe in, aim. Breathe out, pull the trigger.”

It’s a lot easier this time.

And he’s prepared for the recoil, too, so the gun only points to the sky briefly before snapping back down.

He only manages to take off the woman’s ear, though.

“Darn it,” Dennis mutters, taking aim again.

As he goes through the ritual a third time, he’s amazed to find that he feels hardly any resistance in his body. Driven by the rush of perhaps the biggest victory Dennis has ever had in his life, he feels something which must be confidence streaming through his blood, and he fires the gun again, this time hitting the woman squarely in the forehead, sending her onto her back where she stays absolutely still.

Dennis lowers the gun and looks at the two dead bodies on the other side of the fence. He lets out a trembling breath and realizes he’s shaking all over. It’s not fear, though; at least not all of it.

“Dennis!”

He spins around, almost raising the gun as a reflex but manages to stop himself in the last instant as he sees Mom looking up at him from the open hatch, her eyes big and wide, darting from him to the corpses.

“What in heaven’s name is going on?” She sees the gun in his hand, and her mouth slips open. “Was it … was it you? Did you just … fire that thing?”

“I did,” Dennis says, surprised to find how calm his voice sounds despite everything inside of him being in uproar. “I killed them, Mom.”

She climbs up all the way, not taking her eyes off of Dennis. “But … why?”

“I’m practicing. I need to learn to protect us.”

Mom shakes her head. “You don’t need to do that. I’ll make sure—”

“You can’t protect me forever, Mom.” Dennis is more than surprised at hearing himself interrupt Mom this way—and judging from Mom’s face, she’s just as surprised. “The world is turning to shit,” he goes on. “And I need to grow a pair if I’m going to make it.”

Mom’s face goes through a range of emotions before settling on suspicion. “That language … who told you all that?”

“No one,” Dennis says, shrugging. He can’t believe how easily the lie slipped out. He could just as easily have said “Silas,” but for some reason, he doesn’t want Mom to know. What happened between him and Silas out here in the vegetable garden seems like something oddly intimate. What was it Silas called it? A “rite of manhood.”

“You’re lying to me, Dennis,” Mom says, her eyes growing smaller as she steps closer. “Who have you been talking to?”

“No one,” Dennis says again, even more firmly. “I just watched a YouTube video on how to use this.”

He holds out the gun for Mom to see, making sure the barrel is pointed down and his finger is away from the trigger.

Mom reaches out to take the gun, but Dennis pulls it back instinctively before he can even think about it.

Mom’s hand stops in midair as she stares at him in stunned silence.

Slowly, her face changes. “Hand me the gun, Dennis,” she says softly.

“Why?” Dennis asks.

He can hardly recognize himself.

“Why?” Mom repeats, raising one eyebrow. “Because I say so.”

Dennis considers for a moment. His heart is pounding away in his throat, even harder than before.

“I’d rather hold on to it,” he says. “If that’s okay with you, Mom.” He quickly adds: “I’ll be careful, of course. I know how to handle it.”

He sounds like someone who’s been familiar with guns his whole life, when in truth he’s only just fired it for the first time and he’s barely had time to process anything. Yet he feels a strange sense of power connected to the gun.

He made those two awful dead people die for real.

He eliminated the threat.

Part of him expects Mom to react with fury. To scream at him. He’s even prepared for her to slap him.

But she simply says in a detached tone: “I don’t feel safe around guns.”

“Well, I do,” Dennis says. “And I think we’d both be safer if I kept it close to me.” With Mom still not looking convinced, Dennis goes on: “It’s about time I grow up, Mom. I’m not a little boy anymore. I’m a man now.”

Mom eyes him for the longest time. Dennis can literally feel the dew settle on his skin. He can hear the breeze rustle through the plants. He begins to feel a little cold.

Then, finally, Mom speaks: “YouTube, eh?”

Dennis smiles. “Yep.”

She nods once, not looking convinced at all. Then she says: “All right, you can keep it. But let me know the next time you go out in the middle of the night to practice.”

“I will, Mom. Sorry if I scared you.”

“Come on,” she waves at him. “Let’s go back inside.”

Dennis follows Mom down the ladder, and he makes sure to lock the hatch after them.

As they walk through the underground tunnel, Dennis feels the weight of the gun in his hand very acutely. It feels wonderful. It feels almost like a friend.

And he notices Mom doesn’t walk in front of him, but next to him. He realizes his stride is faster than usual, his steps longer. Mom doesn’t say anything, but Dennis can sense she needs to walk fast to keep up with him, and she’s looking at him out of the corner of her eye.

Dennis breathes deeply as he walks on.

The world might be turning to shit like Silas said. At the very least it’s changing. Turning into something new. And it probably won’t be the same ever again.

Neither will Dennis.

DAY 7

The following takes place on

Friday, August 1

ONE

“Try again, Dan.”

Dan is looking at the snowflakes drifting down from the dark sky, slowly covering the driveway. It’s only four in the afternoon, but the sun has long gone down. The neighbors’ houses are covered in Christmas lights, illuminating the street. Somewhere, a radio is playing. Dan can’t wait till he gets to open his presents. Only a few more hours now, and then—

“Dan?”

Dan turns around to see Dad standing by the open hood of the car, his sleeves rolled up, his hands black from oil.

“Huh?”

“Could you turn the key one more time, please?”

“Sure, Dad.”

He opens the driver side door and leans in, finds the key and turns it. The car gives off a series of dry coughs.

“Damnit,” Dad mutters. “That didn’t work either.”

Dan goes to the front of the car. Looking down into the engine, he has no idea what’s what.

“When’s Jennie coming home, Dad?”

“She should be here any minute now,” Dad says, leaning in with the flashlight. “Hand me the wrench, will you?”

“The big one?”

“No, the smaller.”

Dan takes the wrench from the toolbox and passes it to Dad.

Dan is excited at the thought of Jennie joining them for Christmas. Ever since she went to continuation school, he hasn’t seen a lot of her. They text now and then, but she seems too busy with all her new friends. She’s even got a boyfriend now. Tommy or Thomas or something. He’ll be joining them. Dan is a little nervous at the thought of meeting him.

“Aha, think I finally found the problem,” Dad says, pulling out a piece of faulty wire. “I’ll have to replace this.”

Dan is about to answer when he hears a car pulling up to the curb. It’s a cab. Dan’s heart leaps.

“Jennie!” he says. “Jennie is here!”

“Oh, that’s great,” Dad says, straining to reach something inside the engine.

Dan goes out to the driveway to greet Jennie, but as the back door opens, he stops. No one’s in the cab. The backseat is empty.

“Merry Christmas, you guys!”

Jennie’s voice comes from somewhere nearby. But faint. Like an echo blowing in the wind.

Dan frowns and looks around. “Jennie?”

A sound from behind causes him to turn around. The front door is open. Mom is supposed to be standing there, wearing her apron, looking out with a big smile.

But the doorway’s empty.

“Welcome home, honey!”

Mom’s voice is a distant echo as well.

Dan begins to feel eerie. Something is off here.

“Dad?” he says, turning back to the car. The hood is still open, the tools and the flashlight are still there. But now Dad is gone, too. “Dad?” Dan turns around. “Mom? Jennie? Where are you guys? Hello?”

No answer.

He’s completely alone in the driveway. The snow keeps falling quietly.

“Dan?”

Dad’s voice. It’s only a whisper in Dan’s ear. He looks around confused. Fear is starting to creep in. “Where are you, Dad?”

“It’s okay, Dan.”

“What happened?”

“You know what happened.”

“No,” Dan says, shaking his head, as a terrible realization begins to dawn on him. It’s way too terrible to take in. “No, I don’t want you to go, Dad. Not you too.”

“It’s okay,” Dad’s voice tells him again. “I had to go. You know that.”

“No, Dad. You can’t just disappear like that. You can’t!” Dan begins crying. “I’ll never let you go. Never!” He looks around, sobbing. “Dad? You still here?”

“You can come find me if you like. It’s not too late.”

Dad’s voice is even farther away now, barely audible.

“I will! I will come and find you, Dad!”

“All right,” Dad says, and Dan can hear the reassuring smile on his voice. “I’ll see you then.”

“I will find you, Dad. I promise!”

Then there’s suddenly another sound in Dan’s ear. It’s a deep, ominous growl. Like an angry wolf about to attack.

Dan spins around to see what makes the sound, and—

TWO

Iver looks up and sees the hatch in the ceiling above the dining table.

I could hide in the attic, he thinks—then, as Fred kicks the door again, causing the bookcase to almost topple over: No, I’ll get myself trapped up there.

He decides instead to try a trick he saw in a movie once. He jumps up onto the table, pulls the hatch open, and then, instead of climbing up into the attic, he jumps back down and runs for the door, squeezing himself into the corner just as Fred hits the door again and finally tilts the bookcase over with a crash.

“You little shit!” Fred growls through the opening, pushing against the door to widen the gap, the bookcase sliding reluctantly across the floor. “Look what you’ve done to my home!”

Then, with the door open halfway, Fred steps into the living room, the shotgun scanning every direction.

Iver holds his breath and stands absolutely still. If Fred turns back around, he’ll see him, and there will be no time for Iver to react before the old guy can blow his brains out.

But Fred doesn’t turn around. He steps onto the bookcase and looks from side to side, his breathing ragged. “Where are you, you piece of shit?” he whispers hoarsely.

The zombies are groping the windows, attracting Fred’s attention, masking the sound of Iver’s pulse, which is pounding so violently it must be audible. Then Iver sees Fred noticing the hatch still swinging gently back and forth.

“Oh, you little asshole,” he croaks. “I’ve got you now …”

He steps down from the bookcase, coughs wetly as he staggers over to the table and climbs up.

Iver peers out from behind the halfway open door. He sees the old guy stand up and carefully stick his head up into the opening. He looks around the attic.

“I know you’re up here! It’s over! Come on out! If you make me come up and get you, I swear you’ll regret it!”

Iver steps out from behind the door. For a brief second, he considers running back up the hallway. But what good will it do him to keep hiding? There’s still no way out of the house.

I need to get the gun from him. This might be my best chance …

So, he jumps over the bookcase and makes a run for the table, where Fred is still standing with his head through the opening to the attic.

Iver accidentally kicks a book, and Fred hears the noise. He looks down, sees Iver coming at him, and his expression goes from surprise to rage. He lowers the shotgun, which was pointed up into the attic, but the barrel hits the hatch and wins Iver the split-second he needs to reach the table. He grabs Fred’s left ankle with both hands and yanks it hard.

Fred roars as his leg is pulled from under him. He falls onto the table with a crashing bang, the shotgun goes off with an even louder bang.

Iver feels the hail going over his head for the second time, and there’s a sound of shattering glass somewhere behind him. Iver doesn’t waste any time worrying about it.

Get the gun! Get the gun! his mind is shouting at him, and he lunges for the weapon which Fred is still clutching in one hand, even though the fall has knocked the wind out of him and he’s gasping for breath, grinding his teeth.

“Let go!” he wheezes, swatting at Iver with his other hand.

Iver yanks the shotgun as hard as he can again and again, but Fred holds onto it like a dog with a bone. Not until he’s dragged onto the floor is he forced to let go, and Iver stumbles backwards, staring from Fred to the shotgun in his own hands. He fumbles to turn it over and point it at the old guy. He’s never held a real weapon before, so he simply mimics what he’s seen in the movies, and it feels somehow right as his finger finds the trigger.

Fred gets to his feet with a groan of anger and exertion, leaning against the table and glaring at Iver, his eyes watery, his face glowing red with fever, a string of spittle hanging from his lower lip.

“You goddamn piece of shit,” he growls. “You’ve fucked everything up …”

“Stay back,” Iver says, even though Fred is coming closer. “I just want to get out of here.”

Fred says something, but Iver’s attention is caught by a movement from behind the old guy. The lights are low in the living room, and because he’s been busy fighting Fred, it’s not until now Iver notices the broken window and the zombies squeezing through it.

A skinny guy has already made it inside and is getting to his feet, immediately heading for Fred. Two others are shoving to get through the opening as well, one of them being the girl who died just minutes ago out in the driveway.

“Look out!” Iver shouts.

Fred turns around and lets out a roar of surprise. There’s no time to get out of the way, so he simply leans back into the table, trying desperately to get out of the way.

The zombie reaches out his arms and Iver prepares himself mentally to see Fred getting eaten alive.

Then, to his utter surprise, the zombie steers clear of Fred and heads instead for Iver.

Fred glares after it, his face mirroring the same levels of disbelief that Iver is feeling.

He’s infected, a thought flies through his mind. They’re not interested in him anymore.

“I’m … I’m immune,” Fred says, coming to a rather different conclusion than Iver, and he gives off a short, shrill laughter before breaking into a cough.

Iver backs up, his back meeting the wall, as the dead guy speeds up, almost slipping on the books on the floor.

Iver raises the shotgun, takes aim, closes his eyes and pulls the trigger.

Nothing happens.

“Shit!” he shouts, looking at the weapon. “What’s wrong?”

“You asshole!” Fred shouts in a tone of amused mockery. “It’s empty!”

Iver ducks and moves sideways at the last possible moment, the zombie colliding with the wall. Iver turns the shotgun around and uses it instead as a bat, swinging at the zombie, connecting with its cheekbone and sending it to the floor.

Both the girl and two others have made it through the window now, all three of them are coming this way, waddling eagerly right past Fred, as though he wasn’t even there, headed for Iver like slow, heat-seeking missiles.

“You get ’im!” Fred cheers them on. “You kill that little prick!”

Iver goes for the door, but the zombie he just knocked over is getting back up and is blocking the way.

Instead, he runs the other way, placing the dining table between himself and the zombies. The girl, who’s in front, walks right into the table, then begins to make her way around it.

Fred is looking bad now, swaying, blinking his eyes slowly, and he needs to steady himself against the table.

Iver backs up, looking over at the shattered window. More zombies are squeezing through.

I’m not getting out that way …

He looks to the door instead. Reaching it would mean running zigzag between the four zombies closing in on him.

Not that way either …

Iver looks up at his last way of escape. The hatch in the ceiling is still open. Before he can think, Iver jumps onto the table, throws the shotgun up through the hatch, then jumps up himself. He strains to lift his own weight, kicking with both legs in the air to gain momentum.

His right foot hits something, and a hand grabs his left shoe.

“No!” he cries out, flailing his leg wildly, almost losing his grip. Then the shoe slips off and Iver pulls himself up with one final bout of effort.

He rolls onto his back, panting and heaving. From below comes the choir of moaning and the sound of the table begin pushed back and forth as the zombies try in vain to reach the hatch.

I made it, Iver thinks, closing his eyes for a second. I’m safe …

THREE

Dan sits up with a jerk, returning abruptly to a wakened state, the half-dream, half-memory breaking up and dissolving like smoke around him.

He’s on a hilltop at the break of dawn, the grass around him is wet from dew and a white mist is hovering all around.

To his right is William, who looks like he was also just sleeping, but is now sitting upright, looking around confused and alert.

A few yards away, almost lost in the mist, is the contour of Ozzy, looking out at something not visible to Dan. His tail is low and the hairs on his back are standing up straight. He’s growling from deep in his throat.

“Ozzy smells something,” William says, jumping to his feet. “We’d better get moving.”

Dan tries to stand up as well, but his left leg is asleep from lying on the ground. He’s also freezing, which he hasn’t even noticed until now, his limbs stiff and reluctant to move. He picks up his backpack and the rod and limps after William, who is already headed down the hill.

“Ozzy!” he calls out in a loud whisper. “Heel!”

The dog stops growling and joins them, but he keeps looking back.

“You think it was a zombie?” Dan asks.

“Could have been,” William says. “Could also have been an animal of some kind. I prefer not knowing. Either way, it was a good thing we got out of there.”

They walk on in silence through the foggy air and the wet heather. Ozzy is patrolling up ahead, running back and forth to make sure they’re following.

Dan’s brain is finally waking up properly. He recalls the dream he was having just before Ozzy woke him. It was about his father. They were back home. Everything was back to normal. Almost.

“I’ll never let you go, Dad.”

That’s what Dan said in the dream. As the words echo in his mind, they somehow drive home the fact that his family is gone in a way he hadn’t grasped before, and it’s all he can do to not start crying.

He doesn’t want to cry. Not in front of William. Not in front of anyone, in fact. He needs to keep it in, to bottle up his emotions until this is over.

Because there just might be a slight chance that this whole mess can be fixed. And if it can, then Dan needs to keep it together and do what’s necessary. He needs to stay strong. Needs to keep his focus. Billions of lives might depend on it. Billions of families which might still be saved.

And if they can’t? If this crazy quest he’s embarked upon—and convinced William to join him on—turns out to be for nothing? If the curse or whatever is animating all the dead people can’t be reversed? Or if the lady at Holger’s house doesn’t even want to try?

Then Dan will allow himself to cry. But only then.

He takes a shaky breath. He has no idea if he can make it. Right now, just reaching Denmark seems like an impossible mountain to climb.

But then he calls to mind Jennie’s face. And Thomas’s. Then Mom’s. Dorte’s. Nasira’s. And finally Dad’s.

All of those people are gone because of this thing. None of them stood a chance. But they’re still here, somehow, right inside Dan’s mind. He can see them clearly, hear their voices. And he feels very connected to every one of them.

That’s how I’ll do it, he tells himself, breathing in again and this time exhaling from the bottom of his belly, letting out some of the fear and sorrow along with it. I’ll do it because I owe it to all of them.

He suddenly doesn’t feel alone. It’s not just because William is walking next to him. It’s also because none of the people he knew are really gone. Not as long as Dan is breathing. Which means there’s still hope. As tiny as it might be.

That’s what the dream was meant to tell him. That’s why he told his dad he’s never letting him go.

Dan fills his lungs once more, feeling to his surprise an ounce of courage. I’ll see this through. Even if it won’t work. Even if I die trying. Because at least that way we will have a chance.

FOUR

Iver sits up and looks back down the hatch.

Seven—no, eight—zombies are all looking back up at him with their dead, white eyes, reaching for him with bloody hands.

They’ve managed to push the table far enough to the side that, should any of them get the unlikely idea of climbing onto it, they still wouldn’t be able to reach the opening.

Iver sees Fred, who’s lying curled up on the floor, not moving and apparently not breathing, either.

Still more dead people are joining the fun as they manage to climb in through the busted window.

Iver notices Fred’s left arm starts jerking, and then the old guy opens his eyes. For a moment, Iver takes it to mean that he’s regaining consciousness, but then Fred turns his face up at him, revealing his blank eyes and snarling, yellow teeth as he gets up and joins the rest of the living dead in reaching fruitlessly for Iver.

He looks away and takes a deep breath, focusing instead on the attic.

It’s very old and dusty, the floor made of rugged planks, the naked underside of the roof tiles serving as the ceiling. There are no windows up here, which means it’s also very dark. Iver can make out a bunch of cardboard boxes and plastic bags all covered in dust and cobwebs.

There’s something else too. A big, red box which somehow doesn’t fit in with the rest of the stuff. It’s completely clean and has obviously been put up here very recently.

For some reason, Iver feels drawn to find out what’s in it, so he goes and checks. He sees a ton of bullet casings pretty similar to the ones Agnete was keeping.

Fred, you sneaky bastard. Probably put them up here in case someone broke in to try and steal them.

Iver picks up one and strains his eyes to read the text.

“Size 7,” he mutters. “Twelve caliber.”

As he hears himself say it out loud, he realizes he has no idea if the bullets fit the shotgun. There’s only one way to find out.

Iver opens the pack and takes out two shells. He saw Fred reload the shotgun and recalls how he seemed to almost break it in half. Iver fumbles for a minute, then finds a tiny handle which needs to be pushed, and then the weapon opens to him willingly.

He puts in the bullets. They slip in with no problem. He snaps the barrel back into place.

“Seems about right,” he mutters. “Better bring the bullets.”

He puts down the shotgun and looks around for something else to carry the boxes in, spotting a plastic bag. It’s full of Christmas decorations, which Fred won’t be using now. Iver empties it out and instead fills up the bag with bullet boxes.

Below him, the undead are still groaning and waddling back and forth, pushing the table and chairs around. Iver does his best to ignore the sounds.

“Okay,” he says, looking around. “Now, how do I get back?”

His eyes have gotten used to the dark by now, and he can see cracks in the ceiling where the tiles are gaping a few millimeters, letting in strips of starlight.

He goes to the nearest one and feels the underside of the tile. It can be moved a little from side to side, but it’s lodged in place and can’t be removed.

Iver picks up the shotgun, turns it around and uses the butt end to tap the tile. It moves a little. Iver taps it harder. Then even harder. And finally, the tile cracks in half. He puts down the shotgun and pries the pieces out, revealing the early morning sky.

With one tile gone, Iver can now loosen the ones next to it without having to break them. He takes out four in total. The hole is now big enough that he can squeeze through.

First, though, he sticks out his head and surveys the roof. It’s wet from dew, which means it’ll be slippery. It’s not very steep, though, and he just might be able to make it to the garage roof without slipping and sliding down. From the garage, he’ll be able to jump to the ground.

The only problem is, he can hear the zombies standing around the house, groping the windows—even though he can’t actually see them from up here, his best guess is that there are at least ten of them, probably more.

As soon as I climb down to the garage, they’ll sense me and gather around … which means I need to move fast.

Iver pulls his head back inside. For some reason, he feels he needs to check on the zombies in the living room one last time, so he does.

Fred has joined them now in staggering around, reaching for the open hatch.

“Sorry about this,” Iver tells Fred, feeling a little silly, as the old guy obviously can’t understand him. He still goes on: “Thank you for the gun and the bullets.”

He then takes a deep breath, picks up the shotgun and the bag and ties them together with an extension cord before putting them out onto the roof. He secures the other end of the cord to the lath, so that the bag and the gun won’t slide down the roof.

Then he climbs out himself.

FIVE

They’ve walked for maybe an hour without saying much. The landscape hasn’t changed; it’s still an endless stretch of hills and heather, though things have become more visible as the fog has evaporated somewhat and the sun is beginning to rise.

Ozzy is the one to break the silence.

He suddenly growls from up front somewhere.

“What is it, boy?” William calls out.

Ozzy gives a single, low yelp, as though answering the question. Dan can make out the dog’s silhouette up ahead; he’s standing motionless, tail stiff, staring out into the fog.

“Who’s that?” a shrill voice calls back. “Anybody there? Please, I need help!”

It’s a woman, Dan can tell, and she’s speaking Norwegian. He’s just about to call out to her, when William grabs him by the arm, whispering: “Don’t.”

Dan looks at him. “What?”

“Don’t answer her.”

“Why not?”

“Because we have no idea who she is.”

William pulls him over to a cliff protruding from the ground. He lets go of Dan and climbs up unto the rock, scanning the surroundings.

Ozzy growls again.

“Ozzy, heel,” William says, loading the rifle.

“Who’s there?” the woman calls out again. “Please, answer me! Hello?”

Ozzy comes slinking back while darting watchful looks in the direction of the woman’s voice. He jumps up onto the cliff, positioning himself next to William.

“Hello?” the woman keeps calling. “Anybody? Who’s out there?”

Dan sees her coming out of the fog. She’s walking without watching her step, instead turning her head back and forth, obviously trying to not get surprised by anyone. She’s wearing what looks to Dan like underwear with a coat thrown over it. As though she left home in a hurry. She’s older than he thought, maybe around his mom’s age. In her hand is a big kitchen knife. She’s holding it like you’d hold a candle, and Dan can tell right away the woman isn’t exactly an expert in blade combat.

Ozzy growls from deep in his throat, and the woman snaps her head in the direction of the sound. Her eyes grow wide as she sees William standing atop the cliff.

“Don’t come any closer,” William tells her, holding up the rifle. He isn’t exactly pointing it at her, more like showing it to her.

The woman shakes her head. “I won’t. I just need help. Please. My husband … he’s … he’s been … and now he’s … he’s trying to …”

A noise Dan doesn’t pick up on makes the woman spin around and stare out into the fog.

She looks around for a few seconds, breathing quickly. Then, satisfied that no one is there, she turns back to look at William. “I … I need your help, please.”

“I understand that,” William says, his voice oddly strained, which is pretty unlike him. “But I’m not sure we can help you.”

“Please,” the woman goes on, still holding the knife in front of her chest in that awkward position. “Everyone in town is … is infected … I just barely got away … and my husband … my Erik … oh, God …” The woman begins sobbing.

Dan can hear William take a deep breath, as though to try and steady himself. Something about the woman is obviously causing him a great deal of stress, which is weird to Dan, as she doesn’t seem at all prone to attack them. Yet William acts like the situation might get out of hand at any moment.

“He tried to … to bite me,” the woman says between sobs. “I just barely got away … I’ve been walking around out here for … I don’t know how long …”

“I’m sorry,” William says. “But—”

“We just woke up, and … and someone was in the house … Erik w-went to check, and he … I heard him s-shout …” The woman’s tale grows increasingly hard to follow as her voice breaks up into even stronger heaves and sobs.

“Listen,” William interrupts. “I’m sorry, I truly am. But I can tell from here you’ve got yourself scratched up pretty badly. I’m afraid that means we can’t do anything for you.”

The woman glances down briefly, and it’s only now Dan notices the thin, dark red lines running across the woman’s pale thigh. He finally realizes why William is so tense.

The woman tugs at her coat, trying to cover up the marks. “That’s … that’s nothing,” she says, sniffing. “It’s just … I ran into a bush …”

“No, you didn’t,” William says. “Those are marks from fingernails.”

“I’m fine,” the woman says, her crying subsiding with surprising abruptness. “I’m not infected.”

“I’m sorry,” William says. “But I need you to keep walking.”

The woman glares up at him, then she comes closer, lifting her hands in a pleading motion. “You’ve got to help me! Please!”

“No, I don’t,” William says, raising the rifle to his shoulder. “And if you don’t keep back, I’m going to need to use this. I really don’t want to, so please don’t force me.”

The woman is about to say something else, when there’s another sound—this time, Dan also hears it.

She spins around, wielding the knife, just as another figure comes staggering into view.

“Oh, God!” the woman cries out, backing away. “Erik! Oh, God, Erik!”

The man is wearing nothing but boxers. They were once white but are now soaked through with blood thanks to the giant hole in his abdomen, revealing his intestines. He doesn’t seem bothered by it, though, and just heads straight for the woman, who’s still crying out and backing up. As she turns to run, she slips in the wet grass, almost stabbing herself with the knife as she falls down.

William jumps down from the cliff and grabs Dan by the arm. “Come on! Let’s get out of here!”

“Wait,” Dan says, tugging against William’s pull. “We need to help her!”

“We can’t! She’s already infect—”

“No, she’s not,” Dan says, pointing to the woman, who’s scrambling to get back up. “If she was, then he wouldn’t be going for her!”

William darts a look at the guy just as he reaches the woman and grabs her by the coat as she gets up and tries to run.

“Fuck, you’re right,” William says, raising the rifle.

The woman is screaming and struggling to get free. Her dead husband is holding on to the coat, trying to rope her in, but she flails and thrusts and tries to slip out of the coat.

“Damnit, I can’t get a shot,” William says, lowering the rifle again. Instead, he points and shouts: “Ozzy, attack!”

Ozzy—who was obviously just waiting to be tapped in—lunges forward, closing the distance in three giant leaps before tackling the dead guy with the force of rugby player.

The zombie is thrown to the ground, but amazingly manages to hold on to the sleeve of the coat, dragging the woman down with him. Ozzy clams down on his shoulder, thrusting his head back and forth while growling. Had the guy been alive, he would have been screaming in pain. Instead, he just tries to sit up, ignoring completely the German shepherd tearing at him as he reaches for the woman, who’s landed on her side. She tries to crawl away, but her left arm is still caught in the coat.

William steps in and kicks the guy hard under the jaw, sending him onto his back. “Get away from him!” he shouts to the woman—needlessly, as she’s obviously trying hard to do just that, but the dead guy is still stubbornly holding on to the sleeve of the coat, and because of the awkward way the woman is lying, she can’t slip free.

As the guy sits back up, William flips over the rifle and uses the butt end as a piston, punching the guy in the head, sending him back down once more. He gets up again right away, only to get jackhammered a second time by William.

This could likely have gone on for several seconds—Ozzy growling and tearing, the woman screaming, William punching and the dead guy trying to get at the woman—if Dan hadn’t stepped in and grabbed the woman by her arm, helping to pull her out of the coat.

As she tumbles away, the dead guy immediately turns his attention on William, who’s towering over him and is now the closest prey.

But William seems prepared; he flips over the rifle, aims the barrel right at the mouth of the guy, then pulls the trigger.

SIX

Iver manages to slide slowly down the slippery roof tiles by clinging to the extension cord. Once he reaches the garage roof, he quickly unties the bag and the rifle. He runs to the edge of the roof and is about to jump, when a zombie comes staggering around the corner.

“Shit,” he mutters, running to the other end—the one facing the driveway. Here are three zombies already gathered below.

Iver looks back up the roof. The extension cord is still there, and he might be able to climb back up to the hole, but what good would it do?

He puts down the bag and the rifle and goes back to the rear end of the garage. He looks down to see four other zombies standing there, clawing the wall, gazing up at him with their dead eyes.

Iver runs his hands through his hair, breathing deeply, as he realizes he’s trapped.

His only option of getting off the roof is jumping down, and that would mean jumping right into the arms of the zombies. He could take a running start, of course, and simply jump over them. They are standing up against the wall, after all, so he could surpass them easily. And he’s a lot faster than them, so he would probably have time to get up and run away before they could even turn around.

But jumping that far seems risky. The garage is a fairly tall building, maybe ten or twelve feet. And although the ground is covered in soft heather, it’s also very uneven, and he could very easily sprain an ankle.

Just the thought of landing behind the zombies and not being able to get back up is enough to make his blood chill.

It would also mean he would have to leave the weapon and the ammo behind. Or he could throw it beforehand, then hope he would have the time to pick it back up.

None of those look like good prospects to Iver.

I could shoot them?

The thought isn’t very appealing, but it’s an option he needs to consider. In the dawn light, though, he can already see a lot of houses and a lot of undeads. Shooting will just draw more of them. So that’s out too.

I need someone to distract them.

His hand goes to his pocket, but finds it empty. It takes him a few seconds to recall that Fred took his phone.

“Goddamn him!”

Iver begins pacing back and forth. It’s a habit he’s had from early childhood; whenever he feels stressed and needs to think, he’ll walk around restlessly.

He can’t risk jumping. He can’t call Chris for help. He can’t even shout for anybody, as the nearest neighbor is far away. And even if someone heard him, who would leave their house when the island is crawling with zombies?

It begins to dawn on Iver just how bad the situation actually is. He’s not in any immediate danger, but he can’t get away, either.

The zombies surrounding the garage don’t seem to plan on leaving anytime soon, and he’s not carrying any food or water. His mouth is already dry. Once the sun comes up in a couple of hours, he’ll have no shade, and he’ll begin to sweat profusely.

How long can you go without water? What was that they told us at the course?

Iver can’t recall it word-for-word, but it was something about the number three. How the human body can go for three weeks without food, three days without water and three minutes without oxygen.

Sounds about right. There’s plenty of air, which means I’ll die of thirst. And it’ll take me three days to do so.

The thought sends another shiver down his spine.

Relax, there’s still plenty of things that can happen. Maybe the zombies go somewhere else. Or maybe Chris decides to go look for me.

None of those seem like likely things to happen, though. Iver is pretty convinced the zombies don’t need to actually see a living person to know they’re there; why would they gather around a house with boarded-up windows if that’s the case? No, the zombies can sense the living. They’re drawn to the nearest prey. Which means the ones surrounding the garage will probably stay right here for as long as Iver does.

And Chris leaving the house to go look for him? Why would he do that? If he can’t reach him by phone, he will of course assume Iver didn’t make it.

The thought of Adam waking up in the morning and Iver not being there is surprisingly awful. He knows logically that Agnete is there and that she’ll care for the toddler. But somehow, Iver feels like the little guy is more bound to him. After all, he was the one who got him safely off the ferry.

Iver decides to try and calm his mind. Clearing his head might allow an idea to surface. So, he sits down on the bag of ammo, takes a deep breath and closes his eyes.

And then, without really thinking about it, Iver begins to pray.

“Dear Father in heaven, be close to us as we seek you in the quiet of our hearts. Grant us the strength of your Spirit, the strength to wait patiently for your help in our lives …”

He hasn’t said a prayer since he was very little and would visit his grandmother, who’s long since dead but in life was a devout Christian.

“Help us to hold to all that is good. Help us to feel, each one of us, that we are your children and that we may rejoice in your fatherly care. May your will be done more and more fully in us and around us …”

Iver never really incorporated any notions of faith and considers himself an atheist, which makes it all the more surprising to find how fluently the words come to him, as though he last recited them just yesterday.

“May your will be done so that we may be given ever greater freeing and your light can dawn where there is still darkness. Amen.”

He takes another deep breath, then opens his eyes. And what he sees makes him gasp.

Out there, in the dim dawn, a pair of headlights is coming this way.

SEVEN

The shot rings out into the morning air, throwing back several echoes before dying out.

The guy sinks to the ground and stays there. Dan gets a glimpse of his face, which is now missing most of the lower part.

Ozzy lets go and steps back, panting.

William lowers the rifle.

“Erik,” the woman cries, clutching Dan’s arm. “Oh, Erik …”

She breaks into sobs and Dan tries his best to support her as her legs buckle. He feels extremely awkward holding the almost-naked woman. Luckily, William comes to his aid, picking up the coat and throwing it over her shoulders.

“It’s okay,” he mutters. “It’s over now.”

The words don’t seem to console the woman, who’s sobbing uncontrollably now.

Ozzy growls. He’s staring out into the fog.

“We need to get going,” William says, addressing Dan.

“What about her? We can’t just leave her.”

William grabs the woman by the arm. “Listen up. More of them are coming. We need to get out of here.”

“Oh, Erik,” the woman sobs, looking right past William at her dead husband.

“Hey!” William says again, shaking her. “Snap out of it!”

The woman blinks and stops crying, her eyes focusing on William. “Wh … what?”

“Do you want to live?”

The woman frowns as though the question makes no sense. “I … I don’t know …”

“Well, if you make up your mind, come with us. If not, that’s okay too. But we’re leaving now.” William doesn’t wait for the woman to make up her mind, but simply lets go of her arm and begins walking briskly, waving at Dan. “Come on. Ozzy, heel.”

Ozzy obeys right away, but Dan hesitates for a second, looking at the woman. “Please, come with us.”

“I … I can’t …” the woman whispers, her face beginning to crumble up again. “Erik …”

“Don’t look at him,” Dan says, stepping to the side to block her view.

“Dan!” William shouts. “Come on!”

“Please, come with us,” Dan tells the woman one last time before leaving her to run after William.

EIGHT

Iver jumps to his feet and holds up both arms. He remembers instinctively from his training as a lifeguard not to wave, which is the international signal for help.

He’s not sure whether the driver of the car can actually see him from up here, but he has no other way of flagging them down. Except for firing the shotgun, but that could likely be interpreted as a sign of hostility rather than a plea for help.

As the car comes closer to the house it also slows down until coming to a complete halt. It’s far enough away that the zombies don’t pay any attention to it, but just keep clawing the walls of the garage, reaching for Iver.

The driver side window rolls down, and a face pops out. It’s a man in his late forties, big and broad—fat, actually—and bald. His expression is grave as he looks from the zombies to Iver. “You need help, buddy?”

His voice is deep and raspy. He speaks Danish.

Iver nods. “I could use a hand, yeah. Thanks for stopping.”

“No problem. We just got here.” The man gestures with a fat thumb towards the backseat—Iver can tell someone is sitting there. “We sailed over here from the mainland. We were hoping those dead bastards hadn’t made it out here yet.” He looks down at the zombies and frowns. “Guess we weren’t that lucky.”

Iver throws out his arms. “They can cross water, apparently. That’s how they got here.”

“Well, darn it,” the man grunts, punching the steering wheel. “Isn’t that just wonderful?”

The person in the back says something, causing him to glance back.

“I know,” he mutters. “Too late now.” He looks up at Iver again. “So, listen, buddy; we need a safe place to stay. Looks like your home got overrun …”

“This isn’t my house,” Iver says. “I don’t even live on this island; I came from a ferry.”

The man raises his eyebrows. “Oh, the one that sunk? I saw that on the news.”

“Yes. I came with a couple of others. They’re over there, in the next house.” Iver points. “I got cut off when I was looking for weapons.”

The man in the car is about to say something else, when the person in the back speaks again. The guy looks in the direction of Agnete’s house, then asks Iver: “You got room for two more over there?”

Iver shrugs. “I’m sure we can make it work.” He’s really not sure what Chris will say to him bringing back two additional people, but right now he has no choice—he certainly doesn’t want to gamble with what might be his only chance of getting down from here safely.

The person in the back speaks again.

The man behind the wheel nods, then says: “Okay, so, if I help you out, we all go back to your place—or whoever’s place it is?”

“Sure.”

“Fair enough. Hold on just a minute.” To the person in the back, the man says: “Don’t worry, I’ll be careful.”

He then gets out of the car, leaving the engine running as he walks around to the back. He’s even bigger than Iver thought; not just tall and broad but sporting a massive gut, too. From the trunk he pulls a spade, then he steps towards the zombies.

For a silly second, Iver imagines the guy beginning to dig a hole in the ground—but instead he holds up the spade like a baseball bat. Iver can tell it’s not the first time the gardening tool has been used for that exact purpose; the blade is slightly bent and covered in something dark which he suspects is dried blood.

“Hey, you there!” the man shouts. “Look over here!”

Iver glances down at the zombies. None of them seem to even register the man’s call.

“I think you need to back up,” he tells Iver. “You’re too close for me to draw them to me.”

“Oh,” Iver says, stepping back into the middle of the garage roof. He loses the zombies from sight, but that only lasts a couple of seconds; they soon reappear as they abandon their efforts in reaching Iver and instead wobble towards the guy holding the spade.

The guy’s eyes are fixed on the nearest zombie with the intensity of a lion tamer who just stepped into the cage. He shifts his weight from side to side, muttering to himself: “Come on, you. Come on.”

As soon as the zombie comes within reaching distance, the guy steps forward and swings the spade. The blade connects squarely with dead guy’s temple and sends him to the ground. Underneath the loud sound of the blow, Iver picks up a more subtle, crunchy noise, like someone put a coconut inside a pillowcase then steps on it.

That was its skull cracking open, a thought in Iver’s head informs him.

Even as nausea rises up in his throat, the man takes a swing at the second zombie, repeating the motion perfectly and producing a similarly bone-chilling sound as the zombie sinks to the ground.

That guy is a beast. He just knocks them dead with one shot.

Iver can’t help but stare as the guy goes on to the third zombie. This time, his timing is thrown off a little bit, and the blade dips too low, hitting the jaw of the zombie instead. The crunch is there nonetheless, as most of the zombie’s teeth are knocked from its mouth and go spraying into the air. The jawbone is also visibly shattered and relocated to the side of the face, where it dangles from a very painful-looking position, like a pouch full of gravel.

“Damnit,” the guy growls, stepping back and raising the spade for another try.

“Oh, Jesus,” Iver mutters and finally manages to look away just as another crunching blow rings out.

“Leif!” a woman’s voice calls out, a note of panic in it. “Look out! There’s one coming from behind!”

Iver looks to the car and sees the woman shouting from the backseat window while pointing frantically.

Another woman—obviously dead—is waddling past the headlights and goes right for the man, who’s busy knocking down a young guy. He then spins around and goes for the woman just as she reaches out her arms to grab him.

“Damnit,” he growls, audibly panting with exertion now. “They just keep coming …”

The woman shouts again to warn him, as three more zombies approach him from different angles.

The guy goes to work. By now, he’s already standing in a circle of bodies. Just as he’s about to take a swing at the next zombie, the woman he just put down grabs him by the ankle and tries to pull his leg to her mouth. The guy cries out and kicks her under the chin, causing her head to snap back with a vicious crack. Amazingly, though, it doesn’t kill her, and as her head swings forward again—the neck obviously broken—she’s still holding on and trying to bite the man. He rips his leg free and spins around just in time to use the spade to shove away the other zombie. Then he turns back and stomps the lady zombie’s head five inches into the ground, affectively squashing her brain and stopping her from moving further.

The woman in the car screams again, warning the guy about a zombie coming from behind. But neither the woman nor the man notices the kid coming around the corner. It’s a boy, not much older than six or seven, and he moves quickly, walking along the wall, headed for the guy.

“Look out!” Iver shouts, but his voice is drowned out in another crushing blow from the spade.

The boy is within reach of the man now, and there’s no time to warn him, so Iver simply throws the bag of ammo. It connects with the back of the head of the boy and sends him sprawling.

The man spins around, notices the danger and with a brutally decisive stab of the spade, he separates the boy’s head from his body just as he’s about to get back up.

The guy darts a glance up at Iver, and Iver can tell how his face is red and shining with sweat. “You might want to jump when you get the chance, buddy!” he pants, then rounds on the next zombie, swinging the spade.

Iver realizes he’s just been standing there, glaring at the scene below for what—twenty seconds? It feels like twenty minutes. He goes to the far end of the garage and looks down. No zombies here. He crouches down, jumps and lands on the ground.

Immediately, there’s a growl from behind, and Iver turns his head to see two undeads coming around the corner of the garage. He doesn’t waste time engaging in a fight with them, but simply runs for the bag. An old lady is coming right at him, and Iver instinctively thrusts the butt end of the rifle in her chest, knocking her back. He then grabs the bag as another zombie lunges at him from the right, grabbing for his arm and missing it by mere inches.

“Let’s go!” the man shouts, knocking over one more zombie before heading for the car.

Iver needs no further invitation, but runs after the guy, dodging two more zombies grabbing for him.

Where are they all coming from? Did we attract every dead person on the entire island?

The man gets in behind the wheel, and the back door opens just as Iver reaches it. He throws in the bag and the rifle, then jumps in himself and slams the door.

“Holy hell,” the guy heaves from the front seat. “That was too close …”

“Thank you,” Iver says, swallowing. “I can’t tell you how grateful—”

He cuts himself short as he turns his head to look at the woman next to him and sees the blade she’s pointing at his throat. She’s younger than he thought, although judging from her face, she’s aged considerably these past days. Her skin is pale and freckly and her hair is flaming red, pulled back in a tight ponytail. Her eyes are icy blue.

“What … what are you doing?” Iver asks.

“You got any wounds?” she asks in return.

Iver shakes his head. “No, I’m fine.”

“Sure about that? All it takes is one little scratch.”

It finally dawns on Iver what she means. He glances down at his hands, turning them over. “See, there’s nothing. I told you, I’m fine.”

The man turns in the seat to look back at Iver. “He seems fine to me, Linda. I don’t think they got him.”

“He could have had a scratch already before we came,” the woman—Linda—says immediately. “We can’t take any chances.”

“Look, really, I would tell you if I was infected,” Iver says. “But I’m not. Honestly.”

He looks from one to the other. There’s a moment of silence inside the car. From the outside, there’s the scraping of nails, pushing, shoving and moaning from the undead.

“We already trusted one person who gave us her word,” Linda says coolly. “I’m not making that mistake again.”

“All right, well … what do you want me to do?”

“Strip.”

Iver raises his eyebrows. “Are you serious?”

Not a trace of a smile on the woman’s face. “Do I look serious?”

Iver sighs, then pulls off his shirt. “There.”

The woman glances down at his bare torso briefly, then back up at his face. She doesn’t lower the knife even an inch. “All of it.”

“All of it? You mean my pants, too?”

“I mean all of it.”

Iver scoffs and looks to Leif, but he just shrugs. “I guess it’s only fair, buddy.”

Iver considers for a moment. Strangely, even though he was just running from zombies a second ago, narrowly avoiding getting eaten alive, the prospect of stripping down naked in front of two strangers is almost worse. Even though he understands logically why they’re forcing him to do it, it still feels like abuse.

The image of Adam pops into his head. “So, if I do this, you promise to take me home?”

“Sure,” Leif says.

“If you’re clean,” Linda corrects, not taking her eyes of Iver.

“And if I’m not?”

She doesn’t say anything, she just nods almost imperceptibly towards the door, and Iver gets the idea.

If I got even the slightest scratch, they’re kicking me back out there …

He takes a deep breath, then bends down and begins untying his shoe.

NINE

“Holy crap. I was sure for a moment I had to shoot her.”

Dan looks at William, who runs a hand through his hair.

“I mean, shooting zombies is bad enough, but killing someone who’s still alive …” He shakes his head.

“Good thing you didn’t. She wasn’t infected after all.”

“I know.”

Dan darts a glance back, seeing nothing but the hilly landscape and the fog.

“She’s not coming,” William tells him.

“You’re probably right,” Dan mutters as they trudge on.

They’ve already been walking for twenty minutes or so since they left the woman.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you,” William says. “I called my mom yesterday.”

“Your mom’s in Holland, right?”

“Not anymore. She was on a plane headed for Africa.”

“Africa?”

William nods. “The government is transporting as many people as possible out of Europe. She said they’d set up some sort of camps close to a military base in Algeria. It’s out in the desert, so I guess it’s pretty safe and easy to defend.”

Dan bites his lip. “I’m glad they’re finally taking things seriously. Who knows? They might be able to save a lot people.”

“Yeah, but for how long?” William shrugs. “I mean, unless they either kill every last zombie on the face of the planet, or we find a way to stop it from spreading, it’s really a losing battle; they’ll be fighting off dead people for years. Even a military base will run out of ammo at some point.”

Dan considers it for a moment. “So much more reason for us doing this.”

William seems like he’s about to answer, when Ozzy suddenly darts a look back and gives a brief, meaningful yelp.

Dan and William both spin around.

“Huh,” William says, lowering the rifle again. “I was sure we’d lost you.”

Dan feels relief at the sight of the woman coming out of the fog, the coat still wrapped around her, her hair wet.

She looks up at them with a faint expression. “I followed your footprints.”

Dan looks down and realizes they’ve left a trail through the wet dew.

“Good for you,” William says. “You can come with us.”

The woman gives a silent nod and joins them as they walk on. A minute of awkward silence follows, as neither William nor Dan knows what to say or where to look. The woman is walking between them, glancing down at her bare feet.

“So, what’s your name?” William asks.

The woman looks up at him. “Åsaa.”

“That’s a pretty name. I’m William and this is Dan.”

She looks from William to Dan, then back again. “Are you guys Danish?”

“What gave us away?” William asks. “Our great sense of humor?”

“No,” the woman says earnestly. “It was your accents.”

“I figured,” William mutters. “I was being sarcastic.”

“Oh,” the woman says, blinking. “I heard you talking about a military camp …”

Dan and William exchange a look.

“Yeah?” William prompts, as the woman seems to forget how to end the sentence.

“There’s one in Finland, too.”

“Really?”

“Yes. They’re taking us there. The military. They said boats would be leaving from Bergen this morning. We were supposed to go, me and Erik, we … we were supposed to …” The words die out as the woman’s eyes grow distant.

“Bergen?” William says. “There’s a harbor in Bergen?”

The woman looks at him like she forgot he was there. Then she nods.

“How far is it to Bergen?”

The woman shrugs. “Twenty-five miles, I guess.”

William looks at Dan. “Twenty-five miles to the nearest harbor. We can probably find a boat there that can take us back to Denmark.”

“Denmark?” the woman asks, her voice rising slightly in alarm. “Why would you want to go to Denmark? That’s where it all started. They said the country is completely swamped with infected people. I really don’t think you should go there. You should come to Finland.”

“Is that where you’re going?” William asks.

The woman shrugs. “I don’t know where else to go. Everyone around here … they’re all … you know …”

“We would love to come,” Dan says, smiling meekly. “But we have to go back to Denmark.”

William adds: “It’s a long story.”

The woman eyes them for a moment. It looks like she wants to say something, then apparently decides not to, because she simply shrugs again, as though to say: “Suit yourselves.”

“So, how do we get to Bergen?” William asks.

“Do you have a phone? We can find a map.”

“No, my phone is dead.”

“Oh. Well, we just follow the road then.”

“What road?”

“The highway. Isn’t that where we’re headed?” She points ahead. “It should be coming up right behind those hills.”

William stops, then looks from the hills to Dan. “What do you say? I wanted to stay off the roads because it would be too dangerous, but if we’re going to Bergen, we’ll have to hit a road sooner or later.”

Dan nods. “I agree. Besides, we might find a ride. I mean, walking twenty-five miles would take us at least a day.”

“I was thinking the same,” William says, as he begins walking for the hills. “All right, the highway it is.”

TEN

“Satisfied?”

Iver feels immensely awkward. His cheeks are burning. He doesn’t know where to place his hands.

He’s sitting naked in the backseat. Leif and Linda have switched places, meaning that next to him is Leif, who just reluctantly inspected him at the behest of Linda, who at least has the courtesy not to turn around in the passenger seat—but she’s still eyeing Iver in the mirror.

“I think we’re good,” Leif mutters. “You can put your clothes back on.”

“Thank y—”

“Wait, did you check his back?”

“I did,” Leif says. “I checked him all over, Linda.”

“The soles of his feet?”

“Well, no, but—”

“Check the soles of his feet. I told you, I met that guy who died because he stepped on a nail or something, and it was enough to infect him.”

Leif sighs and looks at Iver in a way that says: “Sorry, dude, but we have to.”

You do anything she tells you to? Iver thinks, but wisely doesn’t say anything. Instead, he lifts up his foot and lets Leif check it. Then the other one.

“See anything?” Linda asks.

“Nope, he’s fine.”

“Okay. But we’ll keep an eye on him. If he begins to spike a fever, we’ll drop him off.”

“Jesus,” Iver says, putting on his boxers. “You know I can understand you, right?”

Linda catches his eye in the mirror. Her sky-blue eyes are narrow and catlike. She would be beautiful if it wasn’t for the ugly look of suspicion. “Then you understand why we can’t bring you if you’re infected.”

“I’m not.”

Leif climbs to the front. He’s so big, he needs to squeeze through the seats sideways, and the car sways as he drops into the driver’s seat.

“Okay, let’s get out of here before these assholes ruin my paint job completely.” He puts the car in drive and heads down the road.

Iver is busy putting his clothes back on.

“That’s the place?” Linda asks, pointing ahead.

Iver looks. “Yeah, that’s where we’re staying.”

“How many of you are there?”

“Four. And a toddler.”

“Have you got provisions? What about weapons?”

“We’ve got some food. We’re not doing too well with guns, that’s why I had to get this …” His hand goes to the seat next to him for the shotgun, but finds nothing. He looks up at Linda.

“I’m holding on to it for now,” she says calmly.

Iver frowns. “So, it wasn’t only to check if I had any scratches … you also wanted to frisk me for weapons?”

Linda doesn’t answer.

Leif brings the car to a stop outside Agnete’s driveway. “Doesn’t look like there are any dead people around. But we’ll probably draw them soon.”

“Let me go in first,” Iver says, hoisting up the bag of ammo.

“Hold on,” Linda says. “I think it’s better if Leif comes with you.”

“It’s okay, I’ll just tell the others you’re coming.”

“Yeah, that’s not going to work,” Linda says, looking at Leif. “You go in and check if everything is all right. Then you call to me.”

Leif glances at Iver then back at her. “Why wouldn’t everything be all right?”

Linda shrugs. “We just can’t take any chances. It could be a trick.”

“A trick?” Iver blurts out.

Linda pays him no attention. “I mean, we just met the guy. For all we know this isn’t even his place.”

“Yeah, but he seems honest,” Leif says. “Besides, we saved him from that roof.”

“Exactly. Wouldn’t you act very honest if you wanted someone to save your life?”

Leif is about to say something, when Linda leans forward. “Look, we went over this already. This is how we do it.”

Leif scratches his chin, then nods. “All right. I’ll go with him.”

“You’re paranoid,” Iver mutters to Linda.

“Paranoid people live longer,” Linda says without looking back at him. “You better get going, before any zombies show up.”

ELEVEN

They reach the road within half an hour.

William was hoping to see a car or two left by the roadside. Instead, what he sees looking down from the hilltop is more like a giant parking lot.

The road is completely packed with vehicles of all kinds, placed bumper-to-bumper, all looking eager to get going.

But the queue isn’t moving, and he can tell from the quiet of the morning that none of the engines are on. Quite a few of the car doors are also open, as though the drivers didn’t bother to close them when they got out. The line of cars stretches for as long as William is able to follow the road before it disappears between the hills.

“Looks like we weren’t the only ones headed for Bergen,” he murmurs.

“Of course not,” Åsaa says. “We all got the message yesterday. About the boats leaving for Finland. It was all over the news and Facebook. It was all anyone was talking about.”

“But they all left,” Dan says, shaking his head slowly. “They all just got out of their cars and left.”

William nods. “Either they got tired of waiting and decided to walk, or something drove them out.”

A few seconds of eerie silence passes between them. William notices his companions dart glances around. Apparently, even Ozzy is picking up on the creepy atmosphere—or maybe he’s just eager to get going—because he whimpers softly.

“Well, we can forget about getting a ride,” Dan says. “Both lanes are completely blocked. Even the emergency lane.”

“I’m not walking twenty-five fucking miles,” William mutters as he scans the road. “There’s gotta be some way we can drive …” He looks at Åsaa. “Do you know of any other roads leading to Bergen from here?”

She shrugs. “The nearest one is five miles farther east.”

“That’s most likely going to be packed full as well,” Dan interjects.

“You’re right,” William says, chewing his lip. “We’ve gotta think outside the box here. What road didn’t anybody else think of taking? Åsaa, you’re our local guide. Anything come to mind? Anything at all? Like a dirt road or something. It doesn’t even need to be a proper road, just something wide enough for a car to drive on.”

Åsaa gestures to the other side of the road. “Well, there’s a hiking trail on that hilltop. I’ve walked it with … with Erik a couple of times …”

“Could a car drive on it?” William asks quickly, before Åsaa can sink back into painful memories. “Is it wide enough?”

“I … I guess so. In theory, at least. But it’s very hilly. It’s certainly not meant for cars.”

“Good,” William nods, feeling uplifted. “That means no one else would have thought of taking it.”

“I don’t even think we can get a car up there,” Åsaa says.

“What about down there?” William asks, pointing. “Looks like the hillside isn’t really that steep. I think we could do it.”

He begins walking along the road, Ozzy by his side. Dan and Åsaa follow suit.

“Are you sure we can drive up the hillside?” Dan asks. “I think it’s pretty steep for a car.”

“Depends on what kind of car we’re talking about,” William says. “Damn, there’s a lot of Teslas. Considering how much oil you guys have, you really like electric cars.”

Åsaa hardly seems to notice the remark.

Then William sees it. He stops and points. “There! That one!”

“Which one?” Dan asks, squinting.

“The BMW,” William says.

Dan still looks puzzled.

“The SUV,” William adds.

Dan shakes his head. “Those are just letters to me.”

William sighs. “It’s the big white one.”

“Ah. You think that one could drive up the hillside?”

“I know it can. It’s basically a family-friendly jeep.”

Åsaa gasps. “Look! A man’s coming!”

William follows her gaze. Almost a mile down road he can see a guy walking between the cars. He’s headed this way. The crooked walk suggests he’s either hurt or dead. None of which are appealing prospects.

“There’s more than one,” Dan remarks.

William looks farther up road and can make out at least five additional figures, all coming this way.

“I think we’d better hurry,” he says. “They’ll be here in five minutes. Come on!” He runs down the hillside, Ozzy right at his heels, the bag bouncing on his back.

He doesn’t waste time looking back to see if the others follow him, instead he focuses on not tripping and falling, as taking a tumble on the steep hillside would likely mean rolling all the way to the bottom.

Ozzy—having the advantage of four legs—quickly gains the lead and reaches the road in a matter of seconds.

William joins him half a minute later. As he steps onto the concrete, he darts a glance in the direction of the oncomers, but he can’t see them yet. Behind him he can hear Dan and Åsaa catching up. Ozzy looks at him eagerly, waiting for what will happen next.

William runs to the SUV, which is parked at a crooked angle with both front tires on the roadside, almost like the driver wanted to go off-road to escape the queue, but then changed his mind at the last second.

“Please don’t be locked,” William mutters as he makes his way to the rear door, slipping off the bag. Just as he grabs the handle, Ozzy barks up at him loud and sudden enough to cause William to jump.

“Jesus Christ, buddy! You made me shit myself!”

Ozzy glares up at him, growling menacingly, bristling like a porcupine.

“What is it?” William says, frowning and looking around quickly. “It’s okay; no one’s here. We’re just going for a ride.”

His hand is still resting on the handle and he’s about to pull it when he catches a movement through the tinted window. A girl’s face is staring out at him, biting and smearing the window in drool and blood.

“Oh, shit!” William gasps and lets go of the car handle like it just turned red-hot. He steps back just as Dan joins him. “Don’t,” William says, grabbing him by the arm. “Someone’s already in there …”

“Oh, no,” Dan sighs, catching his breath.

Åsaa catches up and stops a few paces away. “What’s wrong?” she asks.

“There’s a girl inside,” William says, wiping sweat from his brow. The morning has suddenly turned warm; the fog is almost gone and the sun is climbing the sky. Ozzy is still growling and barking. “We need to deal with her before we can take the car.”

“Can’t we just take another?” Åsaa asks.

“No, I told you, we need this one,” William says, pointing at the BMW. “It’s the only one I could make out from up there that’ll take us off-road. Ozzy, will you shut up? We get it!”

“She’s not alone,” Dan says as Ozzy resorts to an anxious whimper and begins slinking around the SUV.

William turns to the car and sees two other faces now—an older boy and a younger one have both squeezed in next to the girl.

Probably her brothers. Fuck me, they’re just kids …

“Why did their parents just leave them?” Åsaa whispers, horror in her voice. Her lips begin to tremble and she shakes her head. “Those poor, poor kids …”

“Don’t go into hysteria now,” William says harshly, feeling his stress levels spike. “We need to think up a solution, and quickly. Before the other dead assholes show up.”

“Can’t you just shoot them through the window?” Dan suggests, nodding at the rifle in William’s hand.

He shakes his head. “That’s a bad idea. We’ll bust the window, and we might need it for protection later. Also, I don’t want fucking brain matter all over the interior …”

“Oh, my God,” Åsaa gasps, clasping a hand to her mouth and turning away.

William realizes immediately he made a mistake by painting that picture. But he’s growing more nervous by the minute, and when he’s nervous he tends to just say whatever shit comes to mind.

“We need to open the door and let them out,” William says. “That’s the best way of getting rid of them.”

“What?” Åsaa exclaims, backing up. “No, wait!”

“It’s okay,” William says, holding up his hand. “I’m not doing it yet. Not before you guys are at a safe distance.”

“What about you?” Dan asks, not looking particularly fond of the idea.

“Me and Ozzy will take care of them,” William tells him. “Just go climb onto another car—one that’s tall enough that they can’t reach you.”

“But—” Åsaa is about to object when William cuts her off.

“It’s just a precaution. Once they’re out, I’ll shoot them.”

“Careful not to shoot Ozzy,” Dan says. “And don’t shoot out the tires, either.”

“You’re right, good thinking. I’ll lure them away from the car first. Right, everyone at your stations. Move, move!”

Dan and Åsaa exchange a brief, uncertain look, then Dan runs to the nearest van and climbs up onto the hood. He reaches down and pulls Åsaa up. She’s still just wearing the coat over her underwear, and as she puts up her leg to climb onto the roof of the car, William catches a glimpse of her panties. They’re pink. He feels an unexpected jolt of excitement, then immediately feels guilty and looks away.

He turns to the BMW and the three kids pushing and shoving each other to try and get at him.

Releasing three zombies suddenly feels like a very bad idea. Kind of like opening the cage to the tigers at a zoo. But he knows they move pretty slow, and he should be able to take them out before things get dangerous.

Besides, there’s no time for second thoughts now.

So, William walks briskly around the car, grabs the door handle and opens it. The moans and groans from the kids grow louder as they wrestle to turn around and get at him.

Once the first one—the youngest boy—manages to push himself out of the open door and fall onto the asphalt, though, William is already several yards farther down road.

“Ozzy, heel,” he says, placing the rifle against his shoulder as the German shepherd settles in next to him, whimpering and growling at the kids who have now all squeezed out of the SUV and are getting to their feet. Immediately, they begin staggering his way.

Goddamnit, William thinks, closing one eye. They’re even younger than I thought.

Only the oldest boy is in his teens, the others can’t be more than six and eight. The thought of them being alive probably just hours ago, sitting in the backseat, arguing, joking around, playing on their iPads, with their parents in the front, trying to get them to safety.

And now.

Now they’re all dead.

And they probably killed each other.

William feels his throat tighten up and his finger curled around the trigger is surprisingly unwilling to squeeze it.

Come on. Do it. They’re not kids anymore. You’re doing them a favor.

Ozzy begins barking. The youngest boy is just ten paces away now.

William aims for his head. Then pulls the trigger.

The shot rings out a lot louder than he anticipated—probably, he thinks absentmindedly, because the sound ricochets off the row of cars and slams right back at his eardrums.

The bullet misses its mark, burrowing instead into the shoulder of the girl walking behind the boy, thrusting her halfway around, but not causing her any real concern, as she just keeps coming forward.

“Fuck,” William mutters, scrambling to reload the rifle.

He didn’t take any misses into consideration; he simply took it for granted he would only need three shots to take out the kids. Turns out, a real-life headshot is a heck of a lot harder to pull off than computer games make it look.

He backs up several feet, commanding Ozzy along, noticing how he can barely hear his own voice. He takes aim again, but this time, he kneels down, resting his elbow on his knee. It makes keeping the rifle steady a whole lot easier.

He aims for the boy’s head once more, muttering to himself.

“Come on … you can do it …”

Then Dan’s voice cuts through the ringing in his ears. William realizes Dan has been calling for him ever since he shot the rifle, but William couldn’t hear him until now.

He gets up and sees Dan and Åsaa, both still standing on the roof of the van, and both jumping and waving their arms.

“What?” Williams shouts.

Dan mouths something that William can’t make out. He assumes they’re upset because he missed the first shot.

“Don’t worry!” he calls back. “I’ll get ’em this time …”

Then, just as he takes a knee, he catches a movement in the sideview mirror of the nearest car.

Right behind him are two zombies.

TWELVE

Iver gets out of the car and looks around. There are still no zombies on this side of the house, but he knows it’s just a matter of seconds before they show up.

Before he left, Chris instructed him to call him up when he got back, so that Chris could lure away the zombies from the front door. But since Iver doesn’t have his phone, he’ll just have to chance it.

He runs to the door, bringing the bag, then bangs the woodwork hard enough that he’s sure Chris will hear him.

Leif joins him, holding the shovel and darting watchful looks in all directions.

“Why didn’t you bring the gun?” Iver asks.

Leif shrugs. “I don’t like firearms.”

Then comes Chris’s voice from the other side of the door: “Iver? That you?”

“Yes! Open the door.”

“Who’s that with you?”

“Someone I met. There’s a woman in the car, too. I told them they could come. Please let us in, and I’ll explain.”

He grabs the handle, but the door is still locked.

“Chris!” he calls out. “Damnit, open the door!”

There’s no glass in the door, so he can’t actually see Chris. But he can easily imagine him standing right on the other side, frowning and contemplating.

“Why didn’t you call me?” Chris asks.

“I lost my phone. Fred took it. Listen, it’s okay; these people helped me out. I was trapped at Fred’s place, I was—I’ll explain later, just please open the door, Chris! The zombies will be here any—”

The car honks.

“I see them,” Leif says, apparently answering Linda’s warning, as he turns and walks towards an old lady coming around the corner. He swings the shovel and knocks her flat on her back. The next one follows closely behind.

“Open up, Chris!” Iver shouts, banging the door again. “They’re coming!”

“Are they threatening you to bring them here?”

“What? No!”

Leif takes down another zombie with a loud bang of the shovel, and three more show up.

“Chris, for God’s sake!” Iver shouts. “If you don’t open up, we’ll have to get back to the car and—”

The lock turns and the door opens. “Get in,” Chris says, grabbing Iver by the wrist. He pulls him inside and is about to slam the door shut, ignoring Iver who tells him to wait a minute.

Then, suddenly, Linda appears in the door, pointing the shotgun at Chris. “Not so fast.”

Chris freezes. He’s holding his own rifle, but it’s pointing down. For half a second, Iver can sense him considering if he’ll be able to flip it up and fire before the woman can pull the trigger.

“Please don’t do anything stupid,” Linda says, reading Chris as well. “I know how to use this thing.”

Iver holds his breath. From the driveway, he can still hear Leif fighting off the zombies.

“Step back, please,” Linda says, bobbing the barrel.

Iver backs up, and two seconds later, Chris follows him, not turning his back to Linda.

“Leif!” Linda calls out, keeping her gaze fixed at Chris as she crosses the doorstep. “Let’s go!”

Leif appears behind her, panting and grunting. “About damn time,” he mutters, slamming the door behind him. “There were way too many out there …”

He stops talking as he notices Linda aiming the rifle at Chris. For a moment, all four of them just stare at each other, standing in Agnete’s tiny entrance hall.

“What exactly is happening here?” Leif asks, wiping sweat from his brow. He’s still holding the bloody shovel. Iver can smell the putrid metallic stench from the blade.

“Exactly what I told you would happen,” Linda says in a cold tone. “They tried to trick us. They tried to keep us out.”

“We did no such thing,” Chris replies. “I just didn’t want any of the dead fuckers to come in here.”

“Oh, please,” Linda says, sending him a wry smile. “Don’t BS me. I heard you talking to him through the door.” She nods at Iver.

Iver is still amazed at how Linda managed to sneak up on them. He had just heard her honk the car horn not twenty seconds before, and then she was suddenly there. She obviously planned the stunt beforehand.

Chris doesn’t flinch. “Well, would you just let in two strangers?”

“Of course not,” she tells him. “That’s why we had to do it the way we did.”

“Congrats on pulling it off,” Chris says. “If you don’t mind, I’m very tired and would like to get some sleep.”

Without waiting for permission, Chris just turns and walks into the living room.

Linda glances at Leif, then at Iver. Finally, she lowers the weapon and gives Leif a nod. They both follow Chris into the living room.

Iver stands there for another second. He’s amazed at how Chris just accepted the intruders. Then on the other hand, what could he do?

Well, I guess our group just grew bigger …

THIRTEEN

“Oh, shit!”

William wastes no time spinning around, he simply reflexively thrusts the butt end of the rifle up and back, connecting with the jaw of the closest zombie—a young skinny dude with a large tattoo covering his neck—who was just about to sink his teeth into William’s shoulder.

The guy’s head is flung back and he stumbles sideways, bumping into the other dead guy—a heavy, middle-aged man in a torn-up bus driver’s uniform—which is very lucky, because it gives William just enough time to get out of the way. He rounds on the ambushers and points the rifle at them, but just as he’s about to fire, Ozzy jumps in front of him, attacking the bus driver.

Afraid that he might shoot Ozzy, William instead uses the rifle as a bat and clocks tattoo guy on the side of the head, bringing him to the ground. Then he turns back to the kids and screams out in surprise as the youngest boy is right in front of him. The kid lunges for him before William has time to aim and fire. Instead, he manages to hold up the rifle as a barrier, hindering the boy in reaching him by keeping him at arm’s length. The boy grabs and bites at him, not paying much heed to the rifle pressed against his chest, but simply trying to push through it. William is stronger, though, and is able to force the boy backwards a few steps.

Then the boy suddenly changes tactics, bares his teeth and goes for William’s left hand. William pulls back his hand a fraction of a second before the boy can bite him.

William kicks the boy hard in the belly, expecting him to go flying backwards. But somehow, probably because the boy doesn’t respond to pain and has no reflexes left, he simply doubles over like a bag of sand, collapsing in front of William.

The girl reaches him next, immediately making her way around her brother, who’s already working to get back up. William uses the short time to take aim and fire the rifle from hip-level—which turns out to be a lot harder than in the movies.

The rifle kicks back just as the shot rings out, throwing William off balance and spinning him halfway around, almost slipping from his hands. The bullet punches a hole in the girl’s throat wide enough that William for a terrible second can see right through it. As to stopping the girl, though, it has little effect, only causing her a slight delay as she wobbles to regain balance, then comes at him again, just as the youngest boy gets back up and their older brother joins in the fun.

“Ozzy!” William bellows, realizing finally it’s a losing battle and runs towards the nearest car. “Come on! Heel!”

Ozzy is still fighting the ambushers, having wrestled one of them to the ground and is tearing at the leg of the other. He lets go only reluctantly at William’s call and runs after him.

William yanks open the door to the car and throws himself inside. Ozzy jumps in after him and William slams the door shut just seconds before the girl reaches the car and begins groping the window. Her brothers soon join her, and William watches as they shove each other around to get closer to him.

Ozzy has gone to the backseat and is barking at them.

“It’s okay, buddy,” William pants, wiping sweat from his forehead. “We’re safe now.”

He’s only just uttered the words when there’s a growl from the other side of the car, and the tattoo guy pokes his head and arms in through the open passenger window.

“Oh, fuck me!” William shouts, scrambling to turn over the rifle as the guy reaches for him. The guy leans in and grabs William’s T-shirt, trying to pull him closer, just as William pulls the trigger.

Nothing happens.

“Fuck!”

William thrusts the rifle at the guy, hitting him in the eye with the barrel, causing the eyeball to burst with a ripe, wet sound, like someone stepping on a grape. It doesn’t deter the guy in the least, though, but it does give William a couple of seconds, which is all he needs to turn in the seat, lift up both legs and start kicking the guy with the soles of his shoes.

Several of the kicks connect, and the guy’s head is thrown back and forth. William can hear the teeth crack and rattle around in his mouth, and the busted eye is dripping from the guy’s cheek and onto the seat, as William kicks more and more frantically.

Finally, the guy is forced backwards far enough that William can reach his pocket, pull out a shell and reload the rifle. He takes aim and is careful to place the butt end against his shoulder this time, leaning his back against the door.

He pulls the trigger just as the guy regroups and lunges forward again. The shot is absolutely deafening, hammering painfully against his eardrums, but William hardly notices. The top of the guy’s skull breaks open like a tin can, as the bullet removes part of his brain the size of a fist.

He collapses with his torso still inside the car. Immediately, the bus driver comes up from behind and tries to push himself through the window, but tattoo guy is blocking most of the open window, and the bus driver only manages to squeeze one arm inside the car, his fat fingers groping the air.

Ozzy is barking fiercely, but William can only hear it as a faint murmur; his hearing has been replaced with a shrill dial tone reverberating inside his skull.

He feels someone bumping against the door behind him and he turns to see the three kids still trying to get in—by now, their fingers have greased up the window pretty good, and he can only make out their faces as pale, blurry circles, their open mouths forming dark Os.

William looks out the other windows and sees more dead people surrounding the car. In fact, there’s several dozen of them, and more seem to be coming every second.

Shit … I’m royally fucked …

His hand goes to the ignition. But there’s no key.

Ozzy is still barking from the backseat, and now he begins to jump around, too. William finally looks back to tell him to calm down. He sees why Ozzy is acting crazy, and his heart stops.

A dead woman—who apparently was hiding in the trunk of the car—is clumsily making her way to the backseat, ignoring the barking dog, her eyes fixed on William …

FOURTEEN

Dan can only watch in horror from atop the van as the group of zombies approach William from behind, making their way through the parked cars.

For once, Ozzy doesn’t pick up on the oncoming threat right away—probably because he’s busy barking at the three dead kids right in front of them, or maybe because his ears are still ringing from the rifle shot.

When William finally sees the zombies, it’s almost too late. Dan can tell he reacts instinctively, thrusting the rifle over his shoulder and connecting with the chin of the guy just about to bite him.

While the guy is flung back, another one immediately steps in from the side, and this time, there’s no time for William to swing the rifle.

Luckily, though, Ozzy has caught on to the threat and lunges himself at the dead guy, wrestling him to the ground, giving William time to regroup and take a swing at the boy, who’s now within striking distance.

“There are too many of them,” Dan says, staring at the zombies suddenly appearing from every direction. It’s almost like they were hiding between the cars. Or maybe inside of them. Which, for all Dan knows, isn’t that unlikely. Perhaps it was the gunshot that called them all out. “We need to help him …”

He’s about to jump down from the van when Åsaa grabs him by the arm, digging her nails into his skin.

“Wait!” she cries.

Dan assumes she doesn’t want him to leave her alone on the van and is about to tell her that he needs to go, that he can’t just watch while William gets killed, but then he follows her gaze and sees the fat lady right below, clawing at his shoelaces.

“Shit,” Dan breathes and steps back. “Where did she come from?”

“They’re everywhere,” Åsaa says, her voice trembling. “We made a huge mistake coming down here …”

Dan looks out over the row of cars and realizes she’s right in both statements. Dozens and dozens of dead people are coming this way like ants drawn to an ice cream cone someone dropped on the sidewalk.

William is swinging for his life, using the rifle not as a firearm but as a baseball bat, knocking over zombies left and right, Ozzy biting and tackling and thrashing alongside him. Together, they’re just able to keep a few feet of space between them and the dead.

But it’s a losing battle.

Dan can tell.

Unless he does something, William won’t make it.

He looks back down at the fat lady, who’s now been joined by a younger and much skinnier woman. Then he looks over at the next car. It’s a station wagon, not as tall as the van, but still tall enough that the zombies probably can’t reach him from there.

He looks at Åsaa. “We have to get out of here. We have to try and make it to the white car.”

“What?” she exclaims. “How?”

“We’ll have to jump.”

“No, I can’t!”

“You have to,” Dan repeats. “Or you’ll be trapped. Come on.”

Åsaa is about to object, and so is Dan’s own mind, which is why he simply acts before either of them can talk him out of it. He takes one step back, then lunges forward and jumps through the air. He lands on the roof of the station wagon and almost tumbles off the other side, but manages to stop just in time and regain his balance.

He looks back over at Åsaa, who’s staring at him like he just jumped clean over the Golden Gate Bridge. “Now it’s your turn,” he says, holding out his arms. “Come on. I’ll make sure you don’t fall!”

He and Åsaa being almost the same height, Dan doesn’t feel at all confident that he can actually stop her from falling if she slips, but he looks at her with all the certainty he can muster. And it seems enough to convince her—although she obviously doesn’t care at all for what she’s about to do.

She takes as much a running start as she can, then jumps over onto the station wagon. Dan halfway catches her, both of them fighting to keep their balance for a second.

“All right,” he breathes, once they stop wobbling. “So far, so good. Only two more to go.”

“We can’t,” Åsaa says, glancing down at the zombies reaching for their feet—there’s five of them now, and more are joining all the time.

“Sure we can,” Dan says. “We just did it once. Come on!”

He steps down onto the hood of the car, using its length as a very short runway for him to take off. He flies through the air and lands on the rear end of the next car, quickly stepping up onto the roof and out of reach of the dead people.

He looks back, waving at Åsaa. “Come on, your turn. Quickly!”

Åsaa steps down onto the hood of the car. But unlike Dan, she doesn’t jump right away, which gives the zombies a chance to reach for her.

Åsaa screams as their fingers scrape against her bare legs.

“Jump! Now!” Dan shouts.

Åsaa jumps.

She doesn’t get enough air.

She lands with only one foot on the car. The other one slides down. She screams and clamps onto the trunk like a drowning mouse. The zombies close in on her immediately.

Dan reaches down, grabs her by the coat and yanks her up at the last possible second. She escapes the eager, dead hands by mere millimeters.

She clings to Dan and begins to cry. “I can’t do it … I can’t do it …”

Dan looks over her shoulder at William and Ozzy, who are both still battling the zombies. They’ve moved off the road, as though William was trying to flee back up the hillside, but the zombies are cutting him off from every direction now, and he has no choice but to keep swinging at them, knocking them over. Most of them get back up, though.

Dan looks over at BMW. It’s the next car over. And the rear door is still open. He can almost jump right in from here.

“Listen to me,” he says, pushing Åsaa gently off of him. “Listen. It’s okay. You just stay here; I’ll get the car.”

She looks at him like she has a hard time picking up the meaning of the words, her eyes spilling over with tears of fear.

“Just stay here, and keep away from their hands, okay?” Dan says.

Åsaa nods, glancing down at the zombies trying to reach them from both sides of the car.

Dan turns towards the BMW. He looks at the open door and takes a deep breath. There are no zombies blocking his way. But he will have to be quick; as soon as he makes the jump, they’ll turn and come for him.

His ankle, which he sprained back in the basement, trying to get away from Jennie, has been getting better every day. It hardly hurts anymore. But the jump he’s about to make could make him sprain it again, maybe even worse than the first time. Maybe he’ll hurt himself badly enough that he won’t be able to walk. Maybe—

Stop that, he tells himself firmly.

He looks over at William and Ozzy—who are getting into a random car to seek refuge—reminding himself what’s at stake.

He takes another deep breath, then he jumps.

FIFTEEN

“Fuck me!”

William scrambles to reload the rifle, while at the same time pushing himself back, trying to create distance to the woman who has managed to scale the backseat and is now reaching her arms between the front seats to grab at him. But there’s very little room to move inside the car, and William only manages to press his back against the steering wheel, causing the horn to go blaring.

Ozzy bites down on the collar of the woman’s coat—she’s wearing an expensive-looking fur coat, which she probably decided to bring along if she wouldn’t be returning home anytime soon—just too bad it’s been torn open at the side when someone dug in to eat away at her gut. Ozzy pulls her sideways so that her painted fingernails can’t reach William, and he gains a few seconds to feed another shell into the chamber and load the rifle.

Just as he swings the barrel around there’s a tearing sound as the coat gives way—William doesn’t hear the sound, but he sees her plunges forward as she’s suddenly freed from the restraint, and he cries out and pushes back farther, landing halfway underneath the wheel, his back bending at a painful angle with his legs sprawled over the gear shift.

The woman goes to work on his pants, scratching at them eagerly like a dog smelling a buried bone, and William has a pang of panic as he feels her nails through the fabric.

A thought—surprisingly clear—shoots through his mind: Good thing I didn’t wear shorts, or I’d be dead now.

Then he pulls the rifle back, prying the barrel awkwardly in between himself and the woman. He points it at her mouth and pulls the trigger.

The shot is less deafening this time, probably because William is already rendered deaf, but the effect is certainly there.

The woman’s head is basically split in two, the top half tipping to the side like someone had cut into a boiled egg and opened it up in order to get to the warm stuff inside. The warm stuff inside the woman’s skull isn’t that appetizing, though; it splatters all over the ceiling, looking to William like some sort of clumpy, grey porridge.

The rest of the woman tilts limply to the side and disappears mercifully out of sight behind the seat.

William just lies there for several seconds, hearing nothing, but feeling his heart pound away in his chest and the breath wheezing in and out through his mouth. There’s a hole in the ceiling the size of an apple and the shape of a halfmoon, showing a tiny outline of the blue sky above, and William can’t take his eyes off of it.

Ozzy pokes his head out and looks at him with concern.

“I’m all right, buddy,” William says, his own voice a distant echo. “Thank you for saving my ass. Let me just … let me just regroup for a second …”

William looks up at the hole in the ceiling once more. There’s something very comforting in looking at it. From where he’s lying, it’s pretty much the only thing not covered in brain or blood.

Even though William can barely hear, his sense of smell works perfectly fine, and the sweet, putrid stench of the woman’s brain reminds him of prunes that have gone bad from lying out in the sun. Nausea wells up in his throat.

He can feel the car rocking gently as the dead people outside push and shove at it, and he’s reminded of the open window.

I need to get up. I need to get going. I can’t stay here.

For some reason, his body doesn’t react. William can’t get it to cooperate. He should be afraid. The situation is still very dangerous. But he feels nothing except an eerie urge to just lie here and think of nothing.

I’m in shock, he realizes with bemused detachment. That’s not good. Better get going right now, or I might never get up again.

He tries again to move, and this time, his body listens, though it feels cumbersome, like the connection between will and acting is still fragile. It takes him a couple of minutes, but he manages to climb up onto the seat. He sinks down with a sigh, and Ozzy immediately begins licking his ear, as though rewarding him.

“Thanks, buddy,” William murmurs, moving his jaw in order to make his hearing return. It clicks, and it actually helps a little. Now he can pick up the moans and groans from the zombies outside.

And speaking of … there are so many now, William can barely see through them. At least fifty, but probably closer to a hundred. Seeing them crowd around the car reminds him of that one time he saw Foo Fighters play at Roskilde Festival.

“Shit, buddy,” William mutters. “We got ourselves in quite a mess here …”

He checks the ignition again, still not finding the key.

“Damnit … if I could just turn on the car, we could drive our way out of here …”

He glances sideways at the open window. The tattoo guy is still hanging there, blocking the opening. The bus driver has been shoved aside and two other zombies are now trying to squeeze in. It looks to William like a cartoon where several people try to rush through a doorway at the same time and get stuck. Except there’s no comical effect in this.

They’ll get in sooner or later … and they won’t stop until that happens …

SIXTEEN

Dan lands on the concrete, breaking the fall by grabbing hold of the open door. Still, a sharp pain shoots up through his ankle, making him wince.

Nothing seems to snap or give way, though, which is good. Dan doesn’t have much time to ponder it anyway; the zombies who were surrounding the car he just jumped from are now headed this way.

He throws himself into the BMW and slams the door.

The sounds immediately grow fainter, and he notices also how the atmosphere is different inside the car; it’s cooler, but also there’s a foul smell in the air, like something rotten has been lying around in here. Which isn’t too far from the truth, as the three dead kids were trapped in here just minutes ago.

Dan looks out and up at Åsaa, who’s looking in at him anxiously. He sends her a thumbs-up, and she nods.

Dan looks at the dashboard. He’s never been inside a car this new or big or expensive; his dad was an accountant and earned a decent wage, but he could never have afforded a car like this.

Dan has also never really driven a car, which is something that just dawns on him now, expect for that one time not that long ago, where his dad let him drive down the block, while instructing him from the passenger seat.

“Learn by doing, I guess,” he tells himself and looks for the ignition as the zombies outside begin groping the windows.

He can’t find either the key or the ignition; instead, there’s a button saying START. He pushes it. The dashboard lights up, but nothing happens.

“Shoot!” He looks back out at Åsaa, holding up his hands, mouthing: “How do I turn it on?”

Åsaa seems to pick up on the question, but she just shrugs and shakes her head.

Dan bites his lip. He looks around for something to help him; a manual or something. His gaze falls on a cell phone left on the passenger seat. He picks it up and activates the screen. It shows a picture of a blond-haired woman standing in what looks like Disney World. Next to her, arm in arm, are three kids. Dan recognizes them and feels a lump in his throat. For some reason, Jennie’s face appears in his mind, and he has to gently push it aside.

Not now. Focus on what you’re doing.

Luckily, there’s no password needed for accessing the phone, and Dan opens a browser. The front page is from a Norwegian news media, and the headlines are all yelling at him things he already knows.

He pauses for a second, recalling what make William had told him the car was. Then he types in a search for “How to start a BMW X5.”

A brief YouTube video tells him what to do: step on the brake, then hit the Start-button.

Dan puts down the phone and follows the instruction. The engine comes to life immediately. It’s surprisingly quiet and produces only a very subtle vibration in the seat.

He sends Åsaa another thumbs-up, then puts his hand on the steering wheel, muttering to himself: “All right, you can do this. Remember what Dad told you.”

Dan puts the BMW in reverse, and a monitor gives him a live feed from a camera somewhere on the rear end of the car. The zombies are completely surrounding the car now, and as soon as he puts it into motion, it begins pushing them aside. Some of them trip and get caught underneath the car—Dan can hear them bumping against the undercarriage—and some are even dragged under the tires and get run over, causing the BMW to bump softly and sway a little.

Dan does his best to ignore them, concentrating instead on getting the BMW turned around. In order to do so, he needs to drive farther out into the roadside where the grass is tall. He worries for a moment that the car will get stuck, but William turns out to be right: it has no trouble at all driving on the uneven ground.

It would be a hard challenge driving the car even without the dead people crowding him, constantly blocking his view. But Dan manages to get as close to William as possible; he can’t get all the way there, since the car William sought refuge in is on the far lane, meaning there’s one lane separating them. And the cars in that lane are parked bumper to bumper.

He stops and looks over at William’s car. He can see him waving briefly before he’s cut from view by the crowd of zombies swarming around both cars.

Dan rolls down the window half an inch. The dead people outside immediately push their grey fingers through the crack, and their moaning voices fill up Dan’s ears.

“William!” he calls out. “Can you hear me?”

He waits for a reply, listening intently. Then, over the choir of zombie voices, he picks up William shouting: “… barely hear you!”

Dan bites his lip. This won’t work. If they’re going to work out how to get William from his own car to the BMW, they need to be able to communicate.

Dan looks at the phone on the seat beside him. William has a phone, too, but Dan doesn’t have his number.

He shouts out the window: “What’s your number?”

He stretches his neck and catches a glimpse of William looking back at him. Dan holds up the phone. William raises his eyebrows. Then he holds up two fingers. At first, Dan takes it as a peace sign, but then William holds up four fingers.

“Oh,” Dan says. “Hold on!” He types in 24.

William signals the rest of the number using his fingers. Since Dan loses him from sight every other moment, he gets the number wrong a couple of times. But finally, he gets it. He makes the call, and William answers right away.

“Johnny’s Auto Repair, what can I do for ya?”

It’s such a lame and unexpected joke, Dan can’t help but snort with laughter. “I’m glad you made it to safety.”

“Yeah, well, let’s not celebrate too early. Hey, I didn’t know you had a driver’s license?”

“I don’t.”

“Well, you’re a natural, then.”

“How do we get you out of there?”

William sighs. “I really don’t know, dude. I just don’t know. It doesn’t look good.”

There’s suddenly something in William’s voice that Dan cares very little for. He has seen William angry and upset, even sad, but he has never picked up on this tone of voice before. It sounds like William is about to lose hope.

“It’s okay, we just need to figure it out,” Dan says.

“Yeah, well, there’s like twenty feet between us, and those twenty feet are crammed full of zombies. I don’t see how we’re going to make that happen.”

Dan feels his heartrate rise. “Let’s just think for a moment. There are three options as I see it. We either get you over here. Or we get the car to you. Or we get rid of the zombies. Right? You see any other ways of doing it?”

“I think that about covers it.”

“Right. So, can we get you over here?”

“Not unless I spontaneously sprout a couple of wings.”

“There’s no key for the car?”

“Nope.”

“And you can’t shoot your way through them?”

“That wouldn’t work; there are way too many of them.”

“How about shooting them from the car?”

“I only have twenty-two bullets left. I already counted them.”

“Twenty-two ain’t bad,” Dan says. “That’ll thin the herd at least.”

“No, it wouldn’t,” William says, his voice growing even more downcast. “Even if I make all of them perfect headshots, twenty-two would be like a drop in the ocean. I mean, have you looked outside? There are at least two hundred of them now.”

Dan chews his lip. “How about Ozzy?”

“What about him?”

“Can he do anything to help? He’s immune, right?”

“Yeah, but I don’t see him killing two hundred zombies. That would take him like a week.”

“Wait!” Dan snaps his fingers. “Can’t you, like … disguise yourself? Maybe if they can’t see you, or … I don’t know … if they think you’re already infected, they’ll leave you alone.”

A brief pause. “I thought about that. In Walking Dead, they do this move where they rub themselves in gunk from a dead zombie and then the other zombies can’t smell them or something. They’re able to walk right out among them without getting attacked.”

Dan feels hope rise. “You think that could work?”

“I don’t know, it depends on whether they go by smell or something else.”

“But it’s worth a shot, don’t you think?” Dan looks over at William’s car. “The dead guy in the window—can’t you use him?”

“If I begin messing with him, I risk the others making their way in. Right now, he’s the only thing keeping them out.”

“Okay, but—”

“I do have someone else, though.”

“You do?”

A brief pause. “There’s a woman here. I suppose she was the owner of the car. She was already in here. I shot her.”

“That’s perfect! Try it, William.”

A longer pause this time. “I’m not sure I can do it.”

“Why not? Can’t you get to her?”

“Yeah, but … you realize what we’re talking about, right? Rubbing myself in the juices from a half-rotten corpse? That’s not exactly a turn-on.”

“I know, but you need to—”

“And I don’t even think they go by smell anyway.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s a lot more likely they go by sense. You said it yourself, remember? How would they have found us at Holger’s place? Don’t tell me they could smell us from miles away inside a house built of bricks. There are no predators in the world that could pick up a smell like that. And yet they came from town and headed straight for us.”

Dan thinks about it and realizes that William is right and that Dan already knew that. He was just grasping at straws.

“Okay, so there’s no way we’re getting you out of there,” he goes on. “Can we get the car to you, then?”

“I don’t see that happening either.”

“If I could just cross the middle lane …”

“Yeah, but it stretches for miles in each direction. And even if you found a hole to slip through and you got the car close to mine, how would we do it?”

“We would park the cars right up against each other and you would climb through the windows.”

“Dude, listen to what you’re saying. You’d spend hours getting the car over here and parking it just right, and even if you managed to do all that, there’s no way I can get from this car to yours without them reaching me and scratching me.”

Dan begins to feel his mouth dry up. “Okay, then there’s one option left: we get rid of the zombies.”

William snorts. “You’re gonna find a machine gun and go Rambo on them?”

“I could … I could set them all on fire.”

“Using what?”

“I could drive to Bergen and find some gasoline.”

“That’s not going to work. You’ll just cook me alive in here.”

“What about luring them away?”

“You’d have to get closer to them than I am, and that can’t be done.”

“Okay. Okay, then … then we …” Dan tries very hard to find something to say, but the words escape him.

“Dan, listen,” William says, and there’s that tone of voice again. “I already went over this in my head …”

“No,” Dan says fiercely, suddenly grinding his teeth, staring over at William. “You’re not doing it. You’re not giving up. You hear me? We’re getting you out of there.”

He gets a glimpse of William shaking his head. “Unless I can get this thing started and drive out of here myself, there’s no way,” he says. “Anyway, there’s nothing more you can do. I think you should get going.”

“No …”

“Drive to Bergen and find a ship that’ll take you to Denmark.”

“What about you then?” Dan’s voice is trembling now. “Are you just going to sit there and wait to die from thirst?”

“Eventually, maybe. I’ll try to get the car started first, but I’m not too hopeful. These newer cars can’t just be hot-wired like Bruce Willis used to do in the eighties. But I’ll give it a shot, I promise. I still have power on my phone, so I can probably Google it.”

“Yes, do that,” Dan urges. “Try to get it started. I’ll wait.”

“It could be hours.”

“I’m not leaving.”

“I think you should go.”

“I’m not leaving!”

William sighs. “Yeah, you are. And you know why? Because it’s the right thing to do.”

“No, it’s not.”

“It is. You’re going to save the world, remember? That’s way more important than saving me.”

Dan feels like crying. He already left William behind once, but this time it’ll be for real. And he’ll be leaving him with the certainty that William will die.

“Listen, I’ve got your number now,” William goes on. “If I manage to get this thing started, I’ll call you.”

“What if … what if I already left for Denmark by then?”

“Then I guess I’ll try to catch up with you. But these are pretty big ifs, Dan. Don’t count on any of it. Just focus on getting back to that house. End this thing so it won’t all have been for nothing.”

Dan is surprised to hear William’s voice shake. He looks over at him, but when he catches a glimpse of him, William has turned his face away.

“You promise me that, okay? Promise me you’ll see this to the end.”

Dan opens his mouth, hesitating, thinking that he can’t promise that, that if he did, he would be accepting the fact that William’s not coming, and there’s no way he’s accepting that.

“I promise,” he whispers.

SEVENTEEN

Iver is called out of a blessed deep and dreamless sleep.

At first, he can’t recall anything. He’s so tired and just wants to keep sleeping. But something tells him he needs to wake up.

He opens his eyes slowly and with difficulty, finding himself on a couch in an unfamiliar room. Sunlight is streaming in through the windows.

Where am I?

For a moment, he’s sure he was out drinking last night.

Then it all comes back to him.

The ferry.

The undead.

Agnete’s house.

He sits up, feeling dizzy, then goes to the window and looks out. He’s on the second floor and the view over the island is quite stunning. The town off in the distance with all the small, picturesque houses and narrow streets; the green hills and the rose hip bushes along the gravel road leading to Agnete’s house; not to mention the blue water in the horizon, sparkling in the early day sun.

The only thing ruining the image is the many figures waddling around, their movements stiff and unnatural, their clothes wet and tattered, their expressions blank. He can also see smoke rising from something burning somewhere and several of the houses have barred-up windows with dead people standing right outside, trying to get in.

At least we’re not the only survivors on the island.

The thought makes him think of Adam.

When Iver finally returned to the house last night, Agnete and the toddler were both sleeping. Chris went straight to bed and Caroline stayed up, keeping watch. Linda and Leif both stayed downstairs.

Iver goes to the hallway and finds the other two upstairs doors open, both the one to the kid’s room and Agnete’s bedroom. He checks them both and finds them empty.

From downstairs, he can hear someone talking.

He goes down the staircase and finds everyone gathered around Agnete’s dining table. The atmosphere down here is quite different from upstairs, due to the windows all being barred-up and the lamps providing fake lighting instead.

Agnete is feeding Adam, and the rest seem to have finished eating already, judging from the empty plates.

Linda and Leif are seated next to each other across from Chris and Charlotte, like an awkward, mismatched couple’s date out for a brunch that none of them enjoy.

The only one speaking is the radio, that same male voice from yesterday.

“Can we turn that shit off?” Linda says, nodding towards the radio on the counter.

“We need to be kept in the loop,” Chris says.

“Well, he doesn’t really tell us anything we don’t know already.”

“He might,” Chris says calmly, not moving.

“Then we’ll turn it back on later,” Linda replies, getting up and walking to the radio. She shuts it off with a sigh of relief, muttering as she sits back down: “That was getting on my nerves.”

Chris—who can reach the radio from where he’s sitting—reaches an arm out and, without taking his eyes off Linda, turns it back on.

“You don’t call the shots here,” he tells Linda, who’s glaring fire across the table at him. “But we’ll make a compromise.” He then turns the volume down low. “How about that?”

Leif and Charlotte exchange a look, then look at Linda, waiting for her reaction. Even Agnete senses an argument brewing and stops feeding Adam the porridge, causing him to reach for the spoon.

Linda massages the inside of her cheek with her tongue. “Fine.”

“Fine,” Chris repeats. He smiles and looks around at the others. “See? We’re already learning to get along here. Now, can we talk?”

“We’re still waiting for Iver,” Agnete interjects.

Iver clears his throat and steps closer. “I’m here.”

“Oh, look who’s finally rested,” Chris remarks, turning to look at him. “Were you tired after your little mission last night?”

Iver ignores him and addresses Agnete. “Did he sleep okay?”

She looks up at him, smiling. “He slept like a log. And he hasn’t stopped eating since he woke up.”

“Well, it’s good he has an appetite,” Iver says, stroking Adam’s head and immediately feeling awkward as he senses the others watching him.

“Is he yours?” Leif asks.

“No, I just … I brought him from the ferry. His mom … well, you know …”

Leif nods with a grim look.

“Sit down and eat something,” Agnete tells Iver in a warm tone. “You must be starving.”

He is, but at the same time his stomach feels very tight. Probably because of the tense atmosphere in the room. He takes a seat by the only unused plate and helps himself to the bread and a slice of cheese.

“Since the rest of us have already been introduced,” Chris says, “I’ll just give you the skinny on Iver here. He’s never used a weapon before, but he claims he’s open to learning. He’s got a soft spot for the baby, as you might already have gathered. Oh, and he’s gay.”

Iver stops buttering his bread to look at Chris, feeling the heat rise to his cheeks. That last piece of information was obviously aimed at Linda.

“Was that really essential information?” Iver asks, keeping his voice calm.

“Why?” Chris retorts with a sneer. “You ashamed of who you are?”

Iver shakes his head and continues smearing butter, muttering: “At least I’m not an asshole.”

“Right,” Chris goes on, pretending not to hear. “Let’s talk strategy, folks. We’re together now, whether we like it or not. I mean, you’re all free to leave anytime, of course, but I don’t assume anyone is interested in that? Especially since it means elbowing your way through our hordes of groupies out there, just dying to get an autograph. So, we need to make it work. We need some ground rules. We need to assign jobs and ranks.”

“Did you say something about serving in the military?” Linda asks, sending Leif a wry smile. “Because you sure sound like a drill sergeant right now.”

“I did,” Chris says. “And that’s exactly what we need here: someone to put things into a system. If we’re not organized, then we’re basically just rolling the dice that nothing bad happens. And something bad will happen, trust me.”

Linda crosses her arms. “I don’t trust people I just met.” Chris is about to say something when she cuts him off: “But I agree with you. We need to have a plan for what we do when things turn messy.”

“Exactly,” Chris says, sending Linda a smile which seems for the first time genuine.

She doesn’t return it, though, but looks around at the others. “We’re six people total. Who will be doing what?”

“We need to play to our strengths,” Chris jumps in, before anyone else has a chance. “You, for instance!” He points at Leif. “You’re strong as a motherfucker. We’ll definitely use you for rearranging the rooms and putting up sandbags.”

“Sandbags?” Agnete says. “Where?”

“In front of the doors, of course,” Chris says. “The front and back and the one in the living room. It’ll create much stronger barricades. The number of dead assholes out there is already growing, and I don’t trust the locks to hold back the pressure forever.”

“But where will we get sandbags from?” Leif asks, glancing at Agnete. “I don’t suppose you have any lying around?”

“I certainly don’t.”

“You have several roles of plastic bags in the basement,” Chris says. “And you have a very old concrete floor down there as well. We’ll need to break it open and dig up enough sand to fill at least ten bags.” He looks at Leif again. “This will be another task for you, and—”

“Hold on,” Agnete cuts him off. “Are you saying you want to break open the floor?”

“I do,” Chris goes on calmly. “It’ll give us more than one advantage. For example, it’ll provide us with a load of concrete fragments we can use as defensive weapons.” When the others around the table look at him questioningly, he adds: “I’m talking about throwing shit at the heads of the zombies.”

“And what’s the other advantages that’ll come from destroying my house?” Agnete asks in a cross tone.

Chris sends Linda another quick look, then says in an off-hand way: “We’ll talk about that later. If it becomes relevant.”

Iver glances at Linda just in time to pick up on the almost imperceptible nod she sends back at Chris. Iver frowns. It’s like something implied just passed between the two.

What the hell’s going on? A minute ago they were biting each other’s heads off, and now they’re talking about something they don’t want the rest of us to know about.

Iver looks at Charlotte and sees her eyeing Linda. Her expression is one of ill-concealed contempt, which just makes Iver all the more puzzled, like he missed something.

Did anything happen before I came down?

As Chris goes on, Iver makes a mental note to ask Charlotte about it later.

“I think your role is obvious as well,” Chris says, pointing at Agnete. “You’ll deal with the kid.” He turns to Iver. “I’m sorry, but we need you for other things.”

“Sure,” Iver says in a guarded tone, taking a bite of his bread and trying to act casual. “Like what?”

“You’re fast. I saw you run yesterday. Very light-footed. Graceful, almost. You’re obviously in great shape. I’m sure you can outrun anyone at any time. Especially the dead ones.”

“So, what? You want me to go for a run?”

“Pretty much, yeah. You’ll be our messenger. At some point, we’ll need to send someone out to get something. Provisions, weapons, food, intel, a vehicle, whatever. And you’re definitely our best bet when that situation arises.”

Iver looks over at the kitchen windows. He can’t see the zombies outside, except for when one of them passes by the cracks between the boards, but he can hear them all right. Their moaning, guttural voices. Their nails scratching the glass.

The thought of going back out there, even in broad daylight, is enough to make his blood chill. He doesn’t say anything, though.

Chris doesn’t give him time to respond anyway, but goes right ahead to Charlotte. “You,” he says. “What’s your strengths?”

Charlotte looks like someone just pulled from a daydream. She blinks and straightens up, clearing her throat. “Uhm, well … I have … I’m good at … keeping a level head in … stressful situations.”

Iver never particularly liked Charlotte, but still he feels bad for her. That answer was probably the worst she could come up with, considering how she reacted during the situation with the window yesterday. And he can tell she realizes so even as the words are coming out, because the look she sends Chris is very guilty.

“Yeah, I can tell,” Linda grunts.

Charlotte snaps her head around and glares at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, just coming up with an answer for that question made you all flustered.”

“Fuck you. You don’t know me.”

“Woah,” Chris says. “Let’s try and keep things civil.”

“Civil?” Charlotte blurts out, pointing at Leif and Linda. “Like the way they threatened their way in here? How’s that for civil?”

“Well, now they’re here,” Chris says in a diplomatic tone. “So we need to make it work.”

Charlotte shakes her head and looks at Iver. “You okay with this? With them being here?”

Iver shrugs. “What do you want me to say, Charlotte?”

“You wimp,” she scoffs, turning to Agnete. “And you! This is your house!”

Adam begins crying, providing Agnete with the perfect excuse not to answer. She picks him up from the chair and goes to the living room to comfort him.

Charlotte stands up and glares at Linda.

“Looks like you’re the minority,” Linda says calmly.

“Sit down, Charlotte,” Chris says. “Let’s finish the—”

Charlotte cuts him off: “Just because you want to fuck her doesn’t mean I need to sit here and listen to her crap.”

She then spins around, almost tipping her chair over as she marches out of the room.

“So that’s where the dog is buried,” Linda says, looking at Chris with a sly smile. “She has a crush on you.”

Iver feels stupid for not having realized this already. Come to think of it, the way Charlotte speaks to Chris, the way she looks at him when he talks—it’s been obvious since they left the ferry.

“Well, that’s her problem,” Chris says. “We’ll just assign her kitchen service. She’ll be in charge of rationing and cooking the food. I think she can handle that much.”

“You think she’ll leave?”

Chris shakes his head. “No way. She’s way too much of scaredy cat to go out there alone.”

“Will she be a problem, then?”

“Nah, she just needs to cool off. Adjust to the new situation, I guess.”

Linda nods, apparently accepting the answer. A moment of silence passes through the kitchen. From inside the living room, Agnete is singing to Adam, and he’s no longer crying.

Iver becomes aware of a growing knot in his stomach. This meeting isn’t going at all like he expected it to. It’s obvious that some sort of power struggle is going on, and surprisingly, Chris seems to side with Linda. Considering how Chris has been acting so far, this is very strange to Iver.

Is it some sort of manipulative move? Is Chris paying lip service to Linda? Making her feel like she’s in control by them teaming up against everyone else?

No, Iver doesn’t think so. Chris seems honest enough. He seems like he’s genuinely forming an alliance with Linda.

And once that word pops into Iver’s head, so does the answer.

It’s an alliance. The alpha male and the alpha female. Just like in high school. They’re not threatened by each other’s power; they’re attracted to it.

This makes perfect sense and causes everything to fall into place in a split second. Why Charlotte acted the way she did; she obviously picked up on it way before Iver. Why Chris doesn’t act like Linda is a rival. And why Linda—who was exceedingly suspicious towards Iver yesterday—seems to already have begun trusting Chris.

Iver looks at Leif, who seems like he’s barely attending the meeting but is more interested in his coffee. As big and strong as he is, he obviously has a small ego and steers right clear of any power struggles. Which explains perfectly why Linda was the boss of him when it was only the two of them.

“That just leaves you and me,” Chris says to Linda, looking at her like they’re the only ones at the table and driving home Iver’s theory. “Two roles left to fill. So where do you see yourself in this?”

Linda doesn’t immediately answer, but she unfolds her arms, picks up her fork and begins spinning it slowly between her fingers. Iver notices her nails are long and unbroken.

“I’m good at being in charge,” she says outright. “I used to work in management.”

“I can tell,” Chris says. “So, you want to be the captain?”

Linda still looks at her fork as she shrugs. “I think I’d do better as chief of staff. I’m not good at being the front figure, that was never one of my responsibilities in corporate life.”

“What were your responsibilities, then?”

“Managing internal affairs, mostly.”

Chris raises one eyebrow. “You mean firing people?”

“Among other things, yes. I always had a say in the major decisions. I was just never the one to actually pull the trigger, so to speak.”

“So chief advisor to the captain, then?”

Linda thinks for a moment, then nods. “I think that’ll work.”

“Good,” Chris says, leaning back. “Well, by process of elimination, we only have one seat left, which means I’ll have to be the captain.”

Leif looks like he finally picks up on the conversation and sends Chris a quick nod as way of admission.

“So what’s your first order, Captain?” Linda asks, putting down the fork and finally looking at Chris.

Chris looks back at her for a moment, then takes his cup and reaches it across the table. “That my chief of staff pours me a second cup of coffee.”

Linda looks from the cup to the pot right beside her. Then she smiles at Chris, picks up the pot and says: “You’re the boss.”

EIGHTEEN

It turns out that William was right: driving on the hiking trail is easier than you would think.

Åsaa is a careful driver, and she avoids the worst of the bumps and holes. The car is also very good for driving in this kind of terrain, making only slight swaying motions, almost rocking Dan to sleep as they make their way through the hilly landscape and the day slips into the afternoon.

He’s holding the phone in his hand, still hoping that William will call.

The radio is on, playing soft music. Dan is surprised that some stations are still on.

Getting Åsaa into the car was surprisingly easy; Dan could just drive right up against the car she was standing on and have her jump over. Then he opened the sunroof and she climbed down.

If only getting to William would have been as easy as that.

Dan is close to drifting off when Åsaa says: “There. I see it.”

Dan straightens up and looks ahead. Wedged between two hills is Bergen. The city looks rather strange in the early evening light. Maybe it’s because there aren’t any streetlights on.

“Looks like the power went out,” Åsaa mutters, confirming Dan’s thoughts. “I really hope we won’t find a ghost town.”

“When were the boats supposed to sail out?” Dan asks. “The ones you were told would take you away?”

“This morning,” Åsaa says, clutching the steering wheel. “I fear the last ones may have already left.”

Dan bites his lip. “We’ll just have to wait and see.”

Within twenty minutes, they reach the city limit. The hills turn into open fields with factories forming an industrial area. They’re finally able to get back onto a road as they head into Bergen.

The city is eerily quiet, and the streets are surprisingly non-cluttered by vehicles. It’s almost like the hordes of people trying to reach Bergen never did, instead getting bogged down on the outskirts of the city. There are plenty of other unnerving things cluttering the streets, though, like clothes, bags, even furniture and tons of broken glass from shattered windows. Dan also picks up on several signs of gunfights; glittering shells are strewn about and now and then he sees cars or building facades covered in tiny bullet holes, making them look like giant homes for insects.

There is also the more obvious telltale: bodies lie on every corner. It’s people of all ages, all sporting more or less visible wounds. Judging from their grey skin, most of them were already dead when they were killed.

Dan tries not to look too closely at their faces as they make their way through the streets.

“Looks like this place was overrun sooner than they expected,” Dan says grimly.

“You think that means the boats haven’t left yet?” Åsaa asks, obvious hope in her voice, as she swerves to avoid a tipped-over shopping cart.

“Either that, or they left even sooner,” Dan says.

The deeper into the city they go, the more zombies also appear. It’s nothing like the horde they encountered out at the highway, more like drifters and small gangs. They seem to be either aimlessly sweeping the streets or gathering around certain buildings.

“Guess someone’s still alive here,” Åsaa remarks, pointing up at a building. From the third floor, a white sheet is dangling from a window. Someone wrote on it in red paint: HELP

Dan has already noticed several places where pale faces are staring out from windows, and he’s guessing that several thousand people might still be hiding in Bergen, as they managed to barricade themselves in their homes.

They cross an intersection where two cars have collided and are left abandoned. A guy is hanging from the open door of one of them, his head busted open.

“Is that the harbor?” Dan asks, pointing ahead to where a blue band has become visible between the buildings.

“I think so.”

As they drive on, the street grows more and more crowded. Several cars are left on the road, and in more than one place, Åsaa needs to drive onto the sidewalk to get past.

There’s the sound of gunfire somewhere. Then silence once more.

A minivan has crashed into a light post and thirty-something zombies have gathered around it, pushing and shoving to get in front, like eager fans hoping to get a glimpse of a celebrity.

“Should we stop and try to help?” Åsaa asks meekly, her voice betraying what she hopes the answer might be.

“No,” Dan says, breathing through his nose as they pass by the group of zombies—a couple of the closest ones turn around briefly to grab at the BMW before turning back towards the minivan. “If we couldn’t help William, we won’t be able to help whoever is in that car either.”

“You’re probably right,” Åsaa sighs.

Dan picks up on a sound of an engine coming closer fast, and he looks in the mirror, expecting to see a car coming up from behind, but there’s nothing.

Instead, a fighter jet comes out of nowhere and swoops overhead. Even inside the car, the sound is deafening for a couple of seconds before finally dying out.

Åsaa and Dan exchange a long look.

“You think … you think they’re going to bomb the city?” Åsaa asks.

“I don’t know,” Dan says. “I hope not. Not as long as there are still survivors.”

But the truth is, he stopped paying attention to the news several days ago. For all he knows, the world could be collapsing and the governments could be at all-out war against the zombies.

“Hey, maybe they’re saying something on the local station,” Åsaa says and turns the radio on to another channel, finding static at first, then a male voice speaking Norwegian in a grave tone.

“… urgent message to the citizens of Bergen: Stay indoors at all times. Avoid contact with others at all cost. This goes for close relatives as well if they themselves have been in contact with an infected person. There’s no reason for panic. Help is coming. The military is fighting the disease and we will win. I repeat this urgent message to the citizens of Bergen …”

Even before the message can play a second time, Dan reaches over and turns the volume down. “He’s lying,” he says hoarsely.

“Maybe he’s just trying to give people hope,” Åsaa suggests.

“That’s still a lie.”

They’re quiet for a moment.

“I watched that clip with the American president,” Åsaa goes on. “You seen it?”

“No?”

“It was yesterday, I think, or maybe the day before that. He said that … if this thing doesn’t get under control soon, they would … ‘use great force’ … I think that’s how he put it.”

Dan vaguely recalls William saying something about it. “He means nuclear weapons, doesn’t he?”

Åsaa swallows audibly, then nods. “Erik was sure this would lead to World War 3. He said America would start bombing Europe to kill the infected before they could reach the States. But he said that the rest of the UN would answer back if that happened, and that would draw Russia and China and India into the conflict.” She shakes her head as her eyes grow distant. “We’ll probably kill each other before the infection can.”

NINETEEN

“You okay back there, Grandpa?”

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine.”

“Just watch the road, damnit!”

Liv swerves to avoid a camper left in the middle of the road.

“Christ, you moron!” Grandpa shouts from the backseat. “I told you to look out! You’ll lose the damn thing if you’re not careful, and it’ll all have been for nothing!”

Liv checks the mirror and sees the jet ski strapped to the trailer. It’s rocking back and forth, threatening to topple over, before it comes to rest again.

Getting the jet ski onto the trailer was a nightmare—Liv still can’t believe they actually did it with just the two of them. It is lightweight, of course, weighing only a little over four hundred pounds, but still quite the task for a teenager and her granddad. It took them almost half an hour. Liv will definitely be sore tomorrow.

Getting the jet ski cost them more than just a backache, though.

Liv’s eyes go to the mirror again, and she studies Grandpa. The old guy reminds her of Clint Eastwood as he sits there, clutching his bleeding hand, looking out the window at the buildings gliding by, breathing sternly through his nose, refusing to show any pain.

“We should never have gone in the first place,” Liv says, shaking her head.

“Of course we should,” Grandpa sneers. “We had no choice. You want to get the hell outta here, don’t you?”

“Yeah, but—”

“Then that thing on the trailer is your best bet, believe me.”

“Our best bet,” Liv corrects him.

“Wha’?”

“I said, it’s our best bet. It’ll carry the both of us, right?”

Grandpa already assured her before they went to get the jet ski that they would both be able to fit on it. But now, as he looks up at Liv, Grandpa suddenly seems hesitant. “We’ll see,” he mutters.

“What does that mean?” Immediate alarm in Liv’s voice.

“It means we’ll see,” Grandpa repeats, as though the conversation is over.

“But we’re both going, right? Right, Grandpa?”

Grandpa shakes his head and looks out the window again. “Nah, I’m not coming with you.”

“What? Why not?”

“Because of this.” He holds up the busted, bloody hand, and Liv recoils at the sight. “I’m infected. I’ll be dead soon.”

“No!” Liv cries out.

“Yes. And watch where you’re going! I’m not telling you again.”

Liv forces her eyes back to the road. She can barely think anymore. First Mom and Dad and now Grandpa.

Liv drives through the streets of Bergen, hardly noticing anything. Her mind is suddenly blank.

“It’s probably for the best,” Grandpa goes on in a softer tone. Liv can hear him breathing more heavily now. “I would have slowed you down anyway. Without me, you’ll be going close to seventy miles an hour. You’ll reach safety before nightfall. It’s better that way. You don’t want to be riding around on open waters in the middle of the night.” Liv is about to say something when Grandpa goes on: “You’ve got the food, right?”

Liv just nods.

“And the suit? You packed the suit like I told you?”

“I did,” Liv whispers. “Both of them.”

Grandpa scoffs, then mutters: “Well, I won’t be needing mine. Save it for Solveig.”

Liv bursts into tears.

“Stop that,” Grandpa bites. “You’ll crash the damn car.”

But Liv can’t help it; the fear and pain are just too much. She sobs as she drives on, wiping her eyes repeatedly with her sleeve.

Grandpa doesn’t say anything. Liv never cried in front of him before, and she feels even worse for doing so now.

“It’s okay,” he says in a low voice, almost too low for Liv to hear. “It’ll all be okay.”

Liv looks up at him again, as he leans forward to place his unharmed hand on her shoulder and squeezes it in a gesture of comfort completely unlike him.

“You’re gonna make it, Liv. You’ll go and get Solveig, and you’re both going to be fine.”

“But … but I don’t know … I don’t know where to go …”

“Head north. That’s your best bet. Your parents had a cabin somewhere up there, right? On one of the small islands just off the coast.”

“Yes, but … I have no idea how to find it.”

“You’ll figure it out. Just follow the coast, and use your intuition. You’re a clever kid, you’ll figure it out.”

Hearing Grandpa talk this way, in such an uncharacteristically warm tone, is the most heartbreaking thing of all. And, to Liv’s surprise, it also gives her a tiny feeling of courage. Of hope. Hope that she just might make it. If Grandpa believes in her, it’s possible.

“All right?” he asks, squeezing her shoulder again.

Liv nods. “All right, Grandpa.”

“Good,” he sighs, leaning back and closing his eyes. “I’ll be off soon.”

Liv looks at him. She can see big drops of sweat beading on his forehead. “We’re almost at the harbor, Grandpa. Hang on.”

He shakes his head without opening his eyes. “I won’t make it. I can feel this thing … it’s everywhere …”

A hot and cold shiver runs down Liv’s spine. “You … you need to fight it, Grandpa. I need you … just a little longer …”

He shakes his head again. “I’m sorry, kid.”

The words sound oddly like a goodbye.

Then, before Liv can say or do anything else, Grandpa reaches out his hand, opens the door, leans out and disappears from sight.

For half a second, Liv is under the impression that he felt ill and needed to vomit. Then, as he appears in the sideview mirror, tumbling and rolling around the road like a rag doll, the reality of what just happened hits her, and she begins to scream.

TWENTY

As they cross another block, they finally reach the harbor.

It’s a lot bigger than Dan imagined, bigger than any harbor he’s ever seen back in Denmark. It’s very obvious that Bergen is centered—or was centered, before it collapsed—around shipping.

But speaking of ships, there aren’t any.

Dan imagines that normally, a harbor like this would be filled with everything from ferries to motorboats, yet all that’s left in the water is tons of dropped items like clothes and bags floating around. And more bodies, of course.

The moor itself is packed full of vehicles, some of them military but most of them civilian, parked haphazardly bumper to bumper.

“They all left,” Åsaa says, stopping the car and leaning back in the seat. “We’re too late.”

“Let’s not give up hope,” Dan says. “There might be one left. Can you go farther down that way?” He points. “Looks like there are some smaller piers. Maybe we can find a boat.”

Åsaa gets the car moving again and drives slowly through the maze of vehicles.

Suddenly, another car cuts in front of them, and Åsaa has to hit the brake hard to avoid a collision.

“Oh, Jeez!” Åsaa exclaims.

The driver of the other car doesn’t seem to notice anything. It’s carrying a trailer with what looks to be a jet ski strapped onto it.

Åsaa and Dan both look at each other, then back at the car with the trailer as it makes its way towards the piers.

“I think we should follow them,” Dan says.

Åsaa nods, then drives after the car with the trailer. It stops by the nearest pier, and Åsaa stops too, glancing over at Dan. “You think …?”

“Let’s just wait a minute,” Dan says, not taking his eyes off the other car. “Don’t turn off the engine.”

“Did you see who they were? I couldn’t make out the driver.”

“Me neither. Let’s wait and see who comes out.”

For half a minute or so, no one does. The car with the trailer just sits there, engine idling.

“They must’ve seen us,” Åsaa mutters.

“Or maybe they’re just making sure the coast is clear,” Dan suggests.

Åsaa checks the mirrors. “Maybe we should just get out of here.”

“Why? You see anyone infected?”

“No, but I’m sure it’s just a matter of time.”

“They’ve got a jet ski,” Dan points out.

Åsaa looks at him. “You planning on stealing it from them?”

Dan shakes his head. “They might know where we can find one too.”

“Oh. Right.”

Another thirty seconds pass by. Still nothing happens. Dan can sense Åsaa grow more agitated. He begins to feel tense himself.

“Maybe they’re dead,” Åsaa suggests.

“They were driving just a minute ago,” Dan reminds her—though he’s well aware that’s no real assurance that whoever is behind the wheel of the car is still alive.

“Let’s just—” Åsaa begins, then cuts herself off and points. “Look! They’re coming out.”

Dan sees the driver’s door open. It doesn’t swing open all the way, but just enough for someone to slip out and duck down out of sight. Dan catches a glimpse of blonde hair. It looks like a girl, but it’s too fast for him to tell for sure.

“They’re trying to hide from us,” Åsaa says in a tone of alarm. “They’re up to no good. I’m driving away from here.”

“No, wait!” Dan urges her. “They might just be scared.”

“Or they’re out to kill us! I’m not taking the chance.” She puts the car in reverse, and Dan realizes there’s no talking her out of it. He makes a quick decision, unbuckles and opens his door.

“No!” Åsaa cries out, trying to grab his arm as he steps out onto the concrete. “What are you doing? Get back in here!”

Dan ignores her and raises his arm. “Hello? We just want to talk!”

TWENTY-ONE

Liv crouches down and looks under the car.

She can see the guy from here; standing next to the open door, as though he’s ready to jump back in at any moment. She can’t really blame him for that; she suspects someone infected will show up at any moment. At least he isn’t armed.

“Hello?” he calls out, holding up an arm in a friendly gesture. “We just want to talk!”

He’s Danish too, Liv notices, biting her lip. Should I trust him? What would Grandpa have done?

The thought of Grandpa brings a stab to her heart. The loss is less than half an hour old, and Liv hasn’t even had the chance to process it.

The boy is around Liv’s own age, and he looks honest enough with his blonde hair and big, blue eyes. Through the windshield, Liv can make out the face of a woman maybe fifteen years older. Too young to be the guy’s mother, too old to be his girlfriend. Probably his sister, though they don’t look at all alike.

“It’s okay!” the boy calls, stepping forward a few paces. “Really, we just want to find a way out of here.”

Liv glances up at the trailer, and suddenly, she recalls what Grandpa told her right after they loaded the jet ski:

“We’ll have to be very careful. This thing is worth more than gold now.”

She hadn’t really paid that much notice when he said it, but now the meaning of it is glaringly clear to her.

“Listen, I’m coming over!” the guy goes on, stepping closer to the trailer while holding out his hands. “You can see I’m not armed!”

Liv feels a pang of panic. “Stop right there!” she calls out. “Don’t come any closer. I-I have a gun!”

She stammers at the exact wrong moment, and the lie is all too obvious. She can tell the boy hears it too, because he only hesitates for a moment, before he steps closer.

“It’s okay, I promise, I just want to talk. I’m sure we can help each other.”

Liv realizes there’s nothing she can say to keep the boy from coming over, so she stands up and faces him from between the car and the trailer. Once he gets a clear look at her, he actually stops and smiles.

“You speak Danish,” he says.

Liv’s not sure whether it’s a question. “Uh-huh.”

He points at the jet ski. “Where did you get that?”

“It’s mine. I didn’t steal it.”

“I didn’t say you did. I just asked where you got it. I’m Dan, by the way. What’s your name?”

Liv glances over at the car and the woman behind the wheel staring out at them. Then she looks around to check no one else is sneaking up on them.

“Look, I don’t think we should be out here,” she tells him. “It’s not safe. I’m leaving now. You should do the same.”

She begins to unfasten the trailer, hoping the boy will take the hint and go away.

But he doesn’t. Instead, he says: “You’ll need help with that.”

Liv realizes he’s right, of course. There’s no way she’ll be able to push the trailer to the ramp on her own, much less hoist the jet ski down into the water. Grandpa was supposed to be here to help her, but …

“It’s fine,” she tells the boy, choking back tears now as she yanks the trailer’s handlebar. “I’ll manage. Just go away.”

The boy steps closer, and Liv recoils.

“It’s all right,” he tells her, looking earnest. “I’m not infected.” He flips the safety clamp—just like Liv saw Grandpa do earlier. “There. Now we can decouple it.” He smiles up at her. “Are you going to help?”

Liv takes a deep breath to steady herself, not moving. “Why are you doing this?”

“I want to help.”

“You want the jet ski.”

“I would love to know where you got it.” He looks back at the car with the woman. “We’re just trying to get out of here. Let’s work together, okay? You need our help and we need yours.”

Liv shakes her head. “I can’t help you,” she says. “Even if I wanted to. This is my Grandpa’s jet ski. He was supposed to come with me, but he … he …” Her throat tightens, and she can’t finish the sentence.

The guy seems to get it. “I lost both my parents, too. And my sister. I’m the only one left, really.”

The pain in his voice is bad enough, but it’s the way he says it—in an almost matter-of-fact way—that really gets her.

Her lower lip begins quivering. “My parents,” she whispers. “They died too …”

“I’m very sorry,” the guy tells her. “I know how badly it hurts.”

Liv bites down hard and blinks fiercely to keep from crying. “I got the jet ski from my Grandpa’s home, and I have no idea where to find more. I’m sorry, but it’s only meant for one.”

The guy raises his eyebrows. “Really?”

“Yes.”

“Didn’t you just say your grandpa was supposed to come with you?”

Liv feels like kicking herself for spilling the beans. “All right, it can carry two people. But it’ll go slower. And it definitely can’t carry all three of us. Besides, I’m going to Denmark.”

The boy raises his eyebrows in surprise. “You are? Why?”

“That’s really none of your business.”

The boy nods and looks from her to the jet ski. “Where did your grandpa get it?”

“I don’t know. He bought it many years ago. It’s been sitting in his garage. I never even …”

Liv stops talking as she realizes the boy has stopped listening. Instead, he’s looking past her.

“What?” Liv says, spinning around and staring into the forest of cars. “What is it?”

“I just thought I saw something,” the guy says. “But maybe it was just—”

“Look out!”

Liv turns around at the woman’s scream. She looks to the car where the door is now open and the woman is sticking her head out, pointing frantically.

Liv turns again to look in the direction, and—

And then she sees him.

TWENTY-TWO

The girl keeps darting glances back in the direction she just came from. She does it as a sort of reflex every few seconds or so, and Dan isn’t entirely sure she’s even aware of it. But it’s obvious that something—or someone—is back there somewhere, hidden between the many cars.

So when Dan spots the old man appearing less than ten yards away, he instantly connects the dots—he doesn’t even need to read the answer on the girl’s face.

That’s her grandfather …

Judging from how the guy looks, he’s either been beaten up pretty badly, or he’s taken quite the fall. His clothes are ripped open in several places, revealing nasty road rash on the skin underneath, his left wrist appears to be broken, and one knee can’t seem to straighten out all the way, giving him an awkward limp. None of that bothers him, though, as he heads straight for the girl, his pupil-less eyes locked on her.

She’s paralyzed for a few seconds, then she begins screaming.

“Get out of there!” Dan shouts, forming a funnel around his mouth. Even though the girl is standing right on the other side of the trailer, she doesn’t seem to hear him.

Dan is just about to move around the trailer to get the girl out of the way when another scream cuts through the air from behind him. He spins around to see Åsaa struggling with another woman around her own age. Åsaa is caught halfway inside the car, unable to pull in all the way, as the attacker is simultaneously blocking the door and getting at Åsaa’s kicking legs.

“Help!” Åsaa screams, writhing and flinging her fist at the face of the woman, who just snaps her teeth, trying to catch Åsaa’s hand midair.

Dan has already taken three steps in the direction of the car, intending to help Åsaa, when she slips and sinks down on her knees, mostly disappearing from sight. The dead woman wastes no time, but bends down immediately, and Åsaa cries out again—this time in pain. The dead woman rears her head back up in a predatory ripping motion, and Dan sees the patch of skin between her teeth and the blood smeared around her mouth—Åsaa’s blood.

Dan stops dead in his track.

Åsaa is still screaming as the woman bends down to take another bite.

From the right comes another figure into view: a man with a blonde beard that’s stained with dried blood. From behind the car, yet another zombie appears and joins in.

Åsaa’s scream is already growing weaker. Her hand reaches up, grabbing for something to hold on to but finding nothing. Two of the fingers are missing.

Dan feels the way too familiar sinking sensation in his gut as he turns away from the scene, thinking to himself in a surprisingly calm voice: I can’t do anything for her now.

It’s harsh, but it’s true.

What’s also true is that in twenty seconds or so, the zombies will lose interest in Åsaa.

Dan needs to act, and act fast.

He turns to the trailer, halfway expecting to see the girl getting eaten alive by her dead grandpa. To his complete surprise, though, the girl has jolted back into action and has jumped up onto the trailer. And she’s not just standing there, either. Instead she’s working to unfasten the straps holding the jet ski, ignoring her dead grandfather who’s trying his best to reach in and grab her.

Dan takes a running start and jumps up onto the trailer, causing the jet ski to sway and the girl to spin around and stare at him.

“Careful!” she tells him. “If it tilts onto the side, we’ll never get it into the water.”

Dan notices the jet ski is sitting on a low but very stern-looking trolley with wheels. The girl moves past him, her hair brushes his face and he catches a scent of lemons which almost makes him dizzy. She goes to unfasten the last of the strops.

“What do you need me to do?” Dan asks, looking at the dead guy moving around the trailer, following the girl while snarling and reaching for her with his broken hand.

“You’ll have to lure him away,” the girl says, nodding in the direction of her grandfather without looking at him. “I need to open the back hatch and lower this thing down.”

“Can you do that on your own?” Dan asks, looking at the jet ski which must weigh around the same as a motorbike.

“Yes!” the girl snaps, sending him a fiery look. “But not unless you get him away from here!”

The last strap gives way with a whoosh, and the jet ski is suddenly free to roll. The girl grabs the handlebar and stops it. And Dan jumps down from the trailer, landing a few paces away from the grandfather—who immediately senses the accessible prey and turns his attention to Dan.

Dan moves away from the trailer, spotting a movement out of the corner of his eye and sees the three zombies who just killed Åsaa. Except now they’ve doubled in numbers as three more have joined them. And they’re all coming this way.

This is a bad idea, Dan thinks to himself as he faces the maze of vehicles. Moving away from the trailer might mean losing it from sight. There’s also the risk of bumping into more zombies lurking between the cars.

As though the thought itself has produced it, a little girl comes crawling out from under the bumper of a car right in front of him, and Dan makes a sharp turn to the right.

He only manages a few steps farther away before a skinny arm shoots out from a half-open window and grabs him by the shoulder. Dan screams and rips free, checking his sleeve to make sure the nails didn’t penetrate the fabric. They didn’t; at least he can’t see any holes in his shirt. The old woman grabs at him eagerly, trying in vain to squeeze out of the opening which is just too narrow.

A groan from behind makes him turn again, and he sees two other zombies coming around the car to get at him.

Dan makes a quick decision and jumps up onto the hood of the car, then onto the roof. The car is just tall enough that the dead people won’t be able to reach him, but as he looks out over the area, that fact brings him little comfort.

The entire harbor is coming alive. Everywhere he sees the dead appearing and moving this way. It’s like someone stuck a stick into an anthill—and Dan is that stick.

This is even worse than back at the highway … in two minutes, we’ll be overrun.

He looks back towards the trailer—and to his relief, he sees the jet ski already on the ground. The girl is pulling the trolley around, headed for the ramp. There are no dead people around her—at least not that Dan can see from here—but they could crop up at any second.

He looks down to see the zombies surrounding the car, like mad groupies at a rock concert, all moaning and trying to reach his shoes. There’s already too many of them for him to jump down anywhere. Instead, he looks over at the neighboring car. It’s a jump of maybe two yards. With a little running start, he should be able to do it.

Dan steps back as far as he can, takes a deep breath, and then he runs before the thoughts can get to him. He lunges himself out over the heads of the clambering zombies—none of them react fast enough to grab for him while he’s in the air—and he lands on the roof of the other car, almost slipping but regaining his balance. He wastes no time but immediately jumps to the next. From here, he can’t reach any other cars, but there are no dead people around yet, so he jumps instead to the ground and makes a run back towards the trailer and the girl—carefully keeping his distance to any open windows and slowing down to turn every corner, so as to not get surprised.

Behind him, he notices the choir of moans and groans growing into a collective cry of hunger as the zombies form a giant mob and move in closer.

TWENTY-THREE

Liv’s hands are shaking so badly, she can hardly operate the trolley. Luckily, though, it’s very straightforward, and it follows along willingly as she makes her way around Grandpa’s car and towards the ramp.

Everything feels like a dream. Things are happening so fast she can barely process them. Yet to her surprise, she finds herself acting with an inexplicable sense of clarity. It’s almost like her brain has switched to an emergency system she didn’t know it had, cutting off anything nonessential and narrowing her senses to focus on just what needs to be done: moving her legs, pulling the trolley, getting the jet ski to the ramp. Nothing else.

No thoughts of Grandpa.

No worries about the woman who just got eaten.

Not even any concern about whether the boy who helped her get off the trailer is still alive.

None of that is of any use to Liv in this moment. And it’s handily blocked off from her awareness.

This must be what people experience in life-threatening situations, Liv realizes as she reaches the ramp and turns the trolley so that the rear end faces the water.

She pulls the handbrake, then kneels down and begins turning the handle, lowering the trolley’s leg, bringing the jet ski closer to the ground.

She’s only managed four or five inches before her left ear picks up a scraping noise from behind. She snaps her head around just in time to see a one-armed guy in a ripped-up T-shirt lunge himself at her.

Liv screams out and twists her body sideways. It’s the only move she has time to perform in the split-second before the zombie closes the distance between them, and it’s just enough to get her out of the way of his single, grabbing hand.

Everything goes to slow-motion.

Liv feels his hand go by less than three inches from her face. His fingers—long and boney—are sticky from blood and get entangled in a lock of her hair, ripping it from her skull. Liv can feel the strands of hair give way one by one.

Then the rest of the guy goes by—his arm, his shoulder, his face, pale and stubbly-bearded—and he crashes into the trolley, connecting his jaw squarely with the metal side bar.

Again, with Liv’s senses working on overdrive, she hears the sound of bone breaking all too clearly, and she catches a glimpse of a molar as it spills out the corner of the guy’s mouth.

Then, like someone hit a button on a remote control somewhere, everything jumps back into regular speed.

Liv finds herself stumbling backwards away from the trolley as the guy struggles to regain his bearings after likely giving himself a fairly decent concussion. He slips back into action surprisingly fast despite this, getting to his feet and rounding on Liv. His jaw looks to be dislocated, as it’s sitting almost an inch to the side, giving him a wondering look.

Liv backs up, drawing him purposefully closer to the water, prepared to run the other way around him as soon as he makes a move for her.

Liv never gets to execute that plan, though, because right then she catches a movement out the corner of her eye. It’s a reflection in the side window of Grandpa’s car, showing a figure coming at her fast from behind.

Liv realizes in a flash there’s no time to get out of the way, so instead she spins around, flinging her right hand out with a shrill cry. The back of her hand connects with the side of the face of the dead person about to jump her.

Except he isn’t dead.

And he wasn’t about to jump her.

Liv stares in amazement as the guy stumbles backwards, his hand going to his cheek, his eyes wide with surprise.

“Oh,” she says stupidly. “Sorry. I thought you—”

The guy looks past her and cries out: “Watch out!”

Liv jumps to the side just as a heavyset figure with long, curly hair covering most of the face grabs for her. Liv doesn’t have time to see whether it’s a guy or a girl, and she doesn’t care either way. She just runs to the trolley and begins wheeling the handle around. “Keep them away!” she shouts at the boy.

He dodges the fat zombie—who turns out to be a woman after all, at least judging from the bra visible through a hole in her shirt. “There’s no time!” he shouts back. “They’re already here!”

Liv darts a look around and feels her gut sink. The deads are coming from every angle. Dozens of them. The closest are seconds away.

The guy jumps over and grabs the trolley. “Get it in the water!”

“It’s not lowered!” Liv protests, but finds herself pushing along nonetheless.

The trolley rolls down the ramp and splashes into the water, the jet ski swaying dangerously from side to side before finding its balance. The trolley sinks and disappears from sight.

“Come on!” the guy tells her, grabbing her wrist and pulling her out of the way as an old guy in pajamas comes lumbering out from behind the car, drooling and revealing his pink, toothless gums.

Liv needs no further invitation; she runs down the ramp and jumps out into the water, landing next to the jet ski, the guy right behind her.

Liv has never been in water fully clothed, and she’s surprised to find how much heavier she feels. She needs to paddle her arms forcefully to keep from sinking. Luckily, though, the water is lukewarm from baking in the sun all day.

The boy swims in front of her, grabs onto the jet ski and tries to pull himself up, but the weight of him causes it to almost topple over.

“Wait!” Liv cries out, spitting water. “Stop that! We’ll have to board it from the stern, or it won’t work!”

The guy lets himself drop back into the water, spluttering: “What’s the stern?”

“The rear end! Here, follow my lead!”

She swims to the back of the jet ski. Again, it’s a lot harder than had she been wearing her swimsuit and a life vest, and it takes all her strength to hoist herself up. But she manages.

“Now you!” she calls out.

Just as she looks down at the guy, he disappears from sight, a look of surprise on his face. It looks like something dragged him down, and for a terrible moment, Liv is thrown back into one of her childhood nightmares where strange, giant undersea creatures would drag her down to the deepest part of the ocean and drown her.

Of course, this part of the port can only be a few yards deep, and two seconds later, the guy breaks the surface again, heaving and coughing.

“What are you doing?” she shouts at him.

“They’re … underwater!” he splutters, grabbing for the jet ski.

Liv looks back towards the ramp, and what she sees her makes her skin crawl. All the commotion in the water has pushed the jet ski a fair bit out from the dock, which is lucky. Because the zombies are marching right into the water, disappearing one after another below the surface.

“Oh, crap,” Liv mutters.

Then she decides there’s only one thing she can do: get the hell out of Dodge. She turns to the handlebars, plunges her hand into her pocket, takes out the key and inserts it into the ignition.

TWENTY-FOUR

Dan feels the hand grope his ankle again, trying to get a hold of his leg. He kicks frantically, splashing to get to the rear end of the jet ski.

He’s almost made it when the jet ski roars to life.

“Wha—” he begins asking, but is cut off when the hand suddenly grabs his shoe and pulls him down.

Dan swallows a mouthful of salty water and uses his free leg to kick at the hand. It’s hard to kick underwater, though, and he feels more hands grabbing for his other foot. Instead, he twists his ankle and slips out of the shoe, allowing him to reach the surface and breathe in air once again.

“… hand! Now! Come on! Grab it!”

Dan coughs and blinks and sees a hand waving wildly in front of his face. The girl is reaching down for him, and Dan uses what’s left of his strength to raise his arm and grab hold of the girl’s hand.

She immediately guns it, and the jet ski jumps forward, almost causing Dan to slip free, but the girl squeezes his hand tightly and drags him along.

As they begin moving through the water and picking up pace, Dan feels the hands grace his feet a few more times, before they’re gone. He twists his neck to look back and sees the zombies streaming into the water like lemmings, splashing and groaning before sinking.

“Hold on!” the girl calls, concentrating on steering the jet ski with one hand. “I’ll take us to a safe distance, then pull you up.”

Dan tries to tell her something—he’s not completely sure what, maybe “thank you”—but his head slips below water again, and he’s already out of breath, so he needs to save it.

His thoughts are reeling too, spinning around the fact that one of the deads just touched his ankle, even pulled off his shoe. What will he find when he checks his skin down there? He can’t feel anything, but that’s no assurance. There could very well be scratch marks from the zombie’s nails …

After half a minute or so of Dan holding on to the girl’s hand while trying to keep his head above water, the jet ski slows down and comes to a halt, bobbing in the low waves.

“Right, you need to move to the stern,” the girl says, nodding her head in the direction.

Dan just stares up at her, not letting go of her hand.

“You can do it,” the girl tells him. “You need to let go and swim.”

Dan is suddenly terrified of loosening his grip. As soon as he does, he might get pulled under. And he doesn’t have the strength left for fighting back. He doesn’t even have the strength for talking, so he just stares pleadingly up at the girl’s face outlined against the sky, hoping to communicate his fear without words.

“It’s okay,” the girl tells him, seemingly catching the message. “Here, I’ll help you.” She twists and leans back at an awkward angle, holding his hand as she guides him back.

Dan swims clumsily. It’s only a few feet, but the water feels like fast-drying cement around him, and he can barely move his body. Finally, he reaches the rear end and grabs hold of the bar he saw the girl use.

There’s no way he’ll be able to pull himself up like she did, though.

The girl slips free of his grasp, and for a moment Dan is afraid she’ll tell him to just climb up—she might as well ask him to climb a mountain wearing a fat-suit. But instead she swings her leg over, enabling her to turn around.

Dan reaches up his hand, but the girl doesn’t take it. Instead, she slips her hands down into the water and under his armpits. In doing so, she leans close enough that Dan’s face gets buried in her long, golden hair, and he picks up that sweet scent of lemons once more. He feels like closing his eyes and going to sleep into that smell.

Then she leans back and pulls him with her, raising him almost waist-high out of the water. “You’ll have to do to the rest!” she groans in a strained voice.

Dan climbs forward clumsily, heaving for breath and grabbing on to whatever he can find. He manages to crawl aboard the jet ski, ending up lying halfway over the girl. He would have felt awkward if he wasn’t so exhausted.

The girl slips out from below him, maneuvering back around with impressive agility while keeping her balance. She takes hold of the handlebars and looks back at Dan. “Sit upright. And hold onto me. Can you do that?”

“Yes,” Dan mutters, regurgitating and letting out a salty burp. He leans forward and places his arms around the waist of the girl, leaning his cheek against her back. His hands meet in front of her and he interlaces his fingers.

Then he closes his eyes.

The girl tells him something else, but Dan can’t pick it up; he’s drifting off. The last thing he perceives is the jet ski starting to move again.

TWENTY-FIVE

Liv keeps her right hand on the handlebar, throttling the gas and steering the jet ski across the mild waves, while her left is clasping the guy’s folded hands pressed against her stomach.

They’ve been riding for half an hour, maybe more, and Liv’s arms are reaching exhaustion.

The coastline is going by on their left, alternating between smaller harbors, beaches and cliffs. The beautiful landscape of southern Norway would normally have been quite the sight, yet Liv hardly notices.

Now and then she sees figures out there, on land. A few of them are waving at her—probably gesturing for her to stop and bring them along—but most of them aren’t waving, they’re simply staggering straight out into the water.

Liv shivers at the thought of how many of the infected are walking around the seabed below them. She makes sure to never slow down the jet ski.

The sun is sinking and the temperature is too. Her clothes have mostly dried in the lukewarm air, and so has her hair. The guy sleeping against her back helps to keep her warm. Still, she wishes she had brought the wetsuits, but those are forever lost back in Grandpa’s car. She didn’t give them a second thought during the panic of getting the jet ski in the water.

The thought of Grandpa makes Liv’s stomach tighten. She feels the tears press behind her eyes, but she blinks to keep them back.

Focus on Solveig. She’s all that matters now.

The guy mutters something, pulling her from her thoughts.

“Are you waking up?” she asks over her shoulder. “Good, because I can’t hold you much longer …”

The guy doesn’t answer. He’s still leaning against her. But now he’s tilting to one side.

“Hey! Sit upright, or you’ll fall!”

Liv eases off on the gas but can’t let go of the handle. She holds on tighter to his hands, but he’s still slipping, muttering in her ear: “Cut that out, Jennie …”

“No, you cut that out!” Liv tells him, wriggling from side to side, trying to shake him awake. The movement doesn’t wake him up, though, and now he’s leaning out over the water, threatening to fall in. Liv leans to the other side to counter the balance. “Hey, you! Wake up, damnit!”

Still no response from the guy. Liv’s grasp on him is slipping, so she pinches the back of his hand with her nails.

“Ouch!” he cries out, jerking his hand back and finally coming to. He sits up straight, and Liv looks back at him. He stares around in confusion, blinking and clearly trying hard to remember how he ended up on a jet ski in the middle of the ocean.

“You awake now?” Liv asks.

He looks at her, then nods. “Yes.” He looks down at his hand. “Did you … pinch me?”

“I had to. You would have fallen in.”

He looks down at the water, then seems to suddenly recall what is lurking down there, because his expression changes. “Holy hell … I almost drowned …”

“Yeah,” Liv nods. “You almost did.”

“They were down there,” he goes on. “In the water. I felt them grabbing my—” He cuts himself off with a gasp, then bends down to check his ankle. After a few seconds, he sits back upright with a sigh of relief. “I’m not hurt.”

“No, you would have been dead by now if you were.”

“It can take up to several hours.”

“They said on the radio it’s more a matter of minutes.”

“Well, I’ve seen it go both fast and slow. Depends on the wound, I guess.”

There’s a moment of quiet between them. The jet ski drifts softly along on the waves.

He looks at her in earnest. “Wait, so you saved me?”

Liv shrugs. “I guess so.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“Sorry for passing out like that, by the way. I haven’t slept well for days.”

“Me neither. Look, mind if we get going? I don’t like sitting still out here.”

“Sure.”

“You okay to drive?”

“I think I would prefer waiting a little, if that’s okay. I feel pretty groggy.”

“That’s fine. I can go another ten minutes. Just hold on to—”

He slips his arms back around her waist.

“—the handles on the sides,” Liv finishes.

“Oh, sorry,” the guy says, taking away his arms again.

“No, that’s okay. Whatever works for you.” Liv feels the heat rise to her cheeks and feels stupid. She keeps looking ahead, making sure the guy can’t see her face.

He wraps his arms around her again, and Liv speeds up.

“I had no idea they could live under water,” he says in her ear. “Were they, like, swimming?”

“I think they were walking on the bottom. I’m sure their lungs are filled with water. If that’s true, then they wouldn’t be able to float.”

“I guess that makes sense.” A moment passes, then he suddenly asks: “Wait, are we going south?”

“Yeah. I’m headed for Denmark. I’m sorry, but that’s not up for discussion. If you want off, I can pull over anytime.”

“No!” the guy says. “No, that’s perfect. I’m going to Denmark, too! I just thought you were lying when you said you were going there.”

Liv glances back at him. “You are going to Denmark too? Why?”

“That’s a really long story.”

“Is Jennie there?” The question slips out before she can think it through.

The guy doesn’t answer right away. “How do you know Jennie?”

“I don’t. You just mentioned that name in your sleep.”

“Oh. Right. I remember now. I had a dream.” His voice trails off.

“Is Jennie your girlfriend?”

The guy scoffs. “No way. She’s my sister. Was, I mean.” Those last three words are so full of pain, Liv regrets she asked.

“I’m sorry.”

The guy doesn’t answer.

“I’m going back to find my sister,” Liv tells him. “She’s still in Denmark. At least she was when I spoke to her yesterday. I haven’t been able to get hold of her since then. I hope … I hope she’s okay.”

“I’m sure she is,” the guy tells her.

Silence for a moment, except for the hum of the engine and the rhythmic sounds of the waves hitting the jet ski.

“Sorry, I didn’t catch your name?” the guy asks.

“I didn’t tell you. It’s Liv.”

“I’m Dan.”

“Right, you said that.”

“How long will it take us to get to Denmark?”

Liv glances down. “We’re going close to sixty-five miles per hour, so I guess that’s five or six hours.”

“That’s a long ride. You got enough fuel on this thing?”

“There’s an extra tank at the back. My Grandpa made sure of that. So we wouldn’t have to pull over and find more gas.”

“Great. So, we’ll reach Denmark at around, what, midnight?”

Liv glances down at the dashboard again. “It’s only six o’clock now. We should be there at eleven.”

“Where exactly is your sister?”

“We lived in Viborg.”

Liv can feel Dan jump a little. “No way, that’s where I lived! And that’s very close to where I’m going. Sounds like we might as well go together.”

“Sure.”

Another pause.

Dan breaks the silence once more: “You want to tell me how you ended up in Norway?”

“I was visiting Grandpa when this … thing happened.”

“I see.”

“How about you?”

“Well, we were trying to get away. Originally, we were headed for the Faroe Islands.”

“You and the woman back there?”

“No, I just met her this morning. I was travelling with a group of people from Denmark. We, uhm, split up.”

Liv glances back at him. “Creative differences?”

Dan snorts. “I suppose that’s not a bad way of putting it. I was the one who wanted to go back to Denmark, and the others wanted to press on.”

“So, who are you going back to find? I thought you said you lost your family?”

“I did.” He pauses. “I’m not going back because of them. Well, I guess I am, in a way.” He pauses again. “I’m going back to try and stop this thing.”

TWENTY-SIX

It takes him the better part of an hour explaining everything to Liv.

He begins with how he agreed to go along on Jennie’s paper route and ends with how he and Åsaa reached the harbor in Bergen.

He doesn’t skip any parts, but tells her everything. The death of Jennie, his mom and his dad. How they reached and later lost the safe house. How they got the helicopter and ended up in Norway and how he convinced William to go with him back to Denmark—and how that sealed William’s fate. He even tells her everything about the voodoo and why he thinks it holds the key to stopping the pandemic.

It’s a long story, and a personal one. He feels awkward telling it to a person he just met. But the way Liv simply listens, and maybe helped by the fact that he can’t see her face, makes it surprisingly easy to keep talking. It also has a therapeutic effect; it’s like his mind needed to put everything in order, to sum up this last, awful week of his life where everything has been turned upside down.

Once he finally stops talking, he feels both exhausted and relieved.

“Well, you were right,” Liv says. “That was a long story.”

“I know, sorry about that.”

“Can you drive a jet ski? My hands are freezing.”

Dan blinks. “Oh, sorry, I completely forgot we were supposed to switch.”

“Don’t sweat it. Can you drive it?”

“I never tried it before. But I guess I can give it a shot.”

Liv slows down the jet ski and leans sideways, showing him the dashboard. “Let me give you a crash course. It really is very simple. You just need to keep it at full throttle and then concentrate on steering. If you turn too sharply, you’ll throw us both off. But there’s a safety thing that probably won’t allow you to. See that thing there? That’s a digital compass. You just follow the coastline until it’s pointing west, then let me know and I’ll take over again.”

“All right. How do we switch?”

“It’s not going to be easy without one of us going into the water. But let’s try. Me and my sister did it once. Come forward as far as you can.”

Liv scooches up against the handlebars, and Dan follows her.

“Right, now lie down on your back.”

“What?”

“Just trust me.”

Dan leans back and lies down on the seat. He lifts his head to see Liv look at him over her shoulder. “Now, try to be still. Don’t lean to either side, or we’ll both go in.”

“Uhm, okay,” Dan says, feeling both awkward and exposed as he lies there with no idea of what’s going to happen or how this will help them switch seats.

Then Liv raises herself up and moves backwards, climbing over him. Her buttocks pass right in front of Dan’s face, and Dan is so unprepared for it, he has no idea how to react, so he simply shuts his eyes firmly.

He can sense Liv hover over him when she says: “Right, here’s the tricky part. Now you sit up.”

He opens his eyes and hoists himself up, feeling Liv grab his shoulders for support. They wobble for a second but manage to regain balance. Dan grabs the handlebars for support and Liv sinks down into the seat behind him.

“There,” she breathes. “We did it.”

Dan is too flustered to say anything, so he just clears his throat and focuses on the dashboard.

“You remember what I told you?”

“Yeah, sure. I just need to turn the handle like this, right?”

He twists the throttle carefully. The engine growls louder and the jet ski begins moving forward.

“You got it,” Liv says, moving in closer and putting her arms around his waist. “If I nod off, remember to tell me when the compass points west.”

“I will.”

He feels her leaning her cheek against his shoulder blades. She shivers gently all over.

“You freezing?” he asks.

He can feel her nod. “My hands are like ice.”

Sitting up front, he understands why; even though the wind screen blocks most of the oncoming air, it’s still a lot cooler than sitting behind the driver. Especially his hands are taking the worst of it.

“You can put them in my pockets, if you want.”

The suggestion slips out before he can think about it.

He can feel Liv sit a little more upright. “You sure?”

“Yeah, no problem.”

She hesitates, and Dan looks back. “What?”

“There’re no holes in them, are there?”

“Holes in what?”

“In your pockets.”

“No. Why would there be—” Dan cuts himself off, then looks back at Liv. “You thought I wanted you to …? Jesus, no!”

“Good,” she says earnestly. “Just making sure.”

“Well, don’t worry.”

Liv slips her hands into Dan’s pockets, curling them up into fists. Even through his pants, he can feel how cold they are against his thighs.

Dan can’t help but snort with laughter. The situation is simply too weird and awkward.

“What?” Liv asks in a defensive tone.

“It’s just … I can’t believe you … sorry, just forget about it.”

“Well, you’d be surprised,” she says. “Some guys never miss a chance.”

“I just told you I lost my entire family!” he blurts out, and he can’t help but laugh some more. “Trust me, the last thing that’s on my mind is getting a hand job.”

“Good,” Liv says, and even though her voice sounds tight, he can tell it’s because she’s close to laughing, too. “My hands are so cold right now, I’d probably turn it into an icicle if I touched it anyway.”

A moment of tense silence passes between them. Dan has to fight hard not to laugh. He feels almost giddy. And it makes him wonder if he’s lost his mind. That image of his penis all blue and frosty just keeps popping into his mind.

Then Liv begins sniggering, and it’s all the trigger Dan needs to burst into shrill laughter. She joins him, and they laugh like crazy for almost a minute. Dan’s eyes run over with tears, and he has to slow down the jet ski.

Finally, the laughter dies down.

“Oh, well,” he says, coughing. “Glad we got that out of the way.”

“Yeah, me too,” she tells him, still hiccupping with laughter.

As they ride on, Dan feels a strange sensation pulsating in his chest. It’s something he hasn’t felt for days. It almost reminds him of being carefree, how it’s like to have no worries bearing down on him, no giant loss weighing down his heart.

Even it’s just for a few moments.

TWENTY-SEVEN

Iver spends most of the day either in his room upstairs, trying to call his parents, or helping Agnete take care of Adam.

So far, he hasn’t been able to get in contact with either his mom or dad, and he suspects the worst. He did receive a short message from his mom yesterday, though, which gives him a slight hope they might be okay.

Tried calling you many times, no service. Heard about the ferry! Hope you’re okay, honey! Please, please call when you can. Dad and I are heading to Oulu in Finland. The military sent busses to evacuate the city. Running out of battery soon. Will call again ASAP. Love you so much. Mom.

The image of his parents being escorted to somewhere safe by the military is comforting, but still he bears no illusions about how rampant this thing is, and that even military protection might not be a guarantee for safety.

Another thing that worries him is RuPaul. Thinking of his best friend being home alone in the apartment makes his heart hurt. Luckily, though, the cat is used to Iver being away for a week or so. He has access to plenty of food and water, so in theory he could survive for months without anybody coming to check on him.

Except he would be pissed at Iver for a day or two—he always is when Iver comes home after a week of work.

But the thing that worries him the most is his own situation. Surprisingly, it’s not so much the dead people outside. Chris has already started organizing the reinforcement of the doors—meaning that he sent Leif down into the basement with a sledgehammer to break open the floor—and they still have plenty of food and water for at least some days.

No, the thing that really worries him is what’s happening between the living people inside the house.

All day he’s been hoping for a chance to speak with Charlotte, but she’s stayed in the guest bedroom downstairs and not answered when Iver knocked on the door. She didn’t come out for lunch or supper, either.

“She’s not hungry?” Linda asked as the rest of them gathered around the meal that Agnete prepared for them.

“She just needs a little more time, I’m sure,” Chris said and dug in with a healthy appetite.

“I hope she’s okay in there,” Agnete remarked.

“Sure, why wouldn’t she be?” Chris said, and then he changed the subject.

Iver heard music playing from inside Charlotte’s room when walking by earlier, which means she’s at least still alive in there.

Charlotte finally comes out an hour after supper. She goes straight to the kitchen and opens the fridge.

Iver is by chance walking through the kitchen just at that moment. “Hey. You all right?”

“I’m fine,” Charlotte says, not turning around.

“You want to talk?”

“No.”

She walks right past him, carrying some leftovers from supper.

“Hey, wait up. There’s something I need to talk with you about.”

Charlotte doesn’t answer or even stop.

Iver catches up with her and stops her right in front of the guest room by grabbing her arm.

“Let go of me,” she sneers.

“Listen,” he says in a low voice, glancing towards the living room. He can hear the television going in there. “We need to talk. I don’t like her any more than you. And I think we might be in trouble.”

Charlotte looks at him briefly, then shrugs. “What do you want me to do about it?”

“I think she’s playing him somehow.”

Charlotte gives him an unpretty smile. “Of course she’s playing him. She runs the show now.”

“You know Chris a lot better than me. Why is he letting himself be manipulated like this?”

Charlotte scoffs. “Isn’t that pretty obvious?”

“Okay, but … isn’t there some way we can talk to him? Make him see what she’s doing?”

Charlotte takes a deep breath. “I don’t expect you to understand, Iver. But Chris is your typical guy. As strong as he is, she’s got the magic wand that’ll make him do whatever she wants. Trust me. If she hasn’t fucked him already, she will soon.”

With those words, Charlotte steps into the room and shuts the door before Iver can ask anything else.

He just stands there for a couple of minutes, chewing his lip. Fake laughter from the living room. They’re watching a sitcom in there.

Iver becomes aware of the sound of banging from the basement. It’s a low, rhythmical sound, and it’s been going on all day. He thought Leif was done for the day, but apparently, he’s working late.

Iver goes and looks into the living room. The television is showing an episode of Friends. It’s the one where Rachel quits. Iver loves that show, and for a moment, he gets lost in the story.

Then he notices only one person sitting there. And it’s Leif.

“Where are the others?” Iver asks, stepping closer.

Leif turns his head. “Oh, sorry, is it too loud? I can turn it down.”

“No, it’s fine. You seen the others?”

“Agnete said goodnight half an hour ago and went upstairs.”

“What about Chris and Linda?”

Leif shrugs. “Linda went out to the garage for a cigarette. Chris, I don’t know.”

“He must be down in the basement,” Iver mutters.

Leif looks at him. “Why you figure that?”

“I heard someone working down there just now. I thought it was you.”

Leif grins and holds up his hands, showing his palms sporting a couple of large, red blisters. “Nah, I’m done for the day.”

“Jeez,” Iver says. “Shouldn’t you put bandages on those?”

He shakes his big head. “Agnete already gave me some ointment. Nice lady, that Agnete. She reminds me of my own mother. She died just last year. Cancer.”

“I’m sorry,” Iver says.

“Well, I’m not,” Leif says, nodding towards the boarded-up window. “I’m actually thankful that she doesn’t get to witness this.”

“Yeah, I get that,” Iver says. “You’ve got any other family left?”

“Only Linda.”

Iver raises his eyebrows. “You guys are related?”

Leif nods. “She’s my niece.” His smile falters. “She came to me all broken and crying. Poor girl. She lost everyone, you know. Her husband. Her stepdaughter.”

“I’m sorry for her,” Iver says.

“Yeah, me too. But she’s a fighter. She was determined to survive. It was her plan coming here, you know. I hadn’t given it a thought, going away on my boat. This thing wasn’t even looking that bad when she came to me; it’s like she knew it was going to really hit the fan. She’s clever, my Linda is.”

Iver nods. “I can tell. Well, I guess I’ll go to bed too.”

“Sounds like a good idea,” Leif says, yawning. “I’ll turn this off in a minute, get some shut eye myself. Got another hard day tomorrow.”

“You should probably let someone else do the rest of the floor down there.”

“Oh, the floor is already done. No more hammering needed.”

“Well, that’s good.”

Iver notices the blanket and realizes that Leif will be sleeping on the couch. On the other couch is another pillow and blanket, which must be meant for Linda.

The thought makes Iver move restlessly on the spot. Something is nagging him, but he can’t quite place what it is.

“Well, goodnight,” he tells Leif and leaves the living room. Leif doesn’t answer—he’s already lost in Friends again.

Walking towards the stairs, Iver notices the banging from the basement again. And suddenly he realizes what’s gnawing at him: Leif just told him he already finished breaking up the concrete floor down there.

Iver crouches down in the middle of the kitchen and puts his ear closer to the floor. The sound is a little louder now. And faster.

What’s he doing down there?

Iver decides to check it out. He goes through the hallway to the back of the house, where Agnete has a laundry room which is also where the stairs for the basement are.

He opens the door and makes it three steps into the room before he sees Chris. He’s halfway hidden behind a rack of clothes hanging to dry.

Chris is facing the washing machine. Iver can only see the upper part of his body and the lower part of his legs, which—to Iver’s immense surprise—are bare, his jeans forming a pile around his ankles. Another pair of legs—slimmer and hairless and still wearing socks—are wrapped around Chris’s waist, which goes back and forth, producing a low banging with every thrust as the washer hits the wall.

Iver is too dumbstruck to do anything except stare.

Chris gives off a hoarse moan, and someone else moans too. Iver manages to take a stumbling step backwards, hoping to leave the room without being seen. But he walks right into the door, making a noise.

Chris turns his head, looks at him and stops thrusting. His face is all red and sweaty, his eyes dreamy. “What are you looking at, you fucking faggot?” he groans in an out-of-breath voice.

Iver is too stunned to answer. He just gapes and shakes his head. Then Linda’s head comes into view as she leans forward.

She looks at Iver briefly, then leans back again and sighs: “Didn’t you lock the fucking door?”

“I thought I did,” Chris tells her.

“Well, get him the hell out of here.”

“Go!” Chris roars.

Iver scrambles out of the room and slams the door. He runs upstairs and goes to his room. He sits down on the bed, then gets back up. Sits down again, then gets up a second time and begins pacing the room.

So many feelings are hurricaning around inside him, he can barely identify them. Shame, disgust, fear and shock.

When he’s finally able to sit back down and stay seated, one clear thought shoots through his head: Well, I guess Charlotte was right …

TWENTY-EIGHT

The sun has crept to the horizon and just dipped below it.

They’ve been taking turns driving the jet ski, switching places every half hour or so. Though the warmth of the day has slipped away, Dan’s clothes have dried up by now, and he isn’t freezing—except for his hands.

They reached Danish shores an hour ago and have been going inland since then. In most places, the channel is narrow enough that Dan can see land on both sides. Now and then a lonely house or perhaps a tiny village glides by. He hasn’t seen any people yet—living or dead—which he takes to be a good sign.

“I was sure it would be swarming with them here,” Liv says in his ear, like she read his thoughts. “I mean, we’re basically headed right for ground zero.”

“I know,” Dan mutters. “I thought so too. But come to think of it, wouldn’t it make more sense for them to leave? Like, would they really just hang around when everyone living had either fled or become zombies?”

Liv thinks for a moment. “No, I guess you’re right. They seem to be always on the move towards the nearest prey.”

“Exactly.”

A moment of silence.

“We’re almost there,” Liv says, pointing ahead. “In a couple of minutes, there’ll be some sandy banks coming up on our right. I think that’s a good place to land.”

“Right. How far to Viborg from there?”

“Twenty miles or so. Maybe a little less.”

“Really?” Dan asks, glancing back. “I thought it was much farther.”

“Trust me, I’ve driven this way several times when I went jet skiing with my sister. I know this bay and the area around it.”

Dan can’t believe his luck in not only finding a ride to Denmark, but also one who knows how to get to where he’s going and knows the way so well that he can keep his cell phone turned off, saving those last precious percentages on the battery for calling Dennis once he gets to Holger’s house.

Which reminds him.

“So, once we get to shore,” he says, looking straight ahead, “are we going to split up?”

A few seconds before Liv replies: “Depends on exactly where you’re headed, I guess.”

“The house is a few miles outside of Viborg. It’s on Mill Road, if that tells you anything?”

“The one north of town?”

“I think so, yeah.”

“That’s nowhere near where I’m going.”

Dan feels an unexpected stab of regret. “Oh. Okay.” He realizes how much he was hoping for Liv’s company. Well, anybody’s company would have done, really. The thought of going that last distance alone is what scares him.

It’s like in The Lord of The Rings, he hears a thought tell him. It sounds eerily like William. At the very end, Frodo had to do the most difficult part on his own.

“But we can go to Viborg together,” Liv says. “If we can find a car, I’ll drop you off on Mill Road and go on to find Solveig.”

“That would be great,” Dan says. Then it hits him. “You know how to drive a car?”

“Sure. Don’t you?”

“I’m not old enough to have a driver’s license.”

Liv scoffs. “Me neither. Doesn’t mean I don’t know how to drive a car. So, you’re telling me you never even tried it?”

“Well, I tried it once, earlier today. But it was only a few minutes.”

“Why haven’t you tried it before?”

Dan shrugs. “I don’t know, I’m just … not into that kind of stuff.”

“Not into driving? I thought all guys loved anything with a motor.”

“Not me.”

“Then what are you into?”

Heat begins rising to his cheeks, as Dan suddenly feels like he’s under investigation and needs to defend himself. “I don’t know. Reading and stuff.”

“Like, books?”

“What’s wrong with books?”

“Nothing,” Liv says, and Dan can hear she’s smiling. “You’re not really a tough guy, are you?”

“I never said I was.”

“I just figured you had to be, since you managed to survive this far.”

“Well, I guess that counts for something, right?”

“Meh, could have been luck.” She’s obviously teasing him now.

Dan shakes his head. “It’s a shame you didn’t get to meet William. He would have loved you.”

“It’s here!” Liv says, leaning closer. “Pull over.”

Dan turns in the direction she’s pointing and slows down the jet ski as they approach the banks.

“Hey, there’s a car!” Dan exclaims, as a dark blue van appears from behind a row of trees lining the banks. “Maybe if the keys are in it, we can use that.”

A moment passes before Liv answers. “Oh, no,” she whispers.

“What?” Dan says in alarm, scanning the banks, ready to turn the jet ski away and gun it. “You see something?”

“That’s … that’s my dad’s van.”

“Oh,” Dan says.

Liv already told him how both her parents died when a dead person barged into their living room, while her sister narrowly escaped by climbing out the window. Afterwards, her sister called Liv to break the bad news over the phone. That was the last time they spoke.

“I’m sorry you have to see his van,” Dan says. “I’m sure it’s not nice being reminded of what happened to—”

“You don’t get it,” Liv cuts him off, her voice thin. “My dad didn’t drive it here …”

“No, of course. Then maybe someone stole it?”

“Why would they come to this exact spot? This is where we always used to go.”

Dan stops the jet ski completely, letting in bob gently in the low waves twenty feet from shore. “So you think your sister drove it here?” he asks, turning to look at her.

“I’m afraid so,” Liv says, biting her lip.

“Why would she do that?”

“To get away, of course. We only use the van when we need to transport the jet ski.”

“Oh,” Dan says again, finally catching on. “So she left the country. I guess that’s a good thing. It means she’s alive.”

“It also means I won’t be able to find her. Come on. Ride it up all the way. Careful, it’ll stop once you hit the bottom.”

Dan does as he’s instructed. The jet ski meets the sand, stops abruptly and tilts gently to the side, allowing them to get off and walk up onto land while only getting their feet wet.

Dan is only wearing one shoe and makes a mental note to find a new pair as soon as possible.

Liv heads straight for the van. It’s parked facing the water, so it’s not until now Dan can see the rear, and he realizes the back doors are open.

“Be careful, okay?” he calls after her.

“I will,” she calls back.

Dan turns slowly and checks the surroundings in the dying light of the day—a habit he’s developed over the past few days without really thinking about it.

Then Liv screams.

Dan spins around, expecting the worst. But she’s just standing there, staring into the back of the van, both hands clasped over her mouth.

“What is it?” Dan shouts, moving closer. He can’t hear anything from inside the van, which means it’s probably not a zombie.

He stops next to Liv, who still hasn’t moved, and looks inside.

The back of the van is empty except for a person lying on her side, eyes closed as though sleeping. She looks exactly like Liv with the only difference being her clothes—she’s wearing what Dan takes to be a wetsuit.

She’s lying in a pool of dark, dried-up blood.

TWENTY-NINE

The shock of seeing Solveig dead is a lot worse than seeing Grandpa—despite the fact that Solveig really is dead and hasn’t turned into a flesh-eating monster.

The way she just lies there, looking like she’s sleeping, waiting for someone to come wake her up, makes a stream of childhood memories go flying by in a flash—her and Solveig waking up together on a sunny Saturday morning, the two of them on the beach, Solveig smashing Liv’s sandcastle, that day they both learned to ride a bike, hi-fiving each other—and it’s all too much for Liv, she can’t take it in, not all at once.

She turns away and collapses to the ground, feeling Dan rush in from the side to catch her awkwardly. He helps her down to the ground gently, and Liv curls up and begins crying.

She cries for the longest time.

Liv usually never cries, and she hates to do so in front of Dan, whom she hardly knows. But she has no real say in the matter; she can either cry or the pain will rip her right open.

Finally, the worst seems to pass—at least for now—and she’s able to sit up.

Dan is standing guard by the van.

“What … what happened to her?” Liv hears herself croak as she wipes her wet cheeks.

Dan looks at her, and his eyes are full of empathy. It looks like he considers for a moment lying to spare her the truth, but then he just tells it plainly: “Someone killed her with a knife. I think they did it to get the jet ski.”

Liv nods and sniffles. “That would make sense. Solveig would never give it up voluntarily.”

“I’m very sorry,” Dan says. “I know how you feel. I know nothing I can say will make it easier.”

Liv gets to her feet. It feels like climbing a mountain. She manages to do it, though, and she brushes the dirt from her pants. Then she looks in at Solveig, and it’s almost enough to get the tears flowing again. She breathes deeply to keep them in.

Dan says nothing; he just stands there, giving her time to do or say whatever she feels like.

“You know,” Liv murmurs. “That thing they say … about twins having this special connection?”

Dan looks at her. “Uh-huh?”

Liv shakes her head. “It’s bullshit … I didn’t feel anything when she died … I had no idea …”

Dan nods and looks away.

They just stand there for a few minutes more.

“Do you want to bury her?” Dan asks softly.

Liv hasn’t even considered it. But now that she does, the answer seems obvious. She looks out over the bay. The sun has gone down now, and the summer night is almost dark, its deep purple color is reflected on the water. It looks immensely peaceful. Bottomless.

“She loved the water,” Liv says. “We both did. I think if she could choose, she’d prefer going there, not in the ground.”

“All right.” He hesitates. “You want me to do it?”

“No,” Liv says firmly. “I’ll do it.”

She steps up into the van. Bending over Solveig, her hand stops in midair. Instead of grabbing her sister and hoisting her up, Liv finds herself caressing her hair. It’s soft and dry.

Liv’s eyes fill with tears. “Damnit,” she mutters, turning away, not wanting to show Dan she’s crying again, but her voice betrays her as she croaks: “You do it.”

She leaves the van and stands there, holding herself and watches as Dan lifts up Solveig and carries her from the van as gently as possible. He puts her down by the shore, steps out into the water and drags her along. As he shoves her gently out into the stream, Solveig turns facedown, and her hair spreads out like a giant sunflower.

Then, just as the stream begins moving her out towards open sea, she slips below the surface and she’s gone.

Liv keeps staring at the place the water swallowed her up, fresh warm tears running down her face.

Dan comes over. He stands beside her, not looking at her. “Anything else you want to say?” he suggests in a low voice.

“I’m starving,” Liv says. “I haven’t eaten since breakfast.”

Dan looks at her with mild surprise. “Me neither. There’s food in the van. She brought a whole bag of it.”

Liv just nods. The thought of eating the food Solveig had planned for the trip is strange. Like her sister will be doing her one last act of kindness.

“Well, that’s it,” Liv says, turning to face Dan with a sudden determination. “I’m the only one left now. Just like you.”

The smile on Dan’s face mirrors the underlying pain Liv is feeling herself. “I guess we’ll get used to it.”

“Probably.”

“So, where do you want to go?”

Liv breathes deeply. “I have nowhere to go. Not anymore.”

Dan says nothing, but Liv can sense him eyeing her.

She looks at him and asks: “You want me to come with you?”

He shrugs, pretending not to care as much as he obviously does. “If you want. The only thing is, I promised the guy to come alone, so he can’t know you’re there. If you choose to come, that is.”

Liv nods slowly. “You really think you’re going to stop this thing?” The question comes out a lot harsher than she intended.

Dan doesn’t seem to mind, though. “I’m going to try anyway,” he says earnestly.

“Well, I guess I have nothing better to do,” she says, shrugging. “Let’s go save the world then.”

THIRTY

Since the episode in the laundry room, Iver has been lying on the bed in the upstairs room, brooding.

The shock of seeing Linda and Chris go at it has worn off, and he’s made an effort to shake most of the accompanying uncomfortableness too. Yet what remains in his stomach is the same feeling from earlier, that gnawing of something he can’t place, except now it’s even stronger.

As he’s lying there in the darkness, feeling his pulse throb behind his eyes and listening to the faint choir of moans coming from outside, sleep seems very far away.

Finally, as the clock passes 11:00, he decides to get up and do something. He’s not sure what, but simply lying around worrying about something he can’t place is maddening.

So, he gets dressed and slips out of the room. He checks on Adam. The toddler is sleeping soundly in his crib, hugging a teddy bear.

Iver opens Agnete’s door as well, peering in and seeing the old lady sleeping under the blanket.

At least they’re okay, he thinks, slipping downstairs.

Not that he suspected anything would be wrong with either Adam or Agnete. He’s just not sure what is wrong—except that something is; he grows more and more certain with every minute.

He stops in the empty, dark kitchen and listens. From the living room he can hear Leif snoring. He steps closer and peers in there. Linda’s couch is empty. The blanket has been moved aside, which Iver takes to mean she was lying there earlier.

Was she waiting for Leif to fall asleep? And once he did, did she get up? Get up to do what? Maybe she’s just out for another cigarette.

Or maybe she and Chris are going at it again.

Or maybe Linda is up to something else, something much more sinister.

Iver turns towards the hallway leading to the laundry room. He feels a sudden prickle of goose bumps down the back of his neck.

Where is Chris, anyway?

He was supposed to take the first shift, staying awake and keeping guard in the kitchen. But he’s nowhere to be seen.

Iver notices the fridge door being ajar and he goes to close it, when he sees the empty shelves inside.

He frowns. Did someone go on an eating spree? No, the fridge had been packed full of food; no one could eat all that in one go.

But then where has it gone?

Iver is getting really nervous now. He goes to the hallway, stepping lightly, holding his breath as he approaches the door to the laundry room. He stops in front of it and listens. Nothing.

Then there’s a noise from the opposite door, the one leading to the garage. Iver stares at it. It’s standing ajar, and a faint glow is coming out from there.

He reaches out a hand and opens the door just enough for him to look out into the garage.

Leif’s car is parked there, the engine off but the headlights on, pointing at the closed garage door. On the other side, Iver can hear the deads scratching away eagerly.

Linda is standing by the open passenger door, smoking a cigarette. She’s wearing a sweater which looks like it belongs to Agnete.

Chris is busy loading stuff into the backseat. He’s wearing his black jacket and boots.

The trunk of the car is open, and from where Iver is standing, he can see plastic bags full of stuff—the stuff from the fridge. Both weapons are also there, along with the boxes of ammo, piles of clothes, spare shoes and other stuff.

“You done soon?” Linda asks in a low voice, dropping the cigarette and stepping on it. “I thought you said we needed to move fast.”

“I did,” Chris says, going to the shelves and helping himself to different tools. “I just need a few more things, and we’re out of here.”

As the full picture is finally revealed to Iver, he finds himself stepping into the garage without really thinking and without making any attempt to hide himself; he’s simply too outraged.

“Where are you going?” he asks.

Linda jumps and Chris spins around, dropping a hammer, which lands with an awfully loud clatter on the concrete floor.

“Holy shit, you gave me a scare!” Chris says.

“What the fuck is he doing here?” Linda hisses at Chris. “That’s the second goddamn time he walks in on us …”

“Where are you going?” Iver asks again. His heart is pounding hard enough to make his vision go fluttery. “Are you sneaking off in the middle of the night? With all the food and all the weapons? Are you really doing that?”

He looks from Linda to Chris. Linda just stands there, staring back at him, licking her teeth with her pink tongue.

Chris throws out his hand—the one not holding any tools—and tries for a casual smile. “It’s not what it looks like.”

“Really? Because it sure looks like you’re about to fuck us all over.” Iver is surprised to hear his own voice jitter from rage. He hardly ever swears, but he’s so angry, he can’t help himself. “How did you get Leif’s car in here? Does he even know?”

“Could you keep your damn voice down?” Chris asks. “We don’t need to wake up everybody else …”

“No, that would ruin your plan, wouldn’t it?” Iver says, still talking loud enough that he hopes someone will hear him. The living room is a little too far away for Leif to wake up, but maybe Charlotte can hear him, as her room is closer.

“Could you deal with him?” Linda asks Chris.

Chris doesn’t take his eyes off of Iver. “Listen, dude, let me explain this to you, all right? It’ll make sense.” As he talks, he steps closer to the car.

Iver picks up on what Chris is doing and acts before he has even time to think. Iver steps to the trunk of the car—he’s closer than Chris, so he has time to yank up the rifle and point it at Chris.

Chris—who was obviously planning on doing the exact same thing—stops dead in his track and holds up his hands again. “Woah, dude! What are you doing?”

“What are you doing?” Linda exclaims at Chris. “Just take it from him! It’s not loaded.”

“It is,” Chris says. “I made sure.”

“What? Why would you drive around with a loaded rifle?”

“Because we might be needing it fast. I didn’t want to waste time fiddling with the bullets while a fucking dead guy was gnawing away at me.”

Linda sighs. “You idiot!”

Chris darts her a look. “What did you call me?”

“You can leave if you want to,” Iver says, addressing both of them. “Take your sick love affair as far away from here as you please. But you’re not taking all the food with you. Get that out of the trunk.” He waves the rifle at Chris, but Chris doesn’t move.

“Okay, listen. You caught us. All right? No need to do anything crazy now. Let’s just talk.”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” Iver says, straining to keep the rifle steady. He’s shaking all over. His finger is curled around the trigger. Just seconds earlier, he was furious enough to shoot the rifle if he needed to. Now, actually holding it, he feels a lot less certain he can do it.

“I want to explain what we’re doing here,” Chris goes on, “and why you should join us.”

“What?” Linda exclaims. “No way we’re bringing that faggot.”

Iver feels a sudden urge to swing the rifle over and point it at Linda instead. But that would be a mistake. First of all because Linda is shielded by the open car door. And secondly, Chris is only four or five steps away and might be tempted to close the distance and wrestle the rifle from Iver if he sees the chance.

“Just take the fucking rifle from him already,” Linda goes on. “He’s not going to use it. Look at him. He’s pretty much pissing himself.”

“Could you shut the fuck up for a moment?” Chris says through gritted teeth.

Linda sends him a mean look, but doesn’t say anything.

Chris looks at Iver. “Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to leave. We get inside that car, all three of us, we open the garage door, and we plow through those dead fucks outside. Okay?”

“And what then?” Iver asks, feeling sweat run down his back. He realizes he’s doing the same thing as Chris now: stalling him. He’s still hoping that Charlotte or anyone else will come. “We’re on an island, you know. You can’t drive off to anywhere else.”

“I contacted a guy on the east coast over the radio. He has a boat. He’ll take us along in exchange for a weapon. That’s why we need to bring both.” Chris nods down at the rifle in Iver’s hands.

“And where are you going to sail to? There are dead people all over Europe.”

“We’re going to St. Petersburg.”

Iver frowns. “To Russia?”

Chris nods. “I was stationed there. I know some guys, some real tough guys. They have military complexes over there like you wouldn’t believe. Bunkers that are meant to sustain decades of nuclear war.”

“Why are you telling him all this?” Linda cries out. “I told you already, he’s not coming!”

Chris pretends not to listen. “If you keep your cool, you can come with us. You don’t have to go all the way to St. Petersburg if you don’t want to. But you need to get off this island. You know that, right?” Chris raises his eyebrows. “It’s a death trap here. I was hoping the dead couldn’t cross water, but they can. Meaning that more and more of them will be coming, until this whole place is swarming and you can’t step a foot outside. What will you do then, once your supplies of food run out? Grow a wheat field in the living room?” He shakes his head. “We need to scram while we can.”

Iver realizes the rifle has dropped a few inches, and he lifts it back up. “Then what about the others?”

“We can’t bring the whole island with us.”

“No, but I’m talking about Agnete and Charlotte and Leif. And Adam.” Those last two words make his voice tremble. “Are you just going to leave them to die?”

Chris shakes his head slowly. “I’m sorry. I really am. But they’re dead regardless.”

“Not if they get to come!”

“There’s no room. Look at the car—it’s already packed full. Besides, an old lady, a scaredy-cat, and that big dumb guy in there … they’re all just liabilities.” Chris takes a step closer and lowers his voice. “Come with us, Iver. Seriously.”

It’s the first time Iver hears Chris use his name. It was probably intended to instill trust, but Iver feels even more repelled. He steps back. “I’m not leaving them.”

“Listen, this is no longer about doing the right thing. It’s too late for playing the hero. That’s for when the world can still be saved.”

“I’m not trying to play the hero. I just can’t leave them to die.”

“Then you’ll die too. And for what? You’ll just be another corpse. Another fucking zombie the rest of us will have to deal with. You’ll be part of the problem, man. Don’t do it.”

Iver breathes shakily a few times. Then he looks over at Linda, who’s been following the conversation keenly. “What about you? You okay with leaving your uncle like this? Without a word?”

She doesn’t answer, just keeps boring into him with those piercing blue eyes.

“Jesus,” Iver says. “You two really deserve each other.”

“Okay, listen,” Chris says. “You can take the baby with you. If that’ll ease your conscience.”

“What?” Linda asks. “Are you insane?”

“I’m negotiating,” Chris says, staring at Iver. “Go upstairs and get him now. We’ll make the car ready.”

Iver considers for a moment. He really does. He hates himself for it. He knows he can’t trust Chris. But he also knows he’s most likely right about the outlook of staying on the island.

Still, the thought of leaving the three others behind is too much for him. Besides …

“You’ll just drive off while I’m upstairs,” Iver says, his voice sounding weak now.

“We’re not leaving without that rifle,” Chris says. “It’s our ticket out of here.”

Iver shakes his head. “I’m not doing it.”

Chris’s expression changes slightly. It grows darker. “Then you understand you leave me no choice, right? If we can’t make a deal, I’ll just have to take the rifle from you.” He steps closer.

“Stay back!” Iver says, his voice breaking. His back hits the wall next to the door.

Chris doesn’t stay back. In fact, he’s about to lunge at Iver.

Then a big, broad figure steps in through the doorway. “What’s going on here?” Leif asks in a groggy voice, peering around at them with narrow eyes. “What’s all the commotion about? Hey, how did you get my car in here?” Leif sees the rifle in Iver’s hands. “And what the heck are you doing, Iver?”

Chris hesitates.

So does Iver.

None of them knows what to do or say.

Linda does. “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she says and steps over to the wall and presses a button.

A metallic rattling as the garage door begins lifting.

“No, no!” Chris cries out. “What the hell are you doing?”

“You guys figure things out,” Linda says as she slips in behind the wheel. “I’m done talking.”

She slams the door and the engine roars to life. The garage door is halfway open by now, revealing a forest of legs, the most eager of the zombies already crouching down to duck under it.

Linda revs up the engine and guns it, the car lurching forward, tires screeching as she blasts into the rows of undeads, plowing through them, dead bodies flying off to the sides, the roof of the car scraping against the garage door.

“Fucking bitch!” Chris bellows after the car as it leaves a trail of busted-up zombies behind. The ones not getting hit are entering the garage, reaching out eagerly for the three of them all just standing there.

Iver can’t move. He’s stunned with horror. All he can do is stare as death comes waddling right at him …

THIRTY-ONE

Dennis watches the sun go down, fondles the gris-gris and tries to imagine he’s back home and that everything is normal.

Sitting in the upstairs room of Holger’s house, he can almost fool himself. There are no dead people visible from up here. No one pointing guns at each other.

Yet he can hardly recall what “normal” feels like. For the past week, nothing about the world has been normal. And Dennis doubts it will ever be so again. Everything has been tainted by something new and crazy.

Like the gris-gris. Just touching it reminds him of how he risked his life getting it back.

Or this very room he’s sitting in. It was the room that he and Mom carried Holger’s body to, so that Dennis could push him out of the window.

He glances down at the windowsill. Next to the gun he sees the brownish stain. Holger’s blood.

He looks back out and sees Silas and Jonas’s truck. It’s still there, a few miles up road, lying on its roof, abandoned. He can just make it out in the twilight.

Dennis takes a deep breath and looks back out at the horizon, to the place where the sun went down. It’s weird how the sun is still going about its business, rising and setting exactly like it’s always done. Come to think of it, it’s probably the only thing still acting normal, and that’s probably why Dennis has been sitting here for the past hour, just watching the sun dip slowly in the sky. He feels comforted just looking at it.

Footsteps from the stairs. The door creaks open behind him.

“Dennis?”

He turns his head to look at Mom standing in the doorway. She’s wearing her nightgown, her hair pulled up in a knot.

“It’s late. We should go to bed.”

“I know, Mom. I just … want to sit here a little longer. Is that okay?”

He asks the question without really thinking about it; it’s old habit, really, asking Mom permission for even the smallest things.

Yet something in Dennis’s voice reveals that he isn’t really asking. Mom can hear it too; Dennis can tell from her face.

“What are you doing up here, anyway?” she asks.

“I’m just …” Dennis shrugs, then realizes Mom is looking at the gris-gris. “Praying,” he finishes.

Mom raises her eyebrows. “Oh. When did you begin doing that?”

“When everything changed, I guess.”

Mom nods slowly. “Good. I’m glad.” She breathes deeply. “Well, try not to stay up too late. We’ve got work to do tomorrow. I need you well rested.”

“Sure, Mom,” Dennis says, thinking to himself that Mom has no idea what kind of work they might be doing tomorrow. “I’ll come down as soon as I’m done praying.”

This time, when he uses the word, it sounds a lot more like a lie. Like he’s telling Mom something she wants to hear to avoid telling the truth.

Dennis has never taken to Mom’s beliefs. It’s obviously very important to Mom, but for some reason she has never tried to push it on Dennis. Dennis always assumed she wanted him to find the interest himself when he was ready, but at the same time, he often gets the feeling that Mom is somehow private about it. Not that she’s keeping anything secret from him or hiding the rituals or prayers, but there’s a subtle sense of her wanting not to share it with him, almost like she’s protecting him from something. Like it’s a bad habit she doesn’t want him to catch.

“Mom?” Dennis says, just as she’s about to close the door.

She looks in at him. “Yes, Dennis?”

“You don’t need to look out for me anymore. I can take care of myself now. Actually, I can take care of both of us.”

Mom eyes him for a moment, then glances at the gun in the window, then back at Dennis. “Okay,” she simply says. There’s no good or bad in her tone. No concern and no encouragement.

Then she closes the door and leaves Dennis to himself.

Dennis looks down at his bag. The satellite phone is in there. He’s kept it with him all day, waiting for it to ring. Mom probably hasn’t noticed it missing from the dock down in the bunker.

It hasn’t rung, though.

And now it’s almost midnight.

The guy—Dan—told Dennis they would be here today. Maybe he lied. Maybe it was all one big prank.

But Dennis doesn’t think so. Dan sounded very honest.

“You need to trust me,” he said, and something in his voice made Dennis believe him.

But maybe he was wrong. Maybe the guy was a very good actor. Dennis is no stranger to being pranked and bullied. He’s well aware of how mean people can be.

Dennis glances at his watch. It’s eleven forty-five now. Only fifteen minutes left of the day. Fifteen minutes for the guy to keep his promise.

And then he sees it. A few miles up road, close to where the truck is. Another car comes this way.

It could be anybody, of course, but it’s the first car Dennis has seen all night.

It stops next to the flipped-over truck. Dennis squints. He can see someone getting out. The person just stands there, next to the car.

Then there’s a ringing from the bag.

Dennis jumps and grabs for it, fumbling out the satellite phone. He stares at the display, recognizing the number from yesterday.

He answers the call, his heart in his throat, barely able to gulp out: “’ello?”

“Dennis?”

Dan’s voice.

Dennis nods. “Yes. It’s me.”

“Good. I’m glad you’re still up. I’m almost at Holger’s place now.”

I know, Dennis thinks. I can see you.

But for some reason he doesn’t want Dan to know. “All right,” he says in a neutral tone.

“We still have an agreement?” Dan asks. “I’ll come unarmed, and you’ll let me in through the underground entrance?”

“Sure,” Dennis says.

“And what about your mom?”

“What about her?”

“Have you told her I’m coming?”

Dennis is about to answer, when the door on the passenger side of the car suddenly opens, and a person steps out. It’s a girl, blonde hair and blue shirt. Dennis just stares at her for several seconds.

“Dennis? You still there?”

Dennis blinks. Then nods. Then he says: “Yes.”

“Have you told your mom about me?”

“No.”

“Good. So everything is ready for me to come?”

“I guess so.”

“Right. I’ll be there in five minutes.”

“Okay. Oh, one last thing.”

“Uh-huh?”

“You’re coming alone, right?” Dennis stares intently at the girl as he asks the questions. “It’ll just be you? No one else?”

Dan hesitates for half a second. Dennis can see him looking over at the girl. Then he says: “Sure. It’s just me.”

Dennis feels his stomach drop. He manages to squeeze out an “Okay.”

“I’ll see you in a bit, Dennis.”

Dan disconnects.

Dennis doesn’t lower the phone. He just stares at the girl and the guy, talking briefly before getting back inside the car.

Who else is in that car? How many people is Dan bringing? Why was he lying? What is his plan?

That last question seems like the easiest to answer.

Dan wants the safe house back. That’s been his plan all along. All of that stuff with curing the deads—that must have been just talk.

As the car gets moving, Dennis finally puts down the phone.

Instead, he picks up the gun. He turns it over slowly in his hands, looking at it, admiring the small details.

Dennis breathes deeply, feeling surprisingly calm.

He has fired the gun before, but never at anyone living.

He has a strong feeling that that is about to change.

THIRTY-TWO

It’s close to midnight. The clock on his phone tells him so. His palms are sore from drumming the steering wheel.

When he was a kid, he wanted badly to be a drummer in a heavy metal band, like Lars Ulrich from Metallica. If one Dane could make it big in the States, why not two?

He spent many hours practicing and he even put together a band that lasted for a few months. They had a couple of gigs in small places before they began arguing constantly over their creative differences, and finally broke up.

That was when William decided he needed to fly solo instead. And being a rock drummer wasn’t the way he would achieve success; instead, he’d become famous as a tattoo artist in LA.

He watched every episode of Ink Masters again and again, studied the craft and practiced drawing whenever he had a spare moment.

But he never got to America.

He needed more money before he could make it happen. And post Nine-Eleven, green cards weren’t exactly easy to come by.

William blinks and comes to. He stops drumming the wheel and looks at his hands. They’re red and swollen.

None of it matters anymore.

He isn’t going to be a drummer or a tattoo artist.

His fate has been sealed.

From the backseat, Ozzy is breathing and whimpering now and then. The dead guy with the neck tattoo is still hanging from the broken passenger door window, effectively serving as a stopper for the rest of the undeads, still trying tirelessly to squish themselves past but so far, no luck.

It’s just a matter of time, though.

Sooner or later, the dead guy in the window will tilt backwards or be pushed all the way through, and it’ll be open season for the rest of them.

“Who’d have thought we’d end like this?” William asks, hardly aware he’s talking aloud.

In the rearview mirror, he sees the German shepherd raise his ears and look at him.

Ever since watching his first zombie movie, William has played with the thought of the dead arising and taking over the world. He’s even come up with specific plans for how he would deal with it if it happened.

And it did.

His first move was to contact Holger and get to his safe house.

Holger is dead now, and William will soon follow him.

So much for that plan.

Yet William had always imagined he would be one of the guys making it to the end. He would survive the apocalypse. He was clever, he was young and healthy. He would take the situation seriously and not fall prey to any of the cliches: trusting someone who can’t be trusted, trying to save someone who is already infected, going into situations that are obviously death traps.

And now, as he thinks back on the last week, he realizes he’s made all of those mistakes and then some.

He left the safe house. He let himself be talked into trusting Eli. And the most recent one: he rushed to get the car without making proper precautions.

This last one turned out to be the one sealing his fate.

And now he can only wait to die.

He reaches a hand back to pet Ozzy, and the dog licks his palm in return. “Sorry I got us into this mess, buddy. I’m a total screw-up.”

The area under the steering wheel is a chaos of wires hanging out. William spent almost twenty minutes breaking it open and even longer meddling with the wires until he finally gave up.

Hot-wiring a car engine sure isn’t as easy as eighties action moves make it look.

William had no idea what he was doing, and his phone didn’t have any internet connection, so he couldn’t Google it. Also, he wanted to save that last nine percentage of the battery.

Running his tongue across his teeth, he can feel all too well how long it’s been since they last met a toothbrush. The sweet taste of the Oreos he found in the glove box earlier still lingers in his mouth, and he regrets eating them now. Not only because of the nauseating aftertaste, but also because they gave him calories enough to last another day.

With all of the water the woman brought, it is obvious that she wasn’t planning on coming back anytime soon; William found at least six large bottles of tap water in the trunk, next to a suitcase crammed full of women’s clothes.

He went through it in the hopes of finding the keys for the car, checked it thoroughly.

Nothing.

As he climbed back onto the front seat, he made sure not to look down at the woman or her open skull. The stench was bad enough on its own; he didn’t need to see her as well.

He dozed off earlier, when the sun went down and the temperature began to drop as well. But he only slept for twenty minutes at a time, waking again and again at the sound of the zombies, plagued by half-dreams that the woman in the back turned out to be not really dead but still able to get up and attack him.

“It’s gonna be a long night,” William tells Ozzy. “And another long day tomorrow.”

Sharing the water with Ozzy, they’ll have enough to last several days.

William doesn’t want to hang around for that long, though. And his subconscious has already begun playing with dark thoughts. Thoughts of alternative endings. He still has other options than dying slowly from thirst, trapped in a car surrounded by zombies.

He could simply open the door.

It would be painful, but quick.

He couldn’t do that to Ozzy, though. Letting the dog see him getting eaten alive.

There was also the more offensive option of going out swinging. He could bring the rifle and just begin shooting. He could probably take at least a handful with him before they got him. The end result would be the same as the first scenario, though.

Then there was the last option.

The one he thought of as he went through the woman’s suitcase earlier. She had packed a carton full of cigarettes. The woman had obviously been a heavy smoker; if packing your essentials for going away forever included cigarettes, you obviously had a habit.

This also meant the woman must have had a lighter somewhere. William didn’t find it in the suitcase, which was probably a wise call by the woman, not putting something able to produce fire in with your last belongings.

Instead, she probably kept it in her pocket.

William could get it. All he needs to do is reach back and grope for it.

But he really doesn’t want to touch her. The thought scares the living hell out of him. It’s like touching her means running the risk of her waking up. It is absurd, of course. But his brain is already growing paranoid.

If he got the lighter, though, he could end things quickly and painlessly. He could light a fire inside the car, suffocating himself and Ozzy within minutes, putting them both gently to sleep.

Or, he could try and reach the gas tank. If he could get to it and light the fire there, it would all be over in a blink of an eye. Plus the added advantage of taking a dozen or so of the dead folks with him.

That might be his favorite choice.

He glances at his phone on the seat next to him.

Seven percentage left now.

Just enough for one last call.

He has been close to calling his mom several times, but what holds him back is that he has no idea what to say.

Should he pretend everything is fine? Should he just tell her he called to check in on her? Or should he be honest and break the bad news to her?

He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t listen to his mom’s voice without breaking into tears. He didn’t want that to the last time she heard him speak.

So, he decided on a text message. Cheesy, maybe, but also a lot easier. Also, surprisingly easy to write. He typed it in earlier. Two short sentences.

Love you Mom. Take care of yourself.

It was on his phone right now, as a draft, waiting for him to hit send. He will do it right before the end. Making sure she doesn’t have time to call him once she reads the text.

William takes a deep breath. “So, buddy, what do you say? You want to wait until tomorrow? Or should we do it now? Get it over with while we still have the guts to do it?”

Ozzy eyes him intently in the mirror, trying to understand the words.

It’s insane of course that Ozzy will have to go out with him. The dog isn’t in any kind of actual danger; he could leave the car and walk right through the forest of dead people without them giving him a second look. He could go away and find food and shelter and a new best friend to take care of.

But William knows he won’t do that, even if William tried to force him. Ozzy would rather die than leave his side. Quite literally.

“I’m not sure I want to spend the night here,” William mutters, glancing out at the dead faces. “I won’t be able to sleep anyway.”

Besides, the guy in the window has shifted a little now, and William can’t reach him without risk of getting scratched by the others. The thought of the corpse being pushed aside while he slept would be enough for him not to get any sleep.

Maybe it was better ending it sooner rather than later. While he still felt relatively okay. While he still had the will power.

I could get the lighter at least.

The thought makes his stomach clench. Which just proves to him that it won’t be easier later on. So, he reaches his hand down, finds the woman and fumbles his way towards her pocket.

His fingers feel the fabric of her coat. Then they meet something cold and squishy, like oat meal someone dropped on the floor.

He recoils for a moment, then closes his eyes and bites down hard, forcing himself to continue. After half a minute of searching, his hand finds her pants pocket and slips down there. He can’t help but feel how cold her skin is.

Then his fingers find the lighter. He pulls it out and realizes he’s been holding his breath. Dropping the lighter on the seat next to him, he breathes heavily and wipes his hand on the side of the seat.

He sits there for a minute or so, eyes closed, catching his breath, feeling his heart pound away in his throat.

You need to do it, he tells himself. Before you can’t. If getting the damn lighter was that hard, imagine how setting the fire will be if you wait much longer.

William begins to cry. It’s been a long time since he did that, and he’s forgotten how it feels when tears spill over and run down your cheeks.

“All right, buddy,” he says, sniffling and breathing faster. “Let’s get it over with. You ready?”

Without looking at it, he picks up the phone and hits send, feeling suddenly determined, while at the same time having the queer sensation of moving in a thick haze.

It’s done, he thinks dreamily as the text flies off into the ether. I’ve said my goodbye. Now I can’t go back.

He picks up the lighter and—

DAY 8

The following takes place on

Saturday, August 2

ONE

—then he freezes.

William just sits there for several seconds. Staring at the object in his hand.

He’s sure he’s hallucinating. That he’s actually holding a lighter, yet seeing it as something else. Probably because the decision to end his life was more than his brain could handle. So it decided to conjure up one last fake glimmer of hope.

It makes him see the lighter as a key.

A key for a car.

This car.

Finally, William is able to blink, terrified that closing his eyes for just a heartbeat will make the key disappear.

It doesn’t. It’s still there, resting on his palm.

Slowly, he closes his fingers around it. Feels it. Squeezes it firmly.

“Holy shit,” he breathes. “It’s real.”

He looks at Ozzy, who’s eyeing him with a certain amount of worry, his head tilted slightly.

William breaks into laughter. “It’s real! I found the key, buddy! I found it! Look! It was in her damn pocket! Of course it was!” He smacks his forehead, still laughing. “Why the fuck didn’t I check her pockets right away? Jesus Christ, I’m a moron!”

The laughter turns into crying, and William makes an effort to stop, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand.

Ozzy is now whimpering with genuine concern.

“It’s okay, buddy,” William tells him. “I didn’t lose it—not yet. I’m just really relieved. Hell, that doesn’t begin to explain how I feel. But we’re getting out of here. You get it? We can drive our way out of—”

His phone rings.

William picks it up. The display says Mom.

“Shit,” he mutters, then answers the call. “Hi, Mom.”

A couple of seconds of silence. “William?” Her voice is far away, yet he can clearly hear the fear. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, Mom. Perfectly fine.”

Another short delay. “You sure? Why did you send me that text all of a sudden?”

William smiles. “What, I can’t tell you I love you?”

“It’s not funny, William. You have to tell me if anything happened to you.”

“Nothing happened, Mom. Promise.”

“You didn’t get … you didn’t get yourself …?”

“No.”

A deep sigh of relief from his mom. “Good God, you scared the living daylight out of me.”

“Sorry, Mom. But I’m fine, really. Guess I just had … an emotional moment, that’s all.”

He gets why his mom reacts this way; they only rarely talk about their feelings openly, much less tell the other person they love them.

“Well, I guess that’s not unusual,” his mom goes on. “I’m sure we all feel that way right now, under these circumstances.”

“I guess so,” William says, still smiling with relief as he glances out at the dead folks clawing at the car from all angles, thinking for a moment what his mom would say if she could see the situation he’s in. She’d probably drop dead from a heart attack. “You still on the plane?”

“No, we landed two hours ago. We’re on a bus right now that’ll take us to the complex.”

“That’s good,” William says, when his phone beeps in his ear. “Listen, Mom, my phone is dying. Can I call you back when I get to a charger?”

“Sure. You take care of yourself, all right?”

“I will.”

“Promise me.”

“I promise.”

“Good. And William?”

“Uh-huh?”

“I love you too.”

William can’t help but smile despite the awkwardness in his mom’s voice. “I know, Mom. Talk later.” He disconnects and puts his phone away. Then he takes a deep breath and turns to the steering wheel. “Okay, buddy, here we go …”

And it finally dawns on him, that the key might not work. It might not be their salvation. Questions begin shooting through his mind.

What if there’s no gas in the car? What if the engine is busted? What if it’s not even the right key? Then again, why would she have a key for another car in her pocket? Still, even if it’s the right key, he can think of a million reasons why the car won’t start.

His hand trembles so much it takes him three tries to even get the key to slip into the ignition. Once it does, he turns it slowly.

It clicks and the lights in the dashboard come on.

William’s heart leaps.

So far, so good … the key fits. Now let’s see if we can actually turn this thing on.

He closes his eyes, bites down hard, then twists the key all the way.

TWO

To Iver, time seems to stop.

He’s just standing there, the rifle in his hand, staring at the zombies staggering across the floor towards him. Next to him are Chris and Leif.

Chris is the first one to react, and his actions seem to jump-start time once again.

“You guys stay here,” he says, shoving Leif back, then making for the door to the house. “Buy me some time.”

“The door!” Leif shouts, pointing. “He’s going to lock it!”

Iver sees Chris rush by him, and he can tell in an instant that Leif is right; Chris is going to slam the door, turn the key and let the zombies eat them both alive.

Iver reacts before he has time to think, stepping sideways and thrusting the rifle out. It goes between Chris’s legs, tripping him, and he tumbles over with a roar. Iver loses his grip on the weapon and it falls to the floor with a metallic clamber.

“Come on!” Iver shouts, waving at Leif, who’s begun knocking the zombies over using his bare fists. “Let’s go, Leif!”

Leif turns and runs, passing by Chris who’s made it back up to his hands and knees. He sees Leif coming and grabs for his leg, but Leif avoids his hand, instead sacrificing two seconds to stop and deliver a crushing soccer kick to Chris’s ribs, audibly knocking the air from his lungs and sending him onto his back.

Iver runs through the opening, and Leif follows suit. Iver slams the door, but a woman swoops in from the side and manages to stick her arm through at the last possible second.

“Fuck!” Iver shouts, using his shoulder to press against the door. “Help me, Leif!”

Leif leans in with all his weight, causing the door to make a crunching sound, as though the wood is about to break. The woman’s arm is squeezed like pastry, her fingers grabbing eagerly at the air, while several more hands are squeezing through.

“You stay the fuck back!” Chris’s voice roars from the other side. “Get away from me!”

The rifle goes off with a deafening bang as Chris apparently managed to get to it before the zombies got to him. Then he begins screaming.

“No, let go! Get back you! Aaargh!”

In a matter of seconds, Chris’s screams turn silent, drowned out by the groans and moans from the army of deads swarming the garage.

“It’s no use!” Iver croaks, still holding the door. “We won’t get it shut! We’ll have to make a run for it!”

“Where to?” Leif says, looking back through the hallway. “They’re all around the house, we can’t get out!”

“Upstairs!” Iver says.

“But we’ll be—”

“It’s our only chance right now!”

“Right.”

The pressure from the zombies is growing as more and more of them are pushing against the door, and Iver can feel it starting to slip inch by inch.

“You ready?” he shouts, darting a look back to see Charlotte suddenly standing there, glaring at them wide-eyed. “We run on the count of three! Get out of the way, Charlotte!”

Leif nods, sweat dripping from his brow, his cheeks burning red from exhaustion.

“One … two … three!”

Iver and Leif turn and run in perfect unison, the door bursting open and the zombies spilling in, tumbling over each other like customers at a Black Friday sale, buying Iver and Leif a few precious seconds to reach the kitchen.

As Iver passes Charlotte, she still hasn’t moved, so he grabs her and pulls her along. In the kitchen, Leif stops and looks around.

“What are you doing?” Iver calls out. “Come on!”

“Knives!” Leif says. “We’ll need something to defend ourselves with …”

“There’s no time! Charlotte, come on, damnit!”

But Charlotte has pulled herself free and is heading for the hall where the door to the basement is—maybe she figures she’ll be safer down there, maybe she’s just caught up in blind panic. Whatever the case, Charlotte only makes it to the corner of the kitchen counter when the first zombie comes staggering into the room, reaches out and grabs her. Charlotte screams as it digs its teeth into her shoulder.

“Fuck!” Iver shouts, then heads for the stairs, the sounds of the zombies growing louder from behind, drowning out Charlotte’s dying screams.

Leif follows him upstairs, the weight of him making the steps shake.

At the top they meet Agnete, standing in her nightclothes with Adam on her arm. Both of them look shocked and confused.

“Are they in?” Agnete asks.

“Yes,” Iver says simply. “Get back inside the bedroom and lock the door.”

Agnete turns around and goes back inside the room, then, before closing the door, she looks at Iver: “What about you and the others?”

“It’s just me and Leif,” Iver says as Leif comes up the stairs. “We’ll take the kid’s room.”

Agnete nods, closing the door.

Iver points Leif into the kid’s room and follows him, slamming the door and twisting the key.

“Holy hell,” Leif breathes, slumping down onto the armchair in the corner, flattening a teddy bear without noticing. “That went really bad …”

“I know,” Iver says, rubbing his temples and feeling his pulse bang away on the inside of his skull. “Damnit, I should have guessed it sooner …”

Leif shakes his head, his cheeks wobbling. “You had no way of knowing they would do that … Christ, I still can’t believe she just left.”

The zombies have made it up the stairs, and now they reach the door and begin scraping on the outside. Iver looks at it anxiously. The handle bops up and down as someone touches it—probably by coincidence.

“It’ll hold,” Leif says. “At least for now.”

“Yeah, but we’ll have to figure out a way to get out again,” Iver says, striding to the window. He opens it and lets in the cool night air.

Looking down he sees what looks like an audience at a rock concert; several dozen zombies are gathered around the house, stomping around in Agnete’s flower beds.

“God,” he mutters. “It’s like they’re drawn to us …”

Leif moans.

“Well, there’s no way we’re getting out the window,” Iver says, closing it again. “We’ll have to think of something else … any ideas?”

Leif just shakes his head.

Iver goes to the door. The zombies—obviously sensing him getting closer—scratch and moan more eagerly. “Agnete?” he calls. “Can you hear me?”

The bedroom is straight across the hallway, so they should be able to communicate.

A couple of seconds pass by. Then her voice comes through the noise of the zombies: “I can. Are you okay in there?”

“Yeah, we’re fine. How about you?”

“The same. The door seems to hold them.”

“Good. That’s good. But, listen, we’ll have to find some way of getting out of here. Can you check the window and see if they are below your room as well?”

“Hold on a minute.”

Leif moans again.

Iver looks over at him. “What is it, Leif?”

The big guy just sits there, holding his thick wrist. Even from over here, Iver can see the three red lines running across the skin.

“Oh, no,” Iver breathes. “Don’t tell me that’s …” He can’t finish the sentence.

Leif looks up at Iver, his face pale. “I think … I think they got me.”

THREE

“Why did you lie to him?”

Dan looks at Liv as she puts the van in gear and drives on down the empty highway.

“Why did you say you’re coming alone?”

Dan shrugs. “I just think it’s best he doesn’t know you’re here.”

“Why?”

“Because I promised him I wouldn’t bring anybody else.”

“So what, am I just going to wait in the car?”

“Just until I’ve convinced him he can trust me.”

Liv nods, though she doesn’t look too fond of the thought. Dan isn’t either. The moment the lie came out of his mouth, he instantly regretted it. He’s not even completely sure why he chose to do it and not just be honest with Dennis. Probably because he wouldn’t risk him going crazy and blowing off the whole deal if Dan told him he had brought someone else. He hadn’t come all this way to not be let into Holger’s house.

Maybe Dennis wouldn’t have freaked out, though. Maybe he would have believed him if Dan had just told him that Liv had come along by a strange turn of faith and that she didn’t pose a threat in any way.

But Dan is tired. More than that, he’s exhausted. Going into week two of this insane new world is taking a toll on him. He feels constantly uptight, like his mind is constricted, pulling into itself.

He longs more than anything for this whole thing to be over and done with. And hopefully he’ll have that wish fulfilled soon.

Holger’s house is coming up on the right, placed just as Dan remembers it a few hundred yards off the road, halfway hidden in trees. From here, he can tell there’s a light burning in one of the upstairs rooms.

But as he looks at it, the light goes out.

“It’s here, right?” Liv asks, slowing down the van to turn into the gravel lane leading up to the house.

“Yeah. I think you should turn off the headlights.”

Liv turns them off. The road is still just barely visible as a pale band sloping its way in front of them as she drives on slowly.

“So, what’s the game plan?”

“We’ll have to see if there’re any dead ones by the house,” Dan says. “If so, it’ll be more difficult, but still doable.”

“How exactly will you get inside the house?”

“I need to get to a well cover that’s at the far end of the courtyard. That’s a secret way in.”

“Oh, sneaky.”

“Yeah. I told you Holger thought of everything. Anyway, once I’m in, I’ll tell Dennis about you. He’ll agree to let you in too.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

“I’m sure he will.”

“Then what if his crazy mom shows up and kills you?”

Dan shrugs. “I suppose you’ll need to be the one talking sense into her, then.”

Liv scoffs. “If she won’t listen to you, I don’t think I’ll have much of a chance.”

Dan looks at her earnestly. “Promise me you’ll try anyway. Promise me that if I die, you’ll try and get her to reverse this thing.”

Liv glances over at him. “Sure,” she mutters. “I’ll try.”

“Good,” Dan says, taking a deep breath as they approach the trees surrounding the courtyard and Holger’s house.

As soon as they see the building, they also see the zombies.

There are a lot more of them than when they left the place—Dan counts at least two dozen, all of them pressing up against the wall, reaching for the windows or scratching at the front door.

“Holy cow,” Liv whispers. “You sure you want to go out there?”

“Stop right here,” Dan says. “We can’t get too close, or we’ll draw them to us.”

Liv eyes him sideways. “I think you’ll draw them anyway as soon as you get out of the car.”

Dan nods. “I’ll just have to be quick. The cover is over there. I’m closer than they are, and they’re not very fast. I’ll have twenty seconds or so before they can reach me.”

“More like ten,” Liv murmurs, looking at the crowd of zombies trying fruitlessly to get inside the house. “I really think this is a bad idea.”

“I think so too, but I don’t have a better one.” He looks at her as he unbuckles. “If you do, I’m all ears.”

“Why don’t we just run them all over? It would take a while, but I’m sure the van could do the trick. We’d just pick them out one at a time, and—”

“And that would wake up Birgit,” Dan says. “In fact, the longer we wait, the greater the risk that she’ll see us. I need to get inside before that happens, or she won’t let me.”

Liv shrugs. “I guess you’re right. So, what, I just wait here?”

Dan nods. “I’ll wave at you from the kitchen window—it’s that one right there. You’ll most likely have to go in the same way I do. Just wait for my signal. Okay?”

“Okay. Good luck.”

“Thanks.”

Dan looks over at the zombies, making sure they’re all still focused on the house. Then he closes his eyes briefly, recalling the faces of Dad, Mom and Jennie. It’s not at all hard, they pop up in great detail right away.

I’m doing it for you guys, he tells them.

And then, before he can have any second thoughts, he opens the door and jumps out. The second his feet—only one of which is still wearing a shoe—hit the ground, most of the undead turn around.

FOUR

Iver looks at Leif for several seconds. Suddenly, he’s acutely aware of the distance between them.

“There are many of them below the window,” Agnete calls from somewhere. And when he doesn’t reply, she goes on: “Iver? You still there?”

“I … I’m sorry,” Iver hears himself croak. “When did it happen?”

Leif shakes his head and sighs deeply. “Must’ve been when I fought them. I know it was stupid, but … I had no choice … I mean, they were all over me … I had to hold them back, you know …”

Iver’s thoughts are going a million miles an hour. How long? How long till Leif dies and wakes up again? Could be minutes. Could be a little longer; half an hour, an hour maybe. It’s only a couple of scratches, but that’s enough.

“I’m … I’m really sorry, Leif,” he says again.

Leif sighs deeply. “Yeah, me too.”

“Iver?” Agnete calls again. “You guys all right in there?”

Iver turns towards the door, not really wanting to take his eyes off of Leif. He clears his throat and shakes his head. “No … no, we’re not all right.”

“What does that mean?” Alarm in Agnete’s voice.

“Leif got himself … he’s infected.”

He can hear Agnete gasp.

Iver goes over to Leif. He has to force himself to move his feet. He knows that Leif wouldn’t hurt him or try to infect him, but still it’s an effort just to come closer.

“Leif,” he says softly, causing Leif to lift his head and look at him. His eyes are glazed over, the obvious look of someone who’s just been told they’ve got less than an hour to live. “I’m really sorry about this. I am. But we need to figure out something before you … I hope you understand.”

Leif doesn’t exactly look like he understands, but he nods. “It’s okay, Iver. You don’t need to worry. I’ll show myself out.”

Iver glances over at the door. “You sure that’s a good idea? I mean, as soon as you open the door, they’ll push themselves inside.”

“Oh, right,” Leif says, as though he’d forgotten all about the zombies in the hallway. He rubs his forehead. “Well, I don’t know then …”

Iver bites his lip. “It might be better if I could get out of here.”

“Uh-huh,” Leif says, but he’s obviously not listening any more. He’s resumed staring at the floor, holding his injured wrist, where the skin is already turning pink around the scratch marks.

Iver goes over to the window again and opens it a second time. He looks down at the crowd of zombies. He’s far too high up to make the jump without breaking bones, even if the zombies hadn’t been there.

He looks to the sides. Then up.

The window is located right below the rain gutter. He can reach it. He might even be able to pull himself onto the roof. From there, he could theoretically reach the other windows—like the one to the bedroom on the other side.

But it would be a very risky move.

Right now, though, it looks like his only chance. He goes back over to the door. “Agnete? You hear me?”

“I do.”

“I’ll try and make it onto the roof. Then I’ll come to your window. We’ll have to figure out some way for me to get into your room. Okay?”

“Okay,” Agnete says, sounding hesitant.

“I know it’s dangerous, but there’s no other way. I’ll call to you once I’m up there.”

“Okay, Iver. Be careful.”

Iver goes back to Leif. “Listen,” he says. “I’ll be going now.”

Leif looks up at him, looking like a sleepwalker. “Going where?”

“Out the window. I’ll climb onto the roof and try and make it to Agnete’s bedroom.”

“Oh,” Leif says. “That’s a good idea.”

“I could use your help,” Iver goes on. “Getting up there, I mean. You think you can support me? I know it’s a lot to ask, but—”

“Oh, no, sure,” Leif says, getting to his feet. “I might as well do some good while I’m still … you know.”

“Thanks, Leif,” Iver says, smiling. “You’re a good guy.”

“You think I’ll get to see her again?”

The question seems to come out of nowhere.

“See who?” Iver asks.

“My old mother?”

Iver feels a lump in his throat as he recalls Leif telling him about his mother dying of cancer not that long ago. He nods. “I think there’s a good chance you just might.”

Leif smiles dreamily. “I sure hope so. That would be nice. You know, I’ve missed her terribly since she died. I never had any kids of my own, so she was kind of all I had.”

“I understand,” Iver says, swallowing hard to keep his voice from shaking. “Listen, Leif, I hate to rush things, but we should get going before you lose your strength.”

“Sure thing. Let’s do it.”

FIVE

“We’ve filled the underground tunnel with gasoline.”

Dennis is standing by the foot of the stairs. He hasn’t turned on the lights in the room, and it’s very dark. Yet his eyes have had plenty of time to adjust, and he can make out the cabinet door underneath the stairs just fine.

He listens to the silence of the house.

Mom is downstairs, in the bunker, sleeping.

From outside comes the faint moan now and then from the deads surrounding the house—Dennis is more or less used to them by now and barely hears them.

What he hears the loudest is his own heartbeat. It’s pounding away on the inside of his eardrums.

The can is heavy in his hand. If he moves it slightly, he can feel the liquid slosh around in there.

“We’ve filled the underground tunnel with gasoline.”

Mom’s voice again, playing in his memory.

“If anyone tries to force their way in, we’ll light a match and burn the intruders alive.”

Mom was bluffing, of course. They hadn’t poured out the gasoline—it was all still in the can. But had the people in the car tried to make their way in, Mom would have gone ahead, turning her threat into reality.

They didn’t, though.

But the big, red can has been sitting here, next to the cupboard under the staircase, ever since. Just in case they came back, Mom had told him.

Mom has no idea that one of them is coming back this very night. In a matter of minutes, actually. And he’s brought company, even though he swore to Dennis he was coming alone.

Which means he was lying about everything else as well. Dan obviously isn’t coming to find a cure for the undead people—he’s coming to steal the safe house back.

Dennis won’t let that happen, though.

A tremor runs through his body, starting from his calves and working its way up through his buttocks and back to his shoulders. It’s accompanied by a strong urge to run downstairs and tell Mom everything.

Dennis breathes in deeply and forces himself to stay put. Running to Mom was something the other Dennis would do. The younger Dennis. The Dennis who hadn’t fired a gun.

The new Dennis is determined to handle this on his own. He already took that decision when he didn’t tell Mom about the call on the satellite phone. In a way, it’s his own fault; after all, he let Dan talk him into his plan about him coming without Mom knowing.

But he lied. Dan lied to him.

Which is why Dennis is determined to see this to the end on his own. Preferably without Mom even knowing.

The weapon is tucked in his pants, resting against his lower back. He brought it down here, convinced he was going to use it. Then he saw the gas can and decided that was a better solution.

First of all, it won’t wake up Mom.

And secondly, there’s much less risk of it going wrong.

Firing a gun at someone isn’t a guarantee to put them out of action. Lighting them on fire, on the other hand, that will do the trick ten out of ten times.

It’s time to get moving. They’ll be here any minute.

Dennis takes another deep breath, then opens the cupboard and steps inside. He pushes the back of the cupboard, producing a low click and causing the wooden surface to swing open like a door.

He peers down into the tunnel. There are ten or twelve steps leading down to the tunnel, which will take him to the ladder, which in turn leads to the hidden cover in the courtyard.

Dennis doesn’t need to go down there, though, which is another great thing about the gasoline plan: he can stay right where he is. He already unlocked the hatch earlier this evening, back when he still believed Dan had good intentions.

Now, he places the can between his feet and unscrews the plug. Then he tilts the whole thing and the gasoline starts spilling down the stairs. Dennis holds it, listens to the can gurgle and the gasoline splashing. The smell of it fills the air.

Once the can is about half-empty, he can tell there’s already a puddle by the foot of the stairs. The tunnel slopes down slightly, and the gasoline flows on towards the ladder.

Dennis decides it’s enough. He puts the can aside, taking his time to screw the plug back on.

He picks up the box of matches and takes one out. He closes the secret door almost all the way, leaving open a gap just wide enough to peer through.

Then he begins waiting.

SIX

Iver steps onto the windowsill.

Leif grabs him by the belt, enabling him to lean out. He twists halfway around and reaches up both hands to grab the rain gutter. It’s cold and moist from dew, but it’s firmly secured to the roof and it feels like it will be able to hold his weight as he climbs up.

“Okay,” Iver says. “I’m going up now. You just hold on until I tell you, okay?”

“Sure,” Leif says.

Iver stands up slowly, using his hands to pull himself up. Standing tall, the rain gutter is level with his chin. He’ll have to pull himself the rest of the way.

“Okay, let go, Leif.”

Leif’s hand releases its hold on his belt, and for a moment Iver just stands there, his feet on the windowsill, his hands grasping the gutter, his weight leaned back out over the eighteen-foot drop behind him ending in zombies.

“Here we go,” he whispers to himself. “You can do it.”

He breathes deeply, then pushes off the windowsill and pulls himself upwards. The gutter gives off a loud, metallic scream, and for a moment Iver is sure it’ll give way, but it doesn’t, even though it complains audibly as he scrambles his way up onto the roof.

Luckily, Agnete’s roof is very different from the one on Fred’s house. This one is a lot less steep, and it’s covered with roofing felt instead of tiles, which provides him with a way firmer grip.

He sits up and climbs away from the edge, his heart pounding hard enough to make his vision go shaky.

“You okay up there?” Leif calls.

“Yeah, I’m okay,” Iver says, panting for breath, almost feeling like laughing with relief. “I made it.”

“Good. Nice job, Iver.”

“Thank you, Leif. For helping me.” He feels like he needs to say something else, as he realizes Leif just helped save his life and this will be the last time they speak. “I’ll never forget about you,” he says, feeling immediately stupid.

“I appreciate that,” Leif says simply. “I think I’ll lie down now. I feel a little hot.”

“Sure,” Iver says. “You do that. Thanks again.”

Leif doesn’t answer; he’s obviously already gone to lie down.

Iver climbs to the top of the roof. A mild breeze is blowing through the night, soothing his sweaty face, and as he looks out over the island, it’s enough to take his breath away.

There are lights in houses here and there, but most have gone dark. Grey, shadowy figures are moving around everywhere, swarming the streets and the fields and the beaches.

Thousands, Iver thinks to himself. There are thousands of them.

He forces himself to focus on the task at hand. He climbs down towards the place Agnete’s bedroom must be. When he’s four feet from the edge, he calls to her.

“Iver?” she answers almost right away, a little to the left from where he’s sitting. “You made it up there? Oh, I’m so relieved.”

“Yes, I’m fine,” Iver says. “So far, at least.”

“What about Leif?”

“He’s already spiking a fever.”

“Goodness, that’s just terrible. And Charlotte? And Chris? And Linda?”

“They’re all gone,” Iver says. “I’ll explain everything when I get in there with you.”

“How are you going to do it?”

“I don’t know,” Iver says honestly. “I think I need to just lower myself down and then … maybe you can help me get in?”

“I’ll try my best, but I really think it’s risky.”

“I know. We have to give it a shot. Stand back while I swing down, okay? Then be ready to grab me if I can’t reach the windowsill.”

Iver scootches closer to the edge, letting his feet drop out over the gutter. Below on the ground there’s a crowd of zombies similar to the one he just saw on the other side.

Iver grabs a firm hold of the gutter, then twists his body, turning over as he lets his hip glide out over the gutter. He pauses here for a moment, taking a breath.

“I see your legs!” Agnete calls. “You want me to grab you?”

“Not yet!”

Iver gathers all his strength, then lets himself drop as gently as he can. Even though he uses his arms to lower himself, there’s still a strong tug at the gutter as his full weight is put on it, and it gives off that awful metallic scream again. But this time, it also gives way, and Iver feels the drop in his stomach.

It’s only a couple of inches, but it’s enough for him to cry out and almost lose his grip. He flails his legs, searching for the windowsill, and he feels Agnete grab his pants and pull him in.

As his feet touch down on the windowsill, he can ease of the pull on the gutter and instead bend down to grab the upper frame of the window, allowing him to squat down and tumble into the bedroom.

He almost knocks over Agnete, who just manages to step out of the way before he lands on his hands and knees on the floor. From the crib Adam is standing up, holding the rails, pacifier in his mouth, looking at him curiously. Iver feels like kissing the floorboards but makes do with closing his eyes and sending a quick prayer of thanks.

“My goodness,” Agnete breathes. “I was afraid you were going to fall.”

“Me too,” Iver says, panting as he looks back out at the gutter. It’s been pulled free and is hanging in a slope. Just thinking about how close he had gotten to plummeting down into the crowd of zombies makes his skin crawl. “Well, there’s no way we’re going back out that way, that’s for sure.”

SEVEN

The engine comes to life right away—as though it’s just as eager as William to get going.

“Yes! Yes, yes, yes, yes! Fuck yeah!” He punches the ceiling harder and harder, unable to keep it in. “Fuck yeah! We’re getting out of here! Fuck you guys! Fuck you all!”

He flips the zombies off with both hands, making sure to cover every direction. Ozzy—uncertain what William is happy about, but feeling his excitement—begins barking.

“You’re goddamn right, buddy!” William says, breathing fast. “Those assholes can go fuck themselves, because we’re outta here!”

He puts the car in reverse, places his right arm around the passenger seat and slowly begins to make his way backwards. It feels like driving in mud. The car is somewhat reluctant to move due to all the dead bodies pressing up against it. So William revs it up some more and gets it moving, shoving the zombies back. Some of them stumble clumsily out of the way, others trip and fall. William can hear them scramble around under the car as he backs right over them. The car rocks as the tires make their way over legs and arms and torsos, producing crunching noises as the bones give way, which brings William a sick satisfaction.

“Fuck you guys,” he mutters, concentrating on steering the car. “Thought you were getting an easy meal, did you? Well, chew on this!”

He stops and puts the car in drive. Then he begins making his way forward while pulling right, moving out of the line of cars. He can barely see anything for the horde of zombies, and he has to go mostly by feel. The darkness doesn’t make it any easier.

Suddenly, the rear end of another car appears, and William has to hit the brakes hard to not collide with it.

“Shit! Thought I was past that one …”

He backs it up a few yards, and immediately the other car disappears from view as it’s swallowed up by the zombies crowding around William’s car. He turns more sharply to the right this time as he goes forward again. He doesn’t meet the other car, but instead he feels how his own car begins tilting to the right as he gets too close to the ditch.

“Fuck me, this is gonna take forever.”

He bites his lip and thinks for a moment, the engine idling away, the zombies pushing and shoving from all sides.

Ozzy whimpers from the backseat, impatient to get going.

“I know, I know, buddy. But we need to be careful now. Can’t jump the gun and end up screwing our last chance up.”

After half a minute of pondering the problem, William comes to the conclusion that there’s really no other way; he needs to drive out of here. Which means he needs to drive alongside the line of cars, striking the balance of not hitting any of them, while at the same time keeping close enough to them so as to not go into the ditch by the roadside.

The problem is that in order to do that, he needs to go very slowly. And this in turn means that the zombies will have time to follow along. The horde is very big—in fact, he has no way of telling exactly how big—and it might take him a very long time to drive his way through it … provided he doesn’t crash the car or get it stuck before that.

“It’s going to be a grind,” William tells Ozzy. “But we’ll have to do it.”

He gets the car moving again, pushing the zombies out of the way. He sees the next car coming up on his left, and he adjusts the course so that he passes by it within six feet. Then, after another few yards, the next car appears, and William again adjusts accordingly.

The system seems to work.

Whenever he’s too close to the car he can see, he pulls little to the right. When he’s too far away, he pulls to the left. Slowly, steadily, he makes his way down the highway, plowing gently through the zombies as he goes, passing one car at a time. After ten minutes or so, he begins to feel confident enough in his system that he ups the speed a few miles per hour, still making sure to keep the course.

The slight upping in the speed means that he’s finally moving faster than the dead people outside, and he’s able to actually make progress as he slowly puts them behind him one at a time. New ones keep appearing, though, and the end is still nowhere in sight.

“Come on,” he mutters to himself, clutching the wheel and focusing hard with his tired eyes. “They can’t keep going forever …”

But it seems that way.

Another ten minutes pass, then another ten.

William must have driven at least three miles down the road now, passing several hundred cars. And yet the forest of zombies in front of him seems no smaller than when he began driving.

Then—suddenly—he catches a glimpse of a clear view ahead, before it’s once again swallowed up by zombies. But it was there! The horde begins thinning out. William breathes and utilizes all his will power to force himself not to speed up. He’s very close now, and making a mistake would be detrimental.

Another glimpse of the road ahead.

Another two minutes.

Another few dozen zombies plowed aside.

And then he’s out.

William lets out a cry of relief as the last zombies are pushed out of his way and the headlights can finally show him the open road.

He hits the gas and gets the car into second gear, then third. He leans over and shoves out the guy still hanging in the window.

“We made it, buddy!” he laughs, looking in the mirror to see the massive group of zombies getting smaller. “We’re out! You hear me? We’re fucking out!”

EIGHT

Only a few minutes have passed when Iver hears Leif call to them.

He glances at Agnete, who’s sitting by Adam’s crib, singing in a low voice to keep the toddler from waking up. Then he goes to the door and listens.

“Hello? Iver? Agnete? Can you guys hear me?”

“We can,” Iver calls back. “How are you holding up, Leif?”

“Not too hot, I’ll be honest. But I got to thinking, maybe I can help you guys.”

“How?”

“I could go downstairs and fetch you some supplies. Food, maybe—if those cowards didn’t steal it all.”

Iver frowns. “That would be suicide, Leif. Don’t open the door.”

“Oh, it’s okay. They won’t hurt me. They aren’t even scratching at my door any longer.”

Iver shakes his head. “That makes no sense. Why would they—”

“Because I’m already infected,” Leif says. “Don’t you know? I’ve seen it happen more than once. As soon as you get yourself bitten, they’re not interested in you anymore.”

Iver hesitates.

“I think it’s true,” Agnete says, and he turns to look at her. “They said it on the radio.”

“Huh,” Iver says, turning back to the door. “Okay, well … if you’re sure, Leif?”

“I am. And I wouldn’t mind doing something to help you guys—you know, as one last good deed.”

Iver can’t help but feel moved. “You already helped me, Leif.”

“Yeah, I know, but without anything to eat in there, you won’t make it for long anyway.”

“That’s true. But how would we get the food? We can’t open the door?”

“I thought of that,” Leif says. “I’ll bring something from downstairs, something to bash them out of the way. We only need a couple seconds, I’m sure I can make that happen.”

“Okay, well … fine. You just call for me, and I’ll be ready by the door, okay?”

“Okay. I’m going now.”

Iver glances back at Agnete again.

“He’s very brave,” she whispers.

Iver nods, then listens by the door. Over the moans and groans and scratching from the zombies, he can hear Leif grunt. “Get out of the way, will ya? Move! Good lord, there are so many of them!”

Iver hears Leif push his way through the zombies, and the sounds get weaker as he reaches the stairs and makes his way down them. He can imagine the big guy plowing through the mass of zombies.

Then he can’t hear him any longer.

Iver waits for five minutes. Then five minutes more. He begins to worry when another five minutes have passed by.

“You think he’ll make it?” Agnete asks.

“I’m starting to doubt it,” Iver admits, yawning.

Then, suddenly, Leif’s voice: “Iver? You there?”

“I’m here! You made it!”

“I did, but …” Leif sounds very weak. “It was difficult … I … I feel exhausted … I’m burning up out here … there are too many of them, Iver … they’ve flooded the house completely … every goddamn inch of it … I’ll never be able to get them away from the door long enough for us to get the bag through …”

“Oh,” Iver says, biting his lip, trying to think of another way. “Give me just a second, Leif …” He looks around the room for something they can use. His eyes fall on the air duct high up on the wall. He looks at Agnete. “What’s on the other side? Is it the bathroom?”

Agnete nods.

Iver turns back to the door. “Leif? Listen, is the door to the bathroom closed?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Can you get the bag into the bathroom? There’s an air duct you can push it through.”

“Hold on …” A few seconds of pushing and grunting from the other side. Then Leif shouts: “Goddamnit, you get away!” A door slams.

“Leif? What happened?”

Leif’s voice comes again: “I messed up, Iver … I got the door open, but I dropped the bag … I had to close the door before they could squeeze in there …”

“That’s okay, Leif,” Iver says, looking at the duct. “I think I can get through to the bathroom from here—I’ll get the bag.”

“You will?” Leif says, sounding relieved. “Well, that’s great …”

“Thank you, Leif. Thank you so much!”

“Don’t mention it,” Leif says, sounding dreamy now. “I think I’ll … I think I’ll go back to my room now … lie down for a while …”

“Sure, you do that,” Iver says.

Then there’s a heavy thump from the hallway.

“Leif? You okay?”

No answer.

Iver looks over at Agnete. She’s looking back at him knowingly. They both heard it. Leif collapsing. The big guy used his last strength to get them something to eat. Now Iver just needs to get to it.

He goes to the air duct and looks up at it.

“I don’t think it’s big enough,” Agnete says.

“We just need to make it a little bigger.”

There’s a sound from the door as one of the dead people throws himself at it. The hinges rattle in a way Iver doesn’t care for one bit. The door is very thin, something you could kick down without too much difficulty.

It’s already starting to give way; it won’t hold forever.

“I think we need to get to the bathroom,” Iver says. “All three of us. The door in there is sturdier. Plus, there’s water in there. We’ll be able to make it for days.”

Agnete just nods.

Iver pulls over the night table, steps onto it and looks through the air duct. The wall—as he hoped—isn’t too thick. Removing the lattice, he’ll only need to make the hole about twice as big. It should be doable, even without any tools.

He glances over at the door as another one of the undeads thrashes against it.

The only question is, will he make it in time?

NINE

Dan runs for the well cover, ignoring the mild jolts of pain from the foot not wearing a shoe as the gravel digs into the sole.

He’s running parallel to the front of the house, and out of the corner of his eye he can sense how the group of undeads are coming towards him like a wave.

He ignores it as best he can, reaching the well cover and crouching down. He fumbles for the handle, which is hidden below a plate that slides sideways. And only then does it strike him that he’s relying blindly on the fact that Dennis has unlocked the cover from inside. If not, then Dan will be in big trouble.

But the cover gives way as soon as he pulls the handle, tilting upwards, and Dan’s heart is filled with relief.

Then Liv calls out: “Dan! Watch out!”

Dan darts a look back at the van to see her head poking out the window, one arm flailing wildly. Dan looks back at the zombies, but the nearest one is still several yards away.

“No, over there!” Liv shouts, obviously making an effort to keep her voice down.

Dan follows her pointing finger and gasps as he sees three figures coming around the garage. They’re much closer to him; too close for him to make it down the ladder before they reach him. Dan gets back up to his feet and backs away from the open well.

This is bad, he thinks, as the zombies close in on him from two angles now. If I lose this chance, it’ll only get more difficult …

So, instead of heading for the van, Dan runs around the trio from the garage, drawing them away from the well while closing in on it himself.

It’s working!

But the horde from the house is now very close, and the move he just made has completely closed him in, with no way to escape and only ten paces between him and the deads.

He wastes no time, throws himself at the opening, gliding across the gravel, ignoring the pain from it, and climbs down the ladder. He reaches back up for the cover, fumbling to lift it.

The zombies are over him, the closest ones dropping to their knees and reaching for him as he pulls the cover frantically, closing it halfway. He almost makes it, but then an arm shoots down the opening, groping for him.

Dan gives off a yelp and almost loses his grip on the ladder. He moves down another couple of steps, holding on to the cover awkwardly, trying desperately to pull it shut, but the zombie with its arm pinned isn’t intent on letting him do it.

I can’t close it, Dan thinks, straining to keep the cover in place while ducking out of reach of the arm. The choir of moans is coming down through the opening, and more hands are being squeezed through now. He can hear the zombies fighting for the best position up there, some of them stepping on the cover, making it move. I need to let go and make a run for it …

He looks down. There are only three more rungs on the ladder, and he can make the jump. But as soon as he does, it means letting go of the cover, and the zombies will shove it aside in a matter of seconds and come spilling down after him.

He has no choice, though.

On the count of three …

Just as he begins counting, grinding his teeth and holding the cover in place for another second, he can hear the sound of an engine. His first thought is that Liv has started up the van and is bolting on him.

But then the sound grows louder, approaching from overhead, and Dan looks up.

Through the opening he can see some of what’s happening. The hands reaching for him are suddenly torn back, as something big shoves the zombies out of the way. Dan lets go of the cover and ducks down as the sound of the engine grows deafening. The undercarriage of the van moves in over the opening like an eclipse.

Then the van stops and the engine is shut off.

Dan stares up at the underside of the van for another second. The sound of the zombies is still there, but a little farther away now. He can imagine them clambering around the van now parked right atop the well cover.

What a clever idea, a thought pops into his head. Why hadn’t I thought of that?

“You okay down there?”

Liv’s voice, muffled from inside the van.

“I’m fine,” Dan calls back in a hushed voice. “Thank you.”

Then he pulls the cover in place, hearing it click, and the darkness closes in on him completely.

TEN

He’s been driving for less than half an hour when he hears it.

The sound of a helicopter.

William looks up at the sky, which is already turning from black to dark blue, but he can’t see the helicopter at first.

He stops the car and leans forward to look properly. And then he makes out the light coming closer from the north. It’s a lot bigger than the medical helicopter. In fact, judging by the size of it, he’s pretty sure it must be military.

William pulls the hand brake and jumps out of the car. His knees almost buckle as he stands up for the first time since yesterday. He reaches in to honk the horn and begins waving at the helicopter.

“Hey! Down here! Look down here!”

He realizes there’s little chance the pilot will hear the car horn, so instead he begins blinking the headlights. In the dim twilight, it must at least be visible from up there.

And it seems to work.

The helicopter slows down, then hovers over the highway. Even though it’s very high up, the sound of the rotors is still deafening, and William covers his ears.

A bright searchlight is turned on, sweeps across the ground, then comes to a rest on top of William. Feeling suddenly very exposed, William realizes he has no idea who’s up there, and he must fight a strong urge to jump back inside the car.

But the helicopter is definitely the fastest way of getting out of here. So he forces himself to wave, while shielding his eyes from the light.

“How many of you are down there?” a voice calls out over a speaker. It’s a man’s voice, and it’s talking English.

“Just me!” William calls back up.

“Tell us by show of fingers!” the voice instructs him. William notices there’s no accent. It doesn’t sound like a Norwegian guy up there. In fact, if anything, the voice sounds like that of an American.

William holds up two fingers.

“Are any of you infected?”

William shakes his head firmly.

“Have any of you been in contact with infected people within the last six hours?”

William hesitates for a second, then nods. Whoever is up there could very well have seen the horde of zombies in the distance and put two and two together, so he decides not to lie.

A short pause. For a moment, William is certain it was the wrong answer and that the helicopter will fly away.

Then the voice comes again: “Are any of you spiking a fever?”

William shakes his head.

“If it’s true, if none of you guys have a fever, we can bring you along. Would you like that?”

“Where are you going?” William asks, throwing out his arms, hoping to communicate his question. Apparently, it goes through.

“We’re going to Tunisia. They’ve put up military bases down there.”

William can’t believe his luck. For a moment, he considers simply taking the offer and going with the helicopter to a safe military base in Africa. But he can’t abandon his promise to Dan. Still, if he wants any hope of reaching Dan in time, the helicopter is his best bet.

William shows them a thumbs-up.

“All right, I’m going to throw down a backpack to you now. We need to confirm that none of you have a fever. Inside the back is a digital thermometer; please place that under your tongue, close your mouth and wait.”

William nods, darting a glance around on the dim highway. It’s not easy making out the surroundings due to the bright spotlight from the helicopter, but Ozzy has come out of the car, too, and is patrolling around the car. William feels confident he’ll pick up the scent of any oncoming deads and warn him immediately.

The backpack falls out of the sky. William catches it. It’s a big, heavy-duty, beige-colored army backpack. On it reads US Airforce.

“They really are American,” William mutters as he unzips the back and finds the casing with the thermometer. He unpacks the metal disc and places it under his tongue as instructed.

Ten seconds pass by. William just stands there, looking around, feeling very awkward as the spotlight hovers over him.

Then the voice tells him: “You’re fine. Please pass on the thermometer to the other person in the car.”

William shakes his head and points to Ozzy.

“Please pass the thermometer to the person accompanying you,” the voice tells him again.

William shakes his head again and points to Ozzy, then shows two fingers.

A brief pause.

“Is it only you and the dog?”

William nods.

“We can only bring you.”

William shakes his head with emphasis.

Another pause.

Then the helicopter drops lower, and William begins feeling the rush of air from the rotors tucking at his hair, pulling the breath from his mouth. He covers his mouth and lowers his head.

“Please use the ladder,” the voice tells him.

William glances up to see a metal wire ladder dangling just ahead.

“Fine, but I’m bringing the dog!” he calls out, pointing to Ozzy.

The voice doesn’t answer, which William takes an OK.

William whistles for Ozzy to come. He kneels down and tells him: “We’re going piggyback—you remember that one? I know we haven’t done it in a while.”

Ozzy seems to get it.

William pats his shoulder. “Come on, buddy. Piggyback!”

Ozzy places both front paws on his shoulder, then steps on and leans over William’s back. The dog is a lot heavier than when William last did this trick. But he’s dead set on bringing Ozzy, so he stands up with an effort, the dog hanging over his shoulders like an oversized feather boa.

William needs one hand to hold Ozzy’s legs, and it’s difficult for him to straighten his back, but he manages to catch the ladder with his free hand and step up onto the lowest rung. The next one proves harder, though, as he can’t let go with his hand. He looks up at the helicopter, squinting his eyes at the blazing winds, the sound deafening. “Could use some help!”

The words are ripped from his mouth and thrown away. There’s no chance of them hearing him up there.

But to his surprise, the voice says: “Hold on! We’ll hoist you up.”

The ladder starts moving up. William holds on tightly, squeezing Ozzy’s legs as they rise from the ground and the dog starts squirming.

“Hold still, buddy!” William calls out. “I know it’s scary, but you need to hold still!”

The ladder moves fairly fast, pulling them up towards the opening in the bottom of the helicopter. William can feel his strength failing, not having anything but Oreos since yesterday, but he holds on with all his will, closing his eyes and biting down hard.

And then suddenly, strong hands grab him and pull him up, Ozzy being lifted from his shoulders.

Three men—two of them wearing soldier’s uniforms, the third in civilian—place him up against the wall, and someone shines a bright light into his eyes.

“Oh, fuck,” William says, squinting and trying to shove the men back, but they’re holding him tight, one of them forcing his right eye open. “Could you please not do that? I told you, I’m not infected …”

“Pupils are fine,” one of the soldiers says. “How about the pulse, Tom?”

“Fine too,” the other soldier says—a tall, broad black guy—taking his fingers away from William’s neck. “I think we’re clear.”

They let go of William and he almost slumps to the floor before regaining his bearings.

“Right, close the hatch!” the black soldier roars. “That was the last one! We’re moving on!”

William just stands there, leaning against the wall, Ozzy by his side, looking just as befuddled as William feels. The soldiers close the hatch as the helicopter begins moving. It’s so much bigger than the medical helicopter, it’s like a small ballroom in here. And it’s crammed full of people, all of them dressed in civilian clothes and placed shoulder to shoulder, their pale faces visible in the darkness. They’re all either looking at him or sleeping up against one another. Some of them are hugging backpacks or plastic bags or piles of clothes and other belongings, but most are just sitting there empty-handed.

“Take a seat,” a deep voice tells William.

He looks at the black soldier suddenly standing next to him. His head is shaved and he reminds William of that guy who played John Coffey in The Green Mile.

“What is this?” William asks. “Who are these people?”

“Survivors,” the soldier tells him with a shrug. “Like yourself, sir.”

“Are you just flying around picking up people at random? What are US soldiers even doing here?”

The guy looks like he expected these questions and doesn’t really feel like answering them. “We were stationed at an air base in the northern part of Norway when this pandemic broke loose. Our orders are to get as many people to safety at Camp Future in Tunisia.”

“Camp Future?” William repeats. “Really? That’s the official name?”

The soldier shrugs again. “I didn’t name the place.” He nods towards the other passengers. “Could you take a seat, sir? It’s not safe standing while we’re airborne.”

William is about to say something else, but the soldier places a big hand on his shoulder and urges him on. William goes to sit down, Ozzy following him close behind. There’s one interim place left, and William sits down. The guy next to him is about the same age, skinny and blonde. He’s sitting upright, staring at nothing. Apparently, he’s not with anybody. Judging by his clothes, William takes him to be someone who used to work in marketing or the likes.

“I’m William,” he says in Danish.

The guy doesn’t answer, he just keeps staring ahead.

William nudges his knee.

The guy blinks and looks at him.

“You all right?” William asks. He needs to lean in close for the guy to hear him, and the guy leans away, his expression flinching. “It’s okay,” William assures him. “I’m not infected. They wouldn’t have taken me along if I was.”

The guy eyes him for a moment, then he nods. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. How are you holding up?”

The guy takes a deep breath. “Like everyone else, I guess. I just lost … my, uhm … fiancée … yesterday. She, uhm …” The guy swallows hard several times. “She was … she was …”

“It’s okay, dude,” William says. “You don’t need to tell me if you don’t want to.”

The guy nods, blinking away tears. He looks down, then up again. “She was pregnant, you know?”

“Oh, fuck me,” William mutters, wishing the guy hadn’t told him. “I’m really sorry.”

The guy squeezes his lips together.

William doesn’t know what to say or do, so he just sits there while the guy battles his emotions.

After a minute or so, he seems to get a hold of himself. He looks at William. “Are you Danish?”

“Yeah. It’s a long story.”

The guy nods as though he understands.

“Where did they pick you up?” William asks.

“In Trondheim. They said I was the last one, but I guess they changed their minds when they saw you.”

William looks over at the soldiers sitting at the front end of the helicopter. They’re wearing headphones and looking out the windows, apparently watching the sunrise.

“You know why they’re taking us to Tunisia?” William asks the guy. “I mean, Finland is a lot closer. I heard they have camps there, too.”

“Someone asked that question earlier,” the guy says with a shrug. “They told us the camps in Finland are full already.”

William squints. “That’s bullshit. My mom is going there. I just spoke with her a few hours ago.”

The guy shrugs again. “I wouldn’t know. I’m just saying what they told us.”

Well, they’re lying, William thinks to himself, looking over at the soldiers now talking about something amongst themselves. Why would they lie to us?

ELEVEN

It’s only as he steps down from the ladder that he finally registers the rank smell.

Dan stops for a moment, sniffing. The air in the tunnel is cool and damp like he recalls it, but that synthetic, chemical smell definitely wasn’t there before.

What is that smell?

He looks down the tunnel and can just make out the staircase at the end. It’s lit up by a faint light from above. Like a celestial staircase. Except it looks nothing like that.

Dan begins walking, and after only a few steps he notices the ground is oddly wet below his feet. His sock is soaked through immediately, and he can hear it slosh every time he lifts his foot.

Is that … gasoline?

Then it suddenly hits home. The woman said something about gasoline in the tunnel when they came back to the house. She threatened to light it on fire if they tried to come back inside. Dan had been almost certain she was bluffing, but apparently not.

Still, it’s weird. Wouldn’t the gasoline have drained into the ground by now? It’s been several days since they left the house, yet judging from the sounds under his feet, there are still fresh puddles everywhere.

Dan’s mind is searching for an explanation as he walks on, and with every step he feels more and more apprehensive, like something is poking at the outskirts of his consciousness, trying to warn him about something.

He approaches the staircase carefully and looks up. The door to the cupboard is open. It’s from there the faint glow is coming, and Dan is pretty sure he can make out the silhouette of a person standing just on the other side.

He’s about to say something when a voice beats him to it: “Stop right there. Don’t come any closer.”

Dan stops by the foot of the stairs, squinting up at the figure. “Dennis? It’s me, Dan.”

“I know.”

Dennis’s voice is different than it was on the phone. It’s colder. Sterner. Older, even.

He might just be nervous, Dan tells himself.

“Thank you for letting me in,” he says, trying to sound as casual as possible.

Dennis doesn’t answer.

Dan stares at the head of the silhouette, straining his eyes to make out Dennis’s face. For some reason, he wants desperately to read his expression. But he can’t.

“Is it okay if I come up?” Dan says, taking a step up. “The smell down here is really bad and I—”

“I told you to stay.”

Something in the voice makes Dan stop abruptly. It sounds completely unlike the one on the phone, so much so that Dan for a moment wonders if the figure up there really is Dennis. On the phone, he sounded hesitant, anxious, someone you could persuade. The voice coming from atop the stairs reminds Dan more of the woman who told them over the phone that she had killed Holger and wouldn’t think twice about killing any of them either unless they got the hell away from here.

But it is Dennis. Dan recognizes the voice, despite the stark shift of tone.

“Listen, Dennis, there’s no need to be afraid …”

“I’m not afraid,” Dennis answers right away. “And I’m done listening to you. Put down your weapon.”

Dan holds out his hands. “What weapon?”

“The one you’re hiding somewhere.”

“I’m not hiding anything, Dennis. I told you I was coming unarmed.”

“You also told me you were coming alone.”

Finally, it clicks.

Of course Dennis must have been watching from the windows. He saw the van drive to the well cover after Dan had got out. He figured out someone else was out there, waiting for him.

“Look,” Dan says, sounding oddly guilty. “I only brought a friend because I don’t know how to drive a car.”

“Really?” Dennis asks, his voice still very cold. “So there’s only one person in that van?”

“Yes.”

“Then why didn’t you just say so on the phone?”

“I … I guess …” Dan fumbles for the right words. Then he decides on the truth. “Look, I just thought you maybe wouldn’t believe me. That you wouldn’t let me in if I broke the promise of coming alone. I couldn’t run that risk. You understand, don’t you?”

The silhouette nods. “I understand.” The voice doesn’t change, though.

“I’m glad you understand,” Dan says, feeling his pulse under his chin. Something about the situation suddenly strikes him as dangerous. “I hope you don’t intend to do anything rash, Dennis. I’m sorry I lied to you, but you need to trust me.”

Dennis scoffs. “Trust you? How can I trust you when you already lied to me? You’re probably lying again right now.”

“No, I’m not. I wouldn’t—”

“You probably have all your friends out in that van,” Dennis cuts him off without even raising his voice. Yet Dan can hear—for the first time—how the words are shaking, like Dennis is either afraid or very angry or both. “They’re just waiting for you to give them the signal. Once you’ve killed me and my mom, you’ll let them all in and you’ll have the place to yourself again. Isn’t that why you’re really here?”

“No!” Dan says, shaking his head with emphasis. “It’s not that at all.”

“It is,” Dennis says. “You want the house back. And you want revenge for Holger.”

“I couldn’t care less about the house, Dennis. Honestly. And I don’t even care that you killed Holger. I only came to speak with your mother about this thing going on and how we can stop it. That’s all I want.”

Dennis doesn’t answer. He’s completely still up there. To Dan it seems like he’s considering.

Then he asks: “Are you really not carrying a weapon?”

“I’m not carrying anything.”

“Show me.”

Dan lifts up his shirt and turns around slowly all the way. He looks back up at Dennis. “See? I told you.”

“That’s good,” Dennis says. His voice is a little softer now. He pushes the door open all the way, revealing his full figure. He’s tall for his age, at least half a foot taller than Dan.

“Can I come up, then?” Dan asks.

“Sure,” Dennis says.

Dan feels a big rush of relief. “Thank you, Dennis.”

“But you might regret it.”

Dan stops in his track. “What do you mean?”

Dennis moves his hands and there’s a ritsch-sound, then a tiny flame flares up in front of Dennis’s chest. He holds it close enough to his face that Dan can make out his features. His eyes are staring right down at Dan, and the look in them is terrifying.

“If you come up here, I’ll throw this down at you,” Dennis says. “I’ve filled the tunnel with gasoline.”

Dan’s throat tightens to the point where he can hardly breathe. “Dennis,” he croaks. “Put that out right now.”

“You don’t tell me what to do.”

“You don’t get it. You need to put that out. You’ll burn the both of us alive. There’s enough gas down here to light the whole goddamn house on fire.”

Dan’s voice is constricted, out of breath. He stares from the match to Dennis’s face, and for the first time he senses hesitation from the guy.

“You’ll kill us both and your mother too,” Dan goes on, speaking fast and low. “Even if she makes it out before the fire can get to her, the house will burn down and she’ll have nowhere to go.”

“You … you’re lying,” Dennis says.

“No, I’m not, Dennis. Don’t you know how gasoline works? It’s the fumes that will burn, and the fumes are drifting upwards. I guarantee you, if you drop that match, you’ll burn before I do. It’s dangerous for you to even stand there with it. You need to put it out right now!”

Dan surprises them both by shouting those last two words. Dennis jumps a little and takes half a step backwards before regaining control of himself.

Dan finds himself unable to stop talking. “You don’t want to do this, Dennis. I’m coming up now so that we can talk this over. I promise you I won’t try anything. And I know you won’t drop that match, because I know you’re too smart for that.”

Dan takes a step up, then another one, and Dennis is still hesitating. Then, as Dan takes yet another step, Dennis suddenly blows out the match.

Dan lets out a sigh of relief. “That’s good, Dennis. I knew you were too—”

“Don’t come any closer,” Dennis says, producing something from his back and points it at Dan. In the dim light, Dan can make out the gun.

Dan stops and holds up his hands. “Dennis,” he begins slowly.

“You might be right about the gasoline,” Dennis says. “That was a stupid idea. I hadn’t thought it through. But I was smart enough to have a backup plan.”

“You’re not going to shoot me, Dennis.”

“I am, if you take one more step. And don’t test me. I already shot one person.”

It sounds like a lie, but Dan doesn’t want to challenge it. Dennis’s voice and whole demeanor have shifted noticeably; now he sounds more like the guy on the phone, scared and uncertain of himself. Yet he’s still pointing a gun at Dan, and he might just fire it if Dan does anything rash. Getting himself shot dead this close to his goal would be a tragedy.

“All right, I’m not coming any closer,” Dan says, still holding up his hands. “Can we just talk like this, then? I can explain everything to you. I can explain how I think your mother can help …”

“I already told you,” Dennis says, waving the gun. “I’m done listening to you, because you’re a liar.”

“Even if I did lie to you once,” Dan says, “that doesn’t mean you’ll shoot me, Dennis. You’re not like that. You’re not like—” Dan cuts himself short just before the last word can escape him.

It’s too late, though.

Dennis obviously catches the message.

“Screw you,” he whispers, and his voice is so full of hate, for a moment, Dan is sure he’ll pull the trigger. “You can stay down here and starve to death.”

Then Dennis reaches out and grabs the door. Dan jumps up the steps, taking them three at a time. But Dennis slams the door before he can reach it, and Dan hears the lock click from the other side.

TWELVE

Liv watches the sunrise. She can’t remember the last time she did that. It’s beautiful. The way the horizon turns slowly brighter, goes from deep purple to red to orange and then to teal.

Now and then she looks over at the house to check for Dan’s signal. So far, she hasn’t seen him or anyone else in the windows. She hasn’t heard any gunshots, either, which she takes to be a good sign. He must be in there, talking with the woman, working to convince her of his plan.

Her thoughts are drifting as she sits there behind the wheel of the van, trying her best to ignore the zombies surrounding her, pushing and shoving to get to her. Some of them have left the van and gone back to the house, clawing again at the door and the boarded-up windows. A couple must have squeezed under the van, because even through the hum of the engine, Liv can hear fingernails scratch away at the undercarriage.

She ignores the living dead and thinks instead of Solveig. The sunrise always reminds her of her sister. Sol means “sun” in Danish, after all, which is what their parents named her after. Liv means “life,” which now seems like a cruel prophecy come true, as Liv is the only one of them still alive.

She can’t help but cry as the faces of her family pass by her inner eye. The tears are big and warm, the sobs coming from deep down in her belly. It feels like something is leaving her body. Like she’s letting go of something. It feels painful and peaceful at the same time.

She sits in that feeling for the longest time, hovering on the edge of sleep.

Then she suddenly returns to a fully wakened state, called back by something she can’t place. She sits upright, realizes that she was sleeping for real and must have been for at least a couple of hours, because the daylight is blinding. It’s warmer inside the van. Her body feels a little lighter, as though something heavy has been lifted from it.

Nothing else seems to have changed, though: the van is still parked on top of the well cover, the zombies are still outside and underneath van.

She looks towards the house and the windows, but sees no one in there.

Why hasn’t Dan called for me? Or has he? Did I just sleep right through it?

No, that doesn’t seem likely. If Dan had signaled for her already, he would have seen her asleep behind the wheel, and he would have found some way of waking her up.

Then she realizes that something else has changed. Something has gone silent. The van’s engine is no longer running.

At first, Liv assumes she must have shut it off without remembering. But as she checks the key, she finds it still turned.

What the hell?

She tries to turn the engine back on, but it just clicks. The gas sign blinks up at her.

“Oh, no … it ran out of gas …”

Liv feels like kicking herself. How could this have happened? The tank had around one third left when they got here; she remembers checking it.

How long was I out for?

She checks her watch and lets out a gasp. It’s nearly three in the afternoon. She slept through most of the day.

She looks back over at the house, and that same question pops into her head again: Why hasn’t Dan called for her yet? Is he okay in there? Did something bad happen?

Then, as Liv watches, the board is removed from one of the windows. A face appears. It’s a woman. Very tall. She’s got fair, freckly skin and red, stringy hair. Her eyes fix on Liv.

Liv feels her heartbeat kick into overdrive as she stares back at the woman, expecting her to do something, to send some sort of signal, to hold up a sign—anything!

But the woman just stands there, her expression set in stone.

Then, after several seconds, she looks down and begins to bring the board back up.

“Hey, wait!” Liv exclaims, waving her arms as though the woman hasn’t seen her. “Hey! No, you can’t just … what the hell?”

The woman disappears from sight as the board blocks the view into the house.

Liv sits there, breathing fast.

That was not a good sign. She didn’t look very friendly. And where was Dan?

Scary thoughts begin spinning around her head. Thoughts of Dan being dead inside the house. Thoughts of the woman bringing the board back down, only to point a gun at Liv. Or even worse, of her simply leaving Liv to die of thirst in the van, surrounded by zombies.

Calm down and think, she demands, forcing control over her mind before it can run wild completely. You still have options here. And you don’t know for certain what’s happened to Dan; he could still be alive.

That last thought makes her look down at the bottom of the van. The well cover is right below her. Liv climbs over the seat to the back, lies down on hands and knees and places her mouth close to the floor.

“Dan!” she calls out. “Dan, can you hear me? Are you still down there? Hello, Dan?”

THIRTEEN

William must have been nodding off, because he wakes up as something nudges his shin.

He looks up to see the black soldier towering over him. The light coming in from the windows is a lot brighter now. The soldier is offering him a grey plastic bag.

“What’s that?” William croaks, reaching up to take the bag.

“Breakfast,” the soldier informs him, then moves on to pass out the next bag to the guy next to William.

William feels his stomach roar by the mere sound of the word. He rips open the bag to find a loaf of bread, two strips of beef jerky, a can of something and a bottle of water. He begins chowing down, giving Ozzy one of the jerky strips.

He looks around to see the other passengers also beginning to dig in, some looking hungrier than others, a few not even touching the food bags.

“Where are we?” William asks the guy next to him.

The guy just shrugs, opening the can of what appears to be beans.

William gets up as the black soldier walks past him again on his way back to his own seat at the front. “Excuse me?”

“That’s all you get for now,” the soldier tells him automatically. “Please sit back down.”

“No, I wanted to ask you something. It’s very important.”

The soldier stops, looks at him, but says nothing.

“Uhm, I was wondering where we are? Like, right now?”

The soldier doesn’t even glance towards the windows. “We just entered Danish airspace. We’ll reach our destination before evening.” He turns to walk away.

“Wait, please! Can I ask you a favor? Could you drop me off?”

The soldier raises one eyebrow. “Are you serious?”

“I am. There’s something I need to do in Denmark. It’s very important.”

“We’re not making any stops,” the soldier tells him. “Unless you spike a fever, you’re not leaving this vessel until we reach the camp in Tunisia.”

“Please!” William says as the soldier is about to turn away again. “Let me just talk to you for two minutes, uhm …” He looks at the patch on the soldier’s chest. “Sergeant Everton. I promise you it’ll make sense.”

“Listen, sir,” the soldier tells him, his tone changing to one of decreasing patience. “You’re not on a bus here. We didn’t bring you along as a favor. We’re operating under orders. We’re bringing you to Camp Future in Tunisia, and that’s it. Now, please sit down.”

“Why not Finland?” William blurts out. “Why aren’t you bringing us to the camps in Finland?” As the sergeant is about to answer, William goes on: “I know they’re not full. My mom is going there. She said there’s still plenty of spots left.”

That last one she didn’t actually say, but he can tell from the soldier’s face that it hits home. It’s only for a second that his stonelike expression changes, though, before returning to unreadable.

“Our orders are to take you to safety,” he repeats slowly. “That’s why we’re bringing you to Tunisia.”

“Safety from what?” William goes on. “Why isn’t Finland safe?”

This time, the sergeant’s eyes flash away from William to briefly check the faces of the other passengers within earshot, before they return to rest on William. “I advise you to stop talking, sir. Otherwise, we might have to drop you off after all.”

“That’s what I’m asking for,” William says, feeling his pulse rise. He puts his palms together and lowers his voice just enough that the soldier can still hear him. “Please, Sergeant, just listen to me. What I have to tell you is very important. I think I know why you’re taking us to Africa, but I’ll keep my theories to myself. If you would just give me two minutes of your time. Please!”

The sergeant runs his tongue across his front teeth while his dark brown eyes bore into William’s. Then he nods once, turns and walks back to his seat.

William bends down and tells Ozzy: “Stay.” Then he follows the sergeant, who’s standing by his seat, his thick arms folded across his chest.

“All right,” he says. “You have exactly one hundred twenty seconds to explain to me why I should drop you off. Time starts now.”

William glances at the other soldier, who’s also paying close attention. Then he takes a deep breath through his nose and begins talking.

“This isn’t a virus. It’s not a medical thing at all. I’m sure you already know that. Sure, it has symptoms like fever and all that, but there’s no treatment, because there’s no illness. It’s something else entirely, something that affects the soul, or whatever you like to call that thing inside of us. It’s more like a curse than anything.” William pauses briefly to check the faces of the soldiers. They’re both set in stone. “I believe voodoo started this thing. My friend was there, at a location in Denmark, right at ground zero. He saw the first dead person coming back to life. And he has figured out what happened. He’s down there, right now, trying to find a way to reverse it. And he needs my help. When you picked me up, I was headed back here. We got separated earlier on, and—well, that doesn’t matter. All that matters is, I’m convinced this is our best shot at stopping this thing—hell, it’s our only shot. So if you’ll please, please just drop me off, that’s all I’m asking for. It won’t put you at risk in any way, you can just hover above ground like you did when you picked me up. Please, that’s all I’m asking. Drop me off.”

William takes a deep, trembling breath as he stops talking.

The soldiers exchange one, long look before turning their faces back at him. The sergeant says: “Here’s the thing: If we drop you off here, you’ll be dead in forty-eight hours.”

William shakes his head. “That’s okay, I know the risk. If you’ll let me have back my rifle, I can—”

“No,” the sergeant interrupts him. “No, you don’t know the risk. Because I’m not talking about the infected getting to you. What I’m saying is, that in forty-eight hours exactly, there won’t be anyone left alive down there. In fact, that goes for most of mainland Europe.”

William opens his mouth, then shuts it again.

“That’s right,” the sergeant tells him, raising both eyebrows. “Since you’re being honest with me, son, I’ll be honest with you in return. What I believe you hinted at earlier is absolutely right. There’s a very good reason we’re taking these survivors away from Europe. Come Tuesday, there won’t be a Europe anymore.”

William feels his gut drop. “Holy shit,” he breathes. “You’re going to … you’re going to …”

“Don’t say it,” the sergeant tells him calmly. “I don’t want that word even uttered. You can think it if you like. But keep it to yourself.”

William feels dizzy and needs to look down at his hands for a moment. So it’s true. What they have been saying on the media. The Americans are going to nuke the entire continent. After the initial shock has died down, the first clear thought that comes to him is about his mother.

“My … my mom,” he mutters, looking back up at the sergeant. “She’s headed for the camp in Finland.”

The soldier takes a breath through his nose. “I’m very sorry about that, son. I truly am.”

William feels something wet against his hand. Ozzy is nudging him with his snout.

“I have a German shepherd back home, you know,” the sergeant tells him, a hint of warmth in his voice. “Looks just like your boy there.”

William clears his throat. “Look, if we … if we find a cure before the … before forty-eight hours have passed … would that change anything?”

The sergeant sighs. “I don’t want you going down there, son. This is your last chance to get out alive. Don’t throw it away.”

William bites his lip, glances towards the window. He can see the green open fields down there, under the perfect blue sky. He imagines that sky turning black and grey with smoke. He thinks of Dan being down there right now. And he recalls the promise he gave him.

“I need to do it,” he says.

“Excuse me?”

William looks at the sergeant. “I need to do it. I made a promise. I can’t leave my friend to do this on his own. Please drop me off, Sergeant.”

FOURTEEN

Dan sits at the bottom of the stairs, breathing through his T-shirt. It helps to keep the smell of gasoline from making him dizzy.

Dennis left the lights on down here—probably because he clean forgot—and Dan is thankful for it. Had he been left in complete darkness, it would have been a whole lot harder to keep from panicking.

How long has it been since Dennis locked the door? Dan is losing his sense of time. He has no watch and his phone is dead. Had it still had any power, he would have tried calling Dennis to get him to talk.

At first, Dan went back through the tunnel to the ladder. But even before he had climbed all the way up to the cover, he could hear the zombies up there, scratching away.

He called for Liv, then listened for a reply, but none came. She probably moved the van again and had parked it the place they originally intended to.

He called for her some more, hoping that she would hear him, but no reply came.

So, since opening the well cover would mean certain death, Dan instead went back to the secret door at the top of the stairs and tried to pick the lock. That endeavor soon proved impossible, however. He had nothing but his fingernails, and they weren’t nearly long or pointy enough to get in the lock.

He then began banging the door, calling for Dennis. But since the secret door was inside the cabinet in the hallway, at the far end of the house, there was a good chance Dennis would only hear him if he stood right outside the cabinet.

When he received no sign of anyone hearing him, Dan had to fight a strong urge to begin throwing himself at the door. It was way too solidly built, though, and he probably couldn’t break it down anyway.

Feeling an increasing sense of claustrophobia, Dan sat down at the bottom of the stairs and tried to think clearly. That’s when he noticed the gasoline fumes were starting to make him feel light-headed.

He’s been sitting here ever since, going over the options in his mind. The hope that Liv will somehow figure out that he’s in trouble and take it upon herself to lure the zombies away, then come back and climb down into the tunnel begins to seem still less likely as the minutes wear on. The same goes with help coming from the other end: Dan felt certain Dennis would come to his senses and return to let him out, but so far, that hasn’t happened.

He really meant it when he said I could stay down here and starve …

How about Dennis’s mother? Does she know about him? Had she known, she would probably have come to kill him by now. Then, on the other hand, maybe she would have simply left him to starve to death.

Whether she knew or not, the fact is that no one has been at the door since Dennis left. And if they simply decided to stay away, then what hope does Dan have of getting out of here?

He suddenly feels like crying and needs to fight back the tears. The wave of emotions comes not only from frustration and fear, but just as much from the thought of letting down the people he has lost. His family. His friends. William. Not to mention the thousands of other people who have died.

All of it will have been for nothing if Dan can’t find a way to get past this final step. If he can’t get into contact with Birgit and somehow convince her to go along with his idea.

“I’m sorry,” Dan whispers to the empty tunnel. “I messed up.”

He closes his eyes, a single, warm tear spilling over and running down his cheek. He doesn’t want to, but he can’t help but see the faces of his family once again. He can even hear them call his name. It sounds faint, far away, but still urgent.

“Dan! … Dan! … Can you hear me? … Dan? … You still down there?”

Dan opens his eyes.

The faces dissipate, and so does the voice calling. But only for two heartbeats. Then it comes again: “Dan! … Can you hear me?”

Dan jumps to his feet, almost tripping as he runs stumbling down the tunnel to the ladder and looks up at the well cover.

He can still hear the zombies clawing away on the other side, but he can also hear the voice calling for him, stronger now: “Hello! … Dan?”

“Liv?” he croaks, then clears his throat: “Liv! Is that you? I can hear you!”

FIFTEEN

“Dennis?”

Mom’s voice calls him awake, and he sits bolt upright, staring around in alarm. He finds himself on the couch in Holger’s living room. A warm sunlight is making its way in through the boarded-up windows.

“Why are you sleeping in here?”

Dennis turns his head to look at Mom standing there, fully dressed, her hair neatly combed, her blue eyes resting on him. She’s holding a basket full of clean laundry.

“I, uhm,” Dennis murmurs, wiping drool from the corner of his mouth. He was deep asleep just ten seconds ago, and his brain still hasn’t caught up. “I just … fell asleep, I guess.”

“You should have come downstairs with me,” Mom says, putting the basket down on the coffee table. “It’s not safe sleeping up here.”

“No, I know,” Dennis mutters, scratching his hair. He had this weird dream about someone trying to get inside the house, but he can’t quite remember it. “I meant to come down, I did, but—”

Then it all comes back to him in a flash.

He just sits there, open-mouthed for several seconds.

Mom doesn’t notice at first. She’s looking at the gun on the table. “And what about this? You just leave that thing lying around?”

Dennis is too shocked to reply.

All he can think of is Dan being down in the tunnel. Mom obviously hasn’t been down there, or she would have known. And she must also not have noticed the van out in the courtyard—which is probably thanks to Dennis.

After he slammed the door on Dan, he walked around the living room for ten minutes, thinking on how to deal with the situation. And he decided to try and keep it from Mom. But as soon as she woke up, she would check the cameras and see the van parked in the courtyard.

So, Dennis snuck down to the bunker and turned the camera showing the van. It was surprisingly easy; Holger had made it so that all cameras could be adjusted from the computer by simply marking it and then using the arrow keys.

Dennis spun the camera around less than half an inch, which was just enough for the van to not be seen, while at the same time, the camera still showed most of the courtyard. Mom probably wouldn’t even notice the angle had changed slightly.

Then he had gone back up to the house, listening by the cabinet. Dan had stopped banging and shouting now. Dennis felt a little better. And he went back to the living room, feeling suddenly exhausted as he lay down on the couch.

All of this flies through Dennis’s mind as he sits there.

“Dennis?” Mom’s voice calls him back again. “What’s wrong?”

Dennis makes an effort to close his mouth, swallows and blinks several times. “I, uhm … it’s just … I’m sorry, Mom. I meant to put it away, but …”

“You need to be more careful,” Mom says earnestly. “You can’t just fall asleep with a gun next to you. If someone made their way in here, they could take it from you.”

“I know, Mom. I’ll … I’ll be more careful.”

She looks at him for a moment, hands at her sides. “What’s up with you? You don’t look well.”

Dennis feels his cheeks burning. Most of the confidence he felt last night has gone. He thought he was doing a brave thing in handling the situation on his own, but it turned into a mess, and now all he can think of is how to keep Mom from finding Dan in the tunnel. But why would she go down there? Maybe if Dennis just waits it out, the problem will—

“Dennis?” Mom insists. “There’s something you’re not telling me.”

Dennis opens his mouth, not sure what will come out. His voice is suddenly calm again. “I’m fine, Mom. I just had a bad dream right now.”

“Oh,” Mom says, eyeing him for another second. “Well, good thing it was just a dream.”

Dennis nods and smiles up at her.

“You hungry?” she asks, picking up the laundry basket. “You must be. I already ate, but I can fix you something.”

Mom goes to the kitchen, and Dennis remembers the van parked in the courtyard. He jumps to his feet and runs after her. He’s just about to grab her and stop her from going into the kitchen, when he sees the boards covering the windows.

He stops and exhales. He forgot about the boards. They put them up so they wouldn’t have to look at the dead people clawing at the windows. Which means the only window the van can be seen from is the one upstairs, in the room Dennis kept a lookout for Dan last night. And Mom rarely goes up there, so he should be safe.

“You want eggs?” she asks him, putting down the basket again and opening the fridge. “We still have some, but we’ll have to eat them before they go bad.”

“Yes, please,” Dennis says, sitting down at the table.

As Mom begins preparing breakfast for him—even though it’s late in the afternoon—Dennis can almost tell himself it’s a normal day. He can almost forget about the van out in the courtyard or Dan in the tunnel. Almost.

To his surprise, though, something other than the fear of Mom finding out has begun to bug him. It feels like guilt. And it’s not from keeping the truth from Mom. It’s the thought of Dan being trapped and alone down there in the tunnel. He is probably starving by now. He must be afraid, too. That’s how Dennis would feel if it was him down there.

Still, Dan came to kill them and take the house. Dennis is certain of that. At least he was certain yesterday. Now, as he sits here in the kitchen, watching Mom start up a pan to make him scrambled eggs, he’s much less certain of Dan’s motives.

Sure, he lied, but when Dennis had confronted him about it, he had seemed honest enough. Then again, he seemed honest when they spoke on the phone, too, but it turned out he was lying.

Either Dan was lying both then and now.

Or else Dan was only lying then but not now.

Either Dan’s intentions are bad and he deserves to be trapped down in the tunnel.

Or Dan told a single lie but is being truthful about everything else.

Which one was it?

If it is the first one, and Dennis lets Dan stay down there to starve to death, he would have stopped Dan’s evil plot to kill them and takeover the house.

If it is the second one, though … then Dennis would be killing a basically innocent person. One who has only told a single lie.

The trouble is, Dennis has no way of finding out which one is true and which one is false. He only has Dan’s words to go on, and his own judgement. He can’t ask Mom or anyone else for advice. The decision is his alone.

Should he just pretend like Dan never existed and wait for him to die? Could he live with that choice? Even if Dan really is a liar and a killer, could Dennis still be the one sentencing him to death?

I didn’t kill him, he killed himself. He shouldn’t have lied to me. If he hadn’t then I would still have trusted him. I would have never—

Dennis notices Mom sniffing the eggs frying on the pan. Then she goes to the fridge, opens it and sniffs inside it.

She looks around the kitchen, then over at Dennis. “You smell something, Dennis?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, something … chemical.”

“No, I don’t smell anything,” Dennis says earnestly.

Mom shrugs, then goes back to the stove. “I just keep thinking I can smell something. It’s almost like gasoline.”

That last word makes Dennis tense up.

As soon as Mom said it, Dennis can smell it all too well. The stench of gasoline seems to be hanging thick like a blanket in the air. He probably didn’t notice it before because he’s gotten used to it.

“It’s probably nothing,” Mom mutters, dumping the eggs onto a plate. She brings it to Dennis, hands him a fork and runs her hand through his hair—a rare sign of affection. “We’ll be okay, Dennis,” she says. “I believe the hardest part is over now. As long as we have each other, we’ll be okay.”

Her voice is uncharacteristically soft and warm—it sounds almost like Mom is smiling.

Dennis doesn’t know for sure, though, because he can’t bring himself to look up at her, so he just nods and begins eating the eggs—even though his appetite is suddenly gone.

Mom stays by his side a moment longer. Then he can hear her sniffing once more. “There it is again. I just remembered, the gas can in the cabinet. Maybe I left the plug open. I’ll go and check.”

Dennis turns his head sideways and watches in horror as Mom walks across the kitchen, headed for the hallway and the cabinet under the stairs.

As soon as she opens it, she will find the gas can empty. And then Dennis will have to confess everything.

“Mom,” he hears himself say, just as Mom is about to leave the kitchen.

Things jump back into normal speed as she turns around to look at him. “Yes, Dennis?”

Dennis takes a deep breath. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

She folds her arms across her chest. “All right?”

“First, promise me you won’t be mad.”

Mom frowns. “I don’t like the sound of that. What did you do, Dennis?”

Dennis stands up. “There’s … there’s someone down in the tunnel.”

SIXTEEN

He walks along the empty road under the scorching sun, Ozzy patrolling up ahead.

William doesn’t know the area that well, and everything basically looks alike; it’s all just fields with the occasional house now and then. But he feels pretty certain he’s at least on Old Mill Road, which means Holger’s house should be coming up ahead any minute now.

They’ve been walking for an hour or so, and William is sweating profusely. He took off his shirt earlier and is wearing it over his head like a turban. He’ll probably get an aggressive tan from walking in the midday sun like this, but who gives a shit? He probably won’t get to enjoy it anyway.

And yet for all the might of the sun, it doesn’t feel as hot as it used to. William even notices a few clouds drifting by now and then. They’re light grey and seem to be growing in size and number. Looks like the heatwave is finally about to break.

Change is in the air, William thinks to himself. Quite literally.

A butterfly floats by in front of him. He’s heard something about butterflies having a lifespan of only a few days. If that’s true, then this fellow chose the right time to live. In two days, it’ll be too late.

He still can’t wrap his head around the fact that Denmark and all the surrounding countries will be turned into a wasteland like the ones you see in American disaster movies. Not only that, it’ll probably also be radioactive for centuries to come, just like the area around Chernobyl, except on a continental scale.

He remembers what Åsaa said, about the European Union answering back if America threatened to bomb everything and how that would draw others into what would soon be a global conflict.

William cares very little for politics, and he has no idea what the relations between the big nations are or how they’ll respond to a nuclear attack. But he does know that once the first bomb is dropped, it’ll likely mark the end of the world in one way or another.

It’ll certainly be the end of his world, as he’s walking around right where the fun will begin.

There’s time, he tells himself, licking sweat from his upper lip. We can reverse it. Dan was right. We can find a cure.

But even if they did—which conveniently ignores a bunch of difficulties, like convincing the voodoo lady to even give it a try—how would they get the message to the Americans? How would they communicate to the world that the so-called infection could be fought back? They would have to at least be able to demonstrate it somehow. And all of this within forty-eight hours? The more William thinks about it, the more it sounds like a computer game set to difficulty level “impossible.”

He tries to shove aside the thoughts, tries to focus on the task at hand. That’s all he can do, after all; he already made his choice.

They haven’t met any zombies yet, which probably doesn’t mean they aren’t here, they’re just not roaming the open landscape any longer. More likely, the ones who haven’t left the country for bigger meals are huddled around the few people still alive inside their houses.

Still, that’s no guarantee, and William keeps scanning the horizon for any figures. So far, though, he hasn’t seen another human, living or dead. And Ozzy hasn’t picked up any ominous scents, either; at least he hasn’t reacted to anything.

William takes a swig from the bottle the sergeant gave him. The water has turned lukewarm. He’s already drunk most of it, sharing a handful with Ozzy now and then. In his pockets are a couple of jerky strips and a loaf of bread the soldiers were nice enough to let him keep.

“God speed, son,” the sergeant had told him as William climbed onto the ladder with Ozzy hanging over his shoulders. “I sure hope you know what you’re doing.”

“I hope so too,” William had told him, glancing briefly at the faces of the survivors, most of them eyeing him back with wondering looks.

Then, to his surprise, the sergeant offered him his hand. William took it. Everton held his hand firmly, looking him dead in the eye. “I’m a religious man. I believe what you said about this being a spiritual pandemic. I think of it as God’s wrath.”

William had nodded, feeling a bit uncertain. “I guess you could say that.”

“In case you find out something we can use—anything,” the sergeant went on, staring at William. “Give me a call.” Then he broke the handshake.

“How would I reach—oh.” William noticed the piece of paper the sergeant had left in his hand. It had a long, hand-written number on it. “Thank you.”

“Take care of yourself down there, son.”

Then he had left the helicopter and watched it fly away, disappearing over the horizon in a matter of minutes, leaving him to the heat and the quiet of the day.

“What the fuck am I doing here?” William mutters, wiping sweat from his brow.

And as he looks again, he actually sees it: Holger’s house surrounded by trees, perched on the slight hill. His heart rate rises slightly, and he picks up speed.

SEVENTEEN

After calling for Dan for a couple of minutes and getting no reply, Liv is about to stop.

And that’s when Dan’s voice comes back up at her: “Liv! Is that you? I can hear you!”

It’s faint and difficult to make out through the moaning and the scratching of the zombies, but it’s definitely him.

“Dan! Oh, my God, what a relief! You okay?”

“I guess so. You still in the van?”

“I am.”

“I’m so glad you’re okay,” Dan calls back. “I need your help. They trapped me down here. I can’t get out. You’ll have to lure the zombies away.”

Liv moans. “I can’t!”

“Sure you can. You just drive the van slowly away, and they will—”

“No, I mean I can’t.”

“Why not?”

Liv closes her eyes. “It’s empty. The van. It ran out of gas.”

A brief pause. “It did? How did that happen?”

“I … I fell asleep.” She feels stupid for admitting it.

“Oh.” Dan seems to think for a moment. “And you can’t get out?”

“No, they’re everywhere out there.”

“So we’re both trapped,” Dan concludes.

“I’m afraid so.”

“Fuck.”

It’s the first time she’s heard Dan swear.

“Why’d they lock you down there?” she asks. “They didn’t want to try your plan?”

“I never got to speak to Birgit. It was Dennis who locked me down here. I’m not even sure she knows about me yet.”

“Oh, I think she does. She just mad dogged me from the window five minutes ago.”

“I see. Maybe she’ll come and speak to me then.”

“Can’t you call out for her?”

“I already tried; I don’t think they can hear me through the door.”

“So if she decides she doesn’t want to talk, she’ll just leave you down there, and that means we’ll both …” Liv can’t bring herself to finish the sentence.

“Looks that way,” Dan says, sounding defeated. “I can’t … I can’t really see any way out of this, can you?”

Liv chews her lip. “I could try and make a run for it.”

“Didn’t you say they are right outside?”

“Yes, but … I can climb out of the sunroof. If I can jump over them, maybe I can get away clean.”

“How many of them are we talking about?” Dan asks, sounding skeptical.

“I don’t know, not that many,” Liv says, realizing she’s halfway lying, not sure if she’s doing it to comfort him or herself. “Most of them have gone back to the house.”

“Well, they will all be coming for you as soon as you jump,” he warns her. “So you’d better not sprain an ankle or hurt yourself in any other way, or you’ll be in trouble.”

“I know, and I know how to jump.”

“Fine, I’m just saying—”

“Listen, I can do it, okay? It’s just a couple of yards, it’s no big deal.” Liv can hear the fear in her own voice.

There’s a brief pause before Dan says: “Even if you get out clean, how will you move the van?”

“I won’t have to; I’ll just lure away the zombies so you can climb up.”

“I’m not sure the cover can open that way. It’s on hinges.”

“Okay, then I’ll run out to find someone who can help me move the van.”

Dan doesn’t answer, which only prompts Liv to go on.

“We’ll be back here soon and we’ll get the van out of the way so you can get out. Or, better yet, I’ll just bring back a can of gasoline so I can drive the van away myself. That way I don’t need any help.”

As she finally manages to stop herself talking, she realizes her chest is all tight. She breathes out in a long, trembling exhale.

“It’s not going to work,” she whispers to the inside of the van.

“It’ll take too long,” Dan says, confirming her own thoughts. “There are miles between the houses out here. And it’s way too dangerous for you to run around in the open without any weapons or anything.”

“Shit!” Liv spits. “Shit, why’d I have to fall asleep and let the stupid van run dry? I’m such a moron.”

“Stop beating yourself up,” Dan tells her. “That’s no use. We still have time. Maybe—” Dan cuts himself short.

“Dan?” Liv asks.

“Hold on,” he says, almost too low for her to pick it up. “I think I heard something.”

“What?” Liv asks, holding her breath. “Are they coming down there?”

Five long seconds of silence.

Then Dan’s voice comes again: “I think so.”

EIGHTEEN

When Dennis finally stops talking, his mouth is all dry and his palms are all sweaty.

He looks at Mom for a reaction. She just stands there for the longest time, staring back at him, her expression unreadable.

Dennis feels very uncomfortable. He’s certain Mom will explode, scold him badly or even strike him. This is probably the worst he has ever disrespected her authority, and of course there will be a punishment.

But Mom just stands there. It looks like she’s thinking.

“Mom?” Dennis says, moving restlessly on the spot. He wishes for some strange reason that he had brought the gun from the living room—not that he would use it on Mom, not even as a deterrent from her punishing him—but he longs for that feeling of confidence the gun gives him when he holds it. He feels grown-up. Right now, he feels more like a five-year-old who accidentally broke a plate.

Mom still doesn’t answer.

“Would you please say something, Mom?” Dennis urges. “You can yell at me if you want.”

Mom’s left eye grows a little narrower. “Yell at you?”

“Yes,” Dennis nods eagerly. “Or, you know … punish me. That’s okay, I totally understand …”

Mom steps closer to him, making Dennis flinch. But she doesn’t come at him; instead, she just stands in front of him, towering over him.

“You want me to treat you like an adult, Dennis?”

Dennis blinks with surprise. “Uhm, well, yes … I’d like that.”

“Then act like one.”

Dennis considers for a moment. Then he slowly straightens up. He lifts his chin, standing at his full height, which is almost enough to be at eye level with Mom.

“That’s better,” Mom says, her voice still betraying no emotion. And then, with the speed of a striking snake, her hand shoots up and grabs Dennis by the chin, her nails digging into his skin.

“Ouch!” he cries out and tries to pull back, but Mom holds him firmly.

She pulls his face close to hers and hisses very low: “That will be the last time you lie to me.”

“It will! It will, Mom, I swear!”

Dennis stands on his toes, shuffling to try and take the pressure of his throbbing chin. Mom holds on to him for another couple of seconds, then she finally releases him, and Dennis stumbles backwards, his hands going to his chin, expecting to feel blood, but amazingly, Mom’s nails don’t seem to have penetrated his skin.

Mom turns away from him and walks to the window. She reaches over the sink and pulls away the board covering the glass. She looks out into the courtyard for almost half a minute, not moving, not saying or doing anything.

From where Dennis is standing, he can make out the rear end of the van. He doesn’t dare to say anything, so he just stands there, rubbing his chin and waiting for Mom’s lead.

Finally, Mom puts the board back up in front of the window. She turns towards Dennis again. “The boy in the tunnel … was it the older or the younger one?”

“The … the younger.”

“The one without any tattoos?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And you didn’t see him? The one with the tattoos?”

Dennis shakes his head.

“How about anyone of the others? There was a man, too. And a young woman with dark skin. Have you seen any of them?”

“No, Mom. I told you: I only saw Dan and the girl who’s sitting out in the van.” Dennis pauses, then dares to say: “I think she’s alone out there.”

“But you don’t know that.”

“No, but …”

“But what? For all you know, that van could be full of people.”

“Yeah, I know, but … I thought of it long and hard last night, Mom, and I think it’s just Dan and the girl. He told me so.”

Mom raises her eyebrows. “He told you he would be coming alone as well. He’s a liar.”

“I know, but …” Dennis shrugs towards the van. “I mean, why would they just stay out there? What are they waiting for?”

Mom seems to consider, then she mutters: “They must have a plan. Luckily, though, it doesn’t really matter. At least not for now. Our problem is the boy.” Mom falls silent once more. Then she looks at Dennis again. “You’re absolutely certain he didn’t have a gun?”

“He wasn’t armed, Mom. I swear.”

“He wasn’t concealing a gun?”

Dennis throws out his arms. “I think I would have seen it. Besides, why wouldn’t he have used it on me if he had one?”

Mom does her slow nod again. She glances at the floor, as though she can see right through to the tunnel below. “We can’t have him running around down there. He might break through the door while we’re sleeping.”

“I don’t think he can,” Dennis begins. “It’s very—”

“We’re not taking that chance,” Mom says, her eyes blazing at him. “We’re cleaning this mess up as best we can.”

“Okay, Mom,” Dennis says meekly. “Then what … what are we going to do?”

Mom’s eyes grow distant for a brief moment. “I need to go down there and take care of it.” Her hand goes to her hip, where she usually keeps the dagger. Dennis can never tell through her gown if it’s there or not.

He gets a sinking feeling in his gut as he realizes what Mom’s intentions are. For some reason, he’s almost sick at the thought of her going down there to …

“Let me do it, Mom,” he blurts out before he even knows what he’s saying. “Let me go down there.”

“No.”

“I’ll take care of it. I’ll use the gun.”

Mom shakes her head. “That thing is way too unreliable. You might miss. Or, even worse, the shot might produce a spark and set everything on fire.”

“But … but this is my mess!” Dennis says, trying to muster some measure of dignity to his voice. “I should be the one to make it right.”

“You should,” Mom says outright. “But I don’t trust you to. And there’s too much at stake.”

“But—”

“We’re done discussing.”

“But, Mom—”

“Enough!”

She raises her voice only slightly, yet it’s enough to make Dennis jump. He forgot himself for a moment. He had to push it, though; the thought of Mom using her dagger on Dan is just too awful. Dennis isn’t sure why, maybe it’s because it reminds him of the way Mom killed Old Niels. Maybe it’s because Dennis feels responsible for Dan ending up down there.

But there’s a deeper reason, too; one that Dennis can’t consciously reach, much less understand. At some level, Dennis identifies with Dan. Not just because they’re the same age, but something about Dan reminded Dennis very much of himself. The way he talked, the way he moved. Dennis has always been an outcast among his classmates—for obvious reasons. And he got the same feeling from Dan—that he was a lonely guy, someone not popular, someone carrying the burden of never being noticed.

Even though Dennis couldn’t put this feeling into words if he had to, part of him understands this to be the reason he doesn’t want Dan to die, the reason why Dennis was never going to burn him alive, even the reason why Dennis trusted Dan in the first place.

Dan and Dennis are very similar, maybe even alike.

In another world they could have been friends. Brothers, even.

“Dennis?” Mom says, bringing him back. Her voice is somewhat softer now, yet very determined. “You stay here, unless I call for you. Okay?”

Dennis swallows, blinks, then nods.

“Good,” Mom says. “I’ll make it fast.”

She turns around and walks out into the hallway. Dennis looks after her as she goes to the cabinet, taking out her dagger. She opens the cabinet carefully, looks briefly at the empty gas can, then steps into the semidarkness.

She stands there for a moment, listening for any sounds through the secret door. Then she reaches out and turns the key slowly.

NINETEEN

“Dan? … Dan, who is it? … Who’s down there with you?”

Liv gets no answer this time; she can sense Dan is no longer below her. He probably climbed down the ladder and has walked back down the tunnel to meet whoever came down from the house.

Liv hopes very much it’s the guy and that he’s changed his mind. That he decided to trust Dan anyway and will be letting him out. That would also mean they could help Liv get out, too.

But she feels very deep in her gut that that’s not what’s about to go down. In fact, she has a very bad feeling. She looks to the house. Even though the windows are still boarded up, she can all too easily recall the dead stare from the woman just minutes ago.

“Fuck,” she mutters. “This is not good … this is not good at all …”

She tries to think, tries desperately to come up with some way of helping Dan, but there’s just no way for her to get out of the van without—

Plonk!

Liv snaps her head around at the sound. Something hit the van from behind. It wasn’t the zombies; the noises from their fingers are a lot softer. This sounded more like metal or stone.

Before Liv can figure out what made the noise, it comes again.

Plonk!

What the hell?

Liv gets to her feet and walks back to the rear doors. She looks out the window, which is high enough that she can see over the heads of the zombies, the only thing obstructing her view being their hands fumbling over the window.

She can see the other end of the courtyard and the gravel road leading down to the highway. But she can’t see what produced the sound.

Then, suddenly, over by the trees, a guy pops out, waving at her.

He’s a few years older than Liv and sports large tattoos running up and down his arms. Over his shoulder is a rifle. He’s wearing a Guns ’n’ Roses T-shirt. Dan never described William to her, but he did mention his German shepherd, which is sitting right beside him, staring menacingly at the zombies, looking like he’s just waiting to be given the green light to launch at them.

“William?” she exclaims.

The guy shrugs, then places one hand behind his ear.

Liv forms a funnel around her mouth with both hands and shouts: “William?”

He nods and shows her a thumbs-up. He then mouths: “Dan?”

Liv shouts: “Dan’s in danger! We have to help him! Get me out of here!”

She’s not sure if all the words reach William through the moans and groans of the zombies, but the main message seems to get through. He glances briefly at the house, gives the dog a command, then steps into the courtyard.

Almost immediately, the zombies by the van seem to sense the more accessible prey and turn their attention towards William. He comes a little closer still, drawing the last of them. Then, once he’s sure the entire group is headed for him, he turns around, whistles at the dog—who follows him only reluctantly—and runs out of the courtyard and down the gravel road.

The zombies stagger after him as William disappears out of sight. Liv watches the zombies follow him, counting her heartbeats, knowing that if she opens the car door too soon, they will turn around and come right back, and she won’t have time to move the van.

“Come on, come on,” she chants.

Then, as the last of the zombies finally disappear from view, Liv opens the door and jumps out, breathing in the fresh air in a big gulp.

She runs around the van, places her hands at the hood and begins pushing. Her feet slip on the gravel and the van doesn’t move an inch. “Come on! Come on, damnit!”

Steps running across gravel make her look up in alarm.

William comes around the van, stopping as he sees her, panting and holding the rifle. “Good, you’re out! Where’s Dan? Is he in danger?”

“Yes! He’s down there,” Liv says, pointing. “Help me move this thing.”

They both place their shoulders against the van and push in unison.

“You sure you put it in neutral?” William asks, heaving for breath as he strains to push the van.

“I double-checked,” Liv says, biting down hard. “Come on, just push!”

For a moment, she’s sure it won’t move.

Then the van—very, very slowly—starts rolling.

TWENTY

Dan senses the person before he actually sees them.

He wasn’t sure if he really heard the lock click from down the other end of the tunnel, but as he climbs back down the ladder, he can tell the glow from atop the staircase is brighter than before.

And then he sees the pair of legs coming down the steps, slowly, methodically, as though choosing every step with great care and consideration. The person is wearing a white, knee-long dress, which tells him right away it’s not Dennis.

As her flat-chested torso comes into view, Dan is struck by how tall Birgit is; he’s only seen her from the window. But now, as she finally comes into full view, stopping by the end of the staircase, she looks almost freakishly tall in the dim light. As she’s standing there, looking at him through the tunnel, she seems like something out of time. Like an evil spirit from ancient worlds come to haunt him.

“I knew you’d be back,” she says.

The words seem to leave her mouth without her having to move her lips, reaching Dan by snaking their way through the tunnel.

Dan has to pry his tongue from the roof of his mouth. “I’m not here to fight.”

Birgit doesn’t seem to hear him. “I knew some of you would be back, but I have to admit, at first I was surprised it was you.” She takes a step closer. It looks more like she glides across the floor. “Then I remembered seeing you in the car. You saw me too, didn’t you?”

Dan nods.

“And I remembered,” Birgit goes on, talking slowly and taking another step towards him, “how I could sense back then you were the one calling the shots. It struck me as odd, since you were the youngest in your group. But sometimes, age doesn’t matter. It’s just a number—isn’t that what they say?”

Dan swallows dryly and shakes his head. “I didn’t call the shots. We were a group. We worked together.”

Birgit smiles. “Then why are you the one standing here? And don’t tell me it’s fate; I don’t believe in that.”

“I don’t either. It was my own choice. I came back to talk with you.”

“Yes, my son told me.”

Another step towards him. The way she walks looks strange, not just because of the way she seems to be moving without the help of her feet, but also due to the way she isn’t facing him straight on; her body is turned very slightly to the left, giving her an off-balance look. There’s something ominous about it, something threatening, yet Dan can’t place what it is.

“So,” she says, showing him her palm. “Here’s your chance. Say what you came to say.”

Dan breathes in. “I need your help. I know you do voodoo. I know you were there when the first person came back to life—the girl at Esther’s place.”

Birgit is in the middle of taking another step, but she stops. Her expression darkens slightly. “And how would you know that, pray tell?”

“I was there,” Dan says. “Some hours after you’d left. I saw your son’s pouch, the one he’s carrying around his neck. And I recognized it when I saw him from the window.”

Birgit is silent for several long seconds. “You’re even more perceptive than I thought.”

“I just put the pieces together,” Dan says. “I figured Dennis wasn’t the one doing the ritual, so it must have been you.”

Birgit takes another step. “I was helping the girl.”

“I know. She died in an accident somehow, and you wanted to bring her back to life. Normal life. You had good intentions, but it went off the rails somehow.”

“That wasn’t my doing,” Birgit says, and the tone of her voice changes, showing real emotion for the first time.

“I didn’t come to blame you for anything,” Dan goes on. “I don’t care about all of that. I don’t even care about you killing Holger.”

“How amicable of you.”

“I just want you to try and reverse this curse, or whatever it is.”

Birgit takes another step. She’s halfway through the tunnel now, slowly closing the distance between them. “You’re a wise boy, but you speak of things you have no knowledge of. Don’t you think I would have reversed it if that was within my power?”

“We have to try,” Dan says. “It’s the only way it’ll ever end.”

Birgit shakes her head. “There’s only one way it will end, and that end has already started.”

As she steps closer, she comes into the light of one of the roof lamps, and for a moment the reflection catches both her eyes, making them flash with menace.

Finally, it strikes Dan what the reason is for the slightly turned way Birgit is walking: she’s holding her right arm close to her side, keeping the hand discretely out of view.

“What’s in your hand?” Dan says, hearing his mouth talk without his permission. “Is that a knife? Are you going to kill me with it like you killed Holger?”

Birgit stops dead in her track.

She stares him right in the face, and Dan stares back at her. Without breaking eye contact, Birgit lets her hand drift out, revealing a shining bronze-colored blade of what looks more like an Iron-Age dagger than a knife.

“That was my intention, yes,” she says.

“You can kill me,” Dan says, feeling a sudden and unexpected rush of something forceful streaming up through his chest. It’s all he can do to keep it back, yet it still shines through in his voice. “But it won’t solve anything. You’ll still be living in a world about to be taken over by the dead. You will live in constant fear and your son will know nothing but paranoia and death.”

Birgit tilts her head slightly, revealing her white teeth in a sneer. “What would you know about death?”

Whatever has built in Dan suddenly breaks loose. He surprises even himself in taking a step forward. “What do I know? I’ve lost my entire family! I’ve lost everyone I love! They’re all dead because of what you started, so go ahead: kill me too! If you want to keep making chaos instead of trying to fix it, then just go ahead!”

Birgit looks like she’s about to step back but manages to hold firm at the last second. Then, as the echo of Dan’s voice dies out in the tunnel, her expression turns from surprise to stone.

And Dan knows at that moment he will die.

He knows it like he knows the sun will rise tomorrow.

As Birgit steps forward, raising the dagger, time slows down and Dan closes his eyes. The faces of his family once more glide across his inner vision, and he thinks very clearly and calmly: I will see you in a moment.

There’s no fear. No pain.

Only a bright light from above enrobing him.

TWENTY-ONE

Breaking open the wall turns out a whole lot harder than Iver imagined.

He’s been working on it for hours, using different tactics and tools. First, he tried simply smashing his way through the wall using Agnete’s metal candlestick, and while getting through the initial layer of wallpaper and plaster was easy enough, it turned out to be bricks on the inside, and there was no way he would get through that way by hammering it.

Instead he began scratching at the joints using the other end of the candlestick. It was tedious work, but he did seem to make progress; the mortar would slowly crumble and fall away as dust.

The problem was, it took him over an hour to get only one brick loose. When he finally was able to pull it out, the door had started to make that awful cracking sound more and more often.

The hinges on the door turned out to be more durable than Iver first feared. But between the occasional thrust against the door and the sheer pressure of the crowd of zombies, it wouldn’t last for long.

Now, the sun has long since come up and is blazing in through the windows. Adam is awake and crying now and then. Agnete comforts him as best she can, but the boy is hungry. So is Iver. He’s also dead tired and his arms are killing him from working the wall. His palms have grown blisters, but he can’t slow down, so he’s pushing through the pain.

He’s pried free three bricks by now, and just as he begins working on the fourth, the lower hinge on the door gives way. It simply falls off, landing on the floor with a metallic sound.

Iver freezes and stares at it.

The door swings into the room a few inches at the bottom. It’s not enough for any of the zombies to squeeze through, since the upper hinge is still clinging on, but they reach in their arms and grope for anything to grab onto.

Adam begins crying when he sees them.

Agnete picks him up and turns away, looking at Iver with big, scared eyes. “Are we going to make it?”

“Yes,” Iver hears himself say, then he begins hammering away at the bricks. He goes into a frenzy, clubbing the wall like a wild man, feeling the painful jolts run up through his arm, but he doesn’t care, he wants those last two bricks out right now, and he’s not going to relent before they give way.

And they do within half a minute. They loosen up at the same time and plummet through the hole into the bathroom.

“Ready!” Iver shouts, dropping the candlestick and darting a look over at the door, where one guy has now pushed his head through, glaring at them with his white eyes, clapping his teeth hungrily. The door looks like it could give up any second. In fact, Iver can’t tell what’s holding that last hinge in place.

“Give him to me!” Iver shouts, holding out his arms.

“You climb through first,” Agnete says. “Then I’ll hand him to you.”

Iver doesn’t want to waste time arguing, so he simply hoists himself up and climbs through to the bathroom. The air duct is right above the toilet, so he can step down onto the seat, spin around and reach his arms back through the hole.

Agnete hands him the crying toddler. “Careful! Don’t bump his head.”

Iver pulls Adam through the wall, and just as he does so, there’s a crunching sound from the bedroom followed by a bang.

That was the door …

Iver sees Agnete dart a glance to the side and knows he’s right.

“Come on!” he shouts, holding Adam on one arm and reaching the other one back, trying to grab Agnete. “Come on, Agnete! Hurry!”

But the look on her face tells him all he needs.

She stares at them through the hole, smiling. “Take care of him, Iver.”

“No! Agnete, no!”

But she has already ducked down out of sight. At first, Iver thinks she has lain down, but then she comes back up, holding the night table. She flings it aside, effectively cutting herself off from climbing through the hole—but also making sure none of the deads can do the same.

Then, just as the first zombie staggers into view, Iver steps down from the toilet, squeezing Adam tightly and closing his eyes. He wants badly to cover his ears, but instead he uses his free hand to cover Adam’s ear, pressing the other one against his head as the toddler cries.

To Iver’s great relief, though, Agnete doesn’t scream.

TWENTY-TWO

The light comes from somewhere overhead. But it’s not celestial as Dan first thought. It’s plain old sunlight.

He opens his eyes after what feels like several minutes, but what is more likely only a couple of seconds.

And he sees a figure come jumping down from above, landing beside him, straightening up and pointing a rifle at Birgit, who stops only eight or ten feet away, the bright light painting her face white and causing her to squint.

The person besides him says something, but Dan’s hearing has tuned out and he can’t interpret the words. Instead, he turns his head and looks at William.

This is a dream. I’m probably already dead. Then, almost making himself smile, he thinks: William must be an angel.

William looks very much alive and temporal, though. He’s holding the rifle firmly against his shoulder, nudging Dan backwards with one elbow while staring fixedly at Birgit. And as he speaks again, Dan is able to understand him.

“You heard me, lady: stay back, or I’ll blow your fucking head off!”

“William?” Dan hears himself asking, his voice sounding bemused more than anything.

“That’s my name, don’t wear it out,” William says without looking at him. “This was a pretty close call, huh?”

“How did you … I don’t understand.”

“Let’s save it for later. Right now, we need to deal with psycho-lady here.”

“You okay down there?” a voice asks from above.

Dan looks up to see Liv peering down through the opening. From somewhere behind her, Dan can hear Ozzy panting and whimpering.

“We’re fine,” William says, still not moving his eyes from Birgit. “Step back, please.”

Birgit doesn’t move. Instead, she turns her head and looks at Dan. “I thought you said you weren’t coming to take back the house?”

“We’re not,” Dan says earnestly, still only halfway convinced this isn’t some sort of dream.

“It’s true, we weren’t,” William confirms. “Not until you decided to kill him anyway. Now, move back! I’m not telling you again.”

“Mom?” a voice calls from down the tunnel. “What’s happening?”

“Go back inside, Dennis!” Birgit calls over her shoulder. “Get down to the bunker right away! Lock yourself in there and don’t—”

“Shut the fuck up!” William shouts.

“—let anyone in, no matter what they say!”

“Stop talking!”

“Go, Dennis! Go, now!”

“I told you to—”

“William!” Liv cuts him off. “They’re coming back!”

Ozzy starts barking up there.

“Move!” William roars, stepping forward and jabbing the rifle at Birgit’s chest. “Get back, or we’ll all be zombie-dinner!”

Finally, Birgit steps backwards, her eyes darting from William to Dan, the dagger still in her hand.

“Come down here and close the hatch!” William shouts—unnecessarily so, because Liv is already coming down the ladder.

She slams the hatch and locks it, looking at William: “What about your dog?”

“He’ll be fine, don’t worry about him.”

Liv climbs down and joins them.

For a moment, they all just stand there, staring at each other: Dan, William and Liv in close formation, Birgit alone a few yards away.

“So far, so good,” William says, as Dan can hear fingers begin to scratch the fake well cover from above. “Now everyone just stay calm …”

“You’ll never get into the bunker,” Birgit says.

“Shut your mouth. And put down that fucking blade you’re holding. What the hell is that, anyway? Looks like something from Game of Thrones.”

“I’ll put down mine if you put down yours,” Birgit tells him calmly.

William grinds his teeth. “Listen, you fucking psycho. I know you’re probably used to bossing people around, but you’re no longer in charge here, so put down that goddamn mini-sword, or I’ll shoot it out of your hand.”

“William,” Dan says.

“Not now,” William says. “Do it, lady. Last warning.”

Birgit doesn’t look like she’s about to put down the dagger. She just stares at William, daring him.

“You really are fucking nuts,” William says, taking a deep breath. “Okay, I’m going to have to shoot her. I suggest you cover your ears …”

“William,” Dan says again, placing a hand on his arm. “It’s okay. Put it down.”

William darts one quick look sideways. “Put what down? The rifle? Are you out of your mind? She’ll come at us if I do that.”

“No,” Dan says, looking over at Birgit. “She won’t.”

Birgit looks back at him, saying nothing, but Dan can tell she tries hard to read him.

“We’re done fighting,” Dan goes on, talking to all of them now. “No more killing each other. From now on, we’ll work together. We’ll find a way to end all this. Right?”

He looks from Birgit to William.

Birgit doesn’t say or do anything; she simply waits to see what happens.

William hesitates, clearly fighting himself.

Dan reaches out and puts his hand on the barrel of the rifle, pushing it gently towards the floor. William resists at first, then lets the rifle drop. He straightens up and looks at Birgit.

Suddenly, the distance between them seems very short. Birgit could close it in less than a second, a lot faster than William could get the rifle back up, and Dan can feel how keenly they’re all aware of that fact.

So he steps forward.

“No, Dan,” William begins, grabbing for his shoulder.

“It’s okay,” Dan says, slipping past him. He stops in front of Birgit and looks up at her—she’s a full foot taller than him. “We’re done fighting,” he repeats softly. “Let’s go inside and talk.”

Then he simply walks past her, the sleeve of his T-shirt brushing against her arm—the one holding the dagger. He walks on down the tunnel. Then, as he senses the others aren’t coming, he stops and turns around.

“You guys coming?”

Liv, William and Birgit are all still standing there, uncertain what to do.

William is the one to break the silence with a snorting laughter. “Jesus Christ, the balls on that guy!”

Liv begins walking, passing by Birgit while giving her one brief look before joining Dan. Then William shrugs and walks past her, too, the rifle by his side. And finally, reluctantly and without a word, Birgit turns and joins them in walking back through the tunnel.

TWENTY-THREE

“Dennis?”

Mom’s voice through the door.

Dennis gets up from the terminal. He’s been following along on the screens, staring in horror as Dan was the first one to appear back inside the house, then the girl came out of the cabinet, followed by the other, older guy. For a brief moment, Dennis felt absolute panic at the thought of them having killed Mom and left her down in the tunnel.

But then, to his amazement, Mom appeared from the cabinet as well, looking unharmed. It looked almost like the four of them had made some sort of truce.

They went to the kitchen, exchanged a few awkward looks before Mom went on to the bedroom, from where she climbed down the hatch to the bunker. The three intruders are still in the kitchen, helping themselves to the fridge, as Mom knocks the metal door.

“It’s me, Dennis. You can open up.”

Dennis unlocks the door and opens it.

He halfway expects Mom to come in and slam the door, having played some sort of trick on the intruders, so as to make it safely down to the bunker.

But she doesn’t come in, she just stands there.

“What … what happened, Mom? Why are they in the house?”

“They’ve come to talk,” Mom says, sounding like the words are difficult to utter. “I agreed to it.”

Dennis blinks. “So they … they weren’t lying after all?”

“I don’t know. We still have to be careful. Okay?”

Dennis nods. “Okay, Mom. So now what?”

Mom darts a look over at the screens showing the three newcomers in the kitchen, eating. “Now we go back up there and talk. I want you there, too.”

Dennis shakes his head. “I can’t, Mom. Dan must hate me after what I did.”

“He’s not angry,” Mom assures him. “And he won’t do anything to hurt you. I’ll make sure of that. Come on, now.”

Dennis follows Mom back into the house, feeling a strange mixture of different feelings like amazement, confusion and anxiety all at once.

They find the three newcomers in the kitchen, all three sitting down by the table, shoveling in food. They’ve taken out bread, ham, cheese, fruit and other stuff from the fridge.

The guy with the tattoos looks up briefly at them and says with his mouth full: “We haven’t eaten anything real for days.”

“I can tell,” Mom says in a cool voice.

Dan looks at Dennis, finishes chewing, then says: “Hi again, Dennis.”

“Uhm, hi,” Dennis says, feeling immensely awkward. “Sorry for … locking you in the tunnel.”

“Sorry for lying to you. That was stupid and unnecessary. I should have trusted you to trust me.”

Dennis can feel Dan isn’t angry, which makes it easier for him to relax. He even manages to send Dan a meek smile.

“This is William,” Dan goes on. “And this is Liv.”

“Howdy,” William says, stuffing most of a banana down his throat.

“Nice to meet you,” Liv says, sounding like she’s still a little tense, but at least trying to mean it. “I’m glad we could, you know … make it work.”

“We’ll see,” Mom says, pulling out a chair and looking at Dennis.

He goes to sit.

“Was it your scrambled eggs?” William asks him. “Sorry, but I ate them. Damn, they were good. Can’t remember the last time I’ve had scrambled eggs.”

“That’s … okay,” Dennis mutters. He feels weird just sitting there, while the rest of them are eating, so he takes a slice of bread and starts making himself a sandwich. His tummy feels very uptight, and he’s not sure he can squeeze down a single bite.

“You care to join us?” Dan says, looking up at Mom still standing there.

“That’s okay, I’m not hungry,” Mom says, going to stand by the sink. She turns and leans her lower back against the table, folding her arms across her chest.

“Oh, shoot,” William says, getting up. “I almost forgot about Ozzy. One moment.”

“What are you doing?” Mom says as he goes to leave the kitchen.

William looks at her. “I’ll let in my dog. It’s okay, he’s very well trained.”

“You can’t just open the door,” Mom says, nodding towards the windows. “They are still out there.”

“I know, I’m not stupid,” William says. “I’ll let him in through the vegetable garden—don’t worry, I’ll lure them away first. They’re not interested in Ozzy, so it’ll be easy for him to slip inside.”

Then he leaves the room.

Mom looks at Dan, her expression hard to read. They keep on eating for a few minutes, the silence in the kitchen becoming more and more oppressive to Dennis. He’s done making his sandwich and forces himself to chow down a couple of bites. As soon as it reaches his stomach, he realizes he’s actually hungry.

Then William returns, a German shepherd by his side. “Piece of cake,” he says, sits down and resumes eating.

The dog goes to Dan, licking his hands happily, and Dan ruffles his ears. “Good to see you too, buddy.”

Then the dog goes to the girl, and she lets him smell her hand, then pats him on the head. The dog comes to Dennis next. He copies the girl’s gesture of offering the dog his open palm, and the dog sniffs it, then gives it a quick lick. Finally, the dog goes to greet Mom.

“I hate dogs,” Mom says. She’s talking to William, but the dog reacts to her voice as well, stopping a few paces away from her.

“Ozzy,” William says, looking up briefly. “Find a place to rest, buddy.”

The dog looks up at Mom for a moment, giving off a short whimper, then slinks to the far end of the kitchen and lies down.

“So,” William says, putting his hands together. “Looks like all are present and the disciplinary meeting can begin.”

Dan finishes chewing, puts down his sandwich, then looks at Mom and says: “We need your help. Like I said, we want you to try and reverse this thing.”

“And like I said, that can’t be done.”

“Why not?” William says right away.

Mom looks at him, answering in a voice like a patient teacher having to explain something to a dumb student: “Because it doesn’t work that way. These things can’t just be reserved. They can only be lifted.”

“Explain to us the difference, please,” Dan urges.

Mom runs her tongue across her teeth. “The difference is, reversing a curse would mean to undo it, to make it as though it was never there. That’s not possible. It’s like curing someone of a bad fever: you can’t make it so that the fever was never there.”

“But you can make it go away?” Dan asks. “The fever?”

Mom looks at him for a long moment, then shrugs. “In theory, yes. You might make it go away, but whatever damage the fever has done will remain.”

“So what would that mean?” William asks. “Supposing we could lift the curse off these poor pricks—would it bring them back to life?”

Mom shakes her head. “They’re already dead.”

“So what would happen to them, exactly?”

Mom shrugs: “They would die.”

William smacks his lips and looks at Dan. “Not exactly what we were hoping to hear, huh? Even if we could make a ritual to cure this thing, it would just kill them. Sounds a lot easier to just shoot them.”

“Hold on,” Dan says, looking at Mom. “Could you explain how exactly lifting the curse would work? I know a little about voodoo. I know about the big and the little angel and that thing about how the soul is split in two.”

Dennis is surprised to hear Dan mention these terms. Mom never speaks to Dennis about her beliefs, not directly at least, but he has picked up a few things over the years. He looks at Mom, curious to see her reaction.

She looks at Dan with slightly raised eyebrows. “Where did you learn about that?”

Dan shrugs. “In school.”

“Well, your school is wrong. That’s not at all how it works.”

“How does it work, then?”

Mom is quiet for a few seconds. When she starts speaking, the words come slowly and pensively. “What you’re referring to are the ti bon ange and the gros bone ange. The ti bon ange or the Little Angel is our individual personalities, small, imperfect, vulnerable. The gros bone ange is the collective life force which animates all life and flows in every human being from birth until death. It is eternal and can never be killed or harmed or even stained.”

For some reason, Dennis feels very uncomfortable hearing Mom talk about this stuff. Maybe it’s because he considers it to be crazy, and he’s sure the others will think so too.

Looking at William, Dennis’s suspicion is confirmed, as he rolls his eyes.

But before he can say anything, Dan asks earnestly: “And the Little Angel is gone, right? In the zombies? Their personal life force is dead. Because that’s the one that dies when a person dies, isn’t it?”

“Normally, yes.”

“But you called it back. In the girl that started all this. You called her Little Angel back from the dead and sent it inside her body again, only it was all screwed up. Isn’t that right?”

Mom shakes her head slowly. “That’s not what happened.”

“What was it then?”

For the first time, Mom seems hesitant. Her eyes flash in Dennis’s direction for a brief second. “I’m not … entirely sure.”

“What’s your best guess?” William asks.

This time, Mom is quiet for an even longer time. The others have stopped eating; all of them are giving Mom their full attention, waiting for her to speak her mind.

In the silent pause, Dennis can’t help but be taken back to that awful evening, which feels both very fresh in his memory, yet at the same time like something that happened a long, long time ago.

“When a human dies,” Mom begins, speaking carefully, “the ti bon ange drifts away and dissipates. It merges back into the collective. It no longer is. The gros bon ange then retracts from that body. You can think of it as a wave sinking back into the ocean. What I … what we were trying to do with Nadia was asking the gros bon ange to rise in her once again. It should have been like a rebirth. Because that’s what happens when a human enters this world; the gros bon ange is there at first, it’s what gives rise to the ti bon ange. And it seemed to work. It did. We had called to the gros bon ange and it had come back, it was once again flowing through her, reanimating her body. But …” Mom’s eyes grow distant.

Dennis gets the feeling they’re all holding their breath.

Liv—who has been quiet until now—is the one to break the silence, asking softly: “Then what went wrong?”

Mom looks at her, then shakes her head slow. “The gros bon ange can give life on its own, but it can’t give meaning. It’s like a car without a driver, the engine just idling away. So it wasn’t enough for us to call back the life force, we had to also call back her personal mind. And I believe we could have succeeded. But the blood … it shouldn’t have been spilled. It contaminated the pathway. It shook everything just at the most critical time.”

Dennis can’t help but seeing the blood dripping into the mouth of Nadia—he can even smell it. The vivid memory is enough to make his throat all tight.

“So what happened to her?” Dan asks. “What happened to her ti bon ange?”

“It was contaminated. Or cursed, as you put it. Just like the blood.”

“Cursed with what?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know?” William chimes in. “That’s the missing piece of the whole damn thing, you can’t just ‘not know’!”

“I have no way of knowing,” Mom says calmly. “I can only see the result of the curse.” She nods towards the window. “It’s right outside.”

“Well, take a wild guess then,” William presses on.

Mom keeps staring at the boarded-up window for a moment. Dennis can hear the zombies scratching away out there. Then she says: “When doing rituals, the ti bon anges of the people present touch each other. If one is not careful, their personal stuff can get in the way. My best guess is that Esther’s desperate desire to revive her granddaughter was what flew into the girl’s mind right before it woke up. The fear, the guilt, the self-loathing … human pain can be immensely powerful. I believe Esther inadvertently cursed the girl’s mind at its most vulnerable stage.”

“So did it break the girl’s mind?” Liv asks.

“No. Like I said, it cursed it.”

“Then why can’t the curse be lifted?” Dan asks.

“I feel like we’re starting to go in circles here,” William says, rubbing his forehead.

“First off, because I’m not sure what did it,” Mom says. “It’s just my guess. Curing it would be like treating someone for a disease that’s never been documented before.”

“Can’t you give her, like, broad-spectrum antibiotics then?” Liv suggests. “That’s what doctors do when they’re not completely sure about things, right? They use a drug that works for most things and hope to hit the mark.”

Mom shakes her head. “That would be irresponsible.”

William throws out his arms. “More irresponsible than causing the end of the fucking world?”

Mom’s eyes flash at him.

“Would it make things worse?” Dan asks. “If we try lifting the curse and we don’t get it right?”

Mom shrugs. “There’s no way of telling.”

“I think we should try something,” Dan says. “I think it’s worth the risk.”

“You don’t get it,” Mom says. “We can’t just ‘try something.’ There are no broad-spectrum rituals; you need to know exactly what you’re aiming for, or the ritual will just be empty gestures and words.”

“Then let’s assume you’re right,” Dan goes on. “About Esther’s pain being what caused the curse. Let’s make a ritual that’ll lift that.”

“That would take several hours.”

“That’s okay, we don’t have any plans,” William says with a wry grin.

“It would take several hours,” Mom repeats, while sending William a sharp look. “And there’s only a very small chance it would work.”

“I still think it’s worth a shot,” Dan says. “We’ll help you. We’ll do whatever we can.”

Mom looks at him, and her expression changes suddenly. So does her voice as she says: “I’m sorry for your losses. But there’s no way your loved ones are coming back.”

Dan blinks once. “I realize that. That’s not why I’m here.”

“Why then?”

“To make sure no one else loses their family.”

“That’s a very noble cause.”

“I don’t care if it’s noble or not,” Dan says calmly. “I just really want you to give it a shot.”

TWENTY-FOUR

“Is she still going at it?”

Dan turns his head to look at William who has joined him without him noticing. They’re standing at the opening to the living room.

“Yeah, she hasn’t moved for forty-five minutes.”

The living room has been stripped clean of furniture—except for a tiny table in the corner—and all of Holger’s stuff is now stacked in the bedroom and most of the kitchen.

Instead, on the middle of the wooden floor sits Birgit, her legs folded, her hands resting on her knees, her eyes closed and her lips moving soundlessly. Around her, a wide circle is drawn in white chalk, surrounded again in a wider circle of lit candles, their flames the only source of light in the room. In front of her is an open book, a bowl of water with leaves floating around it and four shiny black stones places in a neat square. From the ceiling hangs strings with feathers, sea shells and thin animal bones—Dan can even make out what appears to be the skull of a crow.

“This is fucking nuts, you know that, right?” William says in a low voice.

“I guess you’re right,” Dan shrugs. “But so is what’s going on outside.”

“Speaking of things that are fucking nuts,” William says. “That’s actually why I came down here. The tarp is ready. We could use your help, if you’re done here.”

Dan nods. “I don’t think she needs any more from me.”

Earlier on, before sinking into silent prayer, Birgit instructed Dan in strewing out the chalk and lighting the candles while she recited phrases from the book.

Dan follows William upstairs. As they step into the room facing the courtyard, Dan can’t help but recall this was where Holger’s body was dumped from. That’s not the only reason why he dreads this part of the plan, though.

The window is open wide, showing the beautiful sunset in the horizon—which for the first time in weeks is partly covered up by distant clouds, carrying the promise of rain.

Dennis is standing by the window, peering down into the courtyard, from where the incessant choir of moans and groans comes floating up.

On the couch is Ozzy, resting, but lifting his head as they enter the room.

Liv is working on the ropes attached to the big, dark green tarp they found down in one of Holger’s utility closets. They’ve secured the ropes all the way around the edges of the tarp, leaving still several yards of rope for them to hold onto.

“Right, are we at go?” William asks, clapping his hands.

Dennis turns to look at them, the usual look of restraint on his face as he nods.

“I think so,” Liv says. “We just need to lower it.”

“Should we just go over it one more time?” Dan asks. “So we’re all sure of our individual tasks?”

“Right,” William says. “Dennis and I lower the tarp. Liv goes down to the tunnel and lures the zombies over towards the well cover, so that hopefully, only a few of them will stay below our window. Dan, you keep ready with the rifle.” William points to the weapon leaning up against the couch. “If anything goes wrong, you use it.”

Dan nods. “And the two of you, will you be able to hoist it up?”

“Sure, we’re a couple of buff dudes, right, Dennis?” William pats Dennis on the shoulder. “You used to hit the gym regularly, didn’t you?”

Dennis looks down shyly and shakes his head. “Not really.”

“No, I can tell,” William says. “Me neither. But we can lift one guy, right?”

“I guess so.”

William looks at Liv. “We’ll try and catch one of the lighter ones. I saw a couple of kids down there. If you can … you know, lure the others away.”

Liv throws out her arms. “I don’t really think I’ll have any say in the matter.”

“No, you’re right,” William concedes. “We’ll just see who we get. If it’s a big, fat guy, we can always dump him and try again.”

“Okay,” Dan says, going to pick up the rifle. “I guess we’re all set then?”

“Yeah,” William says, looking at Liv. “You make the first move.”

She nods, takes a breath, then leaves the room. They can hear her walk downstairs.

All three of them wait by the window. Dan peers down at the crowd of zombies. There are a lot of them, probably close to a hundred. Most of them are huddled below the window, reaching up at them, but others are still clawing away at the windows.

Then, gradually, they begin to turn and walk off to the far end of the courtyard.

“It’s working,” William says. “Liv is down in the tunnel now, and they are sensing her. Okay, let’s get this thing in the water.”

He lifts up the tarp, and Dennis helps him. Dan moves to the side, getting out of their way as they maneuver the tarp out the window, then starts lowering it using the ropes.

“More to the left,” William instructs. “No, that’s too much. You need to give a little more rope on your side, Dennis. That’s it. Nice job. It’s spread out nicely. Okay, get ready now. Liv will be heading back any minute. As soon as she’s gone, they’ll come back. Once the first one steps onto the tarp, we pull it, okay? You ready?”

Dennis nods. To Dan, he looks like someone who’s about to be sick.

“You’ve got this, Dennis,” he tells him. “You’re doing excellent.”

Dennis looks at him, blushing before he can look away. “Thanks.”

“Okay, here they come,” William says. “On my mark …”

They wait, watching the zombies. Dan can’t see them from where he’s standing, so he watches the faces of Dennis and William instead. Ozzy senses something going down and begins whimpering from the couch.

“Three, two, one,” William counts. “Now!”

He yanks back the rope, and Dennis does the same on his side.

“Pull, pull, pull!” William shouts, as they both heave and tug at the ropes, pulling it in as fast as they can. “I think we got one! Keep pulling, Dennis!”

They hoist up a few more feet of rope, then William stops.

“Okay, wait a minute,” he says, panting. “We need to check …” He holds the rope tightly as he leans out to look down. “It’s closed. And there’s definitely someone in there. Judging from the size, I’d say there’s only one in there.” He darts a broad smile at Dan, then turns to Dennis. “We did it, man! Hole in one! Gimme some!”

He holds up his hand. Dennis hesitates for a moment, then realizes what it means and raises his own hand to high-five William. But as he does, the rope starts slipping.

“Oh, shit,” William says, grabbing it. “Let’s finish the job, then we’ll celebrate later …”

Running footsteps as Liv appears in the doorway, out of breath. “Did it … did it work?”

“It did,” Dan says. “Maybe stay back. We need to make sure the tarp is safe.”

Dennis and William pull the ropes all the way in, and the tarp comes into view. It’s bundled up and closed at the top, where the ropes have laced together just as they had planned. Inside the teardrop-shaped bag, a zombie is thrashing around, its nails audibly scratching away at the tarp. Ozzy jumps to his feet and begins growling.

“It will hold, won’t it?” Dennis asks, sounding both anxious, excited and out of breath all at once. “The tarp is too thick for him to claw his way through?”

“It’s heavy-duty material,” William pants. “I trust Holger only bought the best shit for his bunker. Come on, let’s get it inside …”

They pull with a last effort, backing up as the tarp moves over the windowsill and plunges to the floor.

“Tape it up!” William shouts, holding the ropes tight so the opening is kept closed.

Liv moves in from the side, bringing the role of duct tape. She swiftly wraps it around the opening several times, closing it off effectively.

“Perfect,” William says, still holding the ropes. “Now, everybody out! Except for you, Dan. You keep ready. If that fucker sticks as much as his dick out that bag, you shoot it off. Then you shoot him in the head. All right?”

Dan nods, holding the rifle against his shoulder and pointing it at the tarp.

Dennis and Liv have already left the room.

“I’m letting go now,” William says, easing off the ropes. “Here we go …” He drops the ropes completely and jumps back. The tarp-bag slumps down, the dead guy on the inside groaning and scrambling to get at them, but the tape holds the opening closed with little difficulty. Besides, the zombie seems to have no idea where the opening is, but is simply attempting to crawl right through the tarp, which is way too thick.

“It’s working,” Dan says, feeling his heart pound away in his throat. “It can’t get out.”

William steps back inside the room. “You’re right. We did it.” He looks up, smiling again. “We fucking did it! And on the first try! I can’t believe it. Where’s that high-five you owe me, Dennis?”

Dennis steps into the room, looking like he’d rather not, but he comes closer to William, holding up his palm with a tentative smile, and William slaps him a stinging high-five.

TWENTY-FIVE

If William is being honest with himself, he has very little faith in the project. To him, it looks and sounds like goddamn lunacy; catching a zombie and trying to force some voodoo-ritual on it … stuff like that is only for dumb movies; it’s too crazy to work in real life.

Yet William can’t help feeling excited as they bring the tarp-bag containing the thrashing dead guy into the living room.

Birgit is no longer sitting in the circle, but has gotten up and is preparing something on the table by the wall.

“Where do you want this?” William says, dragging the bag into the room.

Birgit turns to look at them. She’s painted her face white with some flour-like powder and put black feathers into her hair. By all accounts, it should make her look silly, but in the flickering light of the candles, she reminds William of a ghost from ancient times, and there’s nothing funny about it.

“In front of the circle,” she says, pointing. “It needs to stay put; it can’t be thrashing around like that.”

“Well, what do you want us to do?” William says, dragging the bag to the place Birgit pointed out. “Nail him to the goddamn floor?”

Birgit shrugs. “Whatever will keep it from moving around.”

William looks at Dan, then at Liv. “Any bright ideas?”

“We could actually nail it to the floor,” Liv offers. “I mean, nailing the tarp to the floor.”

“That would risk it tearing,” Dan says. “I think it’s better to use duct tape.”

“Great idea,” William says, turning to Dennis. “Could you get the tape? Oh, and maybe bring more than one roll.”

Dennis gives a quick nod, then runs out of the room.

They just stand there for a minute, waiting in awkward silence. The zombie moves around in the bag, trying to get at them, and William needs to constantly pull it back into place.

Birgit has turned back to the table and seems to be mixing things into a bowl. Dan walks over to her, careful not to step on anything on the floor.

“Anything else you need us to do?” he asks.

Birgit offers him half a glance. “I don’t know yet. I’ll tell you if the time comes.”

“You think it’ll work?”

She shakes her head. “I think the chances are very, very slim.”

“Well, let’s try it anyway.”

Dennis comes back, carrying a bunch of duct tape rolls. He hands them out, and Liv and William both begin to tape up the tarp bag.

It’s not easy, especially since the dead guy keeps moving and they have to be constantly on the lookout for any holes or tears in the tarp. But little by little, they start to get the bag wrapped up, making it tighter still with each new round of tape, until finally, the zombie can only wiggle feebly. It looks like a silvery cocoon. They then tape the whole thing to the floorboards.

“There,” William says, straightening up with a sigh. “I think that’ll do.”

“About time,” Birgit says, stepping into the circle, holding the bowl of water. “Now, please leave the room or stay and be quiet. I’ll have to concentrate on this next part.”

“You’re welcome,” William mutters, sending the others a look. They retreat to the kitchen. William places himself in the opening to the living room, so that he can keep an eye on Birgit. Mostly because he’s curious to see the macabre ritual, but also because he still doesn’t trust her.

She sits down in the middle of the circle, crosses her legs and places the bowl of water on her lap. Then, closing her eyes, she starts running her fingers across the surface of the water while mumbling to herself. It goes on like that for a few minutes. Then she starts flicking water drops at the tarp, her voice raising slightly with each flick.

“Begone what was never born, be free what once was. Let the gros bon ange rise once more, let it cleanse itself of the curse. We ask of you, oh, Good Big Angel, reclaim your rightful place in this tormented soul. Begone what was never born …”

At first, nothing happens. The zombie just keeps wriggling as much as the improvised straightjacket allows it, the droplets hitting the tarp and running down to the floor.

“This is so fucking stupid,” William scoffs.

“Shush,” Dan says, suddenly standing next to him. “Look at it …”

“Look at what?”

Dan points to the zombie. And then William sees it. The zombie has stopped moving.

“It’s probably just …”

“Begone what was never born!” Birgit shouts, taking a handful of water and splashing it at the tarp. “We ask you, oh, mighty gros bon ange, rise! Rise now! Take back what is yours!”

Another handful of water, then another. The zombie is still not moving at all. Then Birgit takes the bowl and flings the rest of the water onto the tarp, it goes splashing everywhere. She just sits there, staring at it.

Still nothing happens.

William watches with bated breath, noticing absentmindedly that both Liv and Dennis have also joined them now, squeezing together in the doorway.

Silence for several seconds.

“Rise,” Birgit whispers, breathing fast and staring at the tarp. “Rise …”

One of the candles is blown out. At least that’s what it looks like. Except no one blew at it. Then the one next to it goes out too.

“Holy shit,” William breathes.

“Rise,” Birgit whispers again, closing her eyes.

In rapid succession, all the candles put themselves out, leaving the living room in almost complete darkness.

Then, without warning, the zombie in the tarp jumps violently enough to almost rip the duct tape free from the floor. It writhes and thrashes like a bull, and William can hear the fabric starting to give way. Then there’s a loud, drawn-out awful sound. It’s a wailing, like someone being tormented. And it comes from inside the tarp.

“Holy fucking hell,” William hears himself say.

“Mom!” Dennis shouts.

Liv gasps and backs away.

Birgit gets to her feet, grabs a handful of the crushed chalk and tosses it at the tarp, most of it sticking to the wet surface. It’s like cutting the power. The wail dies out and the zombie stops thrashing.

It’s still for a few moments.

Everyone is waiting.

Then it starts moaning and moving around inside the tarp again. But now it’s like in the beginning; like a regular zombie would move and sound.

Birgit sighs deeply. “It didn’t work.”

“No shit,” William says, swallowing to try and get his heart back down his throat. “But you sure as fuck made something happen. What was that?”

Birgit goes to the table, and Dan steps into the room. William reaches out to grab him, but Dan slips past.

“Why didn’t it work?” he asks, going to Birgit.

She shakes her head. “Something was missing.”

William exchanges a look with Liv, then steps into the room, Ozzy right at his heel.

“What was missing?” Dan asks.

“It was what I feared,” Birgit says in a low voice, leafing through her book slowly.

William joins them, still eyeing the zombie in the tarp, expecting it to begin breakdancing and screaming again at any moment.

“What?” Dan presses on. “What did you fear?”

Birgit looks up at them. “It will require a sacrifice.”

Dan nods. “Like the seven animals you used for the first ritual?”

“Not seven,” she says, glancing down at Ozzy. “We only need one.”

“Hey, hey,” William says. “You’re not fucking with my dog.”

Birgit looks at him, her expression very cold. “We need a sacrifice if the ritual shall work, and …”

“Well, then you’d better go out and catch a bird or something! No, wait. You know what? Be my fucking guest. Try it.” He points to Ozzy, who’s staring fixedly at Birgit, obviously sensing the tenseness in the room, the hair on his back starting to bristle, a low growl beginning from deep in his throat. “What are you waiting for?” William goes on, smiling at Birgit. “Go ahead. Try and sacrifice him. We’ll see how that works out for you, you crazy bitch!”

Birgit just stares at him. “If you’ll let me finish, I’m not talking about your dog.” She shifts her gaze to rest it on Dan, her icy blue eyes seem to glow in the darkness of the room. “A spell like this will require a human sacrifice.”

TWENTY-SIX

“You’re fucking kidding me,” William says.

Birgit obviously isn’t, because she doesn’t even flinch. She just keeps looking at Dan as though he’s the only one there. “I wasn’t sure until now. But there is no other way.”

Dan takes a deep breath. He feels something falling into place within him. Something huge.

“Well, that’s just great,” William says, scoffing. “We’ll just pick one of the many volunteers and we’ll get going.”

Birgit doesn’t look away from Dan. “We will need to replace the cursed blood with clean blood. That shall be the last step of the ritual, and it will seal the spell that will drive the curse from the poor soul.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” William says. “This is just a waste of time. Lady, I know it might be second nature to you, but we’re not killing anyone, okay?”

“How will it work?” Dan hears himself say. Half of his attention is still on the inside, feeling the shift that’s taking place. It’s like his entire soul is turning over. “I mean, will it only cure this one zombie?”

Birgit shakes her head. “That’s the good news …”

“Good news!” William repeats, laughing shrilly.

“… it will only require one sacrifice. That will give us a way to lift the curse off everyone affected by it.”

William stops laughing and turns to look at Birgit. “Hold on, are you saying it will cure all the zombies at once?”

“Of course not,” Birgit says, sending him a brief glance. “I’m saying the spell will have the power to do so. It will be like opening a doorway, one that the gros bon ange can pass through. If it works, every cursed soul that receives the spell will be freed.”

“So, in layman’s term,” William says, “what are you saying?”

Birgit takes a deep breath. “I’m saying that if it works—and I’m more confident now that it will—then we will have a spell that can be bound to a physical thing, like a potion, and that potion can be applied to the undeads.”

“Like you just did with the water?” Dan asks.

“Precisely. Only there won’t be any ritual needed; the spell will be in the water.”

“I’m sorry, but am I the only one calling bullshit on this?” William says, throwing out his arms. “Earlier you said it couldn’t be done, and now you’re telling us we can get a ready-to-go cure-all? Just apply water, and you’re good to go? And all we need is to kill one of us? This is fucking nuts …”

“Earlier, I didn’t know what I now know,” Birgit says calmly. “We were incredibly lucky. We found the key to the curse. That was a one in a thousand shot. But I was right about Esther’s pain being the cause of it. That was obvious from how the poor soul reacted.”

“Well, you’re right that he didn’t sound too happy,” William mutters.

Dan is still looking at Birgit. “If we do this, are you sure it will work? Are you sure we will get a potion that can be used to cure all the zombies?”

“Dan, honestly,” William begins. “You’re not seriously considering this as an—”

“I can’t give any guarantees,” Birgit cuts him off, addressing Dan. “It’s not like selling a car. We will be dealing with something far greater, something no one can ever really grasp or control. That being said, I think the chances are significantly better this time.”

“Oh, so what? We’re up to one in a hundred now?” William spits. “That’s just great. I’m sure we’ll find someone willing to sacrifice themselves for those kinds of odds. I mean—”

“I’ll do it,” Dan says, tuning out William and everything else except for Birgit’s face.

She stares back at him, her eyes growing slightly bigger with surprise. William says something in the background. Dan can’t even hear the words.

The shift inside Dan is complete now, and he feels more certain than he’s ever felt about anything in his life. This is how it ends. This is his purpose. This is why he came back here.

He just keeps looking at Birgit as he repeats: “I’ll do it. Just tell me how.”

TWENTY-SEVEN

“Timeout!”

William grabs Dan by the shoulder and yanks him away from Birgit. He drags him out into Holger’s bedroom and forces him down on the bed.

“What the hell are you thinking?”

Dan looks up at him with an innocent expression of mild surprise, like someone just told him off for something he didn’t do. His face just makes William madder.

“Are you out of your fucking mind?”

“I think I might be,” Dan says. “I mean, quite literally. I don’t feel like I’m inside my mind anymore. I feel like I’ve … expanded.”

“Okay, I don’t know what mushrooms you’ve been getting into, but there’s just no way this is happening. You’re not letting that psycho kill you for something we have no idea will even work.”

“It will work,” Dan says. “I know it.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do.”

“That’s not good enough.”

Dan shrugs. “You saw what happened the first time around. Something definitely affected him in there. I believe Birgit knows what she’s doing.”

“How can you believe a word she’s saying?” William exclaims, wanting to shake Dan. “She killed Holger! Human life obviously means nothing to her. And she said it herself, there’s no guarantee! Why the fuck would you sacrifice yourself for something that’s not even sure to work? Even if it did work, you wouldn’t be alive to see it!”

“It’s what I came back for, William.”

Dan says it in a tone calm enough that William almost slaps him for it. It’s like he’s explaining something to a four-year-old.

“Can’t you see it?” Dan goes on, tilting his head. “It makes perfect sense. You came back to help me the last step of the way. Now we’re here. This is where my journey ends.”

“Don’t you say that,” William says, pointing at him. “Don’t you fucking even think that.”

Dan holds out his hands. “I have nowhere to go from here anyway. I have no one left, William. You understand that, right? Life has taken everything from me to make me ready. It was its plan all along. I get it now.”

William suddenly feels a wave of emotions roll up through his chest, overwhelming him and causing him to choke and gasp for breath. “You haven’t lost everything,” he hears himself say, his voice thick now. “I’m still here. We have each other. You can come with me. We’ll find someplace far away from this. Someplace safe.”

Dan smiles overbearingly. “There’s no place safe, William.”

William tries to say something else—he’s not sure what exactly—but the words never reach his mouth. Instead he begins sobbing.

Dan stands up and puts his arms around him. William being half a foot taller, it’s an awkward embrace.

“You little fucking shithead,” he cries, squeezing Dan. “I can’t believe you’re making me do this again. It’s the third time we’re saying goodbye, you know that?”

“Third time’s the charm, I guess,” Dan says, smiling as he lets go and looks up at William. Dan’s eyes are moist, but he isn’t exactly crying.

“I don’t get it,” William says, wiping his own eyes. “How can you be okay with it?”

Dan takes a breath, and finally some emotion makes its way into his voice as he says: “I miss my family so bad. Wherever I’m going, that’s where they are. That can’t be such a bad thing, can it?”

William bites down hard so as to not break into tears again. “I guess not.”

They stand there in front of each other for another few moments. Then Dan reaches out and squeezes William’s arm. “Let’s go.”

William just nods.

As they come back into the living room, Ozzy is waiting for them, licking their hands.

William notices right away that Birgit has relit the candles and filled the bowl back up with water. Dennis and Liv are both standing at the far end, looking at them, waiting for what’s to come.

“I’ll do it,” Dan says, addressing no one in particular.

“Good,” Birgit says, pointing to the circle. “It’s all ready. We just need you.”

“You want me to be here?” William hears himself ask.

Dan looks up at him. “Whatever you’re comfortable with.”

William follows him into the circle.

“Only he can be in the circle,” Birgit says, looking at William.

So, he stands back, joining Dennis and Liv. Ozzy stays by Dan for a moment, whimpering.

“Ozzy,” William says. “Come here, buddy.”

The dog slinks over to him, tail between his legs, as though he knows what’s going down.

“This is crazy,” Liv whispers to William. “I can’t believe he’s doing it.”

“Me neither,” William mutters. “I just hope it fucking works.”

He notices Dennis leaving the room to slip out into the kitchen. William can’t blame him for not wanting to watch this.

“Lie down,” Birgit instructs Dan, and Dan complies, placing himself flat on his back. The circle is just wide enough.

Birgit steps in besides him, placing the bowl of water carefully by his right hand. She takes his hand and puts it into the water.

William feels his stomach turn over as Birgit takes out the dagger.

She’s gonna slit his wrist and let him bleed out …

“Dan?” William says.

Dan—who’s just lying there, staring up into the ceiling, looking as relaxed as someone about to get a massage—turns his head to look at him. “Yes, William?”

“Say hi to your dad from me.”

Dan smiles. “I will.”

“No more talking from this point forward,” Birgit says. “I’m starting now.”

Just as she puts the blade to Dan’s wrist, Dennis comes running into the room again: “Wait! Mom!”

Birgit snaps her head around. “What is it?”

Dennis looks befuddled. He points to the kitchen. “Outside! Listen …” He shakes his head. “They’re gone.”

“Who is gone?” Liv asks. “The zombies?”

Dennis nods his head wildly.

They all listen for a moment.

“He’s right,” Liv says. “I can’t hear any of them.”

William strides to the nearest window, pulling down the board to reveal Holger’s back garden. No zombies in sight.

“What the fuck?” he says, looking at Birgit. “What did you do?”

Birgit eyes him. “I didn’t do anything. I’ve been here the whole time.”

“I mean with the ritual.”

“I haven’t begun the ritual yet.”

“No, the first time around. You must have done something! Why else would they all just leave?”

Birgit doesn’t seem to have an answer. She stands up and puts the dagger away.

Dan sits up too, looking puzzled.

William goes to check the kitchen windows. No zombies here, either.

“I can’t figure out if this is good or bad news,” he mutters, turning to look at Dan who’s joined him.

“No,” he says, shaking his head slowly. “Me neither.”

“What do we do now?” Liv asks, looking around at them.

“Well,” William says, shrugging and feeling a glimmer of hope. “I guess we go outside to see where they went.”

TWENTY-EIGHT

“You ready?” Liv asks, looking back at William.

He nods and puts the rifle to his shoulder. “Go ahead and open it.”

Liv pulls aside the lock and turns the handle. She then opens the front door. The cool night air seeps in immediately, dispelling some of the stuffy atmosphere in the hall.

She peeks outside, waiting for a few seconds for something to happen. Nothing does.

She looks back at William. “I think we’re good.”

“All right. Let me go first.”

He walks past her, still holding the rifle ready. He steps out into the courtyard and pans around in every direction. “It’s fine,” he calls, lowering the gun. “They really are gone. You can come out here.”

Liv steps outside, breathing in the fresh air. She looks up at the stars. Only about half of them are showing, since the sky is partly covered by clouds. Still no rain, though.

Dan and Birgit and Dennis all join them. They stand in the courtyard, looking around, no one sure what to say.

“This is such a weird feeling,” Liv says, breaking the silence. “Just being out here. I almost forgot how that felt.”

“Let’s not get used to it just yet,” William says, turning towards Birgit. “We don’t know what caused it yet.”

Birgit looks back at him. “I told you, it wasn’t the ritual.”

“So it was just a coincidence? All the zombies deciding to up and leave at the same time you did some crazy voodoo shit? I bet they heard that poor guy screaming in pain and thought better of it.”

“That’s not it,” Dan says, looking out into the darkness.

“I know, I know, they can’t think like that,” William says. “My point is, it must have something to do with what she—”

“I don’t think it has,” Dan cuts him off. “I think they left for something else.”

“Like what?” Liv asks.

“Like something more interesting. We know they can be lured away if they sense something more accessible.”

William throws out his hands. “You think a busload of naked chicks covered in barbeque sauce just rolled by out here? Come on, man. We’re in the middle of fucking nowhere. We’re definitely the closest prey.”

Dan bites his lip. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

“Yeah, me too,” William says. “I don’t like shit I don’t understand.”

“So, what do we do?” Liv asks again.

Silence for a moment, as they all exchange looks.

“We could check the cameras.”

They all turn towards Dennis. Liv almost forgot the tall, chubby guy was even there. He’s standing as though he needs to pee, moving in place and looking from one to the other.

“Maybe … maybe we can see what made them leave.”

“That’s a great idea,” William says. “You know how to do it?”

Dennis nods. “I think so.”

“Great, go check it out then. We’ll stay here.”

Dennis looks to Birgit, and Liv sees her sending him a nod, as though giving him permission to go. Dennis then runs inside the house.

They begin waiting.

Dan picks up a handful of gravel, letting it fall to the ground one piece at a time. The sound of the pebble falling is swallowed up by the night. It’s not that cold, yet Liv finds herself shaking.

Dan drops the last pebble, then turns to look at the others. “I don’t like this,” he says again. “I think we should go back inside.”

“Why?” William says, looking around. “No one’s here.”

“Is that a car?” Birgit says, pointing towards the road.

Liv turns and sees a pair of headlights a few miles up road. The car is holding still, engine apparently idling.

“It is,” William says. “So what? It’s too far away to have anything to do with it.”

“I agree with Dan,” Liv says, shivering. “Something’s wrong. I think even the dog feels it.”

The German shepherd has raised its hair all the way down the back and seems to be staring at something by Holger’s garage.

“What is it, boy?” William asks, squinting to see if anything is hiding over there.

There’s a sound of gravel crunching. Then a figure moves in the shadows. Ozzy barks as the person comes into view. His raspy voice cuts through the dog’s barking: “You can put down that rifle now, son.”

TWENTY-NINE

Dennis runs all the way down to the bunker.

For some reason, his heart is pounding away, and it’s definitely not just from the running. He feels very tense. Anxious. Even more so than he’s been feeling ever since Mom started doing the ritual.

He opens the metal door and goes into the control room, headed straight for the monitors.

The ones showing the courtyard are all on—one of them is still turned slightly to the side, so that the far corner with the well cover isn’t showing. Dennis forgot to adjust it back into place, so he does it now.

On the other ones, he can see Mom and the rest of them standing around, waiting.

Dennis has been messing around with Holger’s security system a fair bit, getting familiar with it. Despite Dennis not being particularly clever, he’s good at computers, and it takes him less than a minute to navigate to the recent recordings. He pulls them up, goes back an hour, then hits play.

The dead people suddenly appear in the courtyard, clambering at the windows. The film shows him nothing else of interest, though.

He puts it on fast-forward. The minutes glide by in seconds. The zombies move around a little, but other than that, nothing happens.

Then, suddenly, a car appears.

Dennis’s heart jumps, and he fumbles to put the video back at regular speed.

It’s a big, black van, and it has its headlights off, so that it’s hard to see in the darkness. It moves into the courtyard slowly, as though sneaking its way. It moves closer to the zombies until they notice it, then it stops. They begin leaving the house one by one and instead gather around the car. They even come from the other side of the house, as they must sense new prey has arrived.

Then, when all the dead people have turned their attention to the car, it begins to move backwards very slowly. It’s barely visible in the middle of the herd; it looks like someone dropped a piece of candy and ants are crawling all over it.

The van heads out of the courtyard, slowly drawing all of the dead people along with it. It keeps going until it and all of the zombies are out of sight.

Dennis just sits there for several seconds, staring at the video, waiting for what comes next.

Nothing does, though.

Dennis’s brain works very hard to figure out what he just saw. Someone came in a van and used themselves as bait to lure away the zombies. But why? It didn’t make sense. And that van—wasn’t there something familiar about it?

Dennis rolls the video back to the point where the van has just showed up. He hits pause. Leans forward. Stares intently at the van.

There is something familiar about the van.

And then it clicks into place.

Dennis gasps out loud.

THIRTY

A man in a motorized wheelchair comes rolling out of the shadows by the garage. He’s holding a shotgun at hip-level, pointing right at William.

William holds up his hands. “Okay, easy now …”

“I said put it down,” the man repeats. “On the ground, please, son.”

“Okay, I’m doing it …” William crouches down slowly to put the rifle on the ground.

Ozzy barks and growls menacingly.

The old guy turns the shotgun at Ozzy, and for a terrible moment, Dan is certain the man will pull the trigger. He even braces himself for the gunshot. But he doesn’t.

Instead, he tells William: “Get your dog under control, son, or I’ll have to shoot him.”

“Ozzy!” William commands. “Heel!”

Ozzy comes to his side, and William grabs him by the collar.

“That’s one well-trained dog,” the old man says, sounding almost jovial. “You know, I had a dog like him once.”

“If you’ve come for the house,” William begins.

The man scoffs. “I couldn’t care less about that house, son. Oh, no. I’ve come for something else entirely.”

Ever since the man revealed himself, Dan has been trying to work out who he is and what he’s doing here. It’s somehow clear to him that the man isn’t just some random stranger. Then, as the man swings the rifle over at Birgit, Dan’s suspicion is confirmed as the man’s expression grows darker and he sneers: “Hello again.”

All of their heads turn in unison to stare at Birgit.

“You guys know each other?” William asks.

Birgit doesn’t answer; she just stares at the man in the wheelchair. Dan notices she’s the only one not holding up her hands in a gesture of surrender. Instead, her hands are by her sides.

“Did you bury my brother like you promised me?” the man goes on.

“No,” Birgit says calmly. “I didn’t.”

“I didn’t think you did,” the man says, breaking into a cough, the barrel of the shotgun jumping a little. “Just like you didn’t spare my son’s life. That was also a lie. Instead, you decided to take them both from me.”

“Sounds like something crazy went down here before we came,” William says, addressing the old man. “I just want you to know, we had nothing to do with—”

“If you open that mouth of yours one more time, I’ll have to blow it off your face, son,” the man says in a voice so calm it bears no relations to the words coming out. He doesn’t take his eyes from Birgit one second. “Silas was a bad boy, at least, he could be. He might have deserved what came for him. Hell, he probably even brought it on himself. But Jonas …” The man closes his mouth for a moment, and Dan can actually hear his teeth grind. “Jonas never did anything to hurt anybody. He was a good boy. He was my boy. And you killed him.”

Birgit still doesn’t answer the man.

Instead, Dan notices her right hand move ever so discretely to her hip and slide inside her gown.

“Mom!”

Without warning, Dennis comes bursting out of the open front door.

“Mom, it’s them! It’s the people who—”

“Stay back, Dennis!”

Dennis stops dead in his tracks, staring from his mom to the others with a wild expression of fear and confusion. “What’s wrong? Why are you—”

“Hello again, son.”

Dennis spins around and gasps as he sees the old man in the wheelchair. Dennis is standing so that he’s now in the line of fire.

Dan sees Birgit slip out the dagger, keeping it hidden behind her hip. He glances over at William and sees right away that William noticed too. He sends Dan a meaningful look, then shakes his head.

The message is clear to Dan: “Don’t do anything. Don’t get in harm’s way.”

“Good to see you again, son,” the old man says to Dennis.

“Please don’t hurt him,” Birgit says.

The old guy looks at Mom like she’s mad. “I’m not going to hurt him. He didn’t do anything to my boys. You did.”

Then, before anyone else has the time to react, the old guy pulls the trigger.

THIRTY-ONE

Dennis sees the flash.

He hears the shot.

He even feels the air move.

And he sees Mom take a step backwards, then collapse.

But he doesn’t get it. Not really.

He shot Mom, a thought tells him, trying to make him understand.

Someone says something. Dennis can’t make out who. He doesn’t really care, either. He just stands there, staring at his mom lying in the gravel.

A pair of headlights appear as the van comes roaring into the courtyard, breaking hard enough that the gravel goes flying. It honks its horn three times.

Out of the corner of his eye, Dennis sees the old man—the father of Silas and Jonas—roll to the van.

“Dennis …”

Mom’s voice.

Dennis goes to her, kneeling down. And then he finally begins to cry. Once he starts, it’s like a damn breaching within him.

“Oh, Mom … don’t die … please don’t die …”

“I’m so sorry, Dennis … you must forgive me … it’s all my fault … you must understand … I was only trying to help …”

Dennis sobs uncontrollably, he’s barely able to pick up on what Mom is saying. Her face is pale. Her gown is mostly red. She’s shaking all over.

Dennis bends down and grabs hold of her, squeezing her tightly, feeling the warm blood get on his hands.

“I thought I could undo it,” she goes on, talking into his ear, her voice hoarse. “I tried so many times, but … it didn’t work, no matter what I did …”

Dennis just cries and cries as Mom’s final words make their way into his mind.

“Then I finally realized … the only thing that would break the curse … I finally saw it … I should have listened … I should have listened to the doctors …”

A moment goes by before Dennis catches on. He forces himself to stop crying as best he can, and leans back so that he can see Mom’s face through a veil of tears.

“D-doctors?” Dennis croaks. “Wh-what doctors, Mom?”

Mom’s eyes fix on someone behind Dennis. “Make the potion,” she croaks.

Dennis turns his head and looks up at Dan. They’re all standing there, looking at Mom, their expressions ranging from sad to shocked.

Dan nods. “We will. Thank you.”

“It can never be diluted,” Mom says. “Remember that.” Then she looks at Dennis and shakes her head gently as she goes on in a thin voice: “I finally saw it, Dennis … I knew what had to be done … but I couldn’t do it …” Her eyes are like icicles, piercing him. “I couldn’t leave you. I just couldn’t. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.”

“I … I forgive you, Mom,” Dennis says, sniffing. “But I don’t know … I don’t know what you mean …”

“You will,” Mom says, reaching up her hand and placing it on his chest. “It’s all in here.” Then her eyes turn from ice to water as they spill over with tears. “I love you, Dennis.”

“I love you too, Mom.”

The words have only just left Dennis’s lips before Mom closes her eyes and exhales deeply, her last warm breath caressing his cheeks, warming the trail of tears flowing from his eyes and dripping from his chin.

“Please don’t go, Mom,” Dennis tries to say, but the words come out as nothing but a sobbing mumble, and instead of telling Mom to stay he grips her even tighter, squeezing her into him with all his force, willing her not to leave.

But she has.

THIRTY-TWO

“They just … they just left,” William hears himself say as he stares out of the driveway after the van has disappeared from sight, leaving the night quiet around them.

“We need to hurry,” Dan says, his tone urgent, and William turns to see him run into the house.

Liv is just standing there, hands to her mouth.

Birgit is lying in the gravel, bleeding from the crater in her gut. Dennis is huddled over her, sobbing. She’s obviously already gone, judging from the way her eyes are staring into nothing, her mouth slightly open.

“They fucked it all up,” he mutters, feeling the last, tiny piece of hope still in his heart evaporate. “She’s gone, and now we’ll never get the cure.”

Liv shakes her head. “I can’t … I can’t believe it … he just … shot her.”

“Oh, Mom …” Dennis cries.

Dan comes running out again, carrying the bowl of water.

“What are you doing?” William asks, thinking for a crazy moment that Dan will attempt to pull Birgit back from death using the not-even-ready potion. “She’s gone, dude. There’s nothing we can—”

William cuts himself short as Dan places the bowl in the gravel next to Birgit and puts her hand over it. It finally dawns on William what Dan is attempting.

“She will be the sacrifice,” Liv says, as it apparently also falls into place for her.

“I’m sorry, Dennis,” Dan says, picking up Birgit’s dagger. “But I have to do this. You might want to look away.”

Dennis barely seems to register what Dan is saying, but he turns his head in the other direction nonetheless.

William has never seen Dan move with such confidence before. He turns Birgit’s wrist up, then places the blade against it, his hands not shaking at all. As he applies even a little pressure, the blade punctures the skin with no difficulty and slides it open. The blood spills out and into the water.

William swallows and wants to look away, but if Dan can be such a tough guy about it, who’s he to pussy out?

“How much you think we need?” Dan says, looking up at William and Liv. “Any idea?”

Liv—still wide-eyed—shakes her head. “She didn’t say.”

“It can’t be all of it,” William says, clearing his throat and struggling to sound unaffected. “Maybe that’s enough now.”

The water in the bowl has already turned thick and red and has almost reached the top.

Dan removes Birgit’s hand and places it gently on the ground. He then places his own hand on Dennis’s shoulder. “I’m very sorry, Dennis.”

Dennis looks up briefly, his face wet from tears and snot. “She’s dead …”

“I know. We’ll try and make sure she didn’t die for nothing.”

Dennis looks down at the bowl, apparently only now realizing what Dan has been doing.

Suddenly, Ozzy starts barking.

“They’re coming back!” Liv shouts.

William jolts back into action, running instinctively for the rifle.

“Get back inside!” Dan says, getting up while carrying the bowl carefully. “Liv, get Dennis!”

William picks up the rifle and spins around towards the driveway, expecting to see the van come rolling back into the courtyard. Instead he sees a horde of zombies.

“Oh, shit!”

Dan is already headed for the front door. Dennis lingers by his Mom, Liv tugging at him. “Come on, Dennis! We need to go!”

William runs over to them, kicking Dennis’s leg. It turns out a lot harder than he intended, but it works; Dennis is pulled from his stupor and looks up at him, then over at the approaching undead.

Liv drags him up, and William follows them into the house, slamming the door and twisting the lock before any of the zombies can reach them.

THIRTY-THREE

Dan puts the bowl on the kitchen table, careful not to spill any of the potion. He lets out a breath, then looks at the others.

William and Liv both look back at him, William holding the rifle, Ozzy by his side. Dennis staggers to the wall, leans up against it, then glides down to the floor as though his legs melt below him. His expression is blank. The tears have stopped flowing, at least for now. Dan can’t help but feel a deep sympathy for the poor guy; he knows all too well what losing a parent feels like.

Dennis looks up, meeting Dan’s eyes. “I feel funny,” he mutters.

“You’re okay,” Dan assures him. “You’ll feel that way for some time.”

Dennis looks at him for a bit longer, then lowers his gaze.

Outside, the zombies gather in front of the windows, resuming their endless clawing and pushing against the glass. Through the window where William removed the board, they can see their dead faces staring in at them.

“Well, we got what we needed,” William says, putting the rifle on the table and running a hand through his hair. “Only question is now, does it work?”

They all look at each other for a moment.

“We still have our test subject,” Liv says, pointing to the living room.

Dan nods. “We’ll give it a try.”

He picks the bowl back up and carries it into the living room, the others following him like a parade, only Dennis stays in the kitchen.

The zombie in the tarp bag is still wriggling and moaning but has made no visible progress in getting himself out of his prison. So, Dan puts the bowl on the table, then looks at William and Liv. “You think we need to say anything?”

Liv shrugs. “She said something with ‘rise’ when she did it the first time around, but I can’t remember the rest.”

“Just try it,” William offers. “We’ll see what happens.”

Dan nods. Then he sticks his fingers into the bowl.

“No, wait!” William exclaims.

“What?”

“Dude, are you just gonna use your hand?” William says, a look of disgust on his face.

“This was how Birgit did it,” Dan says. “And it’s just blood.”

“Just blood,” William scoffs. “All right, Rambo. Suit yourself.”

Dan takes a handful of the blood water, holds it over the bowl for a couple of seconds, letting it drip.

“Rise,” he says, then flings the pink water at the tarp.

He has no idea what to expect.

What happens is very anti-climactic. There’s no gush of wind, no flames going out, no roar or bang or any other sounds.

The tarp bag simply stops moving, and the zombie stops groaning. It’s like an electric toy having its power cut.

For several, long seconds, they all just stare at the bag.

“Shit,” William says, breaking the silence. “Something definitely happened.” He looks at Dan. “Do we check?”

“Let’s wait a little longer,” Dan says. “We’ll give it five minutes. If he still hasn’t moved or said anything, we’ll open the bag.”

William is about to say something, when he notices Ozzy. The dog slinks over to the tarp, sniffing it. His hair isn’t bristling, and he doesn’t look particularly alert, more like curious.

“That’s a good sign,” William says, smiling tentatively. “Ozzy doesn’t seem to consider the guy a threat anymore.”

“God, what if it really worked?” Liv breathes. “What if this is the cure?”

Dan nods slowly. “It seems promising. Let’s give it a little more time. If he really is dead in there, we’ll try it on the zombies outside.”

THIRTY-FOUR

Dennis feels very funny. In fact, with every passing minute, he feels more and more so.

It’s a strange sensation, one he’s never felt before.

Except that’s not entirely true. He has felt like this before, only it was a very, very long time ago, almost too long to remember.

Is this what grief feels like? Is this a normal reaction when you lose someone you love? Dennis isn’t so sure about that. It doesn’t feel like an emotional reaction, more like a change taking place in his brain.

Something’s happening to me, a thought prods him.

He gets to his feet. The others are still in the living room, talking. Dennis heard them use the potion, and since he can no longer hear the zombie groan in there, he assumes it worked. Dennis cares very little about that for now, however; his attention is consumed at what’s going on inside him.

He goes to the window and stands on his toes to look over the heads of the dead people. He can just make out Mom behind them, at least her white gown is visible in the darkness.

He feels a deep stab in his heart region.

There’s the emotion, he thinks to himself. And he’s kind of glad it’s there. The heartache means he’s not losing his mind.

Still, whatever else is going on with him is different from the emotional reaction, he senses that very distinctly. He feels almost light-headed, like a fog is lifting from his mind.

What is this? Please, I need to know …

“It’s all in here.”

Mom’s voice speaking from his memory. She touched his chest when she said that. Dennis reenacts the gesture with his own hand, and he looks down to see the gris-gris between his chest and his palm.

Dennis frowns. He thought Mom was talking about his heart, but maybe … maybe …

Dennis takes off the gris-gris and studies it. It looks the way it has always looked; just a regular leather pouch. Dennis knows it’s empty, but he still opens it, hoping against hope to find something inside. Something Mom has left for him.

There’s nothing, though. The gris-gris is empty.

But just as he’s about to close it, he notices something that he’s seen a hundred times. The engraved letters on the inside of the flap. Dennis has never known what the words meant; he’s never been interested in them before. But now, they suddenly seem very important.

Some spells only end with the one who cast them.

Dennis reads the line, then rereads it. It’s only after reading it a third time that he realizes how easy it is. Normally, he struggles to put the letters into words and the words into meaningful sounds.

Dennis looks around for something else to read. There’s a piece of paper sitting on the door to Holger’s fridge. It’s a manual for something technical, a water pump or something. Dennis goes and looks at it. His eyes automatically begin reading. There are a lot of difficult words, yet he reads the whole thing with no problems.

And what’s more: he understands it too.

“What’s going on with me?” Dennis whispers, feeling his heartrate go up a little. He looks around the kitchen, and suddenly everything seems very clear, almost painfully so, as though his surroundings have grown sharper. He sees them more clearly. He hears them. All the impressions reach his brain without any delay, without anything to take the edge off. His thoughts are like that too, crisp and loud in his mind. Nothing slowing them down.

“You okay?”

Dennis turns to look at William standing in the doorway, looking at him with a worried expression.

“You look a little pale, dude. You might want to sit down.”

“It’s okay, I’m just a little … I don’t know,” Dennis hears himself say. His own voice even sounds clearer to him.

Liv and Dan both appear next to William.

“How are you feeling, Dennis?” Dan asks.

Dennis shrugs. “I feel fine, really. I feel … present.” The word slips out before Dennis can think about it. He’s never used that word before; he never even knew what it meant.

“You sound different,” Liv remarks.

“No shit,” William says. “He sounds ten years older all of a sudden. What’s happening to you, dude?”

Dennis shakes his head and looks down at his hands. “Something is changing. Or changing back, actually.”

“Changing back?” Dan repeats. “What does that mean, Dennis?”

“I … I don’t know. It’s very strange.”

“He’s going into shock,” William says. “Poor guy couldn’t handle losing his mom.”

“It’s not that,” Dennis says. “It’s got nothing to do with—”

He was going to finish the sentence by saying “Mom,” but something holds him back at the last second. Because this does have something to do with Mom. It’s got everything to do with her, in fact. Dennis feels that with a deep certainty.

His attention is once more drawn to the gris-gris, and he takes it off again, opens it and reads the engravement. This time, he reads it out loud.

“Some spells only end with the one who cast them.”

“What does that mean?” Dan asks.

Dennis looks at him. “I think … I think it means I was under some sort of spell. And it ended when Mom died just now.”

“What kind of spell?” William asks, frowning.

Dennis shakes his head. “I don’t know, but … it was something making me feel very different. Now, as it’s changing, I feel like a cloud is lifting from my mind. Like I said, I can think a whole lot clearer. I can read without difficulty.”

William glances at Dan, then back at Dennis. “Dude, you sound like you’re having a trip.”

“No, he doesn’t,” Liv says. “He sounds normal.”

“Normal,” Dennis repeats, and it’s like that word is a password unlocking another room in his brain. Suddenly, he sees himself as a four-year-old, playing in the garden on a winter day, building a snowman. “I used to be normal,” Dennis whispers. “Before I had the brain fever. This was what it felt like. Being normal.”

“You had a brain fever?” William asks. “When?”

“When I was four.”

“How did it happen?” Dan asks. “What caused it?”

Dennis shrugs. “I don’t know, Mom never told me. I just remember being in the hospital. The doctors tried their best to cure me, but they couldn’t. So, Mom brought me home and … and made me better … she made me …” Dennis suddenly can’t get the words out. What Mom said just before she died rings out in his mind.

“I should have listened to the doctors … it’s all my fault … you must understand … I was only trying to help … I thought I could undo it …”

“The doctors, they … they failed to cure me,” he mutters. “At least that’s what she’s always told me, but … but I’m not so sure that’s actually what happened … I think … I think Mom might have been the one who … who made me this way, and … the doctors … the doctors saved me …”

Dennis feels a wave of dizziness roll over him, and he would have collapsed to the floor if William hadn’t jumped in to catch him.

“Dude, you really need to sit down,” he says, helping Dennis over to a chair. “Get him a glass of water, Dan.”

Dennis slumps down and rubs his forehead with both hands. “God, it’s like … everything is turning upside down.”

“Give it a rest for now,” William suggests. “You’re obviously reliving some fucked up trauma. Maybe don’t let it up to the surface all at once.”

But Dennis can’t help it, the images keep spilling out of his memory. Him in the hospital, Mom shouting at the doctors, her bringing him back home.

“They tried to help me,” Dennis whispers as Dan brings him a glass of water. He takes it, yet just stares at it. “But only after Mom had tried to cure me with voodoo.”

“So, you did have a brain fever?” Dan asks, sitting down across from him.

Dennis nods. “That part is true. I remember falling ill. But Mom didn’t trust doctors. She never did. When she finally realized she couldn’t help me, it was too late. The curse she put on me … it must have been one that couldn’t be lifted. It could only end when she died.”

“Holy shit,” William mumbles. “Talk about parents fucking up their kids; this a whole new level of social heritage. I’m really sorry, dude.”

“I’m glad you’re feeling better,” Dan says, sending Dennis a smile. “Just take it easy to begin with, okay? Give yourself time to get used to it.”

Dennis nods. That’s clever advice. Besides, there’s a torrent of different emotions raging in his stomach area, ranging from relief to grief to anger. It’ll take him time to sort it all out.

“The bad news is,” William says, “now that you’re normal again, you’ll have to pay taxes and all that boring shit the rest of us are dealing with.”

“You’ll also have to deal with William’s lame jokes,” Dan interjects, raising one eyebrow.

“Ey!” William cries out. “Uncalled for!”

Liv and Dan laugh, and Dennis can’t help but snort with laughter too, surprising himself. Jokes used to fly right by him, but now he gets it. As he looks at their faces, all three of them smiling back at him, he thinks to himself: Is this normal? This isn’t too bad.

THIRTY-FIVE

“Enough bantering,” William says, clapping his hands together. “Let’s go check on our guinea pig.”

They get up from the table and go to the living room.

Dan is relieved to find the tarp bag still lying completely still and no sounds coming from it.

“Here’s how we’ll do it,” William says, going to the bag, carrying the rifle. “I aim this at the head of the guy, and one of you cuts open the tarp. If he tries anything funny, I’ll blast him to hell and we’ll have to rethink the entire thing. Okay?”

“Okay,” Dan says. “I’ll cut the tarp. You two, stay back.”

Liv and Dennis stay by the doorway as Dan goes back to the kitchen and gets a knife from the drawer. He then reenters the living room and places himself next to the bag, opposite of William.

“You ready?” he asks.

William places the rifle against his shoulder, pointing the barrel at the place where the zombie’s head must be located. “Ready.”

Ozzy whimpers from the doorway.

Dan takes a deep breath, then bends over and pushes the point of the knife through the tarp. He’s careful, not cutting too deep, not wanting to cut the zombie. He drags the knife down, sliding easily through the tarp and the tape, opening the whole thing like a giant wallet.

Then he steps back quickly.

William holds the rifle for a couple of seconds before lowering it. “I think we’re good. He looks awfully dead.”

Dan steps forward again, peering down into the open tarp bag. The zombie was a young, skinny guy. He’s lying in a fetal position, his head turned to the side, his eyes closed. He’s obviously dead, as William noted, but he doesn’t look undead.

“His skin color is different,” Liv says, joining Dan. “It’s normal again.”

“We should check his eyes,” Dan suggests.

“Wait,” William says, placing the rifle against the temple of the guy. “Okay, go.”

Dan reaches down and carefully pries open the guy’s left eye using two fingers.

“Holy shit,” William says, taking away the rifle. “His pupils and irises are back.”

“This is very promising,” Dan says, letting out a breath he wasn’t aware he was holding. “I think it actually worked …”

“We’ll have to test it some more,” Liv says, sounding elated. “We can try it on those outside.”

“Way ahead of you,” William says, grabbing the bowl and striding out to the stairs. Dan, Liv and Dennis all follow him upstairs.

They go to the room facing the courtyard, and William hands Dan the bowl. Then he opens both windows wide and brings the bowl. For a terrible moment, Dan thinks he’ll chuck the whole thing down over the zombies below, but he just holds the bowl ready.

“Come on,” he says, gesturing with his head while looking at Dan. “You already touched the shit, so I assume you won’t mind doing the honors again?”

Dan goes over and picks up a handful of the red water. He leans out the window, looks down at the dead people clambering away at the windows, and then he drops the water on them.

Liv and William and Dennis all squeeze in next to him, eager to look down at what happens.

The water spreads out as it falls, forming a shower of drops which lands across the herd of zombies. About a dozen or so collapse immediately to the ground.

“Holy shit!” William exclaims, laughing shrilly. “It fucking worked like a charm! Do it again!”

“No, wait!” Liv says, as Dan is about to grab another handful of the water. “We can’t use it all.”

“You’re right,” Dan says, biting his lip. “This is all the potion we’ve got.”

William sits the bowl down on a table, then begins pacing the room. “Fuck me. We’ve got the cure right here, but what good will it do? Even if we use it sparingly, there’s only enough for, what, a hundred zombies? That’s like pissing into a firestorm. There must be millions of zombies all over Europe now.”

“We need to replicate it,” Liv says. “Do the whole ritual again and make more of the potion.”

“How would we do that?” William says, flinging out his hands. “The woman who did it is dead—sorry, Dennis. It took her like four hours to do the ritual, and we have no idea what she said or did. And even if we could do it again, that would be late, too late, the Americans will have dropped their bombs by then, and we’ll all be—”

“Wait, what?” Liv blurts out.

William looks at her, then at Dan. “Oh, right. I didn’t tell you. The soldiers who brought me here … they told me some pretty bleak news. The day after tomorrow, they’ll begin flattening Europe, using nuclear weapons.”

“Oh, no,” Liv gasps.

“I know,” William says, shrugging. “I don’t know what I was thinking coming back here. Guess I was hoping for some sort of Hail Mary. But right now, that seems pretty fucking hopeless.”

“Can’t we just dilute it?” Liv suggests. “Maybe make more of it that way?”

Dan shakes his head. “You heard what Birgit said just before she died. It can’t be diluted.”

William slumps down onto a chair. Liv chews her lip, and Dan lowers his head. For several seconds, they all seem to work on the seemingly hopeless conundrum.

“That’s not what she meant.”

Dan turns to look at Dennis.

He holds out his hands. “When she said it couldn’t be diluted.”

“What did she mean then?” William asks.

“She meant the potion can’t be diluted.”

“I fail to see the difference,” William says.

“She wasn’t telling us that we mustn’t dilute it; she was telling us it will never dilute, no matter how much water we add.”

William looks at Dan, then back at Dennis. “Are you sure about that?”

“Absolutely,” Dennis says. “I knew my mother.”

“That means we can scale it up,” Liv says, hope coming back into her voice. “We can make a shitload of it.”

“Wait, how’s that even possible?” William asks. “I know we’re dealing with supernatural shit here, but how can you make a potion that won’t dilute?”

Dennis shrugs. “I have no idea.”

“I think I do,” Dan says, and the others look at him intently. “She said the spell was like a doorway, and that it could be bound to water. A doorway can’t be diluted. It’s not a thing; it’s a passage for things to go through.”

“Right, I remember that part about the Big Angel coming through or whatever,” William says. “But that still doesn’t explain why that spell won’t be diluted if we add more water.”

“Think of the zombie curse,” Dan says. “That doesn’t grow weaker with each new person it reaches.” He points to the bowl. “I think the spell in this water is like that. I think it’ll live on in whatever else water it touches.”

“So,” William says, “are you saying, if we put a single drop of it in a bathtub, that entire bathtub would become like the potion?”

Dan thinks, then nods. “It might take some time, but I think so, yeah.”

“If that’s true,” William says, “then we might actually have a chance.” He jumps to his feet. “What are we waiting for? It’s time for another round of testing!”

THIRTY-SIX

“Just use a very tiny drop,” William instructs him. “We need to see if it’s true this stuff doesn’t get diluted.”

Dan nods, concentrating on the bowl in his hands. He dips the tip of his finger in the potion, then holds his finger over Holger’s bathtub, which is filled to the brim with lukewarm water.

A single drop forms at the end of his finger, then falls into the tub with a ploink. The red color dissipates immediately as the drop dissolves in the water. Then, to Dan’s surprise, the whole tub turns pink, matching the exact color of the potion in the bowl.

“Holy shit,” William says, grinning. “That seemed to work.”

“Let’s find out for sure,” Liv says, dipping the bucket into the tub and scooping up a gallon of the now pink water.

Dan brings the bowl, and all three of them go back upstairs to join Dennis, who’s sitting by the window staring down into the courtyard.

Dan can tell he’s looking at his mother, who’s still lying down in the gravel next to the horde of zombies. To his surprise, though, as Dennis turns to face them, there’s no tears in his eyes.

“Did it work?” he asks.

“Looks like it,” William says, pointing to the bucket in Liv’s hand. “We’ll find out in just a second.”

Liv brings the bucket to the window, lifts it up, then tilts it and pours the whole thing out. She makes a quick swing from right to left, spreading the pink water out over as large an area as she can.

Dan hears the water splash down over the zombies like a gush of heavy rain. They all huddle together by the windows and look down.

“Jesus goddamn Christ,” William breathes. “Will you look at that?”

Dan feels a shimmer of elation in his gut. Almost all of the zombies have collapsed in a big pile, only four or five still standing, waddling around clumsily among their fallen comrades. And as soon as they touch some wet clothes, they too topple over. In less than ten seconds, there are no more living dead people in the courtyard.

“It fucking worked,” William says, turning to Dan with a broad smile. “You little genius! You just saved the fucking world, you know that?”

“Well, let’s not—”

Dan is cut off as William grabs him in a bear hug, squeezing the air from his lungs as he lifts him up, covering his forehead with kisses.

“I love you, I love you, I love you!”

“Okay, okay,” Dan croaks, laughing. “Put me down please.”

William puts him down and steps back. Liv smiles at Dan warmly, and even Dennis seems to be relieved.

“This is very good news,” Dan says, feeling like he ought to say something. “If this keeps holding true, that we can dilute the potion as much we want, then there’s actually hope of reversing this thing.”

“Yeah,” William says, clapping his hands together. “But we’d better get to work, because we have this crazy deadline, remember? And it literally is a fucking dead-line.”

Dan hasn’t forgotten about the nuclear threat hanging over their heads, though he’s been pushing it to the back of his mind, focusing instead on the task at hand.

“Okay, so how do we do it?” Liv asks. “How do we get the water out to people?”

“That’s one problem,” William says. “Another one is, how do we tell people about it?”

“How about YouTube?” Liv suggests. “Can’t we just film what we just did and put the video online? We’ll share it everywhere we can, social media and all that. It might go viral. That’s the fastest way of reaching people.”

“You’re right,” William says. “The thing is, are people still concerned with checking Facebook? Maybe most have even lost their phones or internet connection. Then we can’t reach them.”

“How about the radio?”

They turn to look at Dennis, who’s been quiet so far.

“I noticed Holger has one in the bunker,” he goes on, shrugging. “I think I know how to put out a livestream.”

“You do?” William asks, obvious surprise in his voice.

Dennis nods. “I’ve always been good with … tech stuff.”

“Great!” Liv says. “Let’s get on with that.”

“There’s one more thing,” William says, putting a hand in his pocket and taking out a piece of crumbled-up paper. “One of the soldiers gave me his number. In case we found out something important. I think this more than qualifies. I’ll give him a call and tell him about it. I don’t know, maybe he can do something … postpone the attack or whatever. I think it’s worth a—”

“Hello?”

A woman’s voice from down in the courtyard.

They all stare at each other for half a second, then they rush to the windows.

Dan expects to see someone coming from the driveway. But the woman is standing right in the middle of the pile of zombies. Her clothes are torn, her hair all messy. She looks around, holding herself.

“Hello?” she calls again, her voice weak. “Anybody? What … what happened?”

“Hey!” William calls out. “Up here!”

The woman flinches and turns her face up at them. “Who are you? Where am I?”

“You’re at Old Mile Drive,” William tells her.

“How did I get here?” the woman says, looking around. “What is all this? Who are all these people?” Panic is working its way into her voice.

“She must be delusional,” Dan says in a low voice. “We’d better go down there and—”

“Ooh,” someone groans.

Dan sees one of the zombies starting to move—it’s a young guy on the far left, some yards from the woman. He sits up and looks around, groaning some more.

“Oh, no,” Dan hears himself say, feeling his gut drop. “It didn’t work after all.”

“Fuck, I knew it was too good to be true,” William says. “Hey, lady! Get out of here! Run away!”

“No, wait!” Liv says, pointing. “Look at him. He’s … different.”

The guy looks around, rubbing his forehead, and Dan can tell Liv is right. He’s obviously not acting like a zombie; more like someone who just woke up from a coma. “What the hell?” he mutters. “Where am I?”

“What is this?” the woman asks again, starting to make her way out from the zombie pile. “Someone tell me what happened, please!”

“Yeah, I’d like to know that too,” the guy says, getting to his feet, swaying uncertainly for a moment before finding his balance. “Ooh, man, my head is killing me …”

“Holy … hell,” William breathes, looking at them. “You guys see what I’m seeing?”

“I think so,” Liv mutters.

Dan can only nod as a third person—another young woman—begins to stir and tries to sit up.

Dennis is the one to state it clearly, his voice hoarse with awe: “They’re waking up.”

THIRTY-SEVEN

“Okay, you guys ready?” William asks, looking at them in the dark hallway, his hand resting on the lock for the front door.

Dan nods. He’s the only one not armed. Liv is holding a knife from Holger’s kitchen, Dennis has his handgun, and William himself is carrying the rifle.

“Here we go,” William says, turning the lock and opening the door.

The zombies are literally pressed up against the house, lying like a pile of leaves all wrapped in each other. Except of course for the ones now standing up.

It took them a few minutes to go get the weapons ready, and William had expected more people to have awakened by now, but he only counts five.

Three of them have grouped together outside the pile of zombies, one is sitting on the ground, holding his head, and the last one—the woman who first woke up—is wondering about aimlessly, talking to herself.

“Let me talk to them,” William says, stepping outside and into the zombies. He bends down and checks the pulse of the one at his feet. “Nothing,” he mutters, then goes on to the next. “Also nothing. They haven’t come back yet.” He straightens up and says in a loud voice: “Hello! Can I have your attention?”

All five ex-zombies turn their heads to look at him—except for the guy sitting on the ground; he pukes instead, making a gurgling sound as something dark spills from his mouth to the ground. He spits then wipes his mouth and looks at William.

“Where are we?” one of the others ask. “What is this?”

“This is a very strange situation,” William says. “I’ll tell you what happened, but I can’t tell you exactly how it happened.” He points to the zombies. “You see these guys? You know what they are?”

“They’re infected,” the wandering woman says, finally stopping to look at William. “The virus thing … I remember that.”

“Yeah, me too,” another one chimes in, and the rest—including the puking guy—nod in unison.

“You’re right,” William says. “And you guys were infected too. Until a few minutes ago.”

A moment of dead silence as he lets the message sink in. The people in the courtyard exchange wary looks.

“But we cured you,” William goes on. “I can’t go into details, but this thing, this virus as you call it … it’s not really a virus. It was a curse. And we lifted that curse. We honestly didn’t expect any of you to wake up again, but that’s just great news. So … I guess … welcome back!”

The woman breaks into tears.

“Wait,” one of the guys says. “I can’t remember anything … just that … someone scratched me …” He bends and rolls up his pantleg to show a long, thin red line along his shin. “Then I got a fever, and … and it’s all just dark from there …”

“That’s the same for me,” another woman—who can’t be more than fifteen—chimes in, touching her chin which bears the marks of fingernails. “How long were we out?”

William throws out his arms. “We couldn’t tell you. Depends on when you di—got infected,” William corrects himself at the last second. No point in spilling all the beans at once on these poor bastards. Returning from death can’t be an easy thing, even without having to face that fact mentally.

One of the guys looks out over the zombies. “What about all these people? Why haven’t they woken back up yet?”

“Again, couldn’t tell you.”

Dan steps out next to William. “I think not all of you will,” he says. “It looks to me like you guys are relatively fine; you don’t have any bite marks or major injuries. You all got infected by scratches, right?”

The five people exchange looks and nods.

Dan gestures towards the zombies still on the ground. “Most of these guys are in a really bad state. And they also seem to have been … attacking others.”

William gets it right away; the zombies who haven’t come back are either sporting major wounds or their faces are covered in dried-up blood, suggesting they got their fair share of the feast.

“God, this is crazy,” one of the women says, going for her pocket. “I lost my phone. I need to call my husband. I need to call my family. You guys have a phone I can use?”

“About that,” William says. “Things are looking a little … out of control right now. There’s no need to panic, but … most of Europe has been infected.”

A collective gasp from the ex-zombies.

“But … I need to know my family is safe!” the woman goes on. “Please!”

“I can’t tell you whether they are or not,” William says earnestly. “We do have a phone you can borrow, but please let us check you first. We need to make sure you really are all right. Please come inside.”

THIRTY-EIGHT

How long has it been?

Iver has no idea.

There’s no clock in the bathroom. Only a tiny window. The daylight has gone, replaced with darkness. It must be close to midnight.

Adam is finally sleeping. It took Iver half an hour to get him to calm down enough to slip into sleep.

At least the boy wasn’t hungry; Iver had fed him from the bag Leif left for them. He had managed to find the rest of the food in Agnete’s kitchen, which was mostly canned stuff, crackers and nuts. There was enough for them to make it three, maybe four days if he was careful in rationing the food.

Iver looks at the sleeping toddler, lying in the bathtub, which is stuffed with all the towels from the closet. Iver wrapped one around the boy’s head too, like a turban. It seemed to help keep the noises at bay.

The zombies are clambering at the door—which, luckily, is heavier and stronger than the one in the bedroom. The hinges are bigger and look like they can withhold more pressure.

But it won’t hold forever; the push from the horde of zombies is simply too much. Iver can tell it’ll budge sooner or later.

It could be days. It could be only hours.

For now, though, they’re good.

The sound of the deads is also intruding from the hole in the wall above the toilet. Iver managed to jam the stool into the opening, then used the shower curtain to cover it up. It wasn’t much, but at least it blocked the view to the zombies.

The hole was up high enough anyway that none of the zombies could see through it, and they could only just reach it with their groping hands. Which meant that Iver wasn’t particularly worried they would make it through—not unless they suddenly learned to jump.

There was of course the possibility that one could climb onto another, maybe if one fell down, the others would simply tread on him and use him as a stepping stone. But so far, that hasn’t happened, and with the stool jammed into the hole, they would have a hard time squeezing through to the bathroom anyway.

Iver should be sleeping, he knows that. He’ll be needing his strength.

But he can’t. Not right now.

Instead, he’s working on the handle bar. It’s secured to the wall right next to the tub. It’s one of those U-shaped ones you see in old people’s homes, the ones they use for support when stepping in and out of the bath.

Iver is using the coin he had in his pocket to slowly and meticulously loosen the screws holding the bar. It’s heavy enough that it’ll provide him with an effective weapon.

And he knows he’ll be needing it.

Because the zombies won’t stop until they manage to break down the door.

And there’s no other way out; the window is too tiny to get through.

Even though it’ll be futile to fight back against several hundred zombies, Iver is going to do it anyway. The alternative—just letting the deads have at him and the toddler—is too gruesome to even think about.

So, when the time comes, Iver will fight back. He will try to be brave. Like Leif was. Like Agnete was.

If not for himself, then for Adam. He owes the little guy that much.

He looks at him, his round, pale face glowing in the darkness of the tub.

“I’m sorry, buddy,” Iver whispers, his voice breaking. “It’s quite the mess I got you into. I’m sorry.”

He can’t believe they’re all gone. It all happened so fast. Within a couple of hours.

Now it’s just him and Adam.

And soon, they’ll be dead too.

Iver feels the tears begin to spill down his cheeks. He doesn’t do anything to wipe them away. Instead, he turns back to the wall and continues working on unscrewing the bar, ignoring the sounds from the door.

At least he’ll go down swinging.

THIRTY-NINE

Dan is sitting in Holger’s kitchen, staring at his hands resting in his lap. He’s dead tired. Now that the ritual is over, he can finally feel his energy crashing.

William comes out from the living room. “There you are.”

Dan looks up, barely able to hold his head. “How are they?”

William sits down across from him. “They’re fine as far as we can tell. Physically, anyway. They all ate something and drank a lot of water. They’re also doing pretty well mentally, considering what they been through. They can’t remember being out, but they almost all remember what led up to it. They can recite their names and social security numbers. They can talk and read and give us things like who’s prime minister and what’s five times five, so I’m very hopeful.”

Dan nods. “That’s great news. I really wasn’t expecting that to happen. Did anyone else come back?”

William shakes his head. “So far, only the five of them.” He nods towards the courtyard. “I went out to count them. We cured 104 people total. Five of them coming back is close to five percent.”

Dan just nods. He’s too tired to think.

“This is really big news,” William goes on. “If this is an accurate sample, then 5 percent of the people who died from this thing will come back to life once we break the curse.”

“I know,” Dan says, blinking.

Liv and Dennis join them from the living room.

“You guys ready to shoot the film?” William asks.

“We are,” Dennis says. “I have the camera ready. We just need another … you know, a dead guy.”

“That’s not going to be a problem,” William says, nodding towards the window. “There are already eight more out there. Don’t worry, they are newcomers, I made sure. The others are still just lying around.”

“How is it even possible?” Liv asks in a low voice, nodding towards the living room, from where they can hear the five survivors talking with each other. “I mean, they were dead, right? They weren’t just cursed; they were medically dead too.”

“They were,” William nods. “We talked with a doctor who ran tests and confirmed that. They had no pulse, no heartbeat, no brainwaves. They were most definitely fucking dead.”

“They were,” Dan says, repressing a yawn. “But their souls might not have been far away.”

“How’d that work?” William asks.

“From what I know about voodoo, it kind of makes sense,” Dan says. “Birgit explained that what we’re doing when breaking the curse is opening the doorway for the Big Angel to rush in and clean the curse out. It means we’re basically finishing what would have happened if the curse hadn’t been there to keep them artificially alive.”

“Right, so why do some come back?”

“Because their Little Angel is still present,” Dan says. “That’s the only explanation I can think of, anyway. The Little Angel is our individual soul, our personality or whatever you want to call it. It’s different from the collective life force.”

“So, if the person hasn’t fully left,” Liv goes on, “and the life force comes streaming in, it won’t kill them—it will, like, reignite them?”

“Apparently,” Dan nods.

“But why haven’t they … decayed?” Liv says, lowering her voice to a whisper. “If they’ve been dead for days?”

“Yeah, Dorte told us something about their blood coagulating,” William adds. “That’s something that can’t just be reversed.” He looks at Dan as though he’s supposed to give him an answer.

“Sorry,” Dan says, shrugging. “I just don’t know. I’m not sure I’m even making sense. I’m really tired.”

“But why does it only happen to a few?” William goes on.

“I guess some of them were still clinging to life,” Dan says. “Their Little Angels hadn’t left their bodies yet. Maybe that would explain why their bodies didn’t begin to rot; the life force could still sustain them.”

A moment of quiet in the kitchen as they listen to the voices from the living room.

Then Liv says: “You know what this means, right?”

William, Dan and Dennis all look at her.

“It means the people we knew who got infected and died might still be saved. I mean, it’s a small chance, but still …”

Dan hadn’t thought of that. Now that he sees it, his mind quickly scans through his family.

Jennie was the first one to die. But she was shot by a police officer and died for real; Selina had told him so, just hours before she herself got bitten and died.

Thomas died a few hours later. But he died a second time when Dan and Linda set fire to the car.

Dan’s mother went next. But having committed suicide, she was never infected with the curse and can’t be saved either.

Then there’s Dad.

Dad got scratched by Elias. Then he threw himself from the helicopter. Did that mean he had died for real? Had the fall killed him so that the infection couldn’t?

Dan looks to William and realizes William is staring back at him.

“Your dad,” he says, reading Dan’s mind. “He might still be … I mean, we were flying pretty low.”

Dan swallows dryly. “Even if he survived the fall, he would still have ended up in the water. He would have drowned.”

“Maybe,” William says. “But maybe the infection got him first. There’s at least a small chance.”

Dan shakes his head. “I could never find him, even if he did turn into a zombie.”

“I know,” William says, biting his lip. “If only there was some way of tracking him … wait!” He lights up, snapping his fingers. “Holy hell, it might be doable!” He pulls out his phone and looks at Dan. “Your dad’s phone. I noticed it when he used it earlier.”

Dan frowns. “Are you suggesting I call him?”

“Of course not, numbnuts. But he had the same model phone as I do. And it comes with this tracking thing where you can locate it if someone steals it. It doesn’t matter if it’s dead for power or even if they pull the battery out, we can still track it. We just need his phone number. You have that?”

Dan thinks for a moment. “I remember it, yes. But, William—”

“Holy fuck, that’s great! We can track him, Dan! We can find him!”

“There are so many maybes here,” Dan says, fighting hard to keep his hopes down. “What if his phone was busted when he fell? What if it fell out of his pocket? What if he’s still walking around the bottom of the ocean somewhere? Or if he made it to land, someone could have killed him.” Dan throws out his arms. “Even if we could actually go and find him and cure him, there’s still only a 5 percent chance he’ll come back. With all of those odds put together, I’d say have a better chance of winning the lottery.”

“I know, but … it’s your dad. Isn’t it worth a shot?”

Dan opens his mouth, then closes it again, realizing that of course William is right. That of course he’s going to do it. That even in the face of terrible odds, even the smallest, tiniest chance of getting has father back is more than enough reason that he has to do it.

He hasn’t slept for days. He’s never been this tired in his life. Yet he knows he won’t be able to rest before he’s seen this through.

“Okay,” he says, taking a deep breath.

“Let’s track him.”

DAY 9

The following takes place on

Sunday, August 3

ONE

“Right, what’s his number?”

William’s voice causes Dan to startle. He looks around, and it takes him several seconds to realize he’s sitting on a chair in Holger’s bunker.

William is by the computer, looking over at him. “Were you sleeping?”

“I … I don’t know,” Dan says, rubbing his eyes.

William studies his face. “I think you might want to take a nap before we go out looking for your dad.”

“No, I’m fine.”

“You sure? You look like dog shit.”

“I’m fine.”

William shrugs. “If you say so. Give me his number then.”

Dan closes his eyes and searches his memory. It feels sluggish and uncooperative. But one by one, the digits appear and he speaks them out loud.

William types them in, then hits enter.

Dan strains to look at the monitor as the map loads. It zooms in on a coastline, showing half ocean, half land. Then a thin, red, rugged line appears, going from the water and onto land. At the end of it, a red dot blinks.

William lets out a gasp. “Holy shit, we’re in luck. He made it onto land. And looks like he’s still on the move.”

“Where is that?” Dan asks. “Is it Norway?” The thought of going back across the sea is enough to double the feeling of tiredness in his bones.

William zooms out, revealing more of the map. Dan feels a jolt of excitement as he recognizes the area.

“He’s here,” William says, looking at Dan with a nervous smile. “He’s in Denmark. And look, it’s even better than I thought.” He points to the monitor, tracking the red line. “This must be where we dropped him off. We were a lot closer to the coast than I realized, and your dad went straight for it. He only spent like fifteen minutes in the water, tops.”

“That’s more than enough for his lungs to fill up with water,” Dan mutters, biting his lip.

“We don’t know if zombies even breathe,” William encourages him. “And since he’s still walking around, that means he can’t be in too bad of a state, right? I mean, he probably didn’t break anything vital in the fall.”

“Looks promising,” a voice comes from behind, causing Dan to startle once more. He didn’t hear Liv enter the bunker. She’s holding two steaming cups, and she hands one to Dan. “Here, I figured you needed it.”

Dan takes the cup. The smell of the coffee isn’t exactly Dan’s favorite smell; in fact, he’s never learned to drink it, but Liv is probably right, and he sips the hot liquid.

“Much obliged,” William says, holding out his hand.

Liv doesn’t give him the cup, instead taking a sip herself. “Sorry, I didn’t make any for you.”

William glares at her, then looks at Dan. “What did I tell you? She’s got the hots for you.”

Dan swallows too big a gulp of coffee and coughs.

“Actually, I don’t,” Liv tells William coolly. “I just thought that since Dan and I haven’t slept all night and since we’ll be headed out soon, we’ll need all the help staying alert …”

“Hold on,” William says, frowning. “Are you going with him?”

“I am.”

William throws out his arms. “I could use your help here. With all due respect, we’re trying to save the world, and the clock is ticking.”

“Dennis will stay and help,” Liv says. “I already asked him. Plus, Lars wants to help too.”

Dan assumes that’s the name of one of the people who woke up from the curse.

“Okay,” William says, shrugging. “Well, if you’re intent on helping Dan find his dad, who am I to argue?”

“I’m not just doing this for Dan,” Liv says, downing most of the coffee, wincing at the heat in her mouth. “Both my parents are also still out there.”

“Oh,” Dan says, feeling stupid. He didn’t even think to ask. “Do you … know where they are?”

“I know where they might be. My sister told me she had to leave home when my mother woke back up and … and attacked my father.” A brief flash of hesitation on Liv’s face. Then determination returns. “If I’m lucky, they’re still in the house.”

“And where is the house?” Dan asks.

“In Viborg.”

“Hot dang it,” William says, nodding towards the monitor with a smile. “That’s gotta be fate, because that’s on the way to Dan’s dad.”

Dan nods, sipping his coffee. It’s hot in his throat and it lands like lava in his stomach. But he already feels a little better, a little more optimistic. “I’d be more than happy to have company,” he says. “We can take the van.”

“I think you should opt for something a little more cross-country,” William says. “Holger kept a four-wheeler in the garage. It’ll be a lot easier if you need to go off-road.”

Dan glances at Liv. “Do you know how to …?”

“How to drive a four-wheeler?” she asks, putting down her empty cup. “Sure.”

“It’s settled then,” William says, getting up. “Hand me your phone, Dan. I’ll install the tracking app. Oh, and don’t forget to stock up on holy water.”

TWO

When William returns to the living room after seeing Dan and Liv off, he finds Dennis already busy setting up Holger’s camera on a tripod. One of the guys is helping him.

“Good work,” William says. “But don’t you think we should do it outside? Seems less risky.”

“The sunlight is too bright,” the guy says. “We already tested it.” When William looks at him, he says apologetically: “I’m Lars. I’m a graphic designer.”

“Huh,” William mutters. “What are the odds?”

Most of the other people who woke up are sitting or standing around the room, talking in low voices or just following the conversation. Some of them seem to have left. William can’t imagine how it must be, waking up after several days being clinically dead, with no memory of what has happened or how many people you’ve killed, only to find the world is in even worse shape and with very little hope of finding any of your family members still alive …

“We’ll get a much higher quality video if we shoot it in here,” Lars goes on, dragging William out of his thoughts. ”And the more you can tell what’s going on, the better—right?”

“Right,” William agrees. “That’s the whole point of it.”

“There’s also the problem of controlling the environment,” Dennis goes on. “That’s a lot easier in here. Out there, a group of them could show up any time and cause trouble.”

William looks at him. Even though he hasn’t known Dennis for very long, the transformation the guy has undergone is still astounding. When William first met him, Dennis would have never used a word like “environment,” or any other word longer than three syllables, really. And it’s not just his vocabulary which seems to have improved; William can tell just by looking into Dennis’s eyes that a much bigger and brighter lightbulb is suddenly lit between his ears.

“Right,” William says. “So, how do we get a zombie in here? I think it’ll be too time-consuming going through the tarp-tactic again.”

“We can just lure it in,” Dennis says, nodding towards the courtyard. “There’s already a couple of them out there. If we open the front door, they’ll come in voluntarily.”

“Hell,” William says. “Why not?” He nods towards the camera. “Are we ready?”

“We are,” Lars says after checking the camera one more time. “It’s streaming.”

“Streaming?”

“Yeah, I hooked it up to my YouTube account. I figured we might as well stream it live, then put the video up afterwards.”

“Holy shit, that’s genius,” William says. “Is anyone watching?”

Lars shrugs. “I have a few thousand followers. They get a ping whenever I start a live stream, so if they’re still online, some might be watching.”

William looks at the camera thoughtfully. “If only we could send out the link to everyone still alive so they could watch it in real time …”

“We can,” Lars says. “Nothing spreads faster than a viral video.”

“But first we need to make the video for the US military, right?” Dennis reminds them. “That has got to be our priority. We can always figure out how to get the word out to the rest of the world afterwards, but we need to focus on eliminating the threat of a nuclear attack first of all.”

“You’re right,” William says, nodding. He turns and claps his hands together. “All right, listen up folks. A dead guy will enter the room shortly. So I suggest you all go to the bedroom and close the door. We will be curing our guest, but until that happens, just as a precaution, let’s keep the clientel to a minimum. We don’t want to risk any of you getting bitten again, right?”

None of the people present seem to like that idea, and they all quickly scurry to the bedroom, leaving Dennis, William and Lars alone in the living room.

“Right,” William says, looking at them. “So, who does what? Let’s be absolutely clear on the plan so we don’t fuck anything up.”

Dennis and Lars look at each other, then back at William.

“Here’s how I was thinking we could do it,” Dennis begins. “I go out and open the front door. I lure in one of them. Once I reach this room, I’ll run behind the camera, so the dead guy will come right at me. Then you guys come in from each side and throw water at the guy. That way, it’ll happen right in front of the camera.”

William bites his lip. “It’s not a bad plan. And you’re okay with being the one running the risk?”

Dennis shrugs. “They aren’t moving very fast. As long as I stay well ahead of the guy, I should be fine.”

“And as long as we don’t fuck up our part,” William adds, looking at Lars. “We can’t miss with the water. Dennis will be trapped in a corner if we do.”

“That’s why I prefer both of you to do it,” Dennis says. “So we have a second chance, just in case.”

“Sure, that’s—”

“Hold on,” Lars says, cutting William off. “Who will close the front door again? After we get one of them to enter the house? If both William and I are in here, waiting for Dennis to bring the infected guy, that’ll leave the front door wide open.”

“Good catch,” William says, pointing at him. “Maybe one of us will have to stay in the kitchen, and once Dennis and the dead guy are in the living room, we’ll go and close the front door.”

“Either that,” Dennis says, “or we could ask one of the others to help out.”

“They didn’t exactly look eager to help out,” William remarks. “I’ll stay in the kitchen. Let’s get rolling.”

THREE

“So,” Liv says over her shoulder. “Here we are again, huh?”

Dan smiles as he holds on to her waist with a firm grip. “I guess so.”

The ATV shoots down the empty country road at almost seventy miles an hour. The sky is covered in heavy clouds, but the rain still hasn’t come and the air is thick and hot. Liv’s golden hair flails in every direction, tickling Dan’s face. He can’t help but inhale the smell of it, and it sends a warm sensation to his groin.

“Must be our idea of a date,” Dan blurts out before he can stop himself. It’s only once the words are out he realizes what he just said.

Luckily, though, Liv just sends him a smile over her shoulder.

“So, where did your family live?” Dan asks, swiftly changing the subject.

“It’s near the park. On Ash Lane.”

“I think I know that area,” Dan says. “A girl from my class used to live there.”

“Oh. What’s her name?”

“Susanna Karlsen. You know her?”

Liv looks back at him again. “That’s our next-door neighbor.”

“Really?”

“Really! She went to private school.”

“Yeah, so did I,” Dan says.

“Huh. So your parents were rich?”

“Not particularly.”

“I went to Southern High. Funny how we lived in the same city but never met.”

“Well, it was a pretty big city.”

Liv shrugs. “Guess so.”

Dan thinks for a moment. “It’s uncanny, huh? How we talk about everything in the past tense. Our parents, the city, school, people we knew. Two weeks ago, everything was normal. And now it’s all …” He searches for the word.

“Fucked up?” Liv suggests.

“I was gonna say ‘gone,’ but yeah.”

“Amazing how fast things can change,” Liv agrees. “It’s like society was this old, rotten tree all hollow and porous. Like it was just waiting for a strong enough storm to knock it over.”

“I know,” Dan mutters. “It seemed so … solid. All the institutions, law enforcement and military. All the rules and systems that were in place. You’d think a modern society would be able to withstand challenges. But it all just crumbled when this thing got out of hand.”

“I saw this documentary on Netflix a little while back,” Liv says. “About the Roman Empire and how it slowly collapsed under its own weight. It was really fascinating. But what stuck with me was how long that society lasted. It thrived for over a thousand years! Can you believe that? Everyone back then thought it would never go away. And now look. It’s ancient history.” She glances back at him. “I think this is history repeating itself. I think in a few hundred years, whoever is still alive will look back and view our society as something that once was. Something that looked promising but ultimately ended up eating itself from within—literally.”

Dan can’t help but shiver at the thought. “Maybe it doesn’t need to go that far,” he says. “Maybe we can still pull it back from the brink.”

“Maybe,” Liv says, and Dan can hear she doesn’t really believe it. He can’t blame her. It’s a long shot for sure.

“It’s up to William now anyway,” Dan goes on. “And Dennis. I’m sure they’ll reach the Americans before it’s too late and show them there’s a better way than nuking half the world. All we can do is focus on finding our parents.”

The thought makes him pull out his phone. He activates the screen and sees the GPS map. The red dot indicating the location of his dad’s phone is still there, in the northern part of Viborg. It has moved a bit, but not much.

The sight of it makes his stomach tighten. He’s afraid of what they’ll find once they reach that tiny red dot.

Will his dad be in good shape?

Will the holy water be able to cure him?

Or will it kill him for real?

All these questions have been swirling around the back of Dan’s mind ever since they left Holger’s house. He has to prepare himself for the worst. Odds are he won’t get his dad back.

And yet he can’t help but hope.

Because his dad’s voice from the dream keeps playing in his mind, too.

“You can come find me if you like. It’s not too late.”

That had to mean something. It had to be a sign. His dad was still around. It wasn’t too late. Dan had to believe that.

“There it is,” Liv says, pointing ahead.

Dan looks over her shoulder. A few miles up the road, he can see the tallest buildings of Viborg outlined against the grey sky.

“We agree to swing by my place first, right?” Liv asks, not turning this time. “And if my parents aren’t there, we’ll go on to find your dad.”

“Sure,” Dan says. Inside, he feels an almost desperate impatience to find his dad as soon as possible. But they will pass right through the neighborhood where Liv’s parents might still be, and it shouldn’t take them any more than ten or twenty minutes top to stop and check.

Still, that’s ten or twenty minutes longer before Dan will know for sure whether he gets his father back or if he’s truly alone in this world.

FOUR

The streets of Viborg are almost empty, showing no signs of life. That is, if you don’t count reanimated dead people as “life.”

Dan sees several zombies as they drive through the city. A few of them are occupied scraping at locked doors or boarded-up windows, others stagger around aimlessly. The closest ones turn in the direction of the ATV and attempt to take up pursuit, but Liv drives fast enough that they’re soon lost from sight.

The four-wheeler proves incredibly useful for getting across the city. In several places, cars are either parked haphazardly or have crashed into buildings or other cars, effectively blocking the roads. Some places there are outright pileups of vehicles, and they have to turn back and take the next block over, but most of the roadblocks can be passed by Liv driving onto the sidewalk, crossing front lawns or even maneuvering through a busted storefront, the broken glass crunching underneath the heavy-duty tires.

Dan is impressed with her driving skills. He can’t help but imagine Liv as someone who—if the world should fall apart completely—will do well for herself. She’s determined, intelligent and brave. She’s a survivor.

“Whoa, what’s that?” Liv exclaims, breaking in the middle of the road, the ATV coming to a halt.

“What?” Dan asks in alarm, looking around.

“That!” Liv points down the street.

Dan sees it immediately. A thick pillar of smoke rises up above the rooftops. It’s coming from at least three blocks over, but it’s big enough that they can see it from here with no trouble.

“Something’s burning,” Dan mutters.

“Yeah, no shit,” Liv says. “Something huge. That’s not just a backyard barbeque.”

Dan gazes around the street, checking for any movements. “Can we get going? I don’t like stopping.”

Liv revs up the engine and drives on down the street, still watching the column of black smoke. “It’s coming from the stadium,” she says.

Dan realizes she’s right as they enter an intersection from where they can glimpse the upper edge of the large, rectangular building that used to be Viborg Football Stadium. Dan is no big sports fan, but he did go there once with his dad and Jennie to see Viborg play the finals. They lost. The smoke is welling up from inside the stadium.

“It caught fire,” he says.

“I think someone put it on fire,” Liv corrects him. “It happened within ten minutes. There was no smoke when we entered the city. An accidental fire wouldn’t set off like that.”

“Why would anyone burn down the stadium?” Dan asks as Liv turns left, leading them away from the stadium fire. He notices she drives faster now.

“No idea,” she says. “I just hope the fire won’t spread to the rest of the city.”

Dan hadn’t even thought that far. He gets why Liv is suddenly gunning it; if Viborg is about to burn to the ground, they need to hurry even more in finding their parents.

They enter what looks to have been a pretty and peaceful residential area. The houses are generally new and expensive looking. They are also deserted and obviously marked by fighting; broken windows, boarded-up doors, items strewn about and tracks from car tires on the front lawns. Some must have gotten out of here as soon as they realized the danger. The rest probably barricaded themselves inside their houses.

Dan sees a fair amount of dead bodies—the non-moving kind—lying around the street. Judging from the bullet holes decorating many of the facades, he figures someone went through the neighborhood to thin out the herd of living dead. Could have been law enforcement. Could have been some vigilante who’s gotten his hands on an automatic firearm.

“Which house is yours?” Dan asks.

Liv answers by pulling over and looking up at a red brick house. None of the windows are broken and the front door is closed and intact. Good signs, Dan supposes.

“You think … they’re still in there?” Liv mutters, talking more to herself.

“They could be,” Dan says, getting off the ATV. He takes off the backpack, places it on the seat and unzips it. He pulls out one of the Coke bottles he prepared at Holger’s house.

Liv shuts off the engine and the four-wheeler falls silent. The early afternoon is eerily quiet. Somewhere far away, a dog is barking shrilly. That’s the only thing Dan can hear. No cars. No voices. Not even birds singing. Viborg feels more like a ghost town than anything.

He can smell smoke in the air, and it causes him to turn towards the stadium. “Huh,” he says, pointing. “Looks like they put it out.”

The large, dark smoke column has changed into a series of thin strips of brighter smoke snaking towards the sky.

Liv doesn’t hear him. She’s still sitting on the ATV, staring up at the house. Without looking away, she reaches into the bag and pulls out another bottle of holy water. She unscrews the cap and—before Dan has time to react—takes a sip.

“Whoa! What are you doing?”

She looks at him. “I’m thirsty.”

“That’s the holy water.”

She looks down at the bottle. They wrote HOLY WATER with a black marker across the Coke label. “Shit,” she mutters, then takes out the bottle with no inscription and drinks from that.

Dan goes to her side. “You want me to do it? You could stay out here if you want.”

Liv blinks and looks at him. “No, I’ll do it.” She switches the bottles with determination and gets off the vehicle.

“Okay. But I think it’s better if I stay out here. I’ll call you if we need to leave.”

Liv nods, looking absentminded as she stands there, bottle in her hand.

Dan grabs her arm as she’s about to walk up to the house.

“What?” she snaps, sending him a fierce look.

“You sure you’re okay with this?”

“Of course I’m not okay with this,” she says, showing her teeth in a half grin, half sneer. “I’m not okay at all with this. I’m about to go and find both my parents dead. Or, worse, not find them at all.”

“I know,” Dan says gently. “That’s why I offered to do it. It’ll be a lot easier for me if they’re in there.”

Liv shakes her head. “I have to do it. It has to be me.”

Dan considers, then lets go of her arm. “I get it. Just, please, be careful, okay?”

“I will,” Liv says, taking a deep breath.

She begins walking up the driveway.

Dan looks around the street again. Still no signs of movement. He eyes the nearest corpse—a woman lying face down, her torso on the sidewalk, her legs out in the street. She has been run over by a vehicle, her skin ripped open, her broken bones visible.

Dan breathes through his nose.

He looks up at the house. Liv is standing in front of the door, apparently gathering her courage. She has unscrewed the bottle cap.

Then she reaches out and opens the door. It swings in with no trouble.

Liv hesitates.

When no one comes out, she steps inside and disappears from view.

Dan is suddenly keenly aware that they brought no weapons, only the holy water. The second bottle is still in his backpack. He takes it out. The feeling of it makes him a little less anxious as he scans the street up and down.

FIVE

Liv braces herself as she steps inside the hall.

The smells are immediately familiar to her, which is a big surprise. She had expected nothing to be like she remembered, yet from what she can see things look awfully normal. For a brief moment she entertains the thought that Solveig was wrong, that it’s all been one big misunderstanding, that Mom and Dad are both fine.

Then she recalls her sister's sobbing voice on the phone. “Dad … dad got her to the bathroom and he locked the door, but … it was too late … she already bit him, Liv … oh, my God … I can’t believe it … he told me to … to go … so I did … I just left him there, Liv … I left him at the house …”

Liv can’t imagine the guts it had taken for her sister to leave the house with her dead mother and dying father. To go out into a world falling apart around her, alone and scared, with only a tiny hope of making it.

And yet, Solveig had done just that. She had taken the van and she’d made it out of town. Made it all the way to the bay, where some asshole had killed her.

Liv takes another deep breath, whispering as she lets out the air through pursed lips: “I’m doing this as much for you, Sol.”

Then she steps farther into the house.

She checks the kitchen first. It looks normal enough, no dirty plates or anything. The only exception to her mother’s usual orderliness is the first-aid kit on the counter. It has been opened and rummaged through in a hurry. Liv looks down to see dark, dried-up spots of blood leading to the living room.

She is about to follow the trail, when an idea strikes her. She goes instead and opens the cupboard, taking out her favorite teacup. She holds it steady—which is difficult with a shaky hand—and pours a healthy serving of holy water into it.

Then she proceeds, armed with both the open bottle and the teacup. This will double her odds in case something happens. Like she could drop the bottle. Or her parents could team up and come for her at once.

Somewhere down the street, a dog starts barking.

Liv ignores the sound and slips as quietly as she can across the wooden floor, her eyes and ears scanning the surroundings as she enters the living room. She feels awkward holding the bottle and cup as though she’s about to serve invisible guests a drink of water.

The living room is empty. But the couch is in disarray; someone obviously lay down here earlier. There’s blood smeared on the fabric and a pool of it has formed on the floor.

That’ll never come off, Liv thinks to herself in her mother’s voice.

On the coffee table are discarded bandages all soaked with dried blood. There’s also a bottle of disinfectant and what looks to be a sewing kit with a needle and pieces of thread.

Dad tried to clean and stitch up his wounds, Liv realizes, feeling a lump in her throat too big to swallow.

Had he known it wouldn’t help? He must have. He watched the infection kill her mother, after all, so he probably didn’t bear any illusions that a splash of regular disinfectant would do any good.

Then why did he go through the trouble of stopping the bleeding? Why had he wished to prolong the suffering?

Liv knew her father to be a fighter. Sure, he was only a bank worker nowadays, but he had been an amateur boxer in his younger years and he spent six years in the military after that. He had guts, and both Liv and Sol had inherited that quality. Liv had always—

A loud bang causes her to spin around, scream and almost drop the bottle. The cup spills water all over her hand.

Liv stares at the door to the bedroom. It’s locked.

Another bang from it.

Then a groan.

Liv looks down and notices the bloodstains on the floor leading to the bedroom. Her lips begin shaking. “Dad …”

By the sound of it, there’s only one person in there. It’s got to be her father.

Liv’s legs don’t want to go any closer, but she forces them. She’s in such a state of alarm, it’s only when she stops five feet from the door that she finally notices the sheet of paper pinned to it. It’s right in her eyesight. Written in her dad’s handwriting. A bloody handprint next to it.

Liv squints and reads the short message.

To anyone who reads this: I’m in the bedroom. I’m dead from the infection. Don’t open the door. My wife is in the bathroom. She’s dead too. Don’t open that door either.

To Solveig: What are you doing back here? Go find Liv! I love you.

To Liv: In case Solveig didn’t find you and you somehow made it back here. Go and find safety somewhere. There’s nothing you can do for me or Mom. We both love you.

Liv bites her lip to stop herself from bursting into tears. Her father throws himself at the door again, causing the paper to flutter. He groans from the other side.

“There is, Dad,” she whispers. “There is something I can do to help you.”

Liv looks to the bookshelf next to the door. She decides the cup is the best option for this, so she puts down the bottle, freeing her left hand. She then places that hand on the door’s handle and closes her eyes, steadying herself for a few seconds. The door shakes each time her father bumps into it from the other side.

Okay, now do it, she tells herself. Don’t look at his face. Just open and throw. On the count of three. One … two … three!

Liv bites down hard, rips open the door, steps back and flings the cup of water at the figure coming through the opening.

She screams and stumbles sideways, catching a glimpse of her father’s face as the water hits him in the chest. She’s glad she already threw the water, because if she had looked at him first, she wouldn’t have been able to do it. Seeing him as a living dead is beyond gruesome. His grey skin, his peeled back lips, his white fishlike eyes. But the worst thing is that she still recognizes him.

His expression goes from one of angry snarling to blankness in a heartbeat, and then he collapses onto the floor.

Liv drops the teacup, her hands going to her mouth. It’s all she can do not to collapse next to him. Instead, she leans against the wall, staring at her father, holding back her breath, counting the seconds, waiting.

SIX

A movement catches Dan’s eye from the neighboring house.

The terrace door is pushed open slowly. It’s covered by some sort of insect mesh and he can’t see through it, so he can’t see who’s pushing. He clutches the bottle, readying himself for whatever will appear.

A furry face pops out at knee height. A pink tongue lolls from the open mouth as the dog looks around. Apparently satisfied that everything is okay, it saunters across the porch and down onto the front lawn. It’s a terrier of some kind, not much bigger than a cat. It wears a collar and looks fairly well groomed. From the way it carries itself, Dan assumes it used to live in the house.

It heads for a large, blue kiddie pool sitting in the middle of the lawn. Clothes, flip-flops and even a teddy bear are all left on the grass around the inflatable pool, causing Dan’s heart to break a little.

The terrier doesn’t care about the remains of the young inhabitants of the house; it just leans over the edge of the pool, ducks its head down and laps at the water.

That’s how it’s survived for days alone in the heat, Dan realizes.

As though hearing his thought, the dog suddenly looks up. Its eyes land on Dan, and its ears perk up.

Please don’t begin to—

The dog gives off a shrill bark and comes closer.

“It’s okay,” Dan says in a low voice, holding up his hand. “Please, be quiet.”

The dog stops at the edge of the lawn. Even though there’s no fence or hedge or anything keeping it from going out onto the sidewalk, the terrier has obviously been trained to stay within the property, and so it does, standing there, barking at Dan.

He takes a few steps back, hoping to show the dog he’s not an intruder. But the dog just keeps barking.

Dan looks up and down the street. He’s not entirely sure whether sound draws the zombies. He knows for a fact the undead are first and foremost driven by some predatory instinct guiding them towards the nearest living prey—but who’s to say whether hearing serves as a secondary sense?

Something suggests it might be so—or maybe it’s just coincidence. At any rate, down the street comes three—no, four—zombies.

“Shit,” Dan mutters, looking at the bottle in his hand. It’s filled to the cap, containing two cups. Which might just be enough to give him four tries at flinging the water at the oncomers. But it’ll leave him empty. He needs to make more fast, and his brain connects the dots instantly.

He steps closer to the dog and it barks even more fiercely, backing away a little.

“You need to let me in,” he tells it, pointing down the street, as though the dog could understand him. “They’re coming.”

Whether the dog actually catches the meaning of his words or it just reacts to his pointing hand, it looks in the direction and sees the four figures—which, Dan notices, have turned into seven as three more have joined in from the adjacent lawns.

The terrier runs to the other edge of the lawn, barking madly at the dead people as they waddle onto the property, paying zero attention to the guard.

Dan has already run to the kiddie pool. It’s halfway full, the rest of the water having evaporated under the scorching sun, but it still contains several gallons. Flies, wasps and butterflies have met their destiny here and are now floating around the surface along with a pink toy bucket and a pair of swimming goggles.

Dan uncaps the bottle and pours in a healthy splash. There’s no visible change to the water. No puff of smoke or hiss of the wind. Nothing happened when they tested it at the house, but Dan can’t help thinking: What if it doesn’t work? What if it only works at Holger’s place?

For all he knows, the ritual could somehow be connected to the location it was first performed. Maybe the water’s magical abilities went away as soon as he unscrewed the cap. Maybe he is about to face off with a group of zombies and his only armor is a kiddie pool with regular, lukewarm tap water.

Dan shoves away the thoughts, fastens the cap firmly again and puts the bottle down on the grass. The closest of the zombies—a young woman, around Dan’s mother’s age, sporting a vicious bite wound to her neck—is coming for him, her arms outstretched, her hands groping the air eagerly. She pays no mind to the terrier running around her legs, barking furiously, snapping at her bare ankles.

Dan leans in and scoops up the bucket, filling it up halfway. He turns and flings it at the woman.

Dan was never good at sports, and throwing water from a bucket proves more difficult than he imagined. The water doesn’t shoot out in a beam like he hoped, instead scattering in a cloud. Even with the woman only a few feet away, he mostly misses her. Some of it does splash onto her feet, though, and that’s enough.

The woman collapses with a sigh.

The terrier barks at her, convinced she’s only playing dead, as the next zombie steps past them.

Dan has already scooped up another half bucketful. He tries a different tactic this time, flinging the water more in a horizontal motion, creating a wave as it flies from the bucket and splashes across the waistline of the dead guy, sending him motionless to the ground. The rain droplets flash a brief rainbow at Dan.

The terrier suddenly bolts past Dan, and he turns to look, then feels his stomach drop.

“Oh, shit …”

From the other end of the lawn, several zombies are approaching, the closest of them already on the grass. There must be at least a dozen, and still more are coming from farther down the road.

Dan looks down at the pool and the bucket in his hands, realizing he’ll never be able to hold his ground. He needs to call out for Liv; they need to get the hell out of Dodge.

Then he sees the water gun right next to his foot. It’s a big one, with a tank large enough to contain half a gallon or so. Dan drops to his knees, unscrews the tank and plunges it into the pool.

It takes a few seconds for the water to fill it, and Dan is painfully aware of the figures closing in from both sides.

“Come on, come on,” he chants.

Once the tank is full, he quickly screws it back on. Since it’s wet now, it slips from his hand and he almost drops it. A grunt from behind.

Dan lets out a yelp as a shadow falls over him. Without even looking, he plunges a hand into the pool and sends a splash of water over his shoulder.

The dead person collapses behind him, knocking into his back. Dan ignores it, focuses instead on screwing the tank back onto the gun.

Then, once it’s in place, he jumps to his feet and begins pumping the trigger while pointing the gun at the oncomers. They are forming a half circle around him, almost within reaching distance. Had Dan not been armed with the holy water, he would have been dead within seconds.

But the water gun works like a charm. It sends out a thin, hard stream of water which is incredibly easy to aim, and as soon as it touches one of the deads, it collapses as though someone pulled the plug.

Dan shoots wildly, spinning around like the hero in a bad action movie, spraying water in every direction.

The zombies fall like flies, three, six, ten. More are coming, but Dan steadily creates more distance between them and himself. The fallen dead form an improvised wall around him, proving helpful as the still-standing zombies have difficulty walking over it, buying Dan a little more time to take aim and shoot them down.

The terrier is helping too, running around the legs of the oncomers, barking and snapping, causing some of them to trip and stumble.

Dan shoots the last zombie—a young girl, not much older than ten—and as she falls on top of the veritable pile of bodies, Dan looks around, panting and sweating.

For now, he has cleared the lawn. He couldn’t count the lifeless bodies even if he tried, there are so many of them, and they’re all entangled. But there’s at least thirty.

Somewhere far down the street, two new figures are coming out from a lawn, waddling this way.

Dan checks the tank and sees it’s dangerously close to empty. Still, the gun was a lot more efficient than the bucket, having used only an ounce or so for every person. Dan unscrews the tank and plunges it into the pool to refill it.

The terrier has stopped barking. Instead, it’s come to sniff Dan’s shoe.

“That’s right,” Dan tells it. “We’re on the same team here, right?”

The dog gives him a knowing look. Then it sees something behind Dan and begins barking again.

Dan spins around to see three zombies coming around the corner of the house.

Second wave, he thinks to himself, aiming the water gun. Please hurry, Liv. I can’t hold ’em off forever …

SEVEN

Liv has no sense of time. She needs to look at the living room clock to determine how long it’s been since she threw the water at her father. For all she knows, it could be seconds, or it could be hours.

In reality, she finds, six minutes have passed.

Which is enough.

More than enough.

The realization hits her like a fist to the chest. Her father is not waking up. He’s really dead.

Still, she kneels down and places a hand on his back, nudging him gently. “Dad? Can you … can you hear me?”

No response.

She shakes him a little harder, says his name several times.

Her father doesn’t move or react in any way.

“Oh, Dad …” she whispers, as tears finally begin spilling down her cheeks. “I was really hoping you … you would still be …”

She strokes his hair, feeling the coldness of the skin underneath it. Then she gets back up, her knees almost buckling.

“I’m sorry,” she tells him. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be here sooner. And I’m sorry I have to go.”

She stands there one more moment. She wants to stay, but to her surprise, there’s also a part of her that wants to keep going. That part anticipated this outcome. It was ready for the heartache.

Liv wipes her eyes, sniffling. “Goodbye, Dad. I love you.”

Then she picks up the teacup and the bottle, walks out of the living room, down the hallway and approaches the bathroom door.

Already several paces away, she can hear the sounds through the door. Moans, groans. But no banging, no scraping.

Liv stops for a second, looking at the handle. It doesn’t move. She places a palm on the door. Nothing. No one is pushing from the other side.

Yet she can definitely hear someone in there.

She pours water into the cup, intending to repeat her strategy, as she puts the bottle on the floor after securing the cap.

She grabs the handle and tries to turn it. It’s locked. The key is on this side, though, which must mean her dad is the one who locked it.

She turns the key and then the handle.

The air in the bathroom is warm and rank. Liv inhales through her mouth as the door swings open. She holds the cup ready, but just as she suspected, no one comes out at her. The moaning grows louder.

She immediately sees the bloodstains on the runner. The sink is full of medical supplies and more dried blood.

The shower curtain moves. It’s halfway drawn, hiding most of the bathtub. There’s a squeaky sound as whoever is lying in the tub moves around, skin rubbing against the sides.

Liv steps into the room, stretching her neck to see into the tub. It takes her a moment to understand what she sees.

It’s her mother, and she looks as familiar as Liv expected. She’s wearing her favorite yellow top and her skirt. Her bare, suntanned legs are kicking against the tub, trying to push her up. But her hands are secured behind her back, and the way she’s lying is like a turtle on its shell.

At the sight of Liv, she instead tries to lift her upper body, craning her neck, snapping her teeth. Still, the fact that her arms have been tied together hinders her from sitting up.

Dad must have done it, Liv thinks with a mixture of emotion swirling around her heart. After she died. So she wouldn’t get out and cause trouble.

Liv stares at her mother for a few more seconds. “Hi, Mom,” she says. “It’s me. Liv.”

Her mother reacts to her voice by trying more eagerly to get at her. There is no recognition in her face, not a trace of human emotions.

Still, Liv can’t help herself: “I’m going to heal you, Mom. You’re going to wake up in a minute. Trust me.”

Even as the words are leaving her mouth, Liv can hear how silly they sound. How she pretends to speak them for her mother’s sake when they’re really meant for herself. Meant to push away the almost certainty that her mother won’t wake up.

She’s been dead even longer than Dad. And she wasn’t half the fighter he was. She’ll never—

Liv shakes her head to stop the thoughts. Instead, she forces a smile, lifting the cup. “You ready, Mom? Here it comes.”

She tilts the cup and the water falls, splashing all over her mother’s chest and stomach. She goes limp right away, her body sinks down, her head drops to her shoulder. Suddenly, she simply looks like someone sleeping.

“I’ll wait for you, Mom,” Liv says, kneeling down in front of the tub.

There’s no clock out here, so instead she counts her breaths. As she does so, she watches her mother’s face closely. Searching for a twitch, a movement, anything.

Fifty breaths.

Her mother hasn’t stirred. Liv reaches down a hand and feels her neck. The skin is too cold. The pulse is not there.

There’s time. Keep counting.

A hundred breaths.

Still no signs of life.

Liv squeezes her lips together. It’s not fair. They can’t both be dead. It’s not fair.

A hundred fifty breaths—shaky now.

“Please, Mom,” Liv says, her voice thick. “Please wake up for me.”

Her mother doesn’t wake up.

Two hundred breaths. They turn into sobs. Liv stops counting and starts crying. She cries over the edge of the tub, sobbing like she hasn’t done since she was a little girl.

Everyone is gone.

Everyone.

She’s the only one left.

She knew that already, and yet she couldn’t help but hope a little. That tiny hope is what leaves her now, and it causes her entire world to tremble on its way out.

I can’t get up, a thought occurs to her. I’ll just stay here.

What about Dan? another thought argues. It sounds a lot like Solveig.

Dan will go on without me.

No, he won’t. He needs you.

Bullshit. He’ll be fine.

He’s lost everyone too, you know? The only difference is, he still has hope left. Get up and help him.

Liv shakes her head. “I can’t …”

Sure, you can. There’s warmth in Solveig’s voice now. You can and you will. You’ll do it for me.

Liv takes one last, trembling breath. Then she opens her eyes, darts one last look at her dead mother, and gets to her feet. It feels like climbing a mountain. But she makes it.

“Bye, Mom,” she whispers. “Love you.”

She turns to leave, when a figure steps into the doorway.

Liv stares at Ludwig from across the street. He’s the same age as Liv, and he’s had a crush on both Liv and Solveig since they were kids. Neither Liv nor her sister were ever interested in him—in fact, they saw him as quite a weird guy, with his pet spiders and praying mantises and other creepy stuff.

Ludwig is only wearing bathing trunks, revealing his thin, hairy legs and his boney, marble-white torso. Both his forehead and his chest are covered with bright red pimples. His ribs are showing under his arm where someone ripped off the skin. His blank eyes stare right at Liv.

That’s when she realizes she left the bottle outside the bathroom door.

Liv has nowhere to run. Nothing to defend herself with. She’s completely cornered.

She closes her eyes and waits for the pain.

EIGHT

Dan quickly subdues the three zombies from the backyard.

Three more follow suit from the other direction. He sprays them too as soon as they are within reach of the water gun.

That’s when he sees them.

They look like a parade. Except there’s no music, no colorful clothes, no dancing. There are so many of them, they take up all of the street. At least a hundred. Probably more like two.

”Oh, hell,” Dan mutters.

The dog sees the oncomers and runs to the edge of the lawn, barking furiously.

Dan looks up at the house and shouts: “Liv!”

That’s when he sees her already standing in the open front door.

“Oh, there you are. Come on! We have to leave!”

He runs to the ATV, jumps on it and turns the key. He looks back to see Liv still just standing in the doorway.

He waves at her frantically. “Come on, damnit!”

The first of the zombies enter the lawn, the terrier barking and snapping at their feet, causing them only little trouble.

Dan revs up the engine, driving the four-wheeler onto the grass and up to the door. He stops in front of Liv, gesturing for her to jump on.

“Come on, hurry up! We need to leave!”

Liv just stands there, arms at her sides. She’s holding the bottle of holy water in one hand. It’s halfway empty.

“Liv!” Dan shouts, looking from her to the approaching zombies. “Snap out of it, please!”

Liv blinks and looks at him. “It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not! Get on! We have to get away from here, now! We have to—goddamnit!”

Dan grabs the water gun and fires at the front runners. They fall limply to the ground. Another one approaches from the back, and Dan nails it with a spray to the chest.

He leans over and grabs Liv by the wrist, tugging at her. “Will you get on?”

Liv doesn’t get on. She just stares at him, an unreadable expression on her face. She holds up the bottle. “Here.”

“There’s no time! We have to—”

“Take a sip.”

“What?” Dan’s voice breaks as he has to shoot the next line of zombies. In a matter of seconds, they’ll be cut off from the street and even the ATV won’t save them. “Look, I’m going now! With or without you! So you need to decide—mpfh!”

He’s cut off as Liv places the bottle to his lips and tilts it. A healthy splash of the holy water rolls into his mouth and he gags and splutters. “What the hell?” he blurts out, pushing the bottle away. “What are you doing!?”

Liv looks past him, a weak smile forming around her mouth. “It’s working.”

“What are you …?”

Dan cuts himself off as he turns his head, expecting to see the zombies close in on them. Instead, he sees them all just standing there.

There’s less than six feet to the closest ones. And yet they’ve simply stopped walking.

For several seconds, the dead do nothing but move their heads, uttering low grunts and moans.

And then they simply begin to scatter.

One by one, the zombies turn and waddle off into a seemingly random direction. A few of them come in this direction, and Dan instinctively aims the water gun at them, but they just walk right past him, as though they can’t see him. One of them even brushes up against the ATV, but pays no heed.

Dan stares from the scattering zombie army to Liv, who’s looking back at him with a serene smile. “I told you. It’s okay.”

Dan looks down at the bottle in her hand. “The holy water … it makes you … immune!”

Liv nods.

A movement from behind her. Liv barely flinches as a zombie—a guy around Dan’s age, but taller and even more skinny—makes his way past her. He stops right in front of them for a heartbeat, as though deciding which way to go. Then he proceeds to waddle right past the ATV and down the garden path towards the street. He all but bumps into Liv as he passes her. For all intents and purposes, she’s invisible to him.

Dan follows the guy with his gaze, feeling a budding elation in his chest. “This is incredible. It’s great news!”

Liv nods. “I know.”

“We need to tell William!” Dan pulls out the phone, then looks at Liv again. “Are you …? Were your parents …?”

Liv takes a breath, not looking at him. “They were here. I helped them.”

“But they didn’t …?”

She shakes her head once.

“I’m sorry,” Dan says.

“It’s okay. They showed me this.” She holds up the bottle. “I believe that’s why we had to come here. I mean, I was hoping … of course I was hoping they would … but it’s okay.”

Dan can tell she’s fighting back tears, and he doesn’t say anything.

Liv takes another deep breath, then repeats in a low whisper: “It’s okay.”

Dan gives her another moment, then he says: “I’ll just give William a call. Then we should get moving.” He finds the number for the satellite phone and makes the call. It rings four times, then six, then eight. No one picks up. Dan ends the call. “He didn’t answer.”

Liv eyes him. “You think they’re okay?”

“He said he’d keep the phone on him at all times. But he would have to call the American soldier, so maybe the line is busy right now. I’ll try again in a few minutes. Until then, we better get moving.”

NINE

Chris is praying when his phone rings.

He’s in the cockpit, his elbows resting on his knees, his hands folded in front of him, his eyes closed. He’s thinking of his wife and their daughters and their dog back in Utah. He’s also thinking of his brothers and his dad and his grandma.

Last he spoke with any of them, they were being shipped to a base at a secure location. One of the perks of serving in the air force was that with an impending nuclear war, your family got a head start to safety.

Of course, he couldn’t tell them why. But they knew. They’ve been following the news and social media. And as much as the government tries to downplay what is happening overseas, rumors are outrunning them.

Chris has been praying a lot lately. Usually, he prays for his family or local community. He never tried praying for the world before.

He’s been keenly aware of the time. All the men have; he sees them checking on their watches frequently. It’s like there’s this big, invisible timer hanging over them, counting down the minutes.

And as they passed the twenty-four-hour mark, something unspoken went through the aircraft. The men exchanged looks. They all thought the same thing.

The last day had begun.

The buzz from his inner pocket calls him out of his thoughts. It’s his private cell. Meaning family, most likely.

He pulls it out but sees a number not in his address book. It’s also not from a regular phone, either domestic or international; there are too many digits. Looks like a satellite phone.

He glances a look at Dave next to him. “Need to take this.”

“Sure,” Dave tells him.

Chris puts the call through to his earpiece as he turns discreetly in his seat. “Everton speaking.”

A moment of static crackle. Then the line clears, and a voice comes through: “Hello? Sergeant?”

Chris recognizes both the accent and the tone of the voice—he was always good at remembering people he’d talked to before. “William? That you, son?”

A short delay. “Yeah, it’s me. I’ve got great news.”

Chris can’t help but sit up a little straighter. “Talk to me.”

This time, the pause is a little longer. As though the kid takes a breath before he blurts it out: “We did it. We found the cure.”

Chris’s pulse spikes. He wills it down again immediately. “Are you sure?”

“Absolutely. We tested it more than a hundred times. I have the video ready as well. It proves everything.”

A video proves nothing. It can easily be manipulated. Nowadays, even a teenager with a smartphone can edit Barney the Dinosaur into the video of Kennedy’s assassination in less than two minutes. They need more than that. Yet Chris trusts the kid, and he wants to see the video.

“Can you send it to me, son?”

“I’ll send the link. We’re uploading it to YouTube now.”

“Good job. How did you do it?”

“I told you, voodoo. We found the woman who started it all. She made a counter-curse or whatever—I don’t know the lingo. I just know it works.”

“How? How does it work?” Chris senses Dave looking at him, and he realizes his voice is too high, too eager. He clears his throat and gets himself under control. “Please explain it to me.”

“It’s water,” William says, laughing briefly. “Can you believe it? She made a cure that can be transferred through water. All you need is a tiny drop, and they just collapse—you’ll see it in the video.”

“Water?” Chris repeats, frowning. “You’ll excuse me, but as promising as it sounds, this wasn’t exactly what I expected.”

“No, me neither. But I promise you, Sergeant: it works. All you have to do is—hold on … what’s that, Lars?”

Someone speaking in the background.

“Thanks. Okay, Sergeant, the link is ready. My friend will text it to you now. We’ll do whatever we can to get it out there. Everyone needs to see the video. It explains everything. You need to get it to your president, too. He’ll call off the strikes once he sees this.”

“This is all fine and well, son,” Chris says, turning a little farther away from his colleague. “But in order for me to even consider bringing this to our commander in chief, I need a lot more than just a video. I need physical evidence. I need a way to utilize this cure you claim to have found on a large scale. I need—”

“I know, I know. And it’s totally possible. The water can be distributed easily. All you need is a small sample of it, and you can make more in an instant. A drop in a tank full of regular water will turn the whole thing into holy water—that’s what we call it.”

The creases across Chris’s forehead grow deeper. “Son, are you sure this—”

“Look, I know how it sounds. I wouldn’t have believed me either. Just please, watch the video, Sergeant. Then we’ll figure out how we get some of the holy water into the hands of your people.”

Chris bites his lip, then nods. “Okay, hold on. I’ll call you back ASAP.” He disconnects the call.

“Mind me asking who that was?”

Chris glances at Dave. “Give me a moment, please.”

He opens the text that just popped in. There’s a link in it. Chris opens it. A YouTube video begins playing. It shows a living room in a European-looking house somewhere.

A teenager comes walking into the room, his movements quick, his expression stern. He walks out of shot behind the camera. Then, a few seconds later, an infected man comes staggering into the room.

Someone counts out loud—at least Chris assumes the person is counting, though they’re speaking Danish. Then two other young men jump into view and splash water on the infected.

He turns his eyes to the ceiling and collapses.

Like a robot who had its wires cut.

Chris feels a jolt through his stomach.

A jump cut to William’s face, looking into the camera. He’s holding a Coke bottle full of water as he speaks slowly in English, obviously concentrating on pronouncing every word as clearly as he can: “What you just saw was not a trick and it was not a hoax. This is the real deal. We found a way to combat the infected. We call it holy water. It works instantaneously like you just saw. It cures anyone on direct contact. The best thing about it is how easily we can make more of it. Any amount of holy water added to another pool of water—no matter how big it is—will instantly pass on the effect.”

As the video ends, Chris senses Dave once again staring at him. He returns his questioning gaze. “I’ll send you a link. Watch the video and tell me what you think. Are these kids delusional or trying to trick me?” He texts Dave the link.

It takes his colleague less than two minutes to watch the video. He grins at Chris. “It’s the guy we put back down on the ground?”

“Uh-huh. Whaddya make of it?”

“It looks and sounds too good to be true. If a cure was that easy to make, then how come none of the thousands of doctors working day and night have come across it?”

“Because it’s not a medical cure.”

“Then what?”

Chris takes a deep breath. “A spiritual one. It’s voodoo, Dave. That’s what started this whole thing.”

Dave’s expression goes from amused to skeptical in an instance. Chris knew he wouldn’t be able to accept it right away.

“So you’re saying this whole thing—”

“I am,” Chris cuts him off. “You have seen them up close, Dave, just like I have. You’ve looked them in the eye. Tell me, honestly, do you really feel this is an infection we’re fighting? Can you see anything resembling a soul when you stare into their faces?”

Dave chews on it. “So you believe the guy?”

“I do.” Chris blinks in surprise at how fast the answer comes. The truth may be that he needs to believe William.

“All right, let’s say just for the hell of it that this is the real deal,” Dave says, leaning closer. “What would the next step be?”

Chris shrugs. “Try and get them to call off the strikes.”

Dave shakes his head. “And how the hell are you going to do that? Call up the pres and convince him? Ask him to pretty please watch the video?”

“I have a personal contact on his staff. She’s my cousin, and she will listen to me. She can bring it to him.”

“But even if he did watch it and he did believe it, which is a far enough stretch in and of itself, you really think he could call it off now, in the eleventh hour? The bombers are in the air, Chris.”

“I know,” Chris says, realizing his palms are growing sweaty. “But can’t you see it, Dave? If we drop those nukes, that’s the end. The world will fall into the next dark age.”

“It already has.”

“No, not yet, goddamnit. We can pull it back from the brink, Dave. If we can get the word out. If we can just show people this video, get them to believe …”

Dave looks almost sad as he shakes his head slowly. “You know it’s too late, Chris. I’m sorry, man. We all wish it hadn’t come to this, but it has, and we need to get ready to deal with it.”

Chris runs a hand over his head as he looks to the back of the helicopter. The survivors are either sleeping or staring blankly at nothing. How many Americans back home were in a similar situation right now? How many were being evacuated on planes and busses and trains? And how many of them would reach safety before the counterattacks struck American soil? It was inevitable, they all knew that. As mighty as America was, there was just no way they could prevent the UN from retaliating with a nuclear strike.

“God help us all,” he mutters, then he dials William back up.

TEN

It’s a completely different feeling driving through town now. Not just because Dan is the one driving this time, but also because none of the zombies they pass by seem to notice them.

“How long do you think it’ll last?” Dan asks, darting a look over his shoulder at Liv. “You think it’s permanent?”

Liv doesn’t answer right away. It seems she was lost in thought. When she does speak, her voice is distant. “I don’t know. I hope so.”

“This is a complete game changer,” Dan goes on, feeling renewed hope at the fate of the world. “If we can just get the word out … people can be spared! They can be saved, Liv!”

“I know,” Liv says, sounding like she couldn’t care less.

They reach a T-crossing where one street is blocked off by a garbage truck left haphazardly parked across the road. Dan stops and pulls out his phone to check the map.

The red dot has moved slightly since he last looked, but it’s still in the northern part of town.

I’m less than twenty minutes away from him, Dan thinks, feeling his heart grow in his chest. The thought of seeing his dad again—dead or alive—is almost too much to bear.

He’s about to give William another call, when Liv points down the street. “Wait. Look.”

Dan sees a car coming this way. It’s the first moving vehicle they’ve seen so far. Dan can make out the driver and another person sitting in the passenger seat. The car doesn’t slow down until it’s fairly close to the four-wheeler. Then it stops abruptly, and both doors open.

Dan feels a creeping sense of tension, and he’s pretty sure Liv picks up on it, too, because her grip around his waist tightens.

Two men jump out of the car, one of them middle-aged with grey streaks in his beard, the other a big teenager. The teenager is holding a rifle. The older guy doesn’t seem to have a firearm, but in a holster attached to his belt, Liv sees the shaft of a giant knife.

“Hey there!” the older guy shouts over the running motors, revealing a surprisingly deep voice for his skinny frame. “We’re not infected.”

“Neither are we,” Dan answers, trying hard to interpret the men’s intentions from their movements. The teenager stays by the driver’s side door, while the man comes around to the front of the car. His hand is resting casually on his belt next to the knife.

“Glad to hear it,” he says, smiling. He’s wearing sunglasses, which makes it hard to judge whether the smile is genuine. “You two look like you could use some help.”

“Not really,” Liv says, surprising Dan by speaking up. “We’re doing just fine.”

“Well, you won’t be fine for long,” the man says calmly, glancing around. “This city is swamped with walking dead people, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“We did notice,” Dan says. “We’ll be careful.”

He revs up the engine and turns the ATV around in a half circle. He keeps an eye on the guy while he does it, half expecting him to lunge for them. He just stays in place, though, the knife still in the holster.

Just as Dan is about to gun it, he sees the other car. It’s a police car, and it has come up from behind, neither Dan nor Liv having heard it. Two men have popped out and are standing there, each brandishing rifles. They are certainly not police officers.

Dan considers for a moment going for it. He could accelerate at full speed and try to make it past the men before they could take aim and fire. But they look like they know how to handle those weapons better than Dan knows how to handle the ATV, and if he tries to make a run for it, chances are he’ll be taking a bullet to the head.

Instead, he looks back at the grey-bearded man, who’s still just standing there, looking at them.

“What do you want?” Liv asks.

“Look, let’s not get off on the wrong foot here,” the guy says, walking closer. “You might not need our help, but we need yours. It’s important that the few of us still left alive around here work together, don’t you think? I mean, we need to do something about this situation …”

“We already are,” Liv cuts him off. “We’re trying to solve it.”

“Really?” the guy asks, raising his eyebrows above the brim of the sunglasses. “By driving around on a four-wheeler? Excuse me for asking, but how’s that doing any good?”

“We have a—” Dan begins, when one of the men by the police car whistles sharply.

“John!” he calls out. “Got a bunch of dead guys coming up!”

Dan looks in the direction and sees a group of zombies approaching.

“Right,” the bearded guy says, “we need to speed things up here. Sorry about cutting to the chase, you guys, but you’re coming with us.”

“Like hell we are!” Liv exclaims.

Before Dan can even react, she reaches around him and grabs the steering wheel, twisting the gas handle violently. The ATV lurches forward. Both men by the police car react instantly by jumping to the sides, trying to cut them off.

“They want it the hard way!” John shouts from behind as the four-wheeler speeds towards the police car. “Get them, boys!”

Dan is certain the men are going to shoot them. He is certain both he and Liv will die now.

Instead of opening fire, both men dive into the police car and pop up a second later again, holding what looks to Dan like big balls of fish net. For some reason, this only fills Dan with even more dread. As the men throw the nets, they unfold in the air. Since the ATV is coming right at them, it’s an easy target to hit. One of the nets wraps around Dan and Liv, the other gets tangled up in the front wheels, causing the ATV to grind to a halt, almost throwing them off.

The net is thick and sharp and it really does smell like fish, Dan notices as he struggles to pull it off. But it’s difficult because of how the net seems to cling to them, and before they know it, both men have closed in on them, grabbing the net and pulling them off the ATV.

“Now, listen to me!” Dan hears himself shout before the air is knocked from his lungs as he lands on his shoulder with Liv halfway on top of him. She twists and screams out in what sounds like both fear and rage.

The men don’t listen, though; they just drag Dan and Liv to the rear end of the car and lift them both up into the trunk.

“Get the bags and their phones, Simon,” one of them says, looking over his shoulder, then exclaiming: “Fuck, they’re coming …”

As the other guy begins untangling the bag from the net, the first one puts the rifle to his shoulder and shoots. The sound pierces Dan’s ears and rings out over the street.

“No, let go!” he hears himself say as he struggles to hold on to the bag. The guy rips it from him easily. He takes Liv’s too, then plunges his hand in their pockets and confiscates their phones.

Dan manages to get an arm free of the net and raise it to the lid of the truck as the man is about to close it. But the guy just slams it down anyway, Dan’s arm buckling under the pressure.

There’s shouting, running, two more rifle shots, more shouting, car doors slamming, and then the police car is moving.

ELEVEN

William answers the satellite phone as soon as it rings.

“Hello? Sergeant?”

“Speaking.”

“Did you watch the video?”

“I did, son. You did a fine job on it.”

“Thank you. Do you believe me now?”

A brief pause. “I do, son. I actually do.”

William breaks into a smile. “That’s great!”

“Unfortunately,” the sergeant goes on, speaking in a dreary tone. “My opinion on the matter doesn’t make any difference. Without physical evidence, I’m afraid we’ve got no case.”

“Right, you’re talking about the water? We need to get a sample to the White House.”

“That would be the next step, correct. And this is where it gets really difficult. First off, you would need to get the sample out of the bomb zone, or else we would be unable to pick it up after the initial strike …”

“Whoa,” William says. “Hold on a minute. You’re not going through with the strike, are you?”

“Like I said, son: Without physical evidence, there’s no way we can get our commander in chief to even consider calling it off.”

“Right, so we get a sample to him!”

“We do. After the strike.”

“What? After the strike it’ll barely matter!”

“The strike is in three hours. How would you get a sample across the ocean in less than three hours, son?”

“I … I would … I don’t know … you could send a fighter jet?”

“Not even the fastest jet in the world could make that flight. I’m sorry, William. There’s just no way.”

“There’s gotta be,” William persists. “We might be standing with the solution to all the world’s problems right in our hands. There’s got to be some way of convincing them. Words travel faster than planes.”

“Our words count for nothing. Same with your video. I’m sorry, son, but you know as well as I do that these things can be altered easily.”

“But it’s not altered; it’s real!”

“I believe you.”

“But … but they’ve got at least to be open to hearing what we have to say!”

“Look, we need to treat this as a positive development. Once the dust settles, we can begin working on getting the word out there. We will be able to cure the world of this awful infliction.”

“Getting the word out?” William snorts. “Out to who? This will be World War 3. There won’t be anyone left to hear the word, Sergeant.”

The sergeant sighs. “Unless you can make it rain with holy water in Washington, we have no chance of getting physical proof to the people in charge in time.”

“Wait a minute,” a voice comes from behind William. He turns to look at Dennis, who’s been listening closely. “Maybe we can make it rain.”

William frowns. “How?”

Dennis holds out his hands. “If the holy water really doesn’t dilute no matter how big a pool of water we add it too, then maybe we can add it to the ecosystem.”

William feels a drop in his gut as he suddenly recalls something from geography class. “Holy shit, I think I get what you’re saying. Isn’t there something about all the water on the planet being connected? I mean, the rain and the rivers and shit. Maybe if we pour holy water in a river somewhere, it would spread out all over the globe.”

“That’s what I’m thinking,” Dennis nods. “Or we could just try the ocean.”

“The ocean?” William asks. “You think it’ll work in salt water?”

“We have no way of knowing. But why would a couple of percentages of salt make that much difference?”

William thinks for a second, feeling his heart hammer away in his chest. “This might actually work. Sergeant, did you hear what we just talked about?”

“I did, son.”

“In theory, if we poured some holy water into the Atlantic, it would mean all the oceans would turn into giant reservoirs for holy water, right? What do you think of this?”

“Honestly, I don’t know what to think anymore. How far are you from the ocean?”

“Twenty minutes.”

A moment of silence before the sergeant speaks again: “Well, I guess it’s our best shot, so I suggest you get moving.”

TWELVE

“What do you think they want with us?” Dan asks, his voice hoarse in the darkness.

They’ve been driving for what feels like ten minutes, and despite the enclosed space, they’ve managed to unwrap themselves from the net and shove it to the side.

Now they’re lying next to each other in fetal positions. After their eyes got used to the darkness, Liv could make out the inside of the trunk. She already scanned it for something they could use to defend themselves with, anything sharp or heavy, but the trunk is stripped empty.

“I don’t know,” she says. “But they obviously wanted us alive.”

Part of her wants to believe what the bearded guy said—that they want their help with something and nothing more. He did make it sound like their intentions were good, and they very well could be.

Another part of her—a much bigger part—holds no illusions. This part knows the situation is bad; she could tell from the guy’s face right away. He meant business. He had no emotions towards them. What he said about the living sticking together was just empty words. Besides—

“I don’t think we’re the first ones,” Dan says. He’s holding up something for Liv to see. It’s a tiny object, and she squints to make it out.

“Is that … a button?”

“From a shirt, yeah.”

“Fuck. I really don’t like this. Why the hell are they driving around kidnapping people?”

“No idea,” Dan says. “But we need to show them the water and what it can do. Maybe that will change whatever plans they have.”

Liv isn’t sure about that. It depends on exactly what the men’s plans are. If it’s killing Dan and raping her, then finding out about the holy water might not do much to sway them from that course of action.

The car comes to a halt.

It has slowed down a few times already, but each time was to make a turn. This time, the engine is killed.

“Guess we’re about to find out,” Liv whispers, feeling her pulse spike. After finding both her parents and realizing none of them could be saved, she has been sure she would never feel anything but sorrow again. She has lost her entire family for good, and nothing could ever overshadow that.

And yet, here was fear, prompting her to fight for her life once more.

The car doors open, and they can hear the men talking. Sounds like the other two—including the bearded guy—have joined them.

“Fuck, it stinks!”

“What did you expect, Jack? It’s a dirty job, but someone’s gotta do it.”

“Just wish it wouldn’t make me nauseous.”

“Looks like there’s already new ones coming. Better get those two ready.”

Liv feels Dan tense up when footsteps come closer.

“Ready?” a voice asks from outside the trunk.

“Ready.”

“All right, listen up in there! We’re pointing right at you with our guns. I’ma pop the trunk now, and if you get up to any funny business, we’ll have to shoot you in the face. We clear?”

Liv and Dan exchange a look in the dark.

“We’re clear,” Dan says loudly.

“Good. Here goes.”

The trunk opens and late, greyish afternoon sunlight comes streaming in, hurting Liv’s eyes. She blinks to see the silhouettes of the men towering over them, the closest one holding a rifle aimed at them.

“They unwrapped themselves,” one of the men says.

“Good, means they can walk. You two, get out of there.”

Liv and Dan support each other in climbing out of the trunk. Liv’s arms and legs are hurting from the awkward position she’s been lying in, and she can tell the same is true for Dan.

She blinks and looks around the almost empty parking lot. They’re still in town; in fact, they’ve only moved deeper downtown. A giant building is towering up next to the lot. There’s a big sign above the entrance saying: VIBORG STADIUM.

Liv has no idea why the men brought them here, but as she breathes in through her nose, she gets what the guy was talking about: there’s an awful smell in the air. It’s a mixture of smoke and seared flesh and something even worse underneath, something putrid. It’s like a barbecue gone horribly wrong.

From above the walls of the stadium, a thin, grey fog of smoke is still drifting towards the sky.

“What the hell happened here?” Liv hears herself ask, looking at the men.

“No time for talking,” the guy with the rifle says, urging them on. “Get inside. We’re exposed out here.”

“Look,” Dan says as they begin reluctantly to move for the entrance. “We have something we need to show you. It’s a way of curing the infected.”

The guy with the rifle snorts. “Really? You made a vaccine?”

“You could call it that. But it doesn’t need to be injected. Please, just let me show you, you’ll understand. It’s in my bag. If you’ll just—”

“We’re not idiots,” the other guy cuts in, shoving Dan forward. “Now get a move on, before the dead show up.”

“It’s true what he says,” Liv tries. “You can check out the bags yourselves. There are bottles of water in there which—”

“Heads up, guys!” a voice shouts from above.

Liv looks up to see an armed guy on top of the stadium wall. He’s aiming at something behind them. Liv turns her head to see three zombies coming into view from behind a parked van. There are more coming from farther away, at least twenty.

“Move!” the guy with the rifle says, shoving Liv. “Get inside!”

The guy from the wall begins firing as they run through the entrance. There’s a large, metal grid blocking the way. The bearded guy is standing right inside, waving them closer through an opening that must have been used to funnel in sport fans one at a time.

Dan and Liv slip through, followed by the two men. The bearded guy slams the fence shut behind them and locks it with a chain.

He then pulls out a walkie and says into it: “We’re clear, Hanson. Save your ammo.”

The shots from the wall cease immediately.

Liv looks back to see the zombies approach the entrance.

“Don’t worry, it’ll hold,” John tells them, pulling out a handkerchief which he wraps around his mouth and nose like a mask. “Welcome to our little purgatory. That’s what we dubbed it. Come, let me show you.”

He turns and walks on as the first zombies reach the fence and begin shoving against it.

Liv looks at Dan, and he glances back at her. His eyes reveal the same anxiety she’s feeling herself as they’re prodded along by the guy with the rifle.

The stench grows in intensity with each step. As they enter the stadium, Liv immediately sees why.

The field, which was once green, is now a scorched wasteland. Or a mass grave, rather. Blackened bodies are lying all around, at least five hundred, probably closer to a thousand. Most of them are concentrated towards the center of the field, where a large cage is located.

“Holy shit,” Liv whispers.

“Were they … were they zombies?” Dan asks.

The bearded guy stops to look at him. He takes off his sunglasses, and for the first time, they see his eyes, which are piercing grey. “Of course they were. Do you think we are burning survivors here?”

“How did you get them all in here?” Liv asks.

“That’s where we need your help,” the guy tells her, his eyes resting on her for a moment, his forehead creasing. “Hey, don’t I know you?”

Liv shakes her head. “No.”

“Yeah, I’m sure I do. I saw you just the other day. You were—” The guy stops talking. It’s like his mind keeps going, though. And Liv reads his thoughts from the way his expression changes. It’s quick and subtle, but she catches it.

He saw Solveig, she realizes with a jolt to her belly. He saw my sister while she was still alive …

“Come on,” John says, regaining his bearings. “Take them to the cage.”

Dan begins struggling as one of the men grabs his arm. “No, listen! Please, just listen to us for a moment. We have the cure! We can show you! It really works!”

Liv doesn’t fight the guy who shoves her forward. Even as she stumbles into the field of burned bodies, she can’t take her eyes off the bearded guy. He leads the way, finding a path through the fleshy chaos.

Dan is still shouting, pleading with the men, trying to get free, telling them to just look in the backpack, until the guy delivers a slap to his face and tells him to shut the hell up.

Why did he look at me like that? Liv keeps asking herself as she walks on, barely noticing the rank stench clawing at her sinuses. Why did he stop talking?

The answer should be obvious, and it is. Yet that final piece of the picture eludes her sleep-deprived brain as the men take them across the slaughterfield.

The cage is big, at least ten feet across and another ten feet tall. It’s built of solid metal bars reminding Liv of the kinds you use to keep cattle or horses separated in the stable.

A movement catches her eye from the other side of the stadium. There’s another tunnel, leading to the parking lot on the east side. It too is closed off by a fence, and a group of zombies are pressing against it, trying to get in.

It’s only when they stop by the cage that Liv notices the people inside it. There’s six or seven of them, the oldest being a man her grandpa’s age, the youngest a big boy holding on to his mother.

“Right, you know the drill by now,” John says, aiming the rifle at the cage. “You step aside and let these two come in. Anyone who does something funny gets a bullet to the head.”

One of the other men steps forward and begins unlocking the chain holding the cage gate.

“Please, mister,” the mother says. “Please let us go. At least let my son go. He’s only nine years old.”

“You told us that already,” John says.

The guy with the rifle prods Liv forward as the other guy opens the cage.

Dan looks at John, his expression dark. “What you’re doing here isn’t necessary. Just look in the bag. Try splashing some of the water on one of them; that’s all you need to do.”

“Right, we got it,” John says, not taking his grey eyes off the people in the cage. “Now, get in there.”

Dan steps inside and Liv follows suit.

Just as she’s about to enter, she stops and looks at John, hoping to read his mind again. Their eyes meet for a brief second before he can look away.

It’s all Liv needs. She finally connects the dots.

“You killed her,” she says, pointing to his knife. “You killed my sister.”

“Get her in there,” John says.

The guy behind her shoves Liv into the cage, and the men quickly lock the chain in place.

Liv turns around and stares out at John. He shrugs. “Your sister should’ve just done what we asked of her. Instead, she fought us tooth and nail.”

Liv blinks. “Of course she did. She doesn’t take orders from psycho assholes.”

One of the men laughs hoarsely. “Just as feisty as her sister …”

Liv holds John’s grey eyes firmly, and he doesn’t flinch. “She was lucky we didn’t rape her first. Maybe we’ll do that to you if you keep running your mouth.”

The other man stops laughing immediately, and a stoney silence falls over the stadium.

Liv grinds her teeth. “Why don’t you come in here and try?”

John just stands there for a few seconds. Liv’s heart is pounding away in her throat. She’s so fuelled by rage right now, part of her wants him to step into the cage. And it looks like he’s about to.

“John!” someone shouts across the field.

He turns to look at a guy waving from the mouth of the tunnel. “What?”

“Fence is starting to give. They’re really coming on. We need to open.”

“Right,” John says, looking back at Liv one last time. He doesn’t say anything.

Instead, the men begin moving towards the exits.

“Don’t leave us here!” the mother shouts. “Please!”

None of the men even look back.

THIRTEEN

The open fields fly by as Holger’s car shoots across the landscape. William doesn’t ease off the gas at any point. He clutches the wheel, and Dennis can tell he’s straining his eyes to make out the empty highway in front of them. The sky is so heavy with clouds now, the evening is almost completely dark.

“Maybe you should slow down,” Dennis suggests. He’s holding three bottles of the holy water in his lap. In the backseat is the main “package”: a giant plastic box with a lid taped on, containing almost twenty gallons of holy water. Dennis can hear it sloshing around.

“I’ve got this,” William says, taking one hand off the wheel to wipe sweat from his brow. “But we need to gun it. The fate of the fucking world might depend on it. If we don’t make it in time, we’re toast.”

“If we crash, we’re also toast,” Dennis points out. “And the world too.”

“We’re not going to crash,” William says. “We’re just one mile out.”

Ozzy is sitting on the seat between them, panting and looking alert.

They pass a sign which is briefly lit up by the headlights. Dennis has just time to read the text: Beach 1 mile.

It’s still uncanny to Dennis the way he’s suddenly able to read with no difficulty; even picking up longer words at a glance, words which just twenty-four hours ago, he had to meticulously spell his way through.

He also notices other big changes in his mind. He can remember stuff in greater detail, and he also knows a lot more. Apparently, going to school all these years hasn’t been for nothing. He finds himself able to understand how things work on a deeper level. Things, and people. Looking at William’s face, he can discern what he’s feeling and from that deduct his intentions. It’s like having a superpower, and yet Dennis suspects this is nothing more than slightly-above-average intelligence.

It’s what his mother had. It’s what made her so good at figuring people out. The thought of his mother sends a stab of pain through his heart, and he feels his throat tighten.

Dennis suddenly sees his mother in a new light. She wasn’t a superhuman. She was a regular woman. She wasn’t right in everything she did; in fact, she did a lot of bad things. Initially, when he realized he was changing, he was afraid it would mean the love for his mother would change too. It hadn’t, though. Not at all. She was fallible, she wasn’t always kind, but she was still his mother, and her love for him had never faltered, even for a second. She had always tried to protect him, even when it had ended up hurting him.

William seems to pick up on Dennis’s thoughts and sends him a quick look. “You all right?”

“Yeah,” Dennis mutters, trying to steady his voice. “I just … thought of my mother.”

“Sorry, man. I know it must be tough.”

Dennis shakes his head and looks out the side window. “I can’t believe it. That she’s just gone. Erased. How can that be?”

William sighs. “Beats me.”

“I just can’t … seem to make sense of it,” Dennis goes on. “I know on an intellectual level that she’s passed away, but … it doesn’t feel like she’s gone. Like some emotional part of me hasn’t adapted to the fact yet. I mean, she’s always been here. For as long as I can remember. I guess I just can’t … imagine the world without her in it, you know?”

William nods. “I’m pretty close with my mother too. I have no idea what I would do if I lost her.”

Dennis chews his lip. “It’s amazing. How there can be these different currents inside of me. It’s like they’re fighting with each other. You’d think there’d be congruence between what I know and what I feel, right?”

William is quiet for a moment. “Nah, that’s not how people work. We’re more complicated than that.”

“Strange.”

“Trust me, what you’re going through is perfectly normal. You just gotta give it time to—whoa!”

Dennis jumps as William stomps the brake. The tires give off a shrill screech and the car lurches and sways. In a flash, Dennis sees the gangly teenage boy who’s crossing the road. The boy never sees them, though. The car hits him before he can turn, sending him flying with arms and legs flailing. He’s still rolling around even as the car skids to a halt several feet later and Ozzy almost tumbles to the floor.

“Shit,” William breathes. “That dude came out of nowhere …”

Dennis swallows to try and force his heart back down from his throat. The teenager has landed in the middle of the road. Bathed in the lights from the car he looks like a discarded doll some kid grew tired of playing with.

“You okay?” William asks, turning to check on the container. “The holy water is still there. Didn’t spill a drop.”

“I’m fine,” Dennis mutters, wiping sweat from his temple. He’s about to say something else when a movement catches his eye. “Hey, what’s that?”

William follows his finger and stares into the darkness farther down the road. Dennis can make out a figure. No, two. No, several. They move around at the outskirts of the headlights.

“Looks like more of them,” William says, grabbing the wheel. “Better check.”

He gets the car moving again, driving slowly closer. He makes sure to avoid the body of the teenager. Through the front window, Dennis sees the figures coming into view as the headlights gradually reveal them. There are a lot of them. Thirty, maybe more. They all but block the road, at the side of which sits a van.

Ozzy growls from deep down in his throat.

“Huh,” William says. “Guess we were lucky we didn’t plow into these guys instead.”

Dennis squints to see the van through the crowd of zombies pushing and shoving to get at it. But the windows are all messy from their hands rubbing against the glass. He can’t make out any passengers.

“Someone must be alive in there,” he mutters. “Or the zombies would have moved on.”

“They probably ran out of gas,” William adds, glancing at Dennis. “I guess we need to work our magic; otherwise, there’s no way we’re getting past here.”

Dennis looks at the bottles and nods. “One each?”

“Yeah, but hold on, I brought something …” William turns and reaches into the back. He pulls out a plastic bag and reveals two empty spray bottles. “Holger used them to water his plants. Now we’ll use them to cure zombies. Cool, right?”

They fill up the spray bottles as Ozzy keeps a close eye on the zombies, growling and whining softly. He gives a low bark as a couple of them break from the group and come over to the van.

“Here’s our first customers now,” William says, rolling the window down a couple of inches. He waits for the zombies to reach the car, then sticks out the muzzle of the spray bottle and presses the trigger a few times. The closest one of the undead receives a healthy drizzle of holy water to the face and immediately collapses out of view. William sprays the other one, and he too goes down. “Works like a charm,” William says with a grin. “You ready?”

“Let me just test it,” Dennis says, aiming his spray bottle into his palm and squeezing the trigger. A soft mist of water comes out. He nods. “It works.”

“Great. We stay close. I’ll leave my door open so Ozzy can come out, in case we need him. We stay in the light from the car so none of them can surprise us. Let them come to us, don’t go hunting them in the dark.”

“What’s the plan? I mean, do we cure all of them?”

“I think we have to. There should be plenty of water in the bottles as long as we don’t miss too much.”

Dennis feels fear grip his gut, but he mans up and nods. “Okay. I’m ready.”

“Then let’s party.” William opens his door and jumps out. “Ozzy, you stay.”

The German shepherd is halfway out the door when the command makes him stop dead. Instead, he whines impatiently, like a kid who was just told he couldn’t go out and play.

Dennis opens his door too and steps out, noticing his legs trembling slightly. Come on, you can do it.

Surprisingly, he finds that he can. In the past, the mere thought of leaving the car with a horde of zombies outside would have been enough for him to wet his pants. Apparently, the new Dennis is not only smarter, but also a little braver. Either that, or maybe he’s just better at talking himself into doing stupid shit.

“Hey!” William shouts and gives a sharp whistle as he steps in front of the van, his frame casting a long shadow reaching the zombies. “Fresh meat, ladies and gentlemen! Come get a taste!”

A couple of the undead turn at the sound of his voice and begin waddling this way. Ozzy barks from inside the van. William steps forward to meet the zombies, holding out the bottle and spraying them dead in the face as soon as they’re close enough. They instantly fall to the ground.

Four more break away from the car and come towards William. He shoots a glance back at Dennis. “You with me?”

Dennis hurries over there, placing himself up against William. Just as William takes aim at the new oncomers, Dennis picks up on a noise from a different angle. He spins around just in time to see a tiny old lady coming for him, limping eagerly, her hands outstretched to grab him. Dennis yelps and sprays her frantically in the face. She goes down with a sigh.

“Good job,” William says, focusing on spraying the others, taking them down one at a time. “They’re sneaky. We’d better do it back to back.”

They place their backs up against each other, turning in unison so each of them cover one side of the road. The commotion—or maybe it’s Ozzy’s barking—is drawing more and more of the zombies away from the car and towards William and Dennis. Most of the undead just come right for them, but others stagger off the road into the darkness, only to reappear much closer and from tricky angles.

Dennis turns his head back and forth, covering his side as best he can, shooting holy water as soon as anyone comes close enough. Within minutes, a mound of bodies form around them. It’s providing a modest help, in that the zombies have trouble stepping over it. But it doesn’t make it easier hitting the targets because most of them trip and instead try to climb over their fallen comrades, forcing William and Dennis to shoot low. At the same time, the rate of zombies increases, a new one popping into sight each second.

“Fuck, how many are there?” William growls, and Dennis can tell he’s slightly out of breath. “Are we drawing them from the whole fucking county or what?”

“I don’t know,” Dennis says, quickly checking his bottle. “But I’m more than half empty.”

“Me too. Better call for reinforcements. Ozzy, charge!”

A series of shrill barks as the dog shoots out of the van and lunges at the closest zombie.

Dennis blinks sweat out of his eyes and focuses on taking aim and shooting. His finger is starting to cramp up from the constant squeeze on the trigger. He shoots at a young woman who’s scaling the growing pile of bodies, and she lurches forward just as the water hits her, so she rolls into Dennis’s legs, causing him to stumble.

“Whoa!” William exclaims. “What are you doing back there?”

“There’s too many of them! They’re getting too close! We need to get back inside the van!”

“Too late for that,” William answers. “We’re cut off. Just keep shooting, we’ll make it!”

Dennis can’t help but dart a look back towards the van and he sees that William is right; without Dennis noticing, they have moved farther away from the van to avoid getting pinned up against it. This has in turn resulted in them being open from all sides, and the zombies are still coming fast.

“We need to move!” William shouts. “Follow my lead!”

“I can’t … I can’t shoot fast enough!” Dennis croaks, struggling to keep his balance as William moves sideways. He almost trips as he steps on the arm of one of the fallen zombies.

“Switch it to mist!” William shouts.

“What?”

“Turn the nozzle!”

Dennis glares at the tip of the spray bottle, realizing it can turn. He twists it and begins shooting again—and at the last possible second, because three zombies make a move on him at the same time. Instead of a thin, hard stream of water, the bottle now produces a cloud of mist, and it enables him to cover a much wider field with just one squeeze.

From behind him, he can hear William shoot repeatedly. “Just fill up the air! Shoot, man, shoot!”

Dennis pumps the trigger again and again, turning in a half circle, spraying out holy water like crazy. It creates a fog-like wall between him and the zombies, and as soon as the undead step into it, they collapse, meaning that he doesn’t have to aim at each one directly.

It works. As long as Dennis keeps pumping out mist, the zombies can’t get close. And within another minute or so, the onslaught finally dies out.

“I think we made it,” William pants from behind. “Looks like there’s only a few left.”

Dennis keeps spraying until there’s no more zombies coming at him. He shifts the bottle to his other hand; his right hand can barely open its fingers from the cramped grip.

William steps away, their sweaty backs finally losing contact. “Holy hell … there were more of them than I thought.”

William isn’t exaggerating; Dennis can’t count the number of bodies, but there’s got to be at least a hundred. The road looks like a veritable battlefield. He holds up his spray bottle to see less than half an inch left.

“But we made it,” William goes on, giving a tired laugh. “Look at all these poor suckers we cured. In a matter of minutes, a lucky few of them will come back to life. Too bad we can’t stick around to greet them. Come, help me move them.”

Dennis just looks at William as he places the bottle in his belt and grabs hold of the nearest body, dragging it to the side of the road.

A movement farther away catches Dennis’s eye and he instinctively holds up the spray bottle like it was a gun. “William! Look!”

Dennis realizes it’s not another zombie. It’s the backdoor of the van, swinging open.

“Shit, I forgot about them,” William says, straightening up. “Hey, you mind giving us a hand here? We need to get moving ASAP.”

Ozzy has picked up on the commotion and slinks towards him, bristling and growling.

“Ozzy, cut that out,” William commands.

The dog stops halfway there, but he’s still growling ominously.

Dennis strains to see the van. There’s a buzzing sound, like an electrical engine of some sort. For unknown reasons, the sound makes Dennis very tense. He’s heard it before, recently.

A figure comes out of the van. It’s a motorized wheelchair with an old man seated in it. He turns their way, holding up one hand, shielding his eyes from the headlights.

“Oh, shit,” William breathes, staring at Dennis. “I think we know that guy …”

FOURTEEN

Dan looks around at the others. “Any of you guys know exactly what they’re going to do?”

The old guy points. “Well, first, they’re going to open that fence.”

Dan follows his gaze and sees the men climbing via a ladder onto the spectator seats above the tunnel. From up here, they begin working a system where they pull on something, which makes the fence slowly rise from the ground.

As soon as they can, the zombies squeeze under and enter the stadium. The dead head right for the center and the cage.

“They’re doing it over there, too,” a young woman says.

Dan turns to see the other tunnel, where the fence has also been raised and zombies are streaming in.

“We’re bait,” the old guy says, shaking his head. “My God, what has happened to the world?”

Dan already realized that part. It’s obvious the men are trying to exterminate as many of the zombies as possible and that this isn’t the first round they’re doing.

“How long have you been here?” Dan asks, looking at the old man.

He sighs. “I came ten minutes before you. They brought me here together with them.” He gestures towards the mother and her son. The boy is crying at the sight of the zombies approaching from each side, stumbling over the burned bodies, and the woman holds him tightly, whispering comforting words in his ear.

“How about the rest of you?” Dan asks, looking at the others.

Some of them are just staring blankly in front of them, others are pacing back and forth. A man answers: “I was the first one they brought here. It was half an hour ago.”

“Was the cage empty when you came here?”

The guy nods.

Dan bites his lip. “So none of you were here when they burned the zombies?”

“I don’t think anyone who was around back then made it,” the old man says grimly. “The whole goddamn stadium was on fire. No one could have survived that.”

Dan is about to ask another question when the first zombies reach the cage and bump into it. They reach their arms through the bars, and people inside the cage draw towards the center, coming closer together.

The boy begins screaming, and the mother does her best to calm him down.

Dan exchanges a look with Liv, who’s been even more absentminded since they came here and she learned that the bearded guy killed her sister.

“This is not good,” he mutters.

She steps closer to him, lowering her voice: “You and I are immune. If we can just get out of here, we can work right through the crowd and get away.”

“We would risk getting scratched,” Dan says. “Even if they don’t want to eat us, we would have to push our way through.”

Only the fastest of the zombies have reached the cage, and yet it’s already surrounded on all sides, the dead pushing and shoving to get in front, like teenagers at a rock concert. And more are steadily streaming in from both ends. At this rate, the stadium will be filled before nightfall.

“We’re drawing everyone from miles away,” the old man mutters to himself. “Because we’re so many in one place. They can sense it.”

Dan turns to the first guy. “So the fire had burned out when you came here?”

“Yeah, of course. I mean, it was still smoking a little.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” the old man says. “A fire of that magnitude can’t just burn out like that; it would have taken down the entire stadium and half the city as well.”

“So what do you think happened?” Dan asks.

“I think they put it out again. Once all the dead people were … well, really dead. And it’s not the first time they did it, either. We saw the smoke from the fire yesterday, too, my wife and I. She …” The old guy stops himself and instead just shakes his head. “My God, what have we come to?”

“So they’re systematically burning zombies,” Liv says, suddenly offering her input. “And they don’t care that each time they do it, they kill the bait, too.”

The mother clasps her hands over her son’s ears, sending Liv a scorching look. “Don’t say that!”

“It’s true,” Liv says grimly. “Once the stadium is full, they’ll light the whole damn place on fire again, and we’ll be toast. Just look …” She kneels down and picks up a piece of string. It’s black and burned at one end. “This is a shoelace. I bet you they removed the bodies from the cage before they brought us in here so that we wouldn’t see—”

“Stop saying that!” the mother demands.

Dan tries hard to think clearly. It’s not easy, his brain going on several days with no real sleep, and the noise from the zombies clambering from all sides.

There are still a few questions—like how, if the men really have done this several times already, did they get the fire put out again so quickly?—but he gets the picture now. And he gets how serious the situation is.

If he could only call William …

FIFTEEN

William runs to the car and grabs the gun from the dashboard.

He runs back to Dennis, stops and takes aim at the old guy in the wheelchair as he comes rolling closer.

“Thank you …” he calls out, his voice weak.

“Don’t mention it,” William calls back. “Thank us by stopping right there, why don’t you?”

The old guy doesn’t heed the warning, he just keeps on rolling towards them, squinting against the headlights. William can tell he’s unarmed. He looks worn and tired and hungry.

“I’m grateful you guys came around,” the man says, finally stopping his wheelchair in the middle of the road. “I was sure my days were numbered. Well, they still are, but at least they don’t have to end with me being eaten alive. You don’t happen to have a cigarette on you, do you?”

William glances at Dennis, who isn’t moving or saying anything. “I know you have a gun,” he tells the old guy.

“I do, but I ran out of bullets hours ago,” the old guy says, coughing. “My nephew spent the last on trying to shoot his way out of the mess he’d gotten us into. Unfortunately, the dead just kept on coming, and eventually, they got him.”

William doesn’t lower the gun. He’s sure the guy is bullshitting them. After all, he shot Birgit in cold blood just hours ago.

“Why did you leave the house?” the man asks. “If you don’t mind me asking? Seemed to me like the ideal spot to be right now.”

“We have to try and stop this thing,” William hears himself say. “We’re headed for the coast. It’s a long story. And we’re in a hurry, so you’ll have to excuse us.”

“By all means,” the old guy says, holding up his hands. “Don’t let me slow you down.”

“Dennis?” William asks. “How are you holding up?”

Dennis blinks and turns his head to look at William. He’s pale, but his eyes are surprisingly calm. “I’m fine.”

“What do you want to do here?” William lowers his voice, yet he suspects the old guy can still hear him, as the evening is eerily quiet.

“I want to keep moving,” Dennis says.

“So you don’t … feel like getting even with this guy?”

Dennis frowns. “What do you mean?”

“I mean—”

“He’s talking about blowing my brains out, son.”

They both look at the old guy. He’s sending them an ugly smile.

“We’re not going to kill you,” Dennis says plainly.

“We’re not?” William asks.

Dennis shakes his head. “Why would we?”

“Well … he killed your mother.”

“I know. Would killing him bring her back?”

“No, but … it might make you feel better.”

Dennis looks like he just tasted something sour. “I’m pretty sure it would make me feel worse.”

“He doesn’t have the balls,” the old guy offers, grinning. “Honestly, son, I thought you’d be more like your mother.”

Dennis shakes his head slowly. “I’m not like her. And I’m not like you, either.”

William steps closer to Dennis and says in his ear: “Listen, this guy is a piece of filth. He’s a sociopath. He deserves to get a bullet to his head, not just for what he did to your mother.”

Dennis looks at him, frowning. “This is my second chance at life, William. I’m not going to waste it by doing things the old way.”

William stares at him for a moment. Then he smiles. “Okay, fine, I hear ya. No more fighting fire with fire.” He turns to the old guy. “You’re free to go. We have a hung jury over here.”

The old guy looks from Dennis to William and back at Dennis again. Then he shows his yellow teeth in a sneer. “Young people nowadays. You’ve got no guts. You can’t do what’s necessary. You’re pathetic. How are you ever going to survive in the world?” He’s working himself up into a high, wheezing pitch. “People like my sons would have stood a far better chance. They would have had the guts and the skills. They wouldn’t have—”

“Yeah, well, too bad your sons are dead, huh?” William cuts him off. “Now, buzz the fuck off, old guy.”

The man stops talking abruptly. He stares at William, his eyes dark and furious. “I should have killed all of you when I had the chance.”

“Coulda, shoulda, woulda,” William says, pointing the gun at him. “Get moving.”

The old man stares at them for a moment longer, then the wheelchair begins moving forward. He maneuvers through the dead bodies, making his way towards them. He passes William, sending him a grim look. Then he drives on, passing Dennis too.

William puts the gun in his belt and is about to bend down to drag a dead woman aside, when out of the corner of his eye, he sees the wheelchair stop right behind Dennis and the old man reach down between his legs for something.

“Dennis!”

Dennis realizes the danger at the last possible second, jumping away from the wheelchair as the guy leans over and takes a swing at him with a knife. Dennis trips and falls, and the guy swiftly turns the wheelchair, getting a clear aim at Dennis with the knife.

William shouts and fumbles to get the gun out, but it’s too late; the old man leans over and takes a stab at Dennis.

The knife would have punctured Dennis’s belly if Ozzy hadn’t come flying out of nowhere to tackle the guy off the wheelchair. He gives a yelp of surprise as he topples over, landing below Ozzy, who bites down on his shoulder and tears at it viciously.

William hears the knife clatter to the concrete.

“Ozzy! Release!”

Ozzy lets go of the guy hesitantly and steps back, growling fiercely.

William runs to Dennis. “You okay?”

Dennis sits up and touches his chest and stomach. “I … I think so … He missed me.”

William steps around the wheelchair to look at the man, who’s groaning and clutching the bite wound in his shoulder. He stares up at William, eyes wild. “Get it over with …”

William shakes his head. “I’m not going to kill you. You can use that knife on yourself if you feel the need.”

The old man narrows his eyes and hisses through gritted teeth: “You piece of shit.”

“Ozzy,” William says, putting the gun back in his belt. “Keep an eye on him, will you? If he does anything funny, bite his other shoulder.”

Ozzy steps closer to the guy and growls from deep in his throat.

William turns to look at Dennis. They exchange a silent nod, then begin dragging aside the dead bodies, clearing the way for them to drive on.

SIXTEEN

John chows down his sandwich with gusto.

It’s his favorite kind: shrimp, hard-boiled eggs and mayo. The bread is a little dry, the tomatoes a little soggy, but other than that, it tastes wonderful. It tastes like the world hasn’t turned to shit. He enjoys it even more because he knows it’ll be the last shrimp-and-egg sandwich he gets to eat in a long time, maybe forever.

“Can’t believe no one thought to check the walk-in cooler,” Stefan mouths around a wolf bite of his own sandwich—roast beef and rémoulade, not a bad choice, either.

They’ve got the VIP lounge to themselves; Simon and Jack are keeping guard by the tunnels until it’s their time to eat. The loot from the supermarket is covering the desk in front of them; wrapped-up sandwiches, yogurts, chocolate bars, beer cans, energy drinks, even a carton of milk, which, according to the date, should still be fine.

“People are too scared to go outside,” John says, wiping his mouth with a napkin. “They huddle up in their homes, hoping their supplies will last till this thing blows over.”

Stefan sends him a curious look while he chews. “Will it blow over?”

“Of course it won’t,” John says grimly, opening a beer can. “It’ll only get worse as more people turn into those dead monsters. But regular idiots don’t know that. They think their government will save them.” He takes a sip, then snorts. “What government? They all fled like dogs as soon as the situation got a little heated. Now they’re hiding in a bunker somewhere with the other heads of states, leaving the rest of us to take care of things. Fucking scumbags.”

John realizes he’s working himself into a fit of rage and consciously stops himself talking. He focuses his attention back on the sandwich instead, taking another big bite and savoring it.

Stefan wisely doesn’t pursue the subject, and they both eat in silence for a while.

John can’t help but think what they’ll do once the supermarkets and grocery stores run out of things to eat. Water won’t be a problem anytime soon; they can easily get it from the bay and boil it. But food will be a different matter. Jack worked on a farm outside of town, and he said the cattle were still alive when he left. They might have to go back there and begin running the place, growing crops and keeping animals.

John hates the thought of it. He hates the smell of cow shit. But he’s a pragmatic man, and he’ll do whatever it takes to survive.

First, however, they need to clean up as much as they can around here. John enjoys the work. It’s tough and it’s dirty and it smells even worse than cow shit. But the satisfaction of watching the dead fuckers burn is all he needs to keep going.

He would have liked to personally blow the brains out of every undead asshole in town, but he doesn’t have enough bullets, and it would take too long. This way, they have managed to put things into a system which works almost as efficiently as the concentration camps did in Nazi Germany. The main difference being that the Germans killed innocent people. John and his men are putting down soulless monsters who should have been dead already.

Stefan gets up from the desk, bringing his sandwich, and walks to the window facing the field. “Huh,” he says. “They’re coming even faster this time.”

“Told you they would,” John says. “We have more bait this time.”

Stefan takes a bite and chews it thoughtfully. “Speaking of,” he says, “you think there’s anything to what the blonde guy was talking about? That cure they claimed to have found.”

“Of course not, you moron,” John snaps at him. “He was just running his mouth in the hopes of getting away.”

Stefan turns towards the pile of jackets, phones, bags and other belongings they’ve stripped from the bait. There’s also a suitcase, a couple of helmets and even a baseball bat. Some of them had been better prepared than others. All of them had given up without much of a fight, though, as soon as they found themselves surrounded by men with rifles. All except the girl in the van.

“I don’t know,” Stefan mutters. “I think it might be worth checking out, don’t you?”

John scoffs. “Be my guest.”

Stefan goes to take the backpack and unzips it. He pulls out a bottle of water. On it is written with black marker: HOLY WATER.

John can’t help but laugh. “They really believed their own story. They’re even more delusional than I thought. Must have snapped under the pressure of trying to survive.”

Stefan looks at him without smiling. “What if it works? Shouldn’t we at least try it?”

“What if what works?” John sneers. “Splashing tap water at those dead fuckers? Have you snapped too?”

“No, but … I just figured, it couldn’t hurt to try. I mean, there’s already a couple of hundred of them down there. I could throw some from the tribune.”

“Stop being so fucking naïve,” John growls, taking a big swig of the beer. “We don’t have time to waste on that kind of silly shit.”

“But what if—”

“Enough!” John roars, slamming the beer can down onto the table, causing foam to spurt from the opening. “Enough of this fairy-tale bullshit! There’s no cure! There’s no vaccine! There’s no military coming, either! Bottom line: there’s no hope. Only death and mayhem. Don’t you fucking get it? It’s all gone. It’s all turned to shit. And we’re the ones who will clean it up. At least as much of it as we can before we die and turn to shit too! Get it?”

He glares at Stefan across the room, internally asking himself where this fierce anger is coming from. The gangly teenager looks back at him, his pale lips quivering. “I just … I just thought ...”

“You thought what? That some miracle would come along and save the day? Well, it’s not happening. And you better start focusing on what’s real. Those monsters down there …” John points at the window. “They are real. And the only way to get rid of them is by blowing their brains out or frying them up.”

Stefan shrugs. “Okay, John. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t fucking apologize,” he growls, downing the last of his beer. “Just do as you’re told.”

Stefan nods, turning away, his face burning.

“And don’t start crying, or I’ll throw you into that goddamn cage, you fucking pussy.”

Stefan gives a little jolt, but doesn’t answer and doesn’t turn back around.

John grabs a Mars bar and bites it open.

How the hell could a boy like Stefan have made it this far? When John found him three days ago, he was huddled up in a shed surrounded by zombies. They were going to throw him in the cage, but as soon as Stefan realized what was going on, he told them he knew where a whole family of four was hiding, and he could lead them right to them. If they’d only spare him.

So they did. And they got the family.

It wasn’t fucking fair. A sniffling, cowardly boy like Stefan should have been among the first to be eaten alive back when this thing started. And yet he had found a way to squirm through. While at the same time, much better boys had perished.

Like Andreas.

The thought of his son sends a stab of pain through John’s heart with a force that’s almost enough to double him over.

Andreas had been just fourteen, a year younger than Stefan. And yet he had been so much tougher and smarter. He would have been the perfect guy for this job. If he had been here, John might even have had a sense of purpose left in his life. He would have felt there was something left to fight for. The next generation. Young people with the skills to survive. Not weak wimps like the one in front of him.

Suddenly John understands where his anger is coming from.

I couldn’t protect him. It was already too late.

The thought is true, but it doesn’t make the burden any lighter. There was no way John could get to Andreas in time. John was two hundred miles away when shit broke out. Andreas called him and explained what was going on. He and his classmates were being taken to the harbor. They were to be shipped to England for safety.

John had naïvely trusted the government to carry out such a simple task. To get a bunch of college kids on a bus and drive them forty miles, then on to a ferry and across the sea.

The bus had never reached the harbor.

John heard the news over the radio, back when news was still being broadcast.

At first, he was convinced Andreas had made it out of there. Of course he had. He was a strong kid. A few dead assholes couldn’t take him down.

When he got out his phone to call his son, he saw the missed call that had come in just forty-five minutes prior. Andreas had left a message. John had listened to it with the expectation of hearing his son telling him he was fine and asking him to come find him.

Instead, Andreas had been crying. Sobbing, actually. It was so unlike Andreas, John had thought it was someone else at first. Then when he started speaking, John recognized his son’s voice. The words had burned themselves into his memory.

“I’m sorry, Dad … I’m so sorry … I couldn’t … I tried … they got me … I’m bleeding … I won’t make it … I’m sorry …”

Then commotion in the background, Andreas had screamed out, someone growled close by, and the message was cut short.

John had sat there, behind the wheel of his car, staring at his phone for the better part of an hour.

He blinks and returns to the present moment.

Stefan has turned to face him. The boy has gotten his emotions somewhat under control, though his eyes are a little red. “I guess I … should get back to work,” he says.

John gives him a single nod.

Stefan goes for the door.

“We’re all dead already,” John says out loud. “We just don’t know it yet.”

He senses Stefan hesitate. The boy stays there for a few seconds, waiting for more to come. Then he leaves the office without a word.

A tear spills down John’s cheek, and he wipes it away fiercely. He grinds his teeth hard enough to make a noise.

“I’ll see you soon, Andreas. But first, I’m going to kill as many of those dead assholes as I possibly can.”

John gets to his feet and strides to the microphone.

SEVENTEEN

They reach the bay within a few minutes. It’s beautiful under the setting sun, but neither of them have time to really notice.

William drives all the way down to the water, crossing the grassy field and stopping when they reach the sand.

He lets the engine run, takes a deep breath and looks at Dennis. “Okay, you ready?”

Dennis nods.

They both get out of the car, and Ozzy jumps out too. William pops the trunk and together they lift out the container with the holy water. It’s heavy and they strain to carry it to the water.

They set it down right where the tiny waves touch the sand. William begins pulling off the tape.

Ozzy gives a bark. William looks to see the dog standing there, staring out into the darkness.

“He must have picked up on something,” William says, handing the gun to Dennis. “Keep an eye out, okay? I’ll get this open.”

Dennis takes the gun without a word and goes to join Ozzy.

William feels his hands shake as he peels off the tape. He can’t help but think of the old man. The way they just left him there. He was bound to draw the attention of the undead sooner or later. Maybe he already had.

At least he had the knife. He could cut his wrist.

Before they left, after having cleared the road, some of the dead people started coming back to life. William and Dennis had agreed they didn’t have time to stay and explain the situation to them. It must be scary and confusing for them to wake up like this, in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by dead bodies, with only a vague recollection of what has happened, but they had to figure things out for themselves; Dennis and William had bigger things to do. So they left.

Just as he manages to get the lid off, Dennis calls out: “There’s a group of them coming.”

“I’m doing it now,” William says.

He grabs the edge of the container and tilts the whole thing towards the water. The holy water spills out and mixes with the bay water. William expected some sort of reaction, but nothing happens.

He stares out over the bay, feeling anxious. What if it didn’t work? What if all of this was for nothing?

If so, then there’s only one outcome left. And it does no good thinking about that. The only thing they can do now is test it and pray.

William runs to the car.

“They’re closing in,” Dennis says, pointing.

“Get in the car. We’re leaving. Ozzy, heel!”

They all jump into the car, slamming the doors. William turns the key and the engine roars to life. He guns it out of there and back up to the road, passing the group of zombies.

“How far do we go?” Dennis asks, darting a look back.

“Half a mile should do it,” William says.

They drive for two minutes in silence. Then William pulls over again. He reaches in and grabs the empty bottle from the backseat. “Okay, I’ll do it,” he says. “It’s the moment of truth.”

“Better hurry,” Dennis says, pointing out. “There’s another group coming.”

“Perfect,” William says, opening the door. “They’ll be our test subjects.”

He runs to the bay, crouches down and fills the bottle. He stares at the water through the clear plastic.

This is it. This better work.

Ozzy barks from behind him.

William turns to see Dennis and Ozzy standing there. Figures materialize out of the darkness as a group of eight or ten zombies are coming this way.

“William!” Dennis calls out.

“Coming, coming,” William says, running back up to the car. The zombies have reached them and Dennis is backing away. Ozzy, too, although he looks like he wants to charge.

“Here we go,” William says loudly, feeling his heart pump wildly in his chest. “All or nothing!”

He steps towards the closest of the zombies—a slim woman a little older than himself who looked to have been pregnant when she died—and time seems to slow down.

William has time to think a very clear series of thoughts.

If this works, he’ll be making the call to Sergeant Everton, telling him to move forward.

If not, then nuclear war will happen and lay waste to the modern world.

And it all comes down to the water inside this used Coke bottle.

He flings the water at the zombie.

EIGHTEEN

Stefan looks over his shoulder as he walks briskly down the hallway.

No one’s following him.

If John had seen him take the bag, he would have no doubt come for him by now.

Still, Stefan’s pulse remains high as he reaches the staircase and begins descending the steps two at a time. If any of John’s men see him with the bag, they may find it suspicious and alert John. So he needs to keep it to himself, at least for now.

The stadium is a big building with a lot of rooms, corridors and staircases. Stefan has had time enough during these last few days to explore some of it, especially in those periods where there’s been nothing to do but wait for the field to fill up with zombies.

He knows the locker rooms aren’t safe—that’s where they keep the ammo and some other equipment. So instead, he heads for the women’s toilets in the east wing—none of the men have any reason to venture into that part of the building.

Stefan locks the stall and slumps down onto the seat, taking a few deep breaths and trying to steady himself. Then he unzips the bag and goes through the contents. There’s some spare clothes, some food and the phone and the water gun they confiscated from the boy. There’s also three bottles of water.

Stefan pulls them out and studies them. Two of them have the text HOLY WATER written across it.

What was it the boy said? Something about how you only needed to splash a little of the water on a zombie, and it would be cured?

This sounds too good to be true, of course. Part of Stefan suspects John is right in that this is just a trick by the boy to try and buy his way out of the situation he has been caught up in. Stefan can sympathize with this; he had done the same, after all. But another part of him is curious. That part keeps asking him “what if?”

Actually finding the bottle like the boy said they would if they checked the bag makes Stefan’s hopes go up just a little. After all, why would the guy run around with a bottle marked “holy water” and a water gun if he didn’t at least himself believe it worked? If it didn’t work, that would mean the guy was delusional, and Stefan didn’t think that was the case. He had studied the guy’s eyes intently, and although he looked exhausted, there was no craziness that Stefan could pick up on.

He uncaps the bottle and sniffs the water. There’s no particular smell. Nothing implying this is anything but regular tap water.

Only one way to find out …

Stefan checks the water gun and finds the tank full. He can only assume it’s holy water. So, he brings the gun with him as he gets up, leaving the bag next to the toilet. He doesn’t want to get seen carrying the water gun around, so he places it discreetly under his arm, feeling stupid as he slinks down the corridor.

He makes it to the fire exit by the east end of the building and stops to listen. He can’t hear anything from the other side, and there are no windows for him to check. He knows zombies are drawn to the stadium, so it would be risky to open the door. But he can open it only a few inches to check. Then, if there are too many out there, he will find someplace else to test the water.

He checks one last time that he’s alone, then he turns the handle.

Normally, the fire siren above the door would have begun blaring, but John already disabled all the alarms around the stadium, since they would constantly go off as soon as they set fire to the zombies.

So, there’s only silence as Stefan peeks out into the parking lot and the street behind it. No zombies are in sight. He’s just about to push the door open farther, when a hand grabs it and pulls hard.

Stefan gives a yelp and momentarily loses his grip on the handle before grabbing it again and trying to pull the door shut. But the hand pulls the other way, and the dead face of a tall woman appears in front of him, snarling at him.

Stefan almost manages to get the door shut when the woman sticks her other arm in to grab for him, and he has no choice but to let go of the handle and stumble backwards.

The woman immediately pulls the door aside and comes through the opening. She reaches out both arms as she staggers towards him.

Stefan backs up, staring at the dead woman and the open door behind her. There’s no way for him to get around the woman and close the door, which is inviting anyone in. He needs to run for help, needs to alert the others so they can come shoot the woman. But it will take at least a few minutes, and by then the hallway will be crawling with zombies, and they will have spread throughout the entire building.

All of this becomes clear to Stefan in a flash as he backs away from the woman.

I fucked up … I fucked up so bad … John will kill me …

He is just about to turn on his heel and run when he recalls the water gun still in his hand. He aims and shoots, not really expecting anything to happen. The thin beam of water hits the woman’s throat and collarbone. Immediately, she collapses to the floor, like a robot having its power cut. She stays perfectly still, her eyes closed.

Stefan just stares at her for several seconds. “Oh, shit … it worked!”

He doesn’t get much time to take it in, because another figure comes through the open door: an old guy wearing a suit with one sleeve torn off, his arm gnawed down to the bone.

Stefan shoots him with the water, and he too falls limply to the floor.

A wide grin spreads across Stefan’s face. “Holy hell … this is awesome!”

He steps over the woman and over the old guy, too. He peeks out the door, seeing a group of four zombies crossing the parking lot, drawn towards him.

Stefan goes outside to meet them. He shoots as soon as they’re within reach of the water gun, dropping them one at a time. He laughs shrilly as all four have been put down.

He can’t believe it, but the guy was right; they really did make a cure. He needs to bring this to John. He needs to show him—

A loud slam behind him. Stefan wheels around. The door is closed. A breeze must have shut it. There’s no handle on the outside.

“No, no, no …” He examines the door frantically, but there’s no way of opening it from this side. “Fuck!” He turns around to see three more zombies coming for him.

Stefan takes an offensive approach, running to meet them and shooting them all with the water. As soon as they’ve been pacified, he checks the tank of the water gun. It’s still maybe eighty percent full. Meaning he can take down—what, another thirty zombies? Perhaps more if he’s careful with not missing any shots. It seems like only a tiny squirt is enough.

But as he looks to the sides, there are no doors on this side of the stadium, meaning that he’ll need to make it at least halfway around the building. And both main entrances are probably out of the picture, since that is where the zombies are coming in, which means he would have to shoot his way past at least fifty to get in that way.

His best bet is to find another door, one that he can open from the outside. Or maybe an open window he can reach.

The problem is, he’s pretty sure John and his men secured every way into the stadium when they got here, so no zombies or other unwanted guests could make it inside and surprise them.

“Fuck!” Stefan mutters, moving anxiously in place, not knowing what to do.

He has no walkie and can’t call any of the others. He could maybe shout loud enough for them to hear him, if he found a window from where they could see him. But even then, there’s a good chance John would order them not to come let him in.

No, Stefan needs to fix this himself.

Maybe I don’t need to go back inside? I have the water … I could just take off … Find a car and drive away …

But where would he go? How long would the water last? How long would he last on his own?

No, he needed the protection of John and his men. He needed to get back inside the stadium.

“Think,” he mutters to himself, constantly scanning the parking lot. No more zombies have shown up, but it could happen at any moment. “Think, for fuck’s sake!”

NINETEEN

Iver bites his lip and shifts his grip on the metal bar, then keeps working, the rhythmical crunching sound filling the bathroom.

It’s basically a hopeless project. He knows that.

And yet he keeps working on it. If nothing else then just to keep busy. It helps fend off the panic which constantly tries to creep in on him.

It’s four in the afternoon, and he’s been at it for what—three hours?—and yet he’s only managed to loosen one brick. He’s now working on the second one. The edge of the metal bar, which he unscrewed from the wall, is just pointy enough that he can press it between the bricks under the window. By grinding it back and forth, he can slowly scrape away at the mortar, the grey dust falling to the floor like snow.

Before he could get to the bricks, he had to peel off the wallpaper, which was a task in and of itself. Removing wallpaper with only your nails is not a pleasant task. Fortunately, he found a nail file in the cupboard, internally thanking Agnete.

At this rate, he’ll be lucky to have cleared six bricks by nightfall. He needs at least eight to make the window large enough that he can climb through.

Even if he manages to get all eight of them out of the wall, there’s still the bottom part of the window itself, which consists of a thick piece of wood. Whether he can break it or pry it loose is still very doubtful.

Then, should he manage to succeed in that too, the next challenge will be actually getting out. Since they’re on the second floor, the drop will be several feet too high for a toddler to make—even Iver himself will risk a severe injury if he jumps out. Besides, Agnete’s lawn below is crawling with zombies. Some are wandering about aimlessly, some are clawing at the wall right below the window.

If I do jump, they could break my fall, Iver thinks, as he keeps working the metal rod in between the bricks.

There’s no reason to think that far ahead yet. He still has at least three big ifs he needs to surpass before he even needs to consider how he’ll make the jump.

All in all, it’s busy work.

And yet it’s better than sitting around waiting to die.

Adam is playing in the bathtub. Luckily, he’s surprisingly good at entertaining himself. Iver gave him whatever non-dangerous stuff he could find in Agnete’s cupboards: a hairbrush, a blow-dryer, a roll-on deodorant, some makeup articles and a bar of soap. So far, Adam has been content with examining the stuff, chattering to himself, now and then looking up at Iver to send him a tentative smile.

The sound of the zombies clambering at the door seems to have become background noise for the boy. He only reacts whenever there’s a particularly loud bang, darting a nervous glance in that direction before resuming his game.

Iver has offered him food and water now and then throughout the day. Sometimes, the boy eats and drinks, other times he shakes his head.

Iver himself hasn’t felt the shadow of hunger, and yet he’s forced down a few bites. He needs to stay fueled. He will need his strength. If nothing else than for the final struggle when the door finally gives way.

To begin with, Iver still hoped the bathroom door would hold out. He no longer bears any illusions; the door will break. And it will probably be in a matter of hours rather than days. The upper hinge has already begun to work itself free from the frame. Iver tried fixing it, tried using the coin to retighten the screws, but the reason they are slowly working themselves loose is that the wood of the frame is giving way, breaking from the inside.

At some point, the hinge will simply rip free, and the door will collapse in, allowing the zombies to climb over it and into the bathroom.

There is nothing in here he can use to barricade the door—he already tried to move the cupboards, but they are secured to the walls. Even still, they probably aren’t tall nor heavy enough to provide any real blockage.

Had the metal bar been a mere few inches longer, he could have wedged it between the handle and the floor.

But it’s not.

And there’s no other way he can think of to brace the door from breaking.

It’s messed up, he tells himself, working the metal bar fiercely up and down. We’re trapped like rats. We’ll be eaten alive.

The thoughts aren’t helpful, he knows that. But they’re also true. And he needs to find another way. A more merciful way. He won’t let the zombies get to Adam.

At the outskirts of his conscious mind, awful ideas are circling, trying to make it into the light. He holds them back firmly, trying to tell himself there’s still time. But a deeper part of him insists that soon he’ll have to look at those horrible images.

There’s one of the metal bar, the end of it dripping with blood.

There’s another one of the bathtub filling with water.

A third one of Iver’s shoelaces.

Which one will cause the least pain?

Stop that. Don’t go there.

You have to.

Not yet. The door still holds.

Working faster.

You don’t know that. In reality, it could give way at any moment.

No, it’ll hold. There’s still time.

You need to make this decision. Before you know it, it could be too late.

Shut up.

So which one will it be?

Shut up!

Iver blows away a drop of sweat working its way through his brow. He’s holding the metal bar so tightly his hands are threatening to cramp up, and he forces himself to loosen his grip.

He realizes he’s worked the metal bar in deep enough. He strikes the brick with the end of the bar, and it comes loose.

With a grim smile, Iver pries it out and turns to the tub. ”See? That’s two.”

Adam looks up at him. He sees the brick, a curious look in his eyes. As though he’s asking a silent question.

Which one will it be? the thought insists at the back of Iver’s mind, and he has to turn away from the toddler. Which one will cause the least pain? Strangling, drowning or bludgeoning?

Iver ignores the question and goes back to working at the third brick with renewed vigor.

TWENTY

Stefan moves across the parking lot holding the water gun ready. As a kid, he would spend many days at the beach with his friends, pretending to be soldiers or assassins. They would hide between the cars and sneak up on each other, shooting each other with water guns.

Only this is no game.

It’s life or death.

Stefan keeps his head low, peering up now and then to make sure no one is sneaking up on him.

It doesn’t really matter how stealthy he is, however; the zombies can sense him, and they are drawn to him. Every few minutes, some of them appear and come for him, and he has to shoot them with the water.

Slowly, he makes his way around the stadium.

He’s still not sure what his plan is, exactly, other than he needs to find a way back inside.

Then suddenly, he sees a window with light in it. It’s sitting high up, maybe on the second floor, so Stefan jumps onto a car in an effort to see if anyone is up there. He can’t tell. But it could be the cantine where Jack and Simon are eating.

Stefan picks up a pebble and throws it at the window. It takes him three tries before he hits the glass.

Jack’s face appears.

Stefan waves his arms.

Jack wipes his mouth, then opens the window. “What the hell are you doing out there?” He squints. “And are you running around with a fucking water gun?”

“Help me!” Stefan pleads. “I locked myself outside by accident!”

“There’s no way I can let you back inside,” Jack says, shaking his head. “You know the rules, Stefan.”

“But I have something I need to show you guys! John will want to see this, believe me!”

Jack hesitates. “What is it?”

Stefan hears a growling from behind and spins around. Three zombies are coming for him. He looks back up at Jack. “Just look at this! Look very closely, Jack!”

“I’m looking.”

Stefan shoots the zombies one at a time. They go down without a sound. He looks back up at Jack. Jack is staring down at him, open-mouthed.

“Holy fucking hell …”

“I know! It’s the water, Jack. The water they talked about when we caught them. It’s what’s in this thing. It really works!”

“Yeah, I’ll say. Fuck me. Hold on, Stefan.”

“Wait, don’t go!”

But Jack is already gone.

A couple of minutes pass by. Stefan has to shoot and pacify a dozen more zombies before Jack finally returns to the window. Simon is there, too.

“You better not be kidding me,” Simon says in a dark tone. “John will fucking kill you for this, Stefan.”

“Just show him,” Jack urges.

A handful of fresh zombies appear, and Stefan puts them down.

“See?” Jack grins. “It’s fucking amazing.”

“Fuck me,” Simon mutters. “We need to show John.”

“I know,” Jack says, his grin fading. “But … I don’t think he’ll be happy about it.”

Stefan frowns. “Why not?”

“Because he doesn’t want to hear it,” Jack says plainly. “He told us as soon as we got here. We weren’t supposed to talk to the new ones or even touch their stuff. He didn’t want us messing with it.” Simon shrugs. “Tell you guys the truth, I think he doesn’t want to know. Simple as that. I think it’s got something to do with his kid, you know. He wants to kill every last fucking zombie out there, like that’s going to bring back his boy. He’ll be pissed off if we bring this to him.”

“But … we have to try!” Stefan urges, shooting another zombie. “At least let me inside! I’m almost out of water.”

“We can’t let you in,” Simon says. “John’s rules.”

“John doesn’t have to know,” Jack offers in a low voice.

Simon bites his lip.

“Look,” Stefan says, pleading with him. “If you let me in, I’ll bring this to John myself. I swear. I’ll make him see it. We won’t have to do this anymore, the burnings. I know you guys hate it anyway.”

Simon and Jack exchange a look.

“All right, get the damn rope,” Simon says.

Jack returns in a minute with a rope. They throw it out the window for Stefan to reach. He jumps down from the car and grabs the rope, squeezing the water gun under his arm. “Got it! Pull me up!”

“Look out!” Jack calls.

Stefan turns his head to see a zombie boy coming for him. He was moving so quietly—and Stefan was so eager to get to the rope—that he didn’t hear him.

“Fuck!” Stefan shouts as the boy lunges at him. Stefan lets go of the rope and stumbles backwards, fumbling to turn over the water gun. He finally manages to spray the boy in the face, and he goes down. He breathes heavily. “Shit, that was close …”

“There’s more coming!” Simon warns from above.

Stefan sees them closing in from both sides. He aims the water gun and … nothing happens. It’s empty. Stefan drops it and runs for the rope. He jumps up, grabs it and shouts: “Pull me up! Pull me up!”

Jack and Simon pull with all their strength. But the zombies are too close. Two of them manage to grab his legs. Stefan screams and kicks wildly. He gets free and is pulled out of reach of the zombies.

Jack and Simon hoist him up and drag him inside. He slumps to the floor, panting. “Thank you … thank you guys … I owe you big time …”

Simon points his rifle at Stefan’s face. “Did you get yourself scratched?”

“No,” Stefan says, shaking his head. “Don’t worry, I’m fine.”

“Check your legs,” Jack says. “They got a good grip on you from what I could see.”

“I’m telling you, I’m fine,” Stefan says, mildly annoyed, pulling up one pant leg, then the other. “See? Nothing. They didn’t have time to—”

He cuts himself short at the sight of two long, thin, bright red scratches right over his ankle.

“Oh, fuck me,” Simon mutters. “Fuck me!”

“Goddamnit, I knew it,” Jack says in a grim voice. “Now we have to kill him.”

“No!” Stefan shouts, holding up his hands. “No, wait! I can fix it! If I … if I pour the water on it … it’ll heal me … I’m sure of it …”

“You used the last of it,” Simon reminds him, cocking the rifle.

“There’s more!” Stefan pleads. “In their backpacks! I saw several bottles of it. Please, just … just let me get it …” He tries to get up, but Simon uses his foot to shove him back down.

“You stay right here. Jack, you go get one of those damn bottles. Make sure John doesn’t see you.”

Jack nods, then leaves the room.

They wait in tense silence. Simon never stops pointing the rifle at Stefan. He pulls out a chair and sits down across from him.

“You put us all in danger,” Simon growls.

“I know,” Stefan whispers. “But look what I found out. This could change everything, Simon.”

Simon doesn’t answer.

Stefan glances down at the scratch marks. They’re aching. They’re oozing blood. And the skin surrounding them is already beginning to turn green. The veins around them are turning black. Stefan is horrified at how fast it goes. He discreetly pulls down his pant leg so Simon won’t notice.

“What’s taking Jack so long?” he mutters.

The door opens and Jack comes in, carrying one of the bottles.

Stefan reaches up for it. “Here, let me have it! Quick!”

Jack crouches down, places the bottle on the floor, then slides it over to him. Stefan grabs it, uncaps it and pours some of it on the scratch.

There’s no pain.

He had expected it to sting. But it doesn’t.

There is a clear effect, nonetheless. The green hue disappears from his skin immediately, the swelling goes down and the darkness of the veins dissipates.

“See?” he says, grinning up at them. “You saw that, right? I’m cured! Now it’s just a couple of regular scratches.”

“Fuck, I think he’s right,” Jack mutters.

Simon slowly lowers the rifle. “Looks like it, yeah. Okay, you said you’d bring this to John. Now go do it.”

“I will,” Stefan says, getting to his feet. His ankle is still a little sore. He limps towards the door. “Maybe there’s even time to save the people in the cage.”

Jack shakes his head. “I don’t think so. He already turned on the sprinklers.”

TWENTY-ONE

“But, Mom, what if she hasn’t had any water this whole time? We’ve been away for seven days!”

“Listen, Dan,” Mom says, turning in her seat to look at him. “We just don’t know. You have to wait and see.”

“But what if I forgot to fill her bowl? I’m almost certain I forgot.”

Dan’s voice is pleading. Like he’s asking Mom to make it right. As though she could do that. As though anyone could. What’s done is done. And Dan is the one to blame.

Mom sighs. “There’s nothing we can do about it now.”

“But, Mom …”

“Please, Dan, can we just stop talking about it? We’re all very tired.” She turns around again and closes her eyes.

Dan looks out the window at the houses passing by. “How long until we’re home, Dad?”

Dad checks his watch. “Ten minutes.”

Ten minutes. In ten minutes, Dan will know whether Luna is dead or alive. Whether Dan killed her. He wants to cry. He wants to punch himself. Luna is his best friend. The thought of leaving her home alone was agonizing. He had one job: remember to fill her bowl before they left. And he had forgotten. He is almost sure of it.

Dan begins to cry softly. He can’t help it.

“Come on,” Jennie says, sneering at him. “It was just a cat, okay? We can get a new one.”

Dan is horrified at the thought. He doesn’t want a new cat. He wants Luna to be okay. But if he really did forget to fill her bowl before they left, then Luna is definitely dead. She will have died from thirst. Slowly.

“Couldn’t she … couldn’t she have turned on the tap?” Dan asks, wiping a tear away. “She’s a clever cat. Maybe she’s figured out how to do that.”

“Didn’t you lock her in the basement?” Jennie asks.

“Yeah, but …”

“There are no taps down there.”

“Well … well, then maybe, she figured out how to open the door.”

“Look,” Jennie sighs. “You need to stop this, Dan. You’re just torturing yourself.”

Dan’s face crumbles up and he buries it in his hands.

“I don’t agree with that,” Dad says, looking up at the mirror.

“What?” Jennie asks. “You think the cat is alive?”

“I don’t know. None of us do. So why assume the worst?”

“Come on, Henrik,” Mom says in a low voice. “Don’t do this to the boy.”

“What?” Dad says, taking his eyes off the road to look at Mom.

“Don’t give him false hope. We all know the cat can’t have survived for seven days without water.”

“It’s not fair,” Dan whispers. “Luna can’t be dead. It’s just not fair.”

Mom turns around again and looks at Dan. Dan hates the expression in her eyes. It’s dark, stained by the depression his mother is battling. “The world is not a fair place, Dan. The sooner you learn that, the better.”

“Oh, come on, honey.”

“What?”

“Now you’re just being cruel.”

“Cruel? How am I being cruel? By preparing the boy for what’s going to happen when we get home?”

“We don’t know for sure—”

“I’ll tell you what will happen. We will find the cat dead in the basement. Because I double-checked the damn door and I heard her meowing from the other side. And since Dan forgot to fill up her bowl, she’ll have died of thirst. Keeping his hopes up that some miracle could have happened, that’s being cruel. It’ll just break his heart all the more when he finds her dead.”

Mom stops talking and for a long moment, no one else says anything. Jennie puts her earphones back in. Mom crosses her arms and looks out the window.

Dan stares up at the mirror, hoping to catch Dad’s eyes. Hoping for him to say something. But he’s just sitting there, driving the car, frowning.

Then suddenly, he says: “Here’s what I think, Dan.”

“Here we go,” Jennie mutters.

“I think your mother is right. The world is not a fair place.”

The words hit Dan in the gut like a clenched fist. Even Mom turns her head to look at her husband.

“But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t hope for miracles. I don’t think it’s ever wrong to keep up hope, even when it seems impossible, or even when there’s a high chance you’ll get your heart broken. And you know why? Because a broken heart can be healed, but a heart that’s given up hope? Well, that’s a lot tougher to fix.”

A moment of silence in the car. Dan feels the tightness in his belly soften and turn warm. He can’t help but smile as he catches Dad’s eyes in the mirror.

“The world is a cruel place,” Dad goes on. “That’s true. It’s also true that sometimes it gives you what you want. But only if you don’t give up hope.”

“Thanks for the sermon, Minister,” Jennie grunts.

“You’re hopeless,” Mom says, shaking her head. “And it’ll be your job to pick up the pieces from this.”

Dad just nods and sends Dan a wink.

That’s when they reach the street where they live and Dan sees the house coming up ahead. He feels his heart begin to beat faster, and—

“Ladies and gentlemen, can I have your attention for a moment, please?”

The voice booms out over the stadium, drowning out the choir of moans and groans from the zombies.

Dan jerks out of his state of half-sleep. He feels Liv, who’s leaning against his back, sit up straight too. As he looks around, he sees the other people in the cage exchange looks—some of them standing, others sitting, all of them keeping to the center of the cage out of reach of the zombies.

“If you turn your gazes upwards, you’ll see me through the window of the VIP lounge right above the player entrance. That’s right. Hi there!”

Dan is still missing his contacts, and darkness has descended, but he can just make out John’s figure in the wide rectangle of light above the tribune.

“Since you’ve all been so cooperative, I figured you deserve to learn what comes next. In a matter of seconds, the sprinklers will be turned on. They will soak every dead person within the stadium walls. It won’t be water coming out, though, but a much more flammable substance, commonly known as gasoline.”

The woman gasps, and Dan turns his head to look at Liv. She gives him a quick look, then turns her eyes back up at John, her expression set in stone.

“Then,” their captor goes on. “Once we’re satisfied our dead guests are all drenched, we’ll turn off the sprinklers again and … well, I suppose you can guess the last part of the program. Needless to say, you will enjoy a front row seat to the spectacular sight as the world is rid of some of its dead weight.”

“You maniac,” the old guy mutters. “You’ll kill us all …”

As though John hears him, he goes on, his voice taking on a mock sanctimonious tone: “You’re probably thinking, ‘well, what will happen to us?’ I won’t lie to you: not all of you will survive. But I want you to know that the world is eternally grateful for your sacrifice. And any survivors will of course be free to leave once we put out the fire again.”

“No,” the woman goes on, as her son begins crying again. She jumps to her feet and waves her arms. “No, please don’t! Please don’t do this!”

“Thank you for your time,” John goes on. “And God bless.”

Then he turns around and disappears out of view.

Dan breathes fast as he looks out over the sea of zombies surrounding them on all sides. The stadium is crammed full of them, more than a thousand bodies all pressing together to get at the cage. He hears a whirring and a whizzing, quickly followed by a rapid series of tish-tish-tish … and then he sees thin splashes of liquid sporadically appear throughout the crowd as the sprinklers turn on, misting the air and drenching the zombies. The smell reaches his nose almost instantly. It’s sharp and unmistakable. It’s gasoline.

“You can’t do this!” the old guy shouts. “Let us out of here, you goddamn murderers!”

Liv catches Dan’s eyes. “You got any bright ideas?”

He shakes his head. “I can’t think of anything. We can’t talk him out of it or convince him to try the holy water. We can’t reach anyone from outside. If we could just get out, I think we could make it through the crowd, provided we’re still immune. But we’ve got nothing to break through the cage with.”

“No, we don’t,” Liv says, biting her lip. “And we can’t do anything to stop him from down here …”

Dan turns to look at Liv. She stares back at him, fear and anger and panic in her eyes. The woman and her son are both crying loudly now, hugging each other. The old man seems to be praying.

Dan catches a movement from the VIP lounge window. John is holding what looks to be a signal flare. With his free hand, he opens the window.

Dan realizes the sprinklers have been turned back off.

The woman screams something inarticulate as John holds up the flare. He looks like he’s about to light it, when something apparently catches his attention, because he turns around.

TWENTY-TWO

“John! Wait!”

Stefan bursts into the lounge, almost tripping over his own feet. His ankle is still throbbing, but considerably less so. He sees John standing by the open window holding the flare, about to light it up, and he realizes he made it just in time.

John turns to look at him, an expression of annoyance on his face. “What? This better be important.”

“It is!” Stefan blurts out, staggering into the room. “Believe me, it’s very important.”

“What happened to you?” John says, frowning. “You look a mess. What’s wrong with your foot? You twist it?”

“Let me … explain,” Stefan pants, putting the bottle on the table and slumping down onto a chair, taking the weight off his ankle.

“Make it fast,” John sneers. “We don’t have time for any shit. Tell me what happened to you!”

“I went outside!”

John’s eyes grow wide. “You did what?”

“I went outside the stadium, John. But it was an accident. I didn’t mean to. I just … the door swung closed behind me. But I had this … the water!” He points to the bottle. “I had it with me. And I used it on them, John. I used it on the dead.” Stefan can’t help but smile, despite how crazy he must look. “It worked. It really did. They just … stopped moving. They died, for real. In an instant. A few drops, that’s all it takes. It’s a lot easier than shooting them. We can just—”

“Shut up a second,” John cuts him off. “One thing at a time here. First off, why did you go outside the stadium?”

Stefan’s eyes flicker. “I … I wanted to test the water … I wanted to see if they were telling the truth about it.”

“So you went against my orders because you believed them over me?” John points down towards the cage without taking his eyes off Stefan.

“No, I didn’t believe them … not until I saw it for myself … that’s why I wanted to test it … and it worked, John! I’m telling you, it w—”

“Secondly,” John says, his voice growing louder. “What exactly happened to your foot?”

Stefan breathes fast. He can feel sweat roll down his forehead. “I … I got a scratch.”

John’s expression goes blank. “A scratch from what?”

“From … from one of the dead,” Stefan admits in barely more than a whisper.

John drops the signal flare and instead swings the rifle around, pointing it at Stefan.

“No, wait!” Stefan shouts, jumping to his feet, tipping over the chair. “Wait, John! I’m not infected! Not anymore! I used the holy water! It cured me! You can look for yourself; there’s no infection, I swear!”

John breathes steadily for a moment. “Show me your foot,” he says.

Stefan hesitates briefly, then hoists his leg onto the table and pulls up his pant leg. The scratches look even better than before.

“See?” he says, breathing a sigh of relief. “It’s not infected, I told you. My skin was all green before, but now it’s gone. The water worked, John. It really worked.”

John looks closely at the scratch. Then he looks up at Stefan’s face. “You sure it worked?”

“Absolutely!”

“You’re not just saying it to save your life?”

“Cross my heart, John. I would never lie to you.”

John nods. He points the barrel to the floor. “Hand me the bottle.”

Stefan grabs it and throws it to him eagerly. “I told you, it really works. All we need to do is—”

“I get it,” John says. “Stop talking now, and sit your ass down.”

Stefan takes a seat.

John holds up the bottle, turning it over, studying the water inside. “Looks like regular old tap water to me,” he mutters.

“You can see for yourself, John. Just pour some of it out the window, and—”

“I told you to stop talking, didn’t I?”

Stefan clams up.

John goes to the window. He stands there for a moment, seemingly considering what to do. He uncaps the bottle and sniffs the water. Then he turns it over and starts pouring. But he doesn’t pour it out the window; instead, it just splashes to the floor.

“No!” Stefan says, jumping back up. “What are you doing?!”

John drops the empty bottle, then turns around to face Stefan. His face is an empty mask. “You went outside and you got yourself scratched. I’m sorry, son, but there’s no cure.”

Stefan opens his mouth. John raises the rifle, points it at him and pulls the trigger.

Stefan never hears the shot.

TWENTY-THREE

Dan hears the rifle shot ring out over the stadium. They all jump and look up at the window to the VIP lounge.

“What … what was that?” the woman asks.

“Sounded like someone got shot,” the old man says.

Then a figure appears in the window. It’s John. He’s holding the flare again.

“Oh, no …” the woman cries out. “He’s doing it now!”

“What do we do?” Dan asks, looking at Liv. “What do we do, Liv?”

“I don’t know! I don’t—wait!”

Something seems to catch Liv’s attention. Dan turns to see what she’s looking at, but he can’t figure it out. All he sees is zombies clambering at the cage. “What? What is it?”

“Maybe,” she mutters and steps past him.

“This is it!” John shouts, his voice reaching them across the sea of zombies, despite not being enhanced by the speakers anymore. “The world will not forget you!”

Dan looks up and sees him light the flare. The light is bright and flickering and it illuminates John’s pale face. Even from down here, Dan can tell his eyes are dark and empty.

Everyone in the cage begins shouting and screaming.

Dan spins around to look at Liv. “What are you doing!?”

His question is drowned out in the noise. Besides, it’s obvious what Liv is doing: She’s reaching out through the cage. The zombies on the other side don’t seem to pay any attention to her. One of them is dressed in a police uniform. It’s bloody and torn to shreds, but it’s definitely a police uniform. In his belt sits a gun.

Liv yanks it free and runs to the front end of the cage.

“Do it,” Dan mutters under his breath, feeling a wild sense of elation. “Do it, Liv. Shoot him!”

Liv takes up position and aims the gun at the open VIP lounge window just as John pulls back the flare to throw it.

Dan stands close enough that he can just pick up on Liv saying: “This is for Sol, you asshole.”

Then she fires the gun four times in rapid succession.

As far as Dan can tell, it’s the third bullet that connects. He was hoping it would hit John in the head or the chest. Instead, it all but removes his hand, sending the flare flying back into the room.

John grabs his wounded hand and stumbles backwards, disappearing from sight as he roars out in agony. The VIP lounge is lit up by the flickering, orange light of the flare still burning somewhere.

Dan looks at Liv who lowers the gun and looks back at him, smiling tentatively. “I got him …”

“You did,” Dan whispers. “Holy shit, Liv …”

Then John pops back up into view, holding the still burning flare in his one remaining hand. He’s hunched over, supporting his weight on the window frame. His expression is no longer blank, but instead one of rage and fury.

“You will not stop me!” he roars out, his voice breaking. “I will heal the world!”

Liv takes aim again, but this time, the gun doesn’t fire. She looks at Dan with big, terrified eyes. “It’s empty …”

TWENTY-FOUR

Stefan opens his eyes and stares at a ceiling he doesn’t recognize.

For a moment, he thinks he’s been out drinking and has spent the night with one of his friends. But then the sounds return, and they help him remember.

The choir of groaning zombies. The angry hiss of the signal flare.

Stefan sits up, feeling a faint jab of pain from his chest. He looks down to see a gaping hole right above his right nipple. His shirt is soaked with blood. He gasps, but the gasp turns into a rattling grunt. Blood fills his mouth.

I’ve been shot. I’m dying.

It all comes back to him then. The scratch. The holy water. John aiming the rifle at him.

Then John’s voice fills the room, bellowing: “You will not stop me! I will heal the world!”

Stefan sees John standing there, across the room in front of the window. He’s holding up the flare, about to throw it. Stefan also sees the rifle lying on the floor right in front of him, as though John has dropped it or flung it aside.

It’s curious. John would never leave his rifle lying around like that. He always carries it with him. Then he notices fresh blood on the rifle.

Stefan doesn’t waste anymore time thinking about it. Instead, he picks up the rifle, aims it and fires. The recoil punches him in the chest, sending him back down to the floor, knocking him unconscious.

The last thought that flows through Stefan’s mind before he dies is: I really hope I got him …

TWENTY-FIVE

The second rifle shot rings through the night as John’s neck is blown open and a dark cloud of his blood goes flying out through the window.

The flare drops from his hand and onto the floor right before John collapses out of sight.

Dan stares at Liv. “Was that you?”

She stares back at him. “No. Someone else did it. He was shot from behind.”

They all hold their breath, waiting for what comes next.

Dan expects someone to step into view. But that doesn’t happen. At least not for several minutes.

Then, finally, two of John’s men appear. They both look confused. One of them takes the microphone.

“We … we have a problem here … John is dead, and … well, none of us really want to go through with his plan …”

Dan feels his heart expand with relief. “You don’t have to!” he shouts, forming a funnel around his mouth with his hands. “Just use the water!”

“We really wanted to let you guys go, but there’s really no way …”

“But there is!” Liv shouts and jumps. “Just use the water! The water!”

The guy with the mic asks the other a question. Then he says: “We saw the water work. But John poured it all out.”

“There’s more in my backpack!” Liv shouts.

“What’s that?”

“There’s more in our backpacks!” Dan shouts.

The guy shakes his head. “Yeah, we know, but there’s no way near enough for all those zombies.”

“You can make more of it!” Dan shouts. “Just add more water to it! Then pour it into the sprinklers!”

Dan hears Liv gasp next to him. “That’s brilliant!”

The men up in the lounge exchange looks.

“Just do it!” Dan shouts. “I promise you, it will work!”

The guy with the mic shrugs, then says: “All right. Give us ten minutes.”

They disappear from view.

Ten minutes later, Dan hears the sprinklers turn on. This time, it’s not gasoline coming out, but water.

Within two minutes, every single zombie inside the stadium has collapsed and stopped moving.

As the sprinklers shut off again, an unearthly silence settles over the field. The people inside the cage exchange looks of utter disbelief, but no one speaks.

Dan turns to Liv and smiles. “It worked.”

TWENTY-SIX

A loud ringing pulls William from a slumber.

He sits up on the backseat, looking around, groping for the phone. It’s on the front seat. Outside the car, Dennis and Ozzy are keeping watch. They are still by the bay, and they agreed to take turns sleeping until they heard from the sergeant.

And this is it. Finally.

William grabs the phone and answers the call. “Hello? Sergeant?”

A brief pause. “William? It’s Dan.”

“Oh. Hey. I tried calling you several times. I was getting worried. Are you guys okay?”

“We’re fine.”

“You found your dad?”

“Not yet. We ran into a little trouble. I’ll tell you about it later. Did you upload the video?”

“Sure, we did that a long time ago. The Americans didn’t believe us, so we had to provide them with physical evidence. So get this: We drove to the bay and poured in a big load of holy water. And I think it worked. I think the entire bay is now filled with holy water. And if that’s true, then maybe every fucking ocean is too.”

Dan is quiet for a long time. “That’s … that’s amazing.”

“I know. It can solve everything. If it really worked, that is. I’m still waiting for the sergeant to call me back. He said he would call the White House and urge them to bring a sample from the ocean to test it for themselves.”

“Good work. Maybe they’ll call off the strikes, then.”

“Maybe, yeah. They haven’t thrown any nukes yet, at least. You and I wouldn’t be talking if they had.”

“We found out something else important,” Dan goes on. “If you drink the holy water, you turn immune.”

William blinks. “You do? Holy fuck. Why didn’t I think of trying that?”

“It worked on Liv and me. Zombies aren’t interested in us any more.”

“Well, fuck me. We need to get that info to the Americans. I’ll call up the sergeant again right away.”

“Just one more thing, William.”

“Yeah?”

“I could use your help. Can you make it to Viborg?”

“Sure, why?”

“We lost the ATV, and my dad is still at the other end of town.”

“Can’t you find a car?”

“We could, but …” William senses something creep into Dan’s voice. Is it hesitation? Fear? “I would like you to be here with me.”

William smiles. “Sure, buddy. We’ll come right away. Where you at?”

“The stadium.”

“Okay. Be there in thirty minutes. Talk soon.”

William disconnects. Dennis has come to the car. “Did I get that right? Does the water make you immune?”

“Yep,” William says, lifting up one of the bottles. “Cheers, buddy!” He takes a swig then hands it to Dennis. “Aaah. Cool and refreshing. Right, we better get moving.”

They get in the car, and William takes the wheel and they drive back towards town. William makes the call to Sergeant Everton, telling him about the immunizing effect. The sergeant promises to forward the information.

When William disconnects, they have almost reached town.

“I think the oceans are connected to the water supplies,” Dennis says suddenly. “I think the water coming out of taps all across the country is now holy water.”

“You think?” William says, looking at him. “But we don’t drink salt water.”

“It’s filtered and cleaned before it reaches the houses. But it’s all connected. I’m pretty sure of it.”

“Goddamnit,” William mutters. “We really made people a get-out-of-jail-free card, huh?”

“I think so. But if people don't know about it, it doesn’t do much good. We have to get the word out. There’s gotta be millions of people all across Europe still hiding or barricading. If they can turn themselves immune by just drinking a sip of water, we need to tell them …”

“You’re right,” William says. “We’ll need to make another YouTube video.”

“Maybe that’s not enough,” Dennis says thoughtfully. “Maybe we need to find another way to reach people.”

TWENTY-SEVEN

Jasmine walks fast to keep up with the others. She’s the shortest of the group, and she also happens to be the only woman.

The group strides along the corridor in rushed silence, none of them uttering a word.

Up front, leading the way, are three armed guards. Then comes Evan and Peters, the closest advisers. Next is the president himself, walking alongside his eldest son in a suit matching his father’s. Then comes three more soldiers, each carrying a sealed canister, and finally Jasmine.

She bears no illusions that she’s the expendable one of the group, or that she is only here because they need someone to administer the satellite phone. Even in this day and age, when push comes to shove, men still have the unappealing habit of viewing women as secretaries.

Jasmine hasn’t been in the bunker before, at least not this far down. What level are they even on? She has no idea. The lift just kept going down and down.

They reach an armored double door guarded by two soldiers who straighten up at the sight of their commander in chief. The president steps forward and scans his irises. The doors open, revealing a room taken right out of Independence Day. It’s a lab—Jasmine knew that beforehand, as that’s how everyone refers to it—but it’s smaller than she expected.

Along one side are rows of medical equipment and computers. Medical staff are busy working at different stations. Most of them stop and look at the newcomers. Along the other wall are five cells secured behind thick glass. All five of them are occupied by at least three patients—that’s still the official word for them, even though Jasmine can tell at a glance that these creatures are no more patients than she is a lizard. Their blind eyeballs, their greyish skin and their jerky, uncertain movements as they grope the glass reveal that these poor souls aren’t even human beings anymore.

Zombies; that’s the word the media keeps throwing around.

Jasmine doesn’t like that word, but she likes even less fooling herself, and zombies is the exact right word for the creatures in the cells.

The cells are soundproof, meaning that they can’t actually hear the zombies, who look to be moaning and scraping their nails against the glass.

They have been kidnapped from Europe and brought here on secured aircrafts several days ago. The doctors have been running every possible test on them. So far, nothing has even come close to working as a cure.

The president walks right over there. Evan puts out a hand and holds him back. “You shouldn’t get too close, sir.”

The president shrugs his hand off with a grunt of annoyance. “If these cells weren’t secure, I wouldn’t be here, Evan.” He leans forward and looks right at the zombie on the other side. The dead person stares back at him and claws even more eagerly at the glass. “My God,” the president mutters. “You seeing this, son?”

The president’s son looks like he’d rather not see, but he nods.

“I told you,” the president goes on. “Didn’t I tell you? I’m no doctor, but this is not an illness. It’s not even a medical thing. These poor people have had their souls ripped out of them.”

Jasmine notices the others exchange uncertain looks, yet none of them speak.

The president makes the sign of the cross, then steps back. He claps his hands together loudly and looks around. “All right, people, let’s get this moving. I want to skip the bureaucratic crap and jump right to the point. Does this magic water work? That’s the only thing I’m interested in.”

One of the doctors clears his throat. He’s not wearing a lab coat nor holding a clipboard like he would if this had really been Independence Day. Instead, he’s wearing a regular shirt and pants, and he looks like he hasn’t slept for days.

“We prepared for three tests, sir. The first one will expose the patients to the water. We’re hoping of course to see an effect, but honestly, sir, I’m skeptical that we’ll achieve a full recovery or even—”

“We’re all skeptical,” the president interrupts. “But our man over there in Europe has seen things he claims are all but miracles, and since we’re nowhere near a vaccine, a miracle is exactly what we need.”

The doctor nods. “Of course, sir. The second test will administer the water to a test subject, allowing us to see whether that person will be rendered immune. This intel was just brought to us minutes ago. And the third test will be to see whether the water can be scaled up the way we were told.”

Even as he speaks, the other personnel have taken the canisters from the soldiers and are opening them carefully.

“So, how do we do it?” the president asks, placing both hands on his hips, revealing a protruding gut. “Do we inject it into one of them, or what?”

“Injection shouldn’t be necessary from what we have been informed, sir,” the doctor says, looking at Evan as though he wants confirmation of this.

“Don’t ask me,” Evan says, shaking his head. “I only watched the video. I didn’t speak to Everton.”

He turns to Jasmine, and so does the president.

Jasmine stiffens, feeling like a schoolgirl. “Uhm, no sir, Mister President, Sergeant Everton was very clear that physical contact with the water was all that was needed. Even a very small portion should do it.”

“Great, so we just soak them,” the president says, turning impatiently towards the cells again.

Jasmine feels tense at the thought of the doctors opening any of the cells to splash water on the zombies—even after she spoke with Chris, she’s still doubtful that this will work. But the doctors simply secure the canister to a station across from the cells. A rubber tube runs to the ceiling, where a panel has been removed. The tube has been connected to a metal pipe in a makeshift way—it’s fairly obvious that the doctors made this installation very recently.

“Cells one and two are prepped,” one of them says as he sits down by the station. “Ready for test number one.”

“Hold on just one second,” the president says, holding up his hand. “I think we should say prayers for these poor souls.” He bends his neck and folds his hands. The others follow suit, even the soldiers bow their heads. The president mutters a quick prayer, then looks up again. “Right, let’s do it.”

The doctor by the station types a command and moves the mouse. “Rolling test one,” he says out loud, clicking the mouse.

A gurgle from the canister and a wheezing sound from the tube. Then, two seconds later, a sprinkler inside the cell sends out a drizzle of water. The three zombies are pressed up against the glass and out of reach of the water.

“We need more pressure,” one of the doctors says.

The one by the station shakes his head. “That’s not possible. We’d need to change the pump in the sprinkler system.”

“Goddamnit,” the president mutters. “How do we get them over there?”

“We won’t have to,” Jasmine hears herself say as she steps forward and points down. “Look.”

The water from the sprinkler is forming a pool on the floor, and it’s running towards the zombies. One of them takes half a step back and places his foot in the water.

It’s only his heel that actually touches the water.

But it’s enough.

He turns his eyes to the ceiling and collapses onto his back. He lands in the pool of water, and some of it splashes onto the legs of the next zombie—a young, Spanish-looking woman around Jasmine's age. She too goes down immediately.

“Sweet mother Mary,” someone mutters.

“It’s working,” someone else chimes in.

The rest are just staring in dumb amazement as the pool of water makes its way to the third zombie. It reaches his feet, touches him and instantly drops him to the floor.

Several seconds of silence follow. The only sound is the sluggish pump from the canister.

“Turn … turn off the water,” one of the doctors mutters. “Test number one … successful.”

The sprinkler is shut off, and the personnel gradually come back to life. Jasmine can hear them talking about running further tests on the zombies. She stares at the lifeless bodies inside the cell. Now they look like regular corpses.

The president is the one to cut through the noise: “All right, let’s get on with it. What was the second test?”

“Prepare for test number two,” one of the doctors says. “We need to know whether the water has an immunizing effect on anyone who ingests it.”

Jasmine sees them open one of the other canisters and suck up some of the water with a big plastic syringe. They hand it over to the doctor who’s been taking charge so far. Everyone looks at him as he holds up the syringe, staring at the grimy water inside.

“Go on,” one of the other doctors urges. “We are ready when you are, Sean.”

Sean doesn’t look ready at all. In fact, he looks like the last thing he wants to do is drink the water.

“What’s the problem?” the president bursts out.

“I … I’m sorry, sir,” Sean says, lowering the syringe. “I can’t do it. I have a wife and a son.”

“You volunteered,” one of the doctors says.

“I know,” Sean sneers back at him. “And now I’m withdrawing my volunteering, okay? We have no idea what this stuff is, we haven’t even had time to run an analysis. And you saw what happened to the patients. Whatever this water is, it’s potent as hell. I’m not drinking it until we know more about it.”

“Jesus Christ,” the president scoffs, then looks around, annoyed and impatient. “Any other volunteers? I’d do it myself if I didn’t have a country to run. So, anyone?”

Everyone avoids looking back at the president.

And then, suddenly, Jasmine sees them all for what they really are. They may call themselves doctors and soldiers and politicians. But they are nothing more than scared boys.

“I’ll do it,” Jasmine says, stepping forward.

The president looks at her with surprise. She was obviously the last person he expected to hear from. He even looks as though he’s not sure whether to take her seriously. But as Jasmine just holds his gaze without flinching, his expression softens.

“Well, I guess sometimes it takes a woman to do a man’s job. All right, let Mrs. Everton have it.”

Jasmine receives the syringe from Sean along with a grateful and embarrassed look.

“Please step over to the glass in front of cell number two,” one of the doctors tells her.

Jasmine does so, bringing the syringe. As soon as she gets closer to the glass, the three zombies draw closer, pushing against each other to get at her.

“Now, move from side to side,” the doctor says.

Jasmine steps to the left, then to the right. The zombies follow her every step of the way, staring with their blind eyes.

“Okay, we’re good to go. Whenever you’re ready, Mrs. Everton.”

Jasmine nods, then glances back at them.

The president sends her a reaffirming nod. “Your sacrifice won’t be forgotten.”

Jasmine places the tip of the syringe to her lips, then pushes the handle gently. The lukewarm salt water flows across her tongue and she swallows once, twice, then scoffs at the taste.

Chris said a single swallow should be enough, so she lowers the syringe and wipes her lips. She looks back to see them all staring at her with wide eyes, as though they expect her to sprout wings at any second.

“I feel fine,” she says. “No difference.”

“Please move back and forth again, Mrs. Everton,” one of them instructs her.

Jasmine steps to the side.

This time, none of the zombies follow her. They just stay where they are, clawing at the glass. She walks back in front of them, then moves on to the other side.

“Good heavens,” someone mutters. “It’s like they don’t even see her …”

Jasmine feels her heart grow to twice its size as she turns back to look at the men. “It worked. I’m immune.”

The president stares at her for another second, then he rounds on the doctors, his eyes wild. “We have it! We have a cure and an immunizer! What are you waiting for?”

“Sir, we need to run more—”

“We’re done with tests!” He points to Evan, then to Jasmine. “I want this water flowing from every tap of the whole damn country by dawn! Then I want batches distributed all across Europe and Asia! Call the UN! And call back the bombers!”

TWENTY-EIGHT

Iver is sitting on the floor, hugging his knees, staring at nothing.

Adam is crying in the tub.

The zombies are groaning.

The door is breaking.

He has tried everything. He has gone through the entire cycle of emotions. From panic to rage to grief to numbness and now … now there’s only empty acceptance.

The windowsill is all but intact. He managed to pry out three bricks, but it’s no way near enough. His hands are full of blisters. He gave up ten minutes ago. That’s when the door’s hinge started to give way. That’s when he finally realized it was all for nothing.

He knows what he needs to do. The only thing left. It’s simple. There are no more what ifs. No more if onlys. There is only one course of action left.

But he can’t do it.

Because there still seems to be a choice. A choice between two impossible outcomes.

He either lets the zombies get to Adam. Meaning that when they break down the door in a matter of minutes, he simply stays put and does nothing to defend himself or the toddler.

Or, he gets up now and puts an end to the toddler’s life in a more merciful way.

Both scenarios are too horrible to even think about. He can’t choose between them. And yet he knows which one is right. It’s simple. Since both roads lead to the same thing, the less painful one must be the one to choose.

The thing holding him back is that he’ll have to be the one to do it.

And he can’t.

He can’t kill Adam.

Not even out of mercy.

You have to.

He can’t. There’s no way.

You have to. Think of what he’ll go through if you don’t.

Iver bows his head and squeezes his lips together as a wave of dizziness and nausea rolls up through his chest. He almost vomits but manages to swallow it back down.

He can’t do it. There’s just no way.

But he can’t not do it, either.

It’s an impossible choice.

And it’s one he needs to make.

A dry, cracking sound from the door.

Iver looks over at it. The top hinge has just given way. The door is now hanging. There’s an opening wide enough that some of the zombies can reach their arms through. They push even more eagerly. Adam cries even louder.

You have to do it. Now. This is it. In thirty seconds, it’ll be too late.

Iver feels his body start to move. It gets to its feet. He has no real say in the matter. He’s still in there, somewhere, but way back. He’s looking out through a tunnel. Everything is hazy and distant and unreal.

This is it. This is how you die. You kill a toddler and then you get eaten alive.

Iver can’t hold back the thoughts anymore. He doesn’t really feel anything anymore, either. It’s all been swallowed up by this vacuum inside, which has left his body empty and acting on its own accord.

He looks down at Adam. The toddler is crying and reaches up for him. He wants to be comforted. He wants Iver to make the dead people go away. To save them both from the horrible death that’s about to breach the bathroom door.

And he can.

But only in one way.

“It’s okay,” Iver says. His voice is surprisingly calm. He can even feel a smile on his face. It terrifies him. “It’s okay, buddy. It’s over in a minute.”

Iver reaches for the bar. It’s lying on the counter. Instead, his hand finds the radio. He turned it on earlier, hoping to hear some good news. But there was only static. Now, a new idea comes to him.

“You want to hear some music, buddy?”

He turns on the radio and twists the knob. It searches through the airways, crunching and whining. Then there’s suddenly a woman singing.

Iver smiles. Tears begin spilling down his cheeks. Adam looks up at the radio and stops crying.

“There,” Iver says. “Isn’t that better?”

He picks up the bar and weighs it in his hands.

Just do it. Don’t hesitate. It’ll just make it harder.

Iver takes a step closer to the bathtub. Everything inside of him starts screaming. Red hot needles are poking his every nerve ending as his systems go into all out war against each, fighting for control.

Don’t!

Do it!

Don’t!

Do it!

Iver stares at Adam who’s looking at the radio.

Behind him, the door crunches again and the sounds from the zombies grow louder, mixing with the music. It sounds like someone is talking.

Iver raises the bar. His body is trembling. He doesn’t know whether he’ll finish the blow or pass out.

“… very important … solution to all of this …”

He’s hearing voices. Everything is in an uproar. All sounds are amplified.

Do it!

Do it!

Adam looks up at him. He points to the radio and utters a word which sounds like a question: “Phone?”

“It’s not a phone,” Iver hears himself gasp through gritted teeth. “It’s a radio. It’s playing music. It’s …”

He stops talking as he actually listens. In between the lines of the song comes another voice which has nothing to do with the lyrics.

“... anybody who hears me … it’s in the water …”

Iver blinks. He lowers the bar and turns and stares at the radio.

“... have a cure … regular tap water …”

Iver reaches out and turns the knob gently, searching for the voice. The music is replaced with static, and for a moment, he’s sure he’s lost whoever was speaking. Then suddenly, it comes through loud and clear.

“… anyone infected. This is a very important message. We found a solution to all of this. To anybody who hears me: We have a cure. It’s in the water system. Even the slightest contact with regular tap water will instantly pacify anyone infected. If you drink it, you become immune. This is a very important message …”

Iver can’t decide whether he’s dreaming or has lost his mind.

And he doesn’t have time to figure it out. Because at that moment, the zombies breach the door.

Iver turns to see them spill into the room, falling over each other. One of them lurges for him, and Iver pushes him back and stumbles backwards himself. He knocks into the edge of the tub and loses his balance, falling into the tub and missing Adam by inches. The toddler screams in fear as the undead monsters come swarming across the room.

Iver grabs him around the waist and pulls him in close, shielding him by turning his back to the zombies. Then, with his free hand, he reaches up for the handle, finds it and twists it.

He hears the zombies come roaring.

He hears the water rush up through the hose.

The undead are faster, reaching the tub and immediately falling over Iver. He feels them grope and scratch at his back, feels the weight of them as they pile on, hears their teeth snapping close to his ears.

And then he feels the water.

And the zombies stop biting, stop clawing, stop groaning.

Iver just sits there for the longest time, holding Adam close, fighting the weight of the zombies, feeling the lukewarm water spill over them and run down the drain.

Adam keeps crying softly.

The zombies on top of them are no longer moving.

He can hear the ones farther back still shuffling and pushing to get to the tub, but they seem to be cut off by the pile of their fallen comrades.

Over the moans and groans, Iver can still hear the radio.

“… If you drink it, you become immune …”

Iver reaches down with one hand and picks up a handful of water from the bottom of the tub. He manages to get it to his mouth and slurps it up. He then repeats it, only this time, he offers Adam the water. The boy stops crying and takes a sip.

“Good boy,” Iver whispers.

The weight of the zombies is starting to become overwhelming. They press him down, making it hard to breathe. Iver feels trapped. Squeezed. Claustrophobic. But he needs to hold out.

One minute passes by.

Then suddenly, the sound of the zombies grow fainter. And fainter. Until he can’t hear it anymore.

Iver moves with a groan of exertion. He pushes upwards and shifts his weight just enough that he can get free from under the pile of lifeless bodies. He stands up in the tub, still holding Adam.

They both stare at the zombies. There’s ten or twelve of them. All are wet from the water. All are just lying there, like regular corpses.

The rest of them have left the bathroom. They have left the house, even.

Iver steps over to the window and looks out. Even in the darkness, he can make out the horde of zombies streaming out from the front door. They spread out across the lawn, waddling in every direction, looking for new prey.

“We did it,” Iver says.

Adam looks at him, a curious look on his face. “Diddit?” he repeats, making it sound like a question.

Iver breaks into a wide, trembling smile. “That’s right. We really did it.”

TWENTY-NINE

Dan sits in the passenger seat, the phone resting in his lap.

He occasionally checks it to make sure they’re on the right path. His dad doesn’t move very fast, so it’s not difficult homing in on him.

William is driving. In the backseat is Ozzy.

They dropped Dennis and Liv off at the radio station. Liv and Dan spent the time waiting by checking a few houses next to the stadium. They turned on the taps and brought water out to test on any zombies passing by. It worked. The city’s water system was now distributing holy water. It probably held true for all the other cities across the country, too; maybe even in the neighboring countries.

Dennis was pretty sure he could figure out how to get a message to go out on all frequencies on repeat, telling people about the water. After that, they would begin making videos to upload everywhere, hoping it would go viral.

“So, it’s just you and me again, huh?” William says, sending Dan a smile. “Sam and Frodo, at the foot of Mount Doom.”

Dan smiles meekly. He’s so tired, he can barely think.

“I can’t believe we did it,” William goes on, his gaze turning distant. “I can’t believe we found the cure and we got it out there. We pretty much saved the world, buddy.”

“I guess we did,” Dan says, leaning back his head. If he blinks too slowly, he almost falls asleep. “At least we gave it a fighting chance.”

“If we get your dad back, I’m taking us all out for breakfast. I don’t care if I have to cook it myself. We’re all getting eggs and bacon.”

“Sounds great.”

A loud plonk as a raindrop hits the windscreen. Then another. And another. Within thirty seconds, it’s pouring down.

“Finally,” William says, turning on the wipers. “I was beginning to think that heat wave would go on forever. Maybe it’s a sign of change coming.”

“Maybe.”

William looks at him. “He close?”

Dan glances at the phone. “Two more blocks.”

A moment of silence.

“I know he’ll come back to you, Dan.”

“I hope so.” Dan looks out the window and suddenly recalls the dream he had when he dozed off inside the cage at the stadium. “I had a cat once,” he says. “I loved her more than anything.”

“I didn’t take you to be a cat person.”

Dan shrugs. “It was a long time ago. This one time, me and my family went on a holiday. We were gone for a week. I was supposed to lock her in the basement and make sure she had food and water. Only I forgot about the water.”

“Oh,” William says quietly.

“I haven’t thought of her for years,” Dan goes on. “But the memory suddenly came to me earlier tonight. It was my first encounter with death, you know? The first time I faced losing someone I loved. I remembered about the water on the way home, and … I rushed inside the house as soon as we got there. I found her in the basement. The bowl was empty, just like I feared. I had forgotten to fill it.” Dan takes a deep breath.

“I’m sorry, buddy.”

“Luna was fine.”

William looks at him. “She was? But you said she had no water …”

“There was water all over the floor. It had come from the freezer. A lightning strike had caused a brief power outage while we were gone. It had switched off the freezer, and all the ice had thawed and flooded the floor, providing Luna with plenty of water to drink. And get this: our house was the only one in the entire city affected.”

“Holy shit,” William says, grinning. “That was some lucky coincidence.”

Dan shakes his head. “It was a miracle. It happened because I didn’t give up on hope. I’m sure of it. And now …” He looks down at the phone. “Now I need an even bigger miracle. Pull over, William. He’s here.”

William stops the car, the wipers still fighting the rain.

They’re on an almost empty street.

Dan unbuckles, brings the bottle of water from the glove compartment and gets out. The rain immediately soaks his hair and clothes, but Dan hardly notices. His eyes are fixed on the screen. The red dot is blinking right around the corner.

“You want me to come?” William asks.

Dan doesn’t answer. He doesn’t even hear him. He strides down the street, walking through the heavy rain, slipping the phone back in his pocket. As he reaches the intersection, he stops and looks down the adjacent street.

And there he sees him. He’s walking around all alone. His back is turned, but Dan recognizes his shirt. Tears well up into his eyes.

“Dad,” he croaks.

His dad doesn’t react to the sound. The rain drowns it out.

William is suddenly behind him. “You need to go over there,” he says softly. “We can’t draw him, remember?”

Dan nods and swallows and walks closer. He can’t feel his legs.

Dan can hear his father’s sounds. His dragging feet across the wet asphalt. The low moans escaping his throat. Dan closes his eyes as he walks on. He strains to recall an image of his dad from when he was alive. He pictures his face. His smile. His voice. It’s difficult.

Then suddenly, it all comes through clearly. Dad’s eyes, smiling at him from the rearview mirror. His voice, soft.

“Sometimes, the world gives you what you want. But only if you don’t give up hope.”

Dan stops.

He opens his eyes.

In front of him is his father. Less than ten paces away. Still with his back turned. But he has stopped walking. As though he senses Dan after all.

Then his father turns around to face him. Dan forces himself not to look away. Forces the image of his father’s smiling face to superimpose over the grim mask that’s staring back at him.

“Hi, Dad,” Dan says, his voice shaking with every breath. “I’m sorry it took me so long.”

His father gives off a low moan and takes a step towards Dan.

Dan flings the water at him.

His father collapses.

Dan drops the bottle and rushes to him. He falls to his knees and grabs his father’s head with both hands, staring into his face as the green color dissipates and his humanlike features return.

“Come back to me, Dad,” he chants. “Come back to me, please. I need you. Come back to me.”

His hands slide down to his father’s neck, feeling for a pulse. He can’t find it. He bends over and places his ear close to his father’s open mouth. He can’t feel a breath, either.

“It could take a minute,” William says from somewhere far away. “Give him a minute, Dan.”

Dan gives his father a minute. All the while, he keeps chanting. “Come back to me. Please, come back, Dad. I need you.”

But as the minutes pass by, dark thoughts begin to creep in on Dan.

It’s been too long.

The odds were too small to begin with.

Neither of Liv’s parents came back—why would my dad?

Dan has no idea how long it’s been, but it feels like forever. He looks back at William. William looks at his watch, then throws out his arms. “I’m … I’m sorry, man. I guess we could give it a few more minutes …”

Dan begins to cry. He leans over the corpse of his father, feeling the cold, dead skin through the shirt. “It’s not fair. You were supposed to wake up, Dad. You were supposed to come back to me. I never gave up hope. Never. It’s not fair.”

But the world isn’t fair. Not anymore. It’s a cruel, cold place. A place where death and chaos have taken over. A place where good people die and don’t come back. A place for no second chances and no miracles.

“I’m sorry, Dad. I’m so sorry. I thought I could save you. I really did.” The words are barely more than a hoarse whisper.

Getting back up to his feet is the hardest thing Dan has ever done. Not so much because he’s exhausted beyond imagination, more because all his will to go on has suddenly drained from him.

He turns away and staggers back towards William.

His friend holds out his arms, catching Dan in a warm embrace as he all but collapses. He finally gives up and lets go. He cries and sobs and shakes in William’s arms, and it feels like it will never stop.

The world isn’t fair. It’s cruel.

“Dan?”

William’s voice.

The world is cruel and unfair.

“Dan?”

Except that sometimes …

Dan blinks away the veil of tears and looks up at William. His friend is looking past him, at something behind Dan. A slight smile creases the corner of his mouth. “I think you might want to check again.”

Sometimes, the world gives you what you want.

But only if you don’t give up hope.

Dan turns around.

* * *

In case you’re wondering, this was the end of the series. Thank you for sticking with me to the end; I can’t tell you how much that means to me.

When I began writing Dead Meat, I had no idea Dan would be our main guy. I’m not much of a planner, I tend to just go where the story takes me. So once I realized Thomas (remember him?) was going to die already in the first book, I figured someone just as strong and resourceful would come along. Dan would carry the torch until then.

But the young, shy guy quickly grew on me, and by Day 4 he was still around. That’s when it finally hit home with me that he was going to be the one who would take us to the end.

The ending started to appear on the horizon around Day 6. I saw Europe crawling with zombies. I saw the world on the brink of nuclear disaster. I saw a possible cure. And I saw Dan walking down a deserted street towards his father, hoping against all odds that he would get him back. I’m grateful I was able to turn those images into words that you could read.

I hope you enjoyed reading Dead Meat as much as I did writing it.

If you want to keep in touch and be the first to hear from me when I have a new book out, you should join my readers club at nickclausenbooks.com

Here’s to many more stories!

* * *

If you want to know exactly what happened at Esther’s place before the events of the series, you should check out the free prequel Day 0, which tells you everything you need to know.

Grab your free copy at
nickclausenbooks.com/free

About the author

I grew up in a tiny country far, far away, and I learned English thanks to Netflix and audiobooks. I read Stephen King from a way too young age, and I’m still recovering.

If you want to learn more about me and the books, you can check out my website. You should also consider joining my readers club to be kept in the loop about new releases, which happens several times a year.

Learn more at nickclausenbooks.com

What to read next

If you liked Dead Meat, then you’ll love my other series, Under the Breaking Sky.

It’s just as dark, but the books are longer, the characters are deeper and the action and pacing are even more relentless.

Here’s the blurb:

A mysterious crack in the sky. People turning into savage killers. A world disrupted by death and destruction.

A select few find themselves immune to this deadly phenomenon. Now they must fight to survive in a collapsing society.

Tommy, a maladjusted teenager still reeling from the loss of his father. With no support from his basket case mother, Tommy is facing the situation on his own.

Mark, a young man with a criminal record and a spoiled attitude. Finding himself in a fight for his life, Mark is forced to face the choices he's made.

Gina, a trauma survivor with two young sons to care for. Hardened by life, she is prepared for the worst and will do anything to ensure her boys' safety.

As the hole in the sky grows bigger, more and more people succumb to the rage. Our heroes must stand together in the fight for mankind, or die along with it.

But there seems to be no cure. No safe haven. Not even an explanation.

Only blind rage.

Grab book one now at
nickclausenbooks.com/blind-rage

Table of Contents

CONTENT
DAY 1
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
DAY 2
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
DAY 3
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
DAY 4
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
DAY 5
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
THIRTY-SEVEN
THIRTY-EIGHT
THIRTY-NINE
FORTY
FORTY-ONE
FORTY-TWO
FORTY-THREE
FORTY-FOUR
FORTY-FIVE
FORTY-SIX
FORTY-SEVEN
FORTY-EIGHT
DAY 6
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
DAY 7
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
DAY 8
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
THIRTY-SEVEN
THIRTY-EIGHT
THIRTY-NINE
DAY 9
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
About the author
What to read next