

Sven the Zombie Slayer

Guy James

Copyright 2011 by Guy James

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Also by Guy James:

Rats on Strings

Blood Spatter

The Shareholder

Please visit http://guyjamesfiction.blogspot.com/ to learn more about the Sven the Zombie Slayer series, and other existing and upcoming titles from Guy James.
Chapter 1

Matt Sarelson stared into the thing's eyes, and he knew, with the most terrible of certainties, that he was about to die.

***

Nine minutes and fourteen seconds earlier, Matt Sarelson had parked his Toyota Highlander behind Charlottesville's Downtown Mall. It was still dark.

His head began to nod, and he took another sip of his tepid coffee.

As part of his weekday routine, Matt made himself coffee every morning before he left for work. That morning, Matt had made himself a cup of strong Kona, but departing from his meticulous coffee-making practice, he had committed what he deemed a coffee preparation atrocity.

Matt's coffeemaker had self-destructed a week earlier, and while he waited for its replacement to arrive, Matt used his trusty French press in the broken coffeemaker's stead.

On that unfortunate morning, Matt was especially groggy when he forced himself out of bed at ten minutes past four. The grogginess led to an exceptional bout of clumsiness in the kitchen: the French press slipped out of his fumbling hands as he carried it from the sink, and though he juggled the press for a few turns, his circus skills did not save it from shattering on the kitchen floor.

Broken French press or no, Matt had to have his coffee, so he got out a small saucepan, in which he boiled some water. To the boiling water he added ground Kona, and he let the mixture simmer for a few minutes while he stirred it, distastefully, with a wooden spoon. Then he poured off the top layer of the mixture, striving to keep the grounds out of his cup.

But grounds had come, and now, as he sat in the parking lot in his Highlander, he felt the demonic grounds poking around his mouth, mocking him. He wondered how people had done it back in the day before coffeemakers. The thought made him shudder.

Matt swallowed the tinged mouthful and sighed a coffee breath sigh. Imperfectly prepared coffee was just another in the series of sacrifices he made for his job. Letting grounds run rampant in his coffee was bad, it was true, as was the broken French press, but today—getting in early today—was worth all of that.

He opened the car door, got out, and ducked back in over the driver's seat. He retrieved his coffee mug and tucked his stack of marked-up deal documents under his arm. Matt kicked the door shut with a loafer-clad foot, took a deep breath, and crossed the empty lot.

At the entrance of the dark alley that connected the parking lot and mall commons, Matt paused. It was a creepy shortcut during the day—lined on either side with dim, cavernous recesses—and was even more troubling at night, especially with one of the two overhead lights having burned out. Matt wondered if someone was going to replace that light any time soon. Didn't anyone work anymore?

Matt took long, tired strides through the alley, and then abruptly stopped in the middle. He had heard something...something that sounded too much like a scream. He couldn't tell where the sound had come from, so he looked behind him, and, seeing nothing, turned back around and started for the mall again, quickening his pace.

By the time Matt stepped out onto the mall commons, he had put the sound out of his mind. He was too tired to concentrate both on that and on what he had to accomplish at work that day.

The mall commons were empty, save for a smattering of the sleeping homeless, and they were still dead to the world. The place was still.

As Matt walked past the familiar shops, he felt a sting of resentment. All of the shops' owners and employees were in bed, and he should have been too—not with them but in his own bed—if it wasn't for that lazy, no good—

He heard a cry, and spun around to face the direction from which the noise had come.

He peered into the distance.

Nothing.

No one.

The mall was empty.

Matt decided it had been a particularly disharmonious bird, or, even if it had been a person, it didn't concern him. He had extremely important things to do that day.

He resumed his walk and stopped in front of the building, looking up at it. Bremmer Title Associates, it said to him—to everyone that passed.

But not forever, Matt thought, gripping his coffee mug tighter, one day, it'll say Sarelson Title Company. It shouldn't say "Associates" anyway. That was stupid—remarkably stupid. It was a company, and it should announce that fact to all of the potential clients that passed by it.

There were three residential mortgage closings on Matt's desk that day, and he was coming in early because in his quite correct opinion, he was the only Bremmer Title Associates' employee that could get anything done. Today was the day, Matt knew, that he would make Mr. Bremmer notice. Today was the day that Mr. Bremmer would finally see how talented Matt was, and how incompetent and worthless that suck-up Jon was. God, how Matt hated the two of them—Bremmer and Jon—always gushing over each other and following each other around while Matt got stuck with all the work. And to add insult to injury, Jon was Matt's junior! But Jon's father was a fancy so-and-so and la-di-da and—well, that wasn't going to matter anymore, not after today.

Each of the three closings was to take place when Jon was out of the office on one of his usual three-hour workout and golf sessions—Matt had seen to that bit of timing. Jon would be dropping the ball—not the golf ball of course, the work ball—and Matt would rise up to save the day. And he would make damn sure that Bremmer noticed.

Matt took another sip of his lousy coffee, which was no longer even lukewarm, unlocked the title company's door, and walked in. He locked the door behind him, flicked on the lights, and walked past the empty receptionist's desk toward his own office.

He was beginning to replay one of his favorite fantasies in his head—the one where he beat Jon senseless with the lazy suckup's own nine iron—when he saw a light coming from the back of the office hallway. He walked closer, and was startled to find that it was coming from Jon's office.

Jon's office was tucked away in the back of the floor, and Jon had had the privilege of picking it out because Mr. Bremmer loved him so much—so very, very, nauseatingly much. The position of Jon's office let the lazy bum sneak in and out unnoticed, avoiding work and leaving Matt to run the business under Mr. Bremmer's uninvolved and increasingly ungrateful glare.

God, how stupid they all are, Matt thought. That idiot Jon can't even turn his damn light off.

Sighing in frustration, Matt put his coffee and documents down at his own office's closed door, then crossed the length of the hall to Jon's door.

Just as Matt reached his hand in to flick off the lights, he was overcome by a stench so overpowering that it felt like a punch to the gut. His head began to swim, and the shapes around him got fuzzy. He almost retched, but managed to keep his coffee—grinds and all—in his stomach.

So now Jon was keeping rotten food in his office?

That's exactly something Jon would do, Matt thought.

It wasn't even five in the morning yet and already Matt felt livid with anger. He clamped his fingers over his nose and resolved to dispose of whatever decaying matter he found within Jon's office and get right to work. Even if no one else at Bremmer Title Associates did anything, Matt had a responsibility to the clients, and he was going to see it through. The work mattered.

Matt walked into Jon's office, facing the divider that Jon had rigged up so that no one could see his desk from the hallway. When Matt came around the divider, he almost gasped. But the caffeine had started to do its trick and he remembered not to breathe in. Stifling his surprise-fueled want of a breath, Matt looked down, and had to revise his theory as to the source of the odor.

Jon was slumped face down on his desk. Looking at the pale-yellow, viscous fluid that was collecting at the left side of Jon's head, Matt determined that the smell was vomit.

Great, he thought, now I have to waste my precious time cleaning up after this idiot.

Matt's eyes darted to the corner of Jon's office, where a letter opener stood, peeking out of a pencil stand. The letter opener seemed to wink at him, and he considered it for a moment. Wouldn't that be nice? I could just stab him in the back of the head and end his misery.

Then Matt's eyes shifted to the golf-bag propped up against the wall. Or, I could grab that nine iron sticking out of the bag, bring it up, and...

That was the better way to do it, he decided, flavorfully ironic.

Matt quickly walked out of the office, unclamped his nose, and took two deep breaths. Then he put his hand back over his nose and went back inside.

"Hey!" Matt yelled with his nose still clamped. "Wake up, it stinks in here."

Jon moaned, but didn't move.

"Come on, I have work to do and your stink is distracting. Jon! Jon, come on wake up you can't do this in here."

Jon moaned again, softer this time, and his head wobbled a little, then settled back into place. The puddle of pale-yellow fluid was spreading outward, making its way to the edge of the desk.

Then it'll drip on the floor, Matt thought, and I am not going to be the one to clean it up. I am not.

Matt looked at the clock in Jon's office and realized he needed to get started on his work. He couldn't waste any more time trying to deal with Jon. Matt felt himself growing angrier, and the bit of stench that managed to seep past his fingers and into his nose was making him light-headed. He walked to the corner, picked the nine iron out of the bag, and not-so-gently prodded Jon's shoulder with it.

Jon stirred, moaned, and in an apparent attempt to raise his head, fell off his chair, hit his head on the side of the desk, and landed in an awkward position on his back, with his arms folded together and in front of him, like he had fallen backward into a too-small coffin.

Matt had to stifle a laugh. Maybe Jon was now dead. Maybe his head impacting on the side of the desk had broken his neck. The vomit-laden fiasco may turn out to have a silver lining...no, a golden one.

After taking a shallow breath through his mouth, Matt poked Jon again, in the sternum this time, and hard.

That did the trick.

That did the trick in a way that Matt never expected, and in a way that he never intended.

Jon's eyes shot open, and Matt stumbled backward, knocking something over and almost falling before coming to rest against the wall behind him. Jon's eyes...they were...they were completely black, even where the whites should have been. It was a dull black, and it made Matt's stomach drop to look into it, like he was looking into pure, unabashed evil.

Matt's mind scrambled, trying to think of something to say or do, anything that might make those eyes look away from him, but no thoughts came. He began to feel a muddiness in his brain, and realized that the only thing he wanted to do was to get out of there, close the door behind him, and go back home. He could make some more bad coffee for himself and look for a whole new job—a different one. He decided that he didn't like title work all that much anyway, the clients were arrogant and insatiable, and—

Before Matt could complete his thought, Jon's mouth fell open, and a thick yellowish liquid poured out of it, splattering Jon's button-down. It was a vile thing to see, and then Jon was trying to sit up, and Matt was trying not to breathe.

But he had been holding his breath for too long then, and he had to, he had to take a breath—a full one this time. The hand unclamped from his nose.

Matt inhaled. The smell had gotten so much worse, unspeakably worse.

The office began to spin around him, and a strange numbness began to nip at Matt's skin, as if trying to find a way in. He continued to hold the golf club in front of him, pressing it against Jon, trying to keep Jon down.

"Don't get up," Matt said. "Please don't get up, I'll get someone, some help."

Then Jon grabbed the end of the golf club and pulled, and then—everything was getting fuzzy and that smell—Jon gripped Matt's elbow, and his grip was so strong, pulling Matt in.

It wasn't just a numbness now, it was a debilitating, creeping paralysis. In spite of the relative lack of sensation, Matt felt something in his shoulder give way and pop, sending a terrible shooting pain across his collar bone and down the side of his body.

Damn you, Matt thought, damn you and your working out and—

Jon's straining forearm stuck out of a rolled-up shirt sleeve. The skin of the forearm looked dry as paper, like it was crackling. Lines were forming lengthwise up the forearm, as if the skin was conforming to the muscle strands underneath. Then one of the lines of skin tore inward, and Matt could see muscle fibers ripping over paper-thin skin and—

Matt's failing mind tried to think of something, something nasty, about how he hated Jon, but he couldn't quite form the thought with the cotton ball fuzz that was now proliferating in his brain. And what about the forearm, hadn't it just—

He blinked, and his eyes focused on Jon's—Jon's stale black eyes. That was when Matt knew, even through the fuzziness in his brain, that death was only another moment away.

Matt's eyes were closing again as his dulled sense of touch felt the bite. They tried to reopen in shock, in pain, in anything...but they didn't.

Chapter 2

"You ready?" Lars was sniffling and rubbing his nose.

Sven nodded.

"How many you going for?"

"As many as I can get," Sven said. "Just don't drip any of your cold on me."

Lars nodded, then turned away suddenly and sneezed. "I'm fine, must be allergies or something. Let's go, you got it."

Sven took a deep breath.

He squeezed his shoulder blades together and dug them into the bench. He fixed his grip on the bar one final time. Then, with a mighty heave, he lifted the 435 pound weight off the pins. Every muscle in his body tensed, his mind filled with a crystal clear focus, and the bar and its plates became a part of him.

Sven lowered the bar to his chest. He raised it. He repeated the motion, counting in his head. One. Two. Three. Four. Come on Sven. Five. Six. Come on, come on.

The bar began to slow. Sven strained under the bar, squeezing the hell out of it, squeezing it to death. Four more. Come on. Come on. Seven. There you go Sven, come on just three more. Let's go. Eight. There it is, you got it, you got it. He felt his face flush with heat and a numbness begin to creep down his forearms. His breathing came in short, ragged gulps between clenched teeth.

He lowered the bar for the first half of his ninth rep. When he began to lift the bar again, it stalled three inches above his chest. Lars's hands shot out at once, forming a shadow underhand grip under the bar, in case Sven's muscles failed and the bar began to descend. It didn't descend, but continued to hang in place, obstinate. Sven stared at it, willing it up with his mind. Just get it past the sticking point. Come on, let's go. But the bar just hung there, motionless.

Sven dug his heels into the floor, pushed even harder, and found a few more untapped muscle fibers to contract. The bar burst through its sticking point to just short of lockout. Nine. He had conquered nine. That's it. You got it. One more. Just one more.

Sven stared at the bar. I got this, this is all mine. Come on, let's go. He began to lower the bar to his chest for the tenth rep. His arms shook and his chest burned. His head felt like it was about to explode.

It's a good thing Lars is here, Sven thought, a great thing. And just as he thought it, he got the sense that Lars was moving backward, around the bench press and away from it. Sven couldn't look up or around to check for sure, but that couldn't have been happening, not when Sven was in the middle of what would probably be his final rep, and after having nearly failed on the previous one. Even if Lars had suddenly decided to spot Sven from the front, Lars wouldn't be switching in the middle of a rep so deep into a set as painful as this one. Lars was too experienced and careful a spotter to do that.

Then the shaking spread from Sven's arms and took over his whole body. He was losing control of the bar and he knew it. He was pleading with it now, trying to make his hands grip tighter, trying to recruit more muscle fibers by sheer strength of will.

Then Sven lost control.

The bar came down too fast, hit Sven's chest, and knocked the air out of his lungs with a painful whoosh.

But that wasn't supposed to happen, because Sven had a spotter! Lars had been there just a few seconds earlier, standing behind the bench press for situations just like this one. Lars was a veteran spotter, and he had never let anything like this happen before. Where had he gone? Why would he have gone?

Sven lay there, pinned and bewildered, as the bar began to crush him.

Chapter 3

Jane took a sip of her coffee. It didn't taste good. Maybe it was too much milk, or too much sugar, or maybe it was just too much coffee. She had begun to lose her taste for the stuff in the past few weeks.

Jane took one last, crunching bite of her sesame bagel, then tossed it in the trash. She emptied her half-empty coffee mug into the kitchen sink, shaking her head as she watched the vile stuff go down the drain.

Now came the moment she dreaded every morning—leaving for work. Jane liked her job well enough, and the hours weren't terrible, but it all just seemed so pointless. Sometimes she wished a big pile of money would drop out of the sky and land in her front yard. She would collect the heaven-sent loot, count it, quit her job, and do some traveling.

It's alright Jane, she told herself, there must be a few more corners to cut so that I can save up for a real vacation. Sighing, she reached for—

A pained moan came from the living room, interrupting Jane's morning self-pity self-talk.

Jane walked out of the kitchen, through the foyer, and into the living room. Vicky was in the exact position that Jane had left her in before she went to fix breakfast—sprawled out on the couch, under two large, heavy blankets. There were two boxes of tissues on the floor next to the couch, surrounded by used, crumpled up tissues in various stages of sogginess. One of the boxes was empty and lying on its side.

Jane was beginning to worry. Vicky did get sick a lot, but her colds never progressed so rapidly, and they never appeared so suddenly. Vicky had started coughing at five in the morning, and now, only a few hours later, she was completely indisposed, burning up with fever and getting paler by the minute.

Jane picked up the glass of water on the floor next to the couch. It was cloudy and had nasty looking particles floating in it—probably backwash. She took the glass to the kitchen, dumped out the water with its host of floaters, rinsed the glass out, and refilled it at her Brita faucet filter. Jane brought the glass back out to Vicky, and leaned over her prostrate roommate.

"You have to drink this, really."

Vicky moaned and turned away, trying to hide in the brown, woolen blanket around her shoulders.

"I'm serious, you're not gonna get any better if you don't drink your liquids."

Vicky didn't respond.

"Will you take it?"

Vicky still didn't respond.

Jane sighed, frustrated. "I'm going to put some of that fizzy vitamin C in it—you know, the kind that you like—and set it by you. Just promise me you'll drink it."

When Vicky didn't say anything, Jane said, "Okay, if you don't say anything then you promise."

Then Jane waited a moment for an answer, and when no answer came, she said, "There it is, you've promised to drink the water I bring out to you."

She went back into the kitchen, smiling to herself and thinking how clever she had just been. But the smile faded quickly as her thoughts turned to her sick roommate. Vicky looked like she was getting worse, and Jane was beginning to think she should consider staying home to look after her.

Jane set the glass down on the kitchen counter and opened the cupboard. She took a raspberry vitamin C packet out of a box in the cupboard, then closed the cupboard.

She was about to rip the packet open when a noise from outside made her jump. It was a simple scraping sound, probably nothing more than a squirrel scratching at a screen door, but the way it broke through the quiet startled Jane. Then the scraping stopped. Jane went to the window over the sink and looked outside. The street looked serene, empty. Must have been a squirrel.

Jane went back to the counter, ripped the vitamin C packet open, and tipped it into the glass.

Chapter 4

Sven could feel the droplets of sweat running off his forehead and down the sides of his angular face. It was an odd thing to notice, considering the circumstances. He couldn't take a full breath, and the bar was squeezing the remaining air out of his already-burning lungs. He was pushing as hard as he could, but the bar wasn't going back up, and he knew it wouldn't. Sven was only keeping it from crushing the life out of him, and he only had a minute or two at the most until his muscles failed and the bar made him very, very dead.

I need Lars, Sven thought in desperation. Where the hell is he?

With the bar's weight on him, Sven could only turn his head an inch or two in any direction, and there was a sharp, stabbing pain in the left side of his neck when he tried. Where was Lars? Why would he have walked away in the middle of the set?

Lars had been acting a little strange that day, sure, but he had just lost out to his arch-nemesis in the Virginia Beach Bodybuilding Pose-Off, so Sven hadn't thought much of it. But leaving Sven in the bench like that? That was more than strange.

Trying to avoid the stabbing pain in his neck, Sven took in his surroundings by moving only his eyes. He turned his eyes up, to the left, and to the right.

Lars was supposed to be there, spotting! That was his function when Sven was benching, and one of the reasons the duo worked out together, for exactly this situation.

Spinning his eyeballs around had gained Sven nothing. Lars was nowhere in sight. Sven turned his eyes up again, looking behind the bench now. That was where Lars was supposed to be, doing his spotting duty.

A bead of sweat rolled off Sven's forehead and into his right eye. He flinched at the sting, involuntarily relaxing his grip on the bar. The bar took the opportunity to sag further into his body, evoking a ragged, spluttering cough from the compressed strongman.

He managed a low rasp. "Lars..."

There was no answer.

"Lars..." He rasped again, a little louder this time.

Still no answer.

Each time Sven had called for Lars some air was let loose from Sven's lungs, and the bar had sunk lower, deeper into Sven's chest. His strength was failing, and his ragged gulps of air weren't finding their way home. He was suffocating.

Dead bench-pressers flashed in Sven's mind—the ones who died benching alone in their basements without spotters.

But that's not me, Sven told himself. I have a spotter! That's not my story. Where is Lars? Sven didn't want to be remembered that way, as an idiot bodybuilder that crushed himself in his basement, all the people judging and offering their opinions on his stupidity. It was better not to be remembered at all.

Sven's burning face pulsed, like his heart was beating out of his face, instead of out of his chest, as the expression properly went. Sven pleaded with the bar, pushing against it with all of his strength, but it went nowhere.

Then, as Sven continued to push, the bar began to move upwards. But it was only for a moment, and the bar immediately settled on Sven's chest again.

He would not be racking the bar. There were only two options left—roll, or tilt.

If Sven could roll the bar down his body, he would avoid suffocation. Now accepting that he was alone and had to save himself, Sven pushed his chest into the bar as hard as he could. He loosened his grip on the bar and tried to roll it forward. It didn't budge. Sven curled his back and tried to roll the bar again. This time, the bar rolled forward an inch, shooting pain through Sven's body as it shifted. His chest burned, and it felt as if his ribs were about to break.

The bar was stopped, stuck after its too-short journey. Sven couldn't roll it any farther. The weight was too heavy. If there were 200 fewer pounds on the bar, Sven could have done it with ease, if only...damn you Lars!

Stars entered Sven's field of vision, popping and crackling about as a searing pain began to ripple up and down his body. He would have to try to tilt the bar off. That was it. The last option.

Chapter 5

Milt sat comfortably at his custom-built battle station. He had designed it himself, so that he could sit behind it for hours at a time without having to get up. There was a time when Milt would have used the word bespoke to refer to the battle station of which he was so proud, until that rapper had ruined the word in that song...that song about dandy American lads prancing about. It made Milt shudder to think of it.

There were four bags of miniature Snickers candy bars on the desk next to his oversized monitor. A cooler filled with Coca-Cola bottles sat next to Milt's furry-slipper-clad feet. They were the good kind of bottles, the old-fashioned, glass kind. Plastic bottles were not suitable for a warrior of Milt's caliber. Those were for crass, stupid people—the losers. The only problem with the glass bottles was that they required a bottle opener, so Milt had three scattered about his desk. One of the bottle openers—the one he had used most recently—lay next to the unceremoniously torn Snickers bags.

The bottle opener's most recent victim stood balanced atop Milt's belly, which, over the years, had formed to become the most perfect of cup holders. The top of his belly became a stable, flat surface when he positioned himself in his battle station. Sometimes he had two Coca-Cola bottles set on top of his belly at the same time, and it could easily hold more. Right now, there was just the one bottle.

The front of Milt's comic book and video game store was curtained and had no displays, so that most passersby wouldn't dare to walk into the uncertain lair to disturb whatever inhabited it. For those that were adventurous enough to venture in, a huge neon sign greeted them as soon as they walked their unintelligent bodies through the door.

The sign read:

DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, NO MATTER HOW EXTENUATING YOU MAY INTERPRET SAID CIRCUMSTANCES TO BE, DISTURB THE OWNER AT HIS DESK—IN THE EVENT THAT YOU DO NOT HAVE ON YOUR PERSON THE EXACT CHANGE WITH WHICH TO PAY FOR THE ITEM YOU DESIRE, IT IS REQUESTED THAT YOU KINDLY AND HASTILY VACATE THE PREMISES.

There was a place at the counter where customers could drop off their money to pay for an item. Milt despised customers, but he was exceedingly proud of his store, so he submitted himself to the compromise of allowing the common people entry so that they may see—and covet—his collection, while prohibiting them from accosting him with their stupidity, which he believed to be contagious and transmittable through conversation.

Should a customer ignore the sign and attempt to confront Milt directly, Milt had two cans of pepper spray with which to remedy the situation. In the event of a confrontation, he could give the meddling customer a quick spray and get back to business without losing too much time dealing with the intruder. He had sprayed customers before, and it always got them to leave. Once, a sprayed customer had had the nerve to sue Milt for assault, or battery, or some such nonsense. The idiot judge had made Milt pay a fine, and that made Milt question whether he should keep his store open at all, but keep it open he did, figuring that all the other sprayings he had committed solved the problem without further incident of lawsuit, therefore future sprayings should, in all likelihood, not result in another dim-witted, though apparently legal, tongue-lashing.

Should nature call when Milt was engaged at his battle station, Milt had a way of dealing with that too. He had a way of dealing with everything, of improvising, innovating, and coming up with ingenious solutions to all kinds of problems. At his feet, in its own cooler, was an empty, liter bottle of Coca-Cola, with its top cut off. It made for the perfect urinary receptacle, and the ice in the cooler helped reduce the smell. There was also some raspberry potpourri in the cooler, and that helped the smell too. Notwithstanding all of these precautions, customers did sometimes ask about the smell. "Do you smell that?" the ninnies would ask. "Do you smell pee?" Milt always sprayed the urine-questioners, and got back to business. It was true that the store didn't always smell like a magical fairy tale, but that was war, and Milt, when he was engaged at his battle station, was at war.

Milt was fully engaged at his battle station now. The war was on, and he was so close.

Milt smiled, picked up the half-full Coca-Cola bottle on his belly and gulped down its contents greedily. Then, without taking his eyes off the screen, he felt around on his desk until his pudgy hand found one of the Snickers bags. He smiled again as he reached into it, remembering how smart he always was to tear the bags open before his grand work began. His well-cushioned palm and fingers closed loosely around two miniature Snickers candy bars. Milt pulled the bars out of the bag, and in a single, deft motion of his fingers, he popped the bars out of their wrappers, launching them on a brief flight through the air and into his mouth.

He gave the bars a sloppy chew. Some of his chocolate and caramel-infused saliva dribbled out over his bottom lip, collecting at the left corner of his mouth, like it always did. It dripped now and then, staining the shirt he was now wearing at the left nipple. Each of Milt's plain, white XXXL shirts was stained brown in the same place, at the left nipple. Milt knew this gave him character. The dribbling gave his mouth character and the staining gave his shirts character. Dried Snickers splotches of yesteryear decorated most of Milt's clothing, his store, and his living space, underneath the store.

The fragrance of the Snickers splotches, mixed with the fragrance of flat Coca-Cola, urine, and raspberry potpourri gave the place a distinctive air—it was the way the lair of a deadly warrior would smell. Milt was this deadly warrior, and he relished all that came with it. With great power, Milt knew, came great responsibility, and of course there were what some of the unenlightened would call drawbacks, but Milt knew better. Milt refocused his strained eyes, fumbled around for a fresh bottle of carbonated refreshment, opened it, and stood it up in its rightful spot on his belly.

Then he returned to clicking his mouse in furious fits, reaching up every now and again to feel for pimples on his scalp.

Milt was dimly aware of someone wandering around the back of the store—a stupid customer, probably. But as long as whoever it was didn't try to bother Milt by asking questions or trying to purchase something without the exact change to pay for it, Milt could ignore the wanderer.

Chapter 6

Sven's mind was frantic, and filling with thoughts of death. He tried to stay focused, but the tears that rolled from his eyes weren't just tears of physical pain. They were tears of anguish. He didn't want to die, and he was horrified that this was it—the end.

Sven closed his eyes and pushed his chest into the bar again. The bar had sunk lower, and it was in an even worse position. Though every movement hurt like hell, he kept pushing. He tightened the grip of his right hand, then slid his left hand around the bar, turning the grip to face him. Now his right hand was facing away from him and his left hand was facing toward him.

He pushed with his right hand and pulled with his left.

The bar began to tilt down to Sven's left, the left side of his chest taking more of the weight. The pain became worse, more focused. The bar tilted some more, and, at last, the plates began to shift. Sven told himself not to get ahead of himself. He wasn't out of harm's way yet, and he couldn't let himself get overexcited at the prospect of survival. There was still a lot of hard physical work to be done to get out from under the bar, and he knew he wouldn't be able to do it if he let his mind think the struggle was over, or even halfway through. Mental pacing and preparedness were key.

Sven was able to take a shallow, uncomfortable breath now that some of the weight was off his right side. He knew that if he could shake a few plates off the left side of the bar, he could get out from under it. He kept pulling and pushing, imagining that as he did so, he distanced himself from becoming the subject of a humiliating headline: "Greased-Up Bodybuilder Lifts Too Much, Crushed In Own Basement."

There were six plates on each side of the bar. Four of the plates were forty-five pounds, one was ten pounds, and one was five pounds. The heaviest were on the inside, and the smallest were on the outside. The two outer plates on the left side—the ten and the five—were the first to shift. They clanked to the edge of the bar and fell off. The sound of metal on metal bolstered Sven, but the four forty-five pound plates had only moved a few inches toward the left edge of the bar. Sven kept the bar on its tilt and wiggled it this way and that, moving it only a few inches in any direction, though his effort was enormous.

After one slow minute, one of the forty-five pound plates fell off. It clanked against the smaller plates. Sven didn't notice. All of his focus was on shaking the next plate off.

Seconds later, after the second forty-five pound plate fell, the remaining weight on the right side of the bar finished the job. The right side of the bar was now 105 pounds heavier than the left, and Sven supported the bar as it was pulled around his torso to the right. The plates on the right side came off in a jumble, and Sven pushed the bar, with the two plates still on its left side, off him with a weak, grating roar.

He rolled off the bench to his right, almost knocking his head against the plates. Now that the bar was off his chest, the pain was much worse. His left side felt destroyed. The skin and muscle burned where the bar had been, and there was a dull ache deep inside his ribcage. That wasn't counting all the muscles that had been pulled and strained in the struggle. But that was alright, because Sven had made it. The injuries would heal. He was going to live.

Sven's vision was blurry, his ears were ringing, and he was ready to throw up. He put his face in his shaking, battered hands, then pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes.

And that is why, he told himself, you never, ever, use clips when you bench. If he had, he would be dead. He never used clips at the gym, and there were none in his basement.

Benching doesn't kill people, Sven thought, clips kill people. He almost laughed hysterically, but anticipated the pain and stopped himself.

Crouched next to the bench, Sven was breathing in shallow gasps. He still couldn't breathe all the way in, and he considered sitting up to help the air get in—and to remedy his painfully dry throat—but it was too soon to be straightening up. He still needed a minute or two to recover, to appreciate the fact that he was alive.

Suddenly, a sound came from the back room of the basement, like a box falling. Sven's ears perked up. Maybe that's where Lars is, Sven thought, messing around with the supplies in there. But why would he be doing that? Growing angrier, Sven listened for more sounds, but none came. If he hadn't been in so much pain, he would have called out to try to find out what was going on in the back room.

After a few minutes, Sven's heartbeat had settled to a level just below panic, and he lifted his head out of his hands. He sat up on his knees, straightening up painfully, and looked down at his trembling body to assess the damage.

There was a deep red line where the bar had rested on his chest. The left side of his chest was turning purple already. Sven poked at it. It wasn't tender yet. He got up to his feet. More pain. The basement spun. He couldn't make the spinning stop, so he sat down again. After a few more minutes of ragged breathing, he got up.

The room had stilled enough for him to walk. He walked to the door to his storage room. It was more of a kitchen than a storage room. There was a sink, a refrigerator, two coolers, and shelves filled with non-perishable food supplies.

It was good to have a kitchen in the basement so that Sven could make himself a snack after working out. It was also good to have it there because Sven's basement doubled as a home theater. When friends were over, the storage room was the beer locker.

He walked with a hunch in his back, not due to a lack of back training, but because it hurt too much to straighten out all the way. It hurt to breathe. Sven reached for the door handle and saw the door was slightly ajar.

"Lars," Sven called. "Where the hell are you? I almost died in here."

There was no answer.

Sven pushed the door all the way open and walked into the storage room.

"Lars?" On impulse, Sven spun around to look back into the basement's main room. It was still empty.

"Lars?" he called again, this time it was a whisper.

Sven looked back into the storage room. The refrigerator was open. Not all the way, but enough that Sven could see the light peeking out of it.

So, Sven thought, Lars tries to kill me and jacks up my electric bill. Great. Where is that jerk?

Sven walked to the refrigerator. He took out a bottle of water and drank all of it. Water had never tasted so good. He closed the refrigerator, turning the storage room dark. He set the empty water bottle down on the counter, and his hand brushed up against something.

A sound came from deeper in the storage room where he kept the cat litter for Ivan. Ivan liked to play around in the storage room.

He reached for the light switch and flicked on the lights. A half-eaten sandwich sat on the counter next to the refrigerator. Sven picked it up with his thumb and forefinger. He sniffed it.

Nasty, Sven thought, I don't know how Lars can eat that crap.

He peeked around the refrigerator and in and around the shelves. No Lars there. No Ivan either.

Then he got some ice out of the freezer for his chest and some Burt's Bees' muscle balm off a shelf. He flicked off the lights, walked out of the storage room, and closed the door.

The sandwich was left alone, on the counter, in the dark.

Chapter 7

Milt grinned, and a half-chewed Snickers peanut toppled out of a fold behind his tongue, landing in the open Coca-Cola bottle sitting on his belly with a tiny plop. Milt nodded in approval when he heard the peanut's magnificent, sugary splash. He loved it when his two favorite energy-givers gathered together.

After taking notice of the plop, Milt blocked out his surroundings. He turned his peripheral vision blank. He focused all of his brain power on the screen. There was nothing but the battle for him now.

The Twelve-Gemmed Hammer of Azrael was almost in his grasp. Milt was slobbering now, but he didn't notice that either.

For World of Warcraft artifact collectors, the Twelve-Gemmed Hammer of Azrael was worth a lot of money. There was only one Twelve-Gemmed Hammer of Azrael in the whole World of Warcraft, and Milt was sure that if he got it, he could get at least $15,000.00 for it on eBay. It would be his greatest conquest yet. He had only to destroy the idiot dwarf that called himself Bane Brisgold the Dragon Slayer, and the almighty hammer would be his.

Bane Brisgold the Dragon Slayer was a stupid name for a dwarf. How many dwarves slew dragons? Milt didn't know any. Milt had a real warrior name. He was Miltimore the Sword-Wielder, an expert fighter and sword handler.

Milt had spent almost the entire month tracking Bane and the hammer, and now he had both of them ensnared in the next game chamber on his screen. All that was left to do was to go into that chamber, annihilate Bane, and seize the hammer.

It wasn't a matter of money anymore. Milt didn't need any money. He had been a well-compensated computer game developer in his previous life, and along with his savings from that job, he had stashed away close to a hundred thousand dollars from selling World of Warcraft artifacts on eBay. He had enough savings now that he didn't have to worry about money or actually selling anything from his store. That was especially true because Milt was smart enough to live in the basement beneath his store, so he didn't waste money on a house, above ground apartment, or anything stupid like that.

Milt was going to capture the hammer not for the money that it could bring him at auction, but for the glory of it. Milt was the best World of Warcraft player in the world—no, Milt was the best World of Warcraft player that had ever graced the planet with his wisdom. He was going to get hold of the hammer, play with it for a while, sell it, then win it back, and repeat the praiseworthy cycle.

A viscous slobber droplet fell from Milt's lower lip and landed on top of his protruding belly, next to his Coca-Cola bottle. Because the droplet didn't land at the regular droplet destination that was Milt's left nipple, Milt noticed, and realized that it was time for one last refueling before he entered the next chamber. Refueling before a battle was of the utmost importance, and Milt made sure that his brain was infused with all the sugar and fat it needed to function. That was why it was so unreservedly imperative to eat at regular intervals. Milt was no novice.

Milt felt around on his desk for two more miniature Snickers bars, grabbed them, and popped them out of their wrappers and into his mouth. He grinned as he bit into their chewy insides, remarking at his own incredible skill with the miniature candy bars. After his conquest came to fruition, he would reward himself with several Snickers ice cream bars.

He made himself stop thinking about that, there would be time for that later, and now was the time to be focused. Milt's grin widened as he thought about the hammer, but it could only widen so far, because the thick, sticky caramel, nougat, peanut, and chocolate paste in his mouth kept his grin from reaching its full magnificence.

He picked the Coca-Cola bottle up off his belly and gulped down the rest of its contents. That helped to clear his mouth of the goo. As he drank, the peanut that had gotten into the fizzy drink made its way through the mess in his mouth and lodged, most uncomfortably, in his throat.

Milt gagged and coughed and sprayed chewed Snickers bar fluid and Coca-Cola in a wide arc that covered all of his battle station. He sprayed and spun from left to right and back again in his chair until the evil peanut shot out of his mouth and plinked into his monitor. It didn't bounce off, but stuck by virtue of some caramel and chocolate on it. Milt watched, red-faced and still gagging a little, as the peanut began to slide its way down his screen, leaving a trail of candy bar goo behind it.

"You evil-doing ruffian!" Milt yelled at the peanut. "You, no doubt, are in league with that damned hooligan Bane the dragon-loving dwarf. I know what to do with treacherous scum such as you."

Milt waggled a pudgy finger at the peanut, wobbled some of his bulk in his chair to bend forward an inch or two, picked the peanut from the screen, and popped it into his mouth.

"Now I've got you where I want you," Milt said with the peanut lodged in a fold in his left cheek. "Do you have any last words?"

The peanut didn't respond.

"I thought not," Milt said, and crunched the peanut in a rage-filled chew. Then he opened another bottle of Coca-Cola and washed down the peanut particles with the delicious beverage. The Coca-Cola took care of the scratchy feeling in the back of his throat. The debacle staged by the treacherous peanut was over.

Milt gave his desk a quick survey to assess the damage to his battle station. There were fresh masticated candy bar and Coca-Cola spots all over. Some of the spots were little bubbling puddles with small bits of caramel and peanut scattered in them. Milt nodded. This was how a real battle station should look, one that was well-used and inhabited by a true warrior.

He turned back to the screen, and was relieved to see that Bane and the hammer were still in his ingenious trap. Now it was time to poke at his moronic dwarf quarry.

Milt focused hard on the screen as he probed around inside the folds of his right cheek with his tongue. He found a chunk of nougat, flipped it out of its fold with his tongue, and began to suck on it.

Then it all began to go wrong.

Chapter 8

Back in the basement's main room, Sven thought that something seemed off. Everything looked normal, but there was a strange, unnerving smell in the air. Sven couldn't place it, suddenly feeling confused at his own surroundings. Carrying the ice and muscle balm, he turned his back on the storage room and went upstairs. The air cleared, and the confusion left Sven's mind, leaving no trace that it had been there.

Sven lived in a house on Lewis Mountain Road, in Charlottesville, Virginia. It was the last house on the block right next to the University of Virginia Alumni Hall. The house had four bedrooms, not counting the basement. The floors were wood. There were four parking spots, not counting the front and back yards. It was a good old house, and like all good old houses, it had some character. It made lots of funny creaking noises, and it wasn't good at keeping the cold air out in the winter...or at keeping the hot air out in the summer. The lack of weatherproofing wasn't a problem, because the winters in Charlottesville were too mild to notice, and Sven tolerated the heat well.

Sven opened the door at the top of the basement stairs and strode into his living room. It was largely Spartan, but had all the basic living room stuff—a couch, a reclining chair, a bean bag, a TV, and a coffee table at the center of it all, cleverly positioned for the placement of food and drink items.

"Lars?"

There was no answer.

Sven sat for a moment while he rubbed in some muscle balm. Then, putting the ice pack to his chest, he walked around into the dining room. It was empty save for the seldom-used dining room table and the equally seldom-used chairs around it. He walked into the kitchen—no one there either. At least the kitchen refrigerator was closed, unlike the one in the basement had been. Where could Lars be?

Sven went outside and stood on the porch. The front yard was empty. Sven's SUV was parked in its spot. Lars's car was behind it. Sven walked into the driveway, and peered into Lars's car. Empty.

Sven walked around to the back of the house. There was no one in the back yard either. Sven walked back to the front of the house and stepped out into the street. He looked toward the University of Virginia grounds and up the street the other way. There were no cars out. That was normal. It was a quiet street.

Then he heard a scream—probably someone playing tennis or basketball across the street. As Sven surveyed the rest of his block, he saw some fast movement in his peripheral vision. He turned back toward the University of Virginia and caught the tail-end of a group of runners—no, sprinters—going north up Emmet Street. Sven thought it was a little strange that they weren't dressed for sprinting. They were just wearing ordinary clothes and a few had backpacks. Maybe it was a student sprint.

Sven shrugged, turned back to the house and went inside. As he was closing the door behind him, he heard another loud tennis scream-grunt. Whoever it was coming from really took her tennis seriously, it was blood-curdling in its terror. Must be a tough set, Sven thought.

Inside, Ivan Drago padded up to Sven and greeted him with a meow. Sven had adopted the Russian Blue from a rescue shelter three years earlier, and according to Sven's realty, the two of them were the longest-renting tenants in the house so far—apparently three and a half years was a record for the place.

Ivan hadn't been fond of people at first, and used to run away from everyone but Sven. Ivan was especially afraid of long, cylindrical objects like brooms and rolled up magazines, and when Sven noticed this, he tried to do the sweeping and bug-swatting out of Ivan's sight. Over time, Ivan had grown more comfortable with strangers and even with cylindrical objects, and had begun to act like a normal, contented housecat, but Sven still made an effort to hide the broom from Ivan. It had become routine.

Ivan meowed again, and Sven remembered something one of his college professors used to say: "When a cat meows at you, it's not to say hello. It's because he wants something."

That wasn't true, and as a cat owner, Sven knew it. Cats did meow to say hello. Ivan did it all the time. Ivan meowed for lots of other reasons too. He meowed when he wanted to go outside, and he meowed when he wanted to come back in. Ivan also meowed when he was pleased, and he meowed when he was displeased.

But Ivan was meowing now because he was hungry. Sven could tell because Ivan was meowing and trying to lead Sven into the kitchen. Sven obliged and walked into the kitchen where Ivan's bowl sat on the floor. The bowl was empty.

"Did you eat all your food already?" Sven asked. "I gave you your full ration just an hour ago. How'd you eat all of that so fast?"

Ivan stretched, brushed up against Sven's legs, meowed again, and then turned his green eyes up at Sven.

"You really like that liver huh?" Sven saw some of Ivan's wet food on the floor around the bowl. That wasn't like Ivan.

"Now here you go making a mess."

Ivan meowed.

"It's okay. I'll get you some more." Sven petted Ivan, and felt a searing pain shoot through his chest and neck. He flinched, and slowly straightened up again. He was trying to remember to limit his range of motion, so that he didn't end up any worse than he already was. Stupid Lars, Sven thought, I'm gonna have to ice myself and rest all week. What a waste of time.

That reminded him. Sven glanced at his watch and remembered he had a training session at eight that morning. It was already half past seven and the gym was a fifteen minute drive away. The session was with one of his most important clients—important because the client always paid on time—and Sven didn't want to ruin a good thing. He would feed Ivan and get on his way, injured or not. Then, Sven told himself, when I get back later today, I'm gonna have some serious words with Lars.

Sven jogged painfully to the cupboard for some of the canned wet food that Ivan enjoyed so much. He didn't mind giving Ivan some more food—the cat wasn't on a diet, after all. Ivan was very lean from running about the neighborhood, and he could be trusted to eat until he was full and then stop.

"I spoil you too much," Sven said to Ivan, who was padding around Sven and meowing. Sven opened the cupboard. There were no cans of cat food there. Sven thought he remembered the cat food being well-stocked, but maybe he was thinking of the shelves in the storage room. He wasn't sure.

Looking down, Sven was surprised to see a smear of a cat-food-like substance on the counter beneath the cupboard.

"Looks like I'm making a mess too. I'll get you a can from downstairs. Come on."

Ivan meowed.

Sven glanced at his watch again, feeling the stress start to build up. Lars was probably chatting up that girl at Mem Gym. What a good-for-nothing workout partner. She didn't like Lars anyway, she liked Sven. Sven had meant to take her out or something, but he never knew what to do with her besides work out. I should've taken her to that polo match at King Family, Sven thought. Even better, I should've had her spot me on the bench today.

Sven started down the stairs into the basement. Feeling that he was being watched, he stopped midway down and looked over his shoulder. Ivan was standing at the top of the stairs, looking down at him.

"Come on, Ivan. You come down with me."

Ivan wouldn't move.

"You want me to do your bidding while you chill out up there?"

Ivan didn't answer, but flicked his tail along the ground.

Sven shrugged and walked the rest of the way down the stairs. The pain in his chest, side, and arms was getting worse. His back was tight in a way that suggested it would be in a lot of pain later. He must have tweaked it in his struggle against the bar. He hoped that nothing was herniated. Damn that Lars.

Sven walked across the basement and opened the door to the storage room. When he let go of the handle, there was something cold and greasy in his hand. Cat food. There was more on the doorknob.

Then Sven looked up and a chill passed through him. He had found Lars.

Chapter 9

The vitamin C powder fizzed and bubbled as Jane poured it into the glass. She liked the sound. It was satisfying.

Jane got a spoon out of a drawer and gave the drink a bit of a mix. She took a sip of the vitamin C water. It was delicious.

Jane brought the water out to Vicky and stood over her.

"Okay," Jane said. "You've gotta drink this. It's gonna make you better, and then I really have to go to work, okay?"

Vicky didn't respond.

Jane stood there, glass in hand, watching Vicky lie there on the couch. Vicky was turned away, her face against the couch's backrest, gulping air in ragged gasps.

"Honey," Jane said, "you have to drink something."

Jane put her hand on Vicky's shoulder. It felt as cold as ice. She pulled. Vicky didn't budge.

Jane pulled harder on Vicky's shoulder. "Come on, turn over."

Vicky rolled over and looked up.

Jane shrieked and jumped backward, forgetting to keep her fingers tight on the glass.

The glass fell to the floor and shattered. The vitamin C water made a purplish puddle, punctuated by small shards of glass scattered in and around it.

The puddle fizzed.

Chapter 10

Lars was kneeling on the cement floor of the storage room. He was in the back under shelves of protein powder and meal replacement bars. Lars had his back to Sven, and was bent over something on the floor in front of him. He was doing something to it or with it. To Sven, it looked like Lars was moving something back and forth on the floor. Sven heard an unmistakable sound—squishy chewing. Here was Lars, sitting in a dark corner and sloshing something about in his mouth, having left to sit there in the middle of his spotting duties? It made no sense.

Squish, squosh, squoosh. Squish, squosh, squish. Squish, squosh, squeesh.

There was a smell too, a strange, cloying odor. Sven began to feel a numbness inching up from his extremities, and a dizziness—

He shook it off. "Lars? What the hell are you doing over there? I was this close to being crushed in the—"

Lars turned, and the ice pack fell from Sven's hand.

Sven stared at Lars in disbelieving shock. His workout partner's skin was grey. His eyes were a dull black, and blood oozed from between his lips. A chunk of what could only be cat food tumbled out of his mouth and landed on the leg of his black man-tard. Small bits of Ivan's wet food were strewn all over Lars, all over his skin and all over the man-tard. Cat food was all over Lars's mouth—cat food mixed with blood.

Sven stepped backward, uncertain of the sight before him and feeling more lightheaded with every second.

Had Lars mixed weight gainer shakes again? But that hadn't been this bad. Lars looked like he needed medical help. He looked extremely ill, maybe even on the verge of death.

"What happened? Are you okay?" Sven asked as he made himself reverse course and walk closer to Lars. Lars stared, black eyes unblinking.

The cat food-coated muscle man said nothing.

"Lars? Say something." Sven walked close enough to see what was on the floor. Lars was kneeling before six cans of Ivan's wet food.

There was cat food and blood all over the floor. There was cat food and blood all over Lars's fingers, mouth, and lips. That's where it was coming from—Lars's fingers and mouth. Sven flinched when he saw that many of Lars's fingernails were gone. Sven didn't understand what he was seeing.

"Did you open those with your fingers and teeth? Dude we have to get you a doctor, you're bleeding all over the place."

Lars said nothing. His black eyes were fixed on Sven. Then Lars opened his mouth. Bloody cat food cakes rolled out. He must have cut himself on the cans, Sven thought, he must be really sick, I have to get him to a—

Lars groaned. It was a low groan, filled with what sounded to Sven like anger.

"Come on let's get you up," Sven said, but he didn't walk any closer to Lars to help him. Something was keeping Sven back—Lars seemed wrong. Sven stood a few feet away from Lars. Then Sven made himself take a step forward. He had to help his friend. But his eyes, and his skin, what's wrong with him?

Sven took another step forward, deeper into the wooziness that was now gripping his body. Lars kept up his mute, black-eyed stare. Sven put out his hand to help his friend. Looking at his own hand, he saw that it was trembling, but he couldn't really feel it, it was as if the sensation in his hands and feet had been dampened.

"Come on," Sven said, thinking that he might need a doctor himself if he kept feeling like this. Lars groaned again, then he raised his right hand and grabbed Sven's arm just above the wrist.

"Alright," Sven said, resenting the fact that Lars had thought it necessary to grab him that hard. Sven pulled. Lars's body began to rise, but then sank back down. Lars was pulling hard on Sven's hand, but he wasn't trying to get up. Sven made a move to get in front of Lars for some more leverage, but he couldn't do it. Lars was pulling on Sven's wrist too hard.

"Let go, man. I can't get you up if you don't help me."

But Lars wouldn't let go. He pulled on Sven's wrist with more force, and Sven had to grab hold of a shelf support to keep himself from falling down on top of Lars.

Sven felt like his wrist was caught in a vise. He tried to wrench his hand free but Lars wouldn't let up. Then Lars's gaze seemed to shift from Sven's face to Sven's forearm. Lars's mouth opened wide—too wide—and he began to pull Sven's forearm into his gaping mouth. Black saliva and bits of bloody cat food dripped from Lars's mouth. The droplets landed on the floor in front of Lars and on the short legs of his man-tard.

Thoughts of rabid dogs flashed in Sven's now unsteady mind. Sven pulled harder. He had to get free. Lars might have some kind of disease, and even if he didn't, there was no sense in getting bitten. Sven pulled on the shelf support with his free hand. An enormous case of meal replacement bars tottered closer to the edge. Sven pulled again, harder this time. And then he pulled again.

Lars wasn't letting up, but the case of meal replacement bars was getting closer to the edge. Sven's muscles were beginning to fail, and it seemed like Lars could go on forever. The pain in Sven's upper body from his near-death bench press encounter was agonizing.

Then Lars's bloody, cat-food spattered teeth were less than an inch away from Sven's forearm.

Sven braced himself for the bite.

Just then, the case of meal replacement bars fell from the shelf. It struck Lars on the side of the head. Lars's death grip loosened and he slumped over onto his left side. Still pulling when Lars loosened his grip, Sven fell backward, sitting down on top of the cold ice pack.

Some of the feeling began to return to his extremities, the room stopped lurching. Sven's heart raced. He was free.

Chapter 11

Milt heard a commotion in the back of the store. It sounded like someone falling, and was followed by a plainly brainless moan. The back part of the store was full of ancient DVDs and even more ancient video games—a section of primordial classics. There was even a Commodore 64 computer back there to set the mood. Milt wasn't sure if anyone had ever bought anything from that section, and he wouldn't be surprised if not one item had ever moved from it. The common people had no taste, and couldn't appreciate the rarity and wonder of the wares in the back of the store. The newer, more plebeian stuff was in the middle of the store, toward the front, and it moved better.

"Please refrain from physical outbursts," Milt shouted without turning away from his screen. "Pretend that you are cultured. This is a sophisticated establishment. Please make an effort to recall your etiquette training, though I doubt you have had any."

Milt belched some caramel and listened for a retort from the ninny in the back, who, Milt suspected, likely did not know what etiquette training was. He regretted not closing the store for this battle—so much pride hung in the balance. The fool in the back would no doubt only distract Milt, and leave without purchasing anything.

No response came from the disturbance-causer, probably because he was stumped by Milt's clever words.

Milt blinked and retrained his eyes on the screen, choosing to forget the distraction for the present moment.

The time had come. Milt entered the chamber where the naive dwarf Bane waited, trembling in his magical video game boots.

"I have come for the Twelve-Gemmed Hammer of Azrael," Milt clattered into his keyboard. "If you surrender it to me without incident, I shall consider sparing your pathetic life. I assume, of course, that you know who I am, as I am sure my reputation precedes me, and so I suggest that you do not attempt anything foolish."

Milt had no intention of sparing Bane's life, but it was nice to toy with his victims a little before dispatching them to the netherworld.

"Yes, I know who you are," Bane's character typed back. "But you will never defeat me, for I have the hammer, and you are naught but a thieving, dishonorable scoundrel."

A pleasant outrage seeped into Milt. He was surprised by the dwarf's audacity, but Milt loved verbal jousting, and he would best the dwarf in banter before dispatching him to the gates of hell.

Milt was about to type a taunting response to the knave's foolish challenge when there came another noise from the back of the store—a loud rattle this time—followed by a crash of breaking glass and the scraping of plastic.

Milt couldn't spare the time to get up and look back there. Instead, he yelled, "Stop that racket this instant or I will be forced to retaliate. You are on notice that I expect you to compensate me for all of the damage that you have no doubt inflicted on that most precious part of my store. The items in it are truly irreplaceable and invaluable. You stay right where you are and ready your cash reserves."

Milt was angry now, and had to have two more miniature Snickers bars to refocus his energies on the task at hand.

Milt began to type a belittling response to Bane, "I know you are but what am—" when he noticed that Bane was no longer in the room with him. What? But how could that be? Did that coward sign off and think that he could escape that way?

Then Milt noticed that it was his own internet connection that had gone dead. But that was impossible!

Milt huffed and puffed and knew that it wasn't impossible, for his internet provider was Time Warner, and of all the dastardly evil-doers that made up the internet provider oligarchy, Time Warner had no challenger as the worst.

Seething and gurgling nougat, Milt dialed Time Warner's customer support, which he had on speed dial on his phone, and was preparing a barrage of insults when the whole middle aisle of the store was tipped over and came to a clattering, video game case-breaking crash. That put Milt at a point of infuriation that he wasn't sure he had ever experienced before.

Milt put the phone down—he wasn't getting a dial tone for some reason—put his hands on his desk and used them to spin his great bulk in his chair to face the long open room of the store.

Then he saw the man—was it a man?—the thing, that had caused the ruckus.

Hyperventilating, Milt forgot about Bane, and began to fish his inhaler out of his pants with his left hand while fumbling for another Snickers bar with his right.

The empty Coca-Cola bottle that rested on Milt's stomach toppled as he panicked. It made a dull clunk on the carpeted floor beneath him, and did not break.

Chapter 12

Ivan was sniffing around the kitchen, wagging his tail and looking for a treat. He liked treats. He liked fish treats most of all. Sven usually fed him by now. Why hadn't Sven fed him yet? Maybe it had to do with the bad smell. The bad smell was bad. Some bad smells said stand and fight. But this bad smell said run and hide. It was a very bad smell. Ivan didn't like bad smells. Couldn't Sven smell it? It was getting stronger, and Ivan was finding it hard to focus on his search for fish treats. Ivan wasn't even sure he still wanted a fish treat with that smell lingering in the air. Ivan hoped Sven would finish playing with his clanking toys and come up to give Ivan a treat. Was Sven playing with his clanking toys? He had been earlier, but Ivan couldn't hear any clanking now. Sven liked to clank. He was probably clanking the toys. Ivan shook his head, and decided that if Sven didn't come to feed him soon, Ivan would go downstairs and give Sven a good, hard bite.

Chapter 13

Lars lay in a heap on the floor. Sven watched him, not knowing what to expect. A few moments passed. Lars groaned. It was a soft groan this time.

"Lars?" Sven said. His voice was a squeak, and he expected no answer.

There was none.

Lars gathered himself up on his hands and knees. Then he began to crawl toward Sven. Lars's mouth was closed again. He made no noise as he crawled. Much of the blood around his mouth and fingers had dried. Lars had grown even paler, making the dried blood stand out more. There was a grey tinge to him now. It wasn't a bad weight gainer that had done this to Lars. No, it was definitely no weight gainer.

Sven scrambled to his feet and took a step backward. Then he took another, and another. Lars was still crawling toward him. Sven took another step backward and bumped into the edge of the counter by the door. He felt for the doorway, and without taking his eyes off Lars for a second, Sven backed out of the storage room and closed the door.

He heard another groan through the closed door. He didn't know what to do. He stood outside the door, unable to think. Sven's mind wasn't carrying its weight, but was flopping around like a fish on mud.

The door to the storage room didn't have a lock.

Upstairs, Ivan hissed.

Chapter 14

"Vicky?" Jane asked. Jane couldn't believe what she was seeing right now. Vicky's head looked like a popped popcorn kernel—a grey popped popcorn kernel. There was no color in her face, and her head bulged in places it shouldn't bulge in, and sagged in placed it shouldn't sag in.

"Are you alright? Hey, I'm gonna get you to the hospital, okay? Vicky?"

Vicky rolled off the couch and crashed to the floor, her arms at her sides and her legs together like a grey popped popcorn kernel soldier.

Jane bumped into the TV stand behind her and realized that she had been backing up all the while. She reached out with a hand to steady the TV and then looked back at Vicky.

Vicky began to flop over toward Jane, turning as she went. Vicky groaned and flailed one of her arms as she flopped. To Jane, Vicky looked like a diseased rag doll rolling its way across the living room floor.

The glass shards crunched as Vicky rolled over them. Then her arms were outstretched, reaching for Jane.

Jane shrank back farther, her body filling with cold terror. It was obvious that this was no ordinary cold. She knew that she had to help Vicky, but she wasn't going to touch her. She couldn't, there was something wrong about her...and the air—there was a funny smell in the air—a wrong smell. It smelled like spicy, rotten fruit jam. The room began to sway...or was Jane swaying? She couldn't tell.

Jane felt a pang of guilt for not reaching out to help her friend, but something was stopping her. Jane began to edge around the TV stand back toward the kitchen.

Vicky's groans grew louder and more frequent, and it seemed she might be trying to stand up.

Jane noticed, for the first time, that her own cheeks were wet from crying, and that her hand was outstretched in front of her, as if she were still holding that glass of vitamin C water.

She had just gathered her thoughts enough to know what to do next—it was hard with that smell in the air—when a not so faraway scream distracted her for a second.

Jane looked down at the thing that was crawling toward her, and as the room's swaying became more violent, she forgot her next move.

Chapter 15

He stood outside the storage room for a moment longer. Then, feeling cold, Sven picked up his shirt from the floor next to the bench and put it on. He stood in the basement and listened. Slow shuffling noises were coming from inside the storage room.

Sven dragged his bench press over and put it in front of the door, blocking it. He put the bar in place and, working through the pain, loaded it with all of the plates he had. Sven looked at what he had done. It should keep Lars in the room. But would it? Lars was so strong. Sven stood there a moment longer, his mind blanking again.

Ivan hissed, snapping Sven out of the sudden trance.

Sven went upstairs and found his cell phone. He dialed 911 and paced with the phone to his ear.

"Your call cannot be completed as dialed," a robotic voice said. "Please hang up and try again."

Sven dialed 911 again.

"Your call cannot be completed as dialed. Please hang up and try again."

Sven dialed 911 one more time, with the same result. He tried some of his other workout buddies, including Brian and Lundgren, each of whom was resourceful and would help in a tight situation. He tried his mom, his lawyer client, Memorial Gymnasium across the street, Gold's Gym, his favorite online bodybuilding supplement retailer, Yuan Ho Chinese Restaurant, Asian Express Chinese Restaurant, Whole Foods Market, and Ivan's vet.

None of the calls went through.

Sven gave up, and with growing agitation and discomfort, tossed the phone on the couch. He walked into the kitchen, trying to figure out what to do next.

Then he heard scraping coming from the basement, and—

He at last saw what had displeased Ivan. There was a man in the back yard. It was Sven's neighbor, Bob. Bob's house was behind Sven's. Bob was a tennis fanatic, and sometimes he managed to drag Sven out onto the tennis courts. Tennis was not Sven's sport—he carried too much brawn for it. But it was nice to watch.

Sven stared out of the kitchen window at Bob. Bob wasn't moving. It looked like he wasn't even breathing.

Sven unlocked his back door and stepped into the back yard. He noticed that Bob looked thinner than usual. He was wearing his tennis clothes, complete with head and wrist bands, and he was clutching a tennis racquet with both hands. He just stood there, like a statue, his grey skin much greyer than usual.

Then Sven knew—this was the start of a very bad day.

Chapter 16

Jane watched Vicky stand up. It had taken a few minutes, and horror-stricken though she was, Jane couldn't make herself turn away. She was frozen in place, staring, the whole time.

Vicky's whole body had creaked as she made her way up from the floor. It took Vicky several tries, propping herself up, and then falling back to the floor, as if she had forgotten how to make her body work, how to coordinate her limbs in time.

Vicky was up now, and Jane found herself trapped by the cold, dark gaze of her roommate, who, Jane was now sure, was not exactly her roommate any longer. Jane's body was rigid, and though she was willing herself into action—any action that would take her away from her transformed roommate—she could barely manage a shudder.

"Vicky..." Jane said, her heart pounding in her ears. "Vicky? What's happening? What's wrong with you?"

Vicky groaned in answer, and began to stagger toward Jane.

Jane drew in a breath and tried to move her feet. They were so heavy, as if they were glued to the floor...and that smell, it was making her want to throw up, like she was turning into mush on the inside and her body needed to expel it. She tried to get her legs to move, but her muscles were frozen solid.

Of all the stupid images she could've pictured at a moment like that, Jane was now picturing a frozen, unthawed chicken breast under warm running water. If her legs were the chicken breast, and her mind the water, the thaw would take too long and...and what? What was Vicky going to do when she reached her?

Vicky dragged herself to within a few feet from Jane. Vicky raised her arm, bumping it clumsily into Jane's shoulder. Jane recoiled but still couldn't get her legs moving. Vicky's hand tried to grab, but the rickety, uncoordinated fingers closed on air.

Vicky shuffled closer. Her mouth opened, and a thin string of drool began to make its way from her bottom lip to the floor. The string broke when it reached knee level and plipped onto the floor a few inches from Jane's foot. Jane still couldn't get herself to move, the muscles in her legs were clenched so tight now that they burned. Run, she kept telling herself, run, get out of here.

Vicky's head came to within inches of Jane's face. Vicky's mouth was snapping open and shut in violent motions, sending the whole of her body into seizures with each snap, as if Vicky had no control over her limbs at all.

When Vicky snapped at Jane's neck, Jane's instincts finally, mercifully kicked in. She reacted, falling backward away from the bite, and kicked out with her leg, striking Vicky in the knee.

Jane fell backward onto the floor. The air was clearer there, and the fog in her mind and numbness in her body let up. She remembered where she was, who she was, and she remembered that she had to survive. It didn't matter what was happening, she was going to survive.

Chapter 17

Sven had seen this movie before. He had an idea of what was going on, but he had to make sure.

"Bob," he said. "Wake up Bob. You wanna hit some balls today?"

Bob said nothing.

There was a faraway scream.

"It's a great day for tennis, weather's perfect."

Bob just stood there.

"Nice headband, where'd you get it?"

Bob still said nothing.

Nodding in understanding, Sven picked up a branch and waved it at Bob. It was a soft branch, so instead of poking Bob as Sven had intended, the branch only caressed the immobile tennis player.

After a few tender, leafy caresses, Bob raised his head. Sven jumped back, dropping the branch.

After Sven regained his composure, he retrieved the branch and resumed the caresses, aiming the branch at Bob's face this time.

Bob's eyes snapped open to reveal dark, glaring eyeballs in too-loose sockets—just how Lars had looked in the basement. Then the tennis player's head tilted sideways, snapping his neck, and sending Sven tripping backward over his own feet to fall onto the grass of the back yard.

There was another scream, much closer now.

Bob's mouth popped open, and he began to sputter and pop toward Sven, clicking and gnashing his teeth. Sven got painfully to his feet, ran around the chomping tennis player and went back into his house, locking the back door behind him. From the kitchen window, he watched Bob make his awkward way to the back door. Then Bob began to bump into the door. He kept at it, bumping the tennis racquet against the door over and over again. He never tried the knob.

Chapter 18

The knee kick sent Vicky staggering backward several ungainly steps. Then she stopped, steadied herself, moaned and resumed her pursuit. As she drew closer again, her dragging feet picked up shards of glass and scraped them along the floor.

"Stop!" Jane screamed, unnerved by the scraping shards stuck in Vicky's feet. "Just stay over there, and, and I'll get help. Just stay on that side of the room. Okay? Don't come over to this side, okay?"

Vicky groaned and kept coming.

Jane remembered her gun. It was upstairs in the bedroom. She wanted to get it, but she'd have to go around Vicky. What was she even thinking? She couldn't shoot Vicky. Was Vicky still Vicky? What was wrong with her? What was with the biting? People with colds and even the flu didn't try to bite other people...right? I don't know, Jane thought in exasperation, I'm an accountant not a doctor!

Vicky was getting closer, her saliva splattering the floor as she went.

Forgetting that she could get up, Jane crawled backward without taking her eyes off Vicky. She crawled until she bumped into the wall behind her and had to veer left, into the kitchen. Once Vicky's staggering body was out of sight, Jane found it easier to concentrate. She got up, shook herself, and closed the kitchen door. She looked around the kitchen for something to prop against the door. Her eyes settled on the wine refrigerator. That would have to do. She dragged it over and set it in front of the door. At least the door opened inward—that was something.

Muffled by the glass of the kitchen windows, Jane heard a faraway scream. It was unmistakable—pure terror.

Jane's mind began to race as she stared at the small wine refrigerator in front of the closed door, and listened to Vicky's dragging, scraping feet out in the hall. Jane knew she had to get out of the house, and she cursed herself for ending up in the kitchen with only the one door. She looked at the windows over the sink. She could try to jump out if it came to it. She began to look around the kitchen, thinking about what to do next. Her eyes came to attention when they fell on her 32-piece, stainless steel knife set. She walked over to it. Jane felt her heart beating in her chest as she closed her left hand around the handle of the largest knife in the set. The plastic handle was room temperature. She pulled the knife out and stood there for a moment, thinking. Then she opened a drawer and took out a long, two-pronged weenie fork.

Holding her knife and fork, Jane turned back to the door.

Chapter 19

Sven locked his front door and then submitted his body to agonizing pain by pushing the couch up against the door to the basement. Afterward, he hobbled upstairs to his bedroom where he retrieved his backpack and gym bag. He put on a pair of nylon track pants, a loose t-shirt, and his most comfortable pair of cross-trainers—a pair of Asics. Sven took his emergency supply of protein bars out from under the bed and put it in his gym bag. Then he grabbed all three of his stainless steel water bottles and a portable water filter and threw all of them into the gym bag.

Sven didn't pack any clothes—except for his man-tard, which he put in his gym bag by rote. Realizing that he had packed it made him think of Lars, in his now bloody cat food-coated man-tard in the basement. They had gotten their man-tards together. Lars had introduced him to the man-tard. Before Lars, Sven hadn't known there was a male equivalent of a leotard. Man-tards made lifting so much better. The mind-muscle connection that man-tards enabled just couldn't be matched. Sven was crouched over his gym bag now, clutching the man-tard. He nodded his head, and as he did so, a single tear rolled down his well-muscled cheek. The tear fell, landing soundlessly on the man-tard.

Sven pulled himself together and carried the gym bag and backpack downstairs to the kitchen. To the gym bag he added the first aid kit that he kept on top of the refrigerator. He filled the three water bottles and put them back into the gym bag. Sven opened his cupboards and cursed under his breath. He kept all the good stuff in the storage room downstairs. But he couldn't go there now.

Out of the cupboard Sven took a small bag of dried pineapple and papaya, a box of oatmeal granola bars, and some uncooked rice. He put all of these into the gym bag. Sven looked at the bag that was now bulging. He took the rice out and put it back in the cupboard, figuring that wherever he was going, he wasn't going to be cooking rice. Then he took a small bag of Ivan's dry cat kibble out from under the counter and stuffed it in the outer pocket of the backpack.

"This is your ride," Sven said to Ivan, pointing at the backpack. Ivan looked up at him and tilted his blue head to one side.

Sven took a pan out from under the counter and set it on the stove. He turned the stove on. Then he picked Ivan up and found an angle at which both he and Ivan could see Bob bumping and grinding against the back door.

Sven pointed at Bob. "You never liked him did you?"

Ivan hissed.

"Smart cat." Sven gave Ivan a smelly fish treat, which Ivan gobbled happily. Then Sven put Ivan back down, and put the bag of fish treats in one of the backpack's small outside pockets.

When the pan was hot enough, Sven took out two ribeye steaks that had been meant for his post-benching meal. He seared each to perfection, all the while trying to silence the voice in his head telling him he better enjoy them, because they would be his last. Sven plated the steaks in overlapping slices, and carried the plate into the living room. Ivan followed. Sven sat down on the floor and began to eat the steaks. He started with a knife and fork, then put the knife and fork aside and used his hands. Sven devoured the meat while Ivan lapped at the steak juice that collected at the bottom of the plate.

It occurred to Sven to turn the TV on and see if the news had anything to say about what was going on. He wiped his hands, got the remote, and turned the TV on.

The first channel that came on was all static. Sven flipped around and saw that most of the channels were just static. Thinking that was all in a good day's work for Time Warner, he nodded to himself as he chewed and kept on flipping.

The first channel that worked was Comedy Central. The caption on the screen read, "Strange Flu Outbreak Grips Commonwealth of Virginia." There was a reporter on the screen. She looked uneasy and pointed behind her. She said, "The CDC is handling the matter and asks that if you reside in Virginia, you stay indoors until the matter is resolved."

Sven gnawed on one of the rib bones. The reporter went on, "The flu symptoms are rather unusual but the CDC insists there is no cause for alarm. Special field units have been dispatched to—"

The channel cut out and the TV screen filled with static. Sven looked down at the bare rib bones in his plate. His stomach growled against the backdrop of Lars's scraping downstairs, Bob's bumping outside, and Ivan's tongue smacking as he worked on the steak juice in the plate. Sven picked up the remote and flipped around some more. He found another working channel—the Oprah Channel. There was a news report on that one too, but with no caption on the screen.

The reporter said, "The Virginia flu outbreak has been traced to—" and the channel cut out. The TV filled with static once more. Sven had had enough of Time Warner and its static, so he turned the TV off.

Maybe he should have turned the TV on before he cooked his steaks. Maybe then he would have heard more about what was happening. He shrugged, walked back into the kitchen, and seared another ribeye.

Chapter 20

It was clear that Ivan didn't want to get in the backpack. Sven pleaded with him, but Ivan just wouldn't listen.

"Come on, we have to get out of here," Sven said. "Just get in and we'll talk about it later."

Sven pointed at the backpack in frustration. "Please? We really have to go. I promise we're not going to the vet. Would I lie to you?" That was probably the problem. When they went to the vet, Ivan usually traveled in the backpack, and Sven figured that Ivan suspected this was a vet trip.

Ivan meowed in defiance as he danced around the backpack, hitting Sven repeatedly with his tail.

"Come on," Sven said, still pointing at the backpack. "We're really not going to the vet, and I won't close the top of the backpack all the way. You can peek out as we go, so you can jump out and run away if something happens."

Ivan turned away from Sven and waved his tail.

"Okay, okay, I'll get you some beef jerky. How about that?"

Ivan got in the backpack.

"That's all it takes," Sven said, and he put on the backpack and picked up the gym bag. He got his car keys and made for the front door.

Something in the basement overturned as Sven was walking to the door. He stopped for a moment, and then he heard the screams.

Chapter 21

Lorie was trying to finish her eggs. She knew she had to finish them, and the toast too. Her breakfast would be her fuel for the race. But she was too nervous, and her stomach wasn't cooperating. Lorie always got that way before track meets, and today was the most important meet so far. She cut away a piece of broccoli omelet with her fork and stared at it.

Evan was next to her, eagerly lapping up spoonfuls of Fruit Loops. Lorie looked into his bowl. There were only three fruit loops left—one blue and two yellow.

"Do you actually like that stuff?" Lorie asked. "The milk doesn't even look like milk anymore, it's all blue and purple and orange in places."

Evan looked up at her as he sloshed another milk-drenched loop into his mouth. "These are great. And blue milk is better than regular milk. It's sweeter."

"Milk isn't supposed to be sweet, Evan. Everyone knows that."

Evan picked up the bowl of cereal and slurped up all of the brightly-colored milk. He put the bowl down, turned to Lorie's plate, and looked thoughtful. "It looks like mine is better than yours. At least I want to eat mine. You're just playing with your green omelet."

"Am not. I'm just not that hungry."

"You shouldn't play with your food."

Lorie smiled. "I'm not playing with it." It was good to have Evan around. It made for much less boring breakfasts, even though he liked those silly cereals that she had no taste for. Lorie also liked Evan's dad, and Lorie's mom liked Evan's dad, and they all hung out together and it was fun. It had been a little weird when their parents first got married, but now it was starting to feel normal, a lot like things used to feel like back when Lorie's dad had been around before he—

A shattering sound came from the living room.

Lorie was on her feet at once, calling into the living room. "Mom? Are you okay?"

No response.

Lorie began to walk toward the living room threshold. "Mom?"

No response.

"Come on," Lorie said to Evan, and he got up to follow her.

Lorie's mom and Evan's dad had been taking their breakfast on the balcony off the living room. They often took their breakfast out there, outside and away from Lorie and Evan. They liked their privacy.

As Lorie was about to cross into the living room, there was another shattering sound, and Lorie was hit in the face with a rancid, too-sweet smell that stopped her in her tracks.

Chapter 22

Sven realized that the screams were coming from the front yard. He looked out the window into the yard but saw nothing. The screams continued, unabated.

He could only get a full view of the yard if he went outside, and he had been on his way out until the screams began. Now he stood there, uncertain.

In the basement, something heavy fell, its sound adding to Sven's uncertainty.

Sven turned to the door to the basement that was blocked with his couch. He turned to the front door. The screams seemed to be subsiding. Sven went back to his kitchen and looked out the window. Bob was gone.

"Here we go," Sven said to Ivan, and opened the back door. Ivan's head and front paws stuck out of the backpack, his paws perched on Sven's left shoulder. Sven found himself thinking that it was a fun day to be a cat.

Sven walked out and shut the door behind him. The back yard was empty. He made his way around the back of the house and walked through the driveway. The straps of the backpack bothered his benching injury, but carrying the food-loaded gym bag bothered the injury more. Both were necessary, he knew, and grossly inadequate if what he suspected was happening, really was happening.

Sven let out the breath he'd been holding since he walked out of his house. His mid-size SUV was still there. From somewhere beyond the car, the screamer, though apparently losing steam, kept screaming. Sven put his bag down on the driver's side of the car and rushed around to see what was happening.

It was Bob. His tennis racquet was on the ground and he was bent over something. Was he the one screaming? No, he was bent over someone...someone else.

"Hey," Sven said, "what are you doing over there?" It wasn't unusual for Bob to be in Sven's back yard, since Bob and Sven shared a driveway and sometimes Sven saw Bob doing skinny guy calisthenics back there. It was weird, but it was alright by Sven. Sven got to use Bob's three extra parking spots whenever he wanted, so he wasn't about to complain about Bob's back yard Pilates. But Bob was in Sven's front yard now, and he wasn't doing Pilates.

Bob turned, and when Sven walked closer he finally saw the screamer. It was Bill, the mailman, or at least what was left of him. Sven's jaw dropped and he walked backward into the pokey hedge. Bob began to get up from his crouch over Bill and locked his dead black eyes on Sven. Bob's face was covered in blood and gobbets of flesh, his arms were covered in gore up the elbows, and a four inch piece of intestine hung out of his mouth, suspended, apparently mid-swallow. Bob and the parts of Bill's flesh that covered the cannibalistic tennis player began to stagger toward Sven in uncoordinated spasms.

Even while Bob approached, Sven's eyes were drawn back to Bill, who lay in the gore of his own evisceration. Finally, his screams died down to whimpers, and the whimpers died down to nothing. Bill lay still.

It was so hard to look away from Bill's destroyed body. The carnage was mesmerizing, even to the non-violent Sven, who, after much difficulty managed to unlock his gaze from the dispatched mailman and turn his head in Bob's direction. Sven's eyes narrowed and he gritted his teeth as he fought the creeping numbness that was suddenly nipping at him again, now that Bob was close.

"You bastard," Sven said. "You killed Bill. But—but why? But what? What are you doing? And what's wrong with you?"

Bob didn't reply, his stupid, bloody grin didn't move, and he kept shuffling across the lawn toward Sven, dribbling blood and bits of flesh.

Sven ran around the slowly-shuffling Bob to the tree in the very front of the front yard. It took Bob a few seconds to register that Sven was somewhere else before he began the fit of spasms that turned his uncoordinated body around. From under the tree, Sven picked up the E-Z Curl Bar that he used for biceps curls. When the weather was nice Sven liked to work his arms on the front lawn. He loved it when people passed by and admired his physique. Some would roll their eyes—the jealous ones. Sven knew that his arms were something to be shown off. And most importantly, Ivan approved, always keeping Sven company during the front lawn arm-pumping sessions.

Sven looked at the bar in his hand, then around at the bloody mess in his yard. The bar wouldn't be enough on its own to make up for it. Sven picked up four of the ten pound plates on the ground and put them on one end of the bar. He clipped them, then let the bar hang from his right hand like a club. It swung at his side as he waited.

Bob shuffled closer. It'd be nice to swat at Bob with his own tennis racquet, Sven thought, but that meant touching it, and Sven didn't want to touch anything Bob had touched. The bicep bar would have to do. As Sven patiently waited for Bob to shuffle closer, more screams came, some distant, and some not.

Chapter 23

Bob was close enough now. Sven took a breath, steadied himself, squeezed the hell out of the bar, and swung. The plates on the end of the bar hit Bob square on the left temple. Bob's head exploded into a shower of dry, grey flesh, covering the hedge behind him. The headless body stumbled on toward an open-mouthed Sven for a few dragging steps, then collapsed. The blow had left Bob's headless body with a dry stump at the neck.

But why not a wet stump? Wasn't it supposed to be a wet stump? Sven's junior high school math teacher, Mr. Newman, had loved to threaten students by saying, "I'm gonna rip your head off and spit down the wet stump." Sven didn't understand the gravity of this threat until years later—until now.

Looking at the dry stump, Sven wondered what Mr. Newman would have to say about this. He had been a good math teacher—one of the best. Mr. Newman would know what to do with Bob.

Sven shook his head and retreated from the flashback of his junior high school math class, leaving young, puny Sven and his protractor behind.

The headless tennis player's hands clawed at the ground and his legs still moved like the legs of those wind-up toys when they fall over. Then he was still.

Sven dropped his makeshift club and let out a ragged breath, feeling shaken and confused.

There was a faraway hissing, and then it was closer, and then Sven was back, stepping backward out of the body's tainted odor. It was Ivan—Ivan was still hissing.

"It's okay now," Sven said, and reached back with his left hand to pet Ivan on the head.

"He's done, his tennis days are over."

Ivan bit Sven's finger. Not hard enough to get to the bone, but hard enough to draw blood. Sven winced, pulling his hand away.

"Why'd you—"

Something grabbed Sven's ankle. He looked down at the hand and understood at once why Ivan had been hissing. It was Bill's hand, but Bill had been killed, hadn't he? Sven wriggled his ankle free and turned around, again getting a whiff of the syrupy odor, which a back part of Sven's brain was starting to connect with the mind and body-numbing effects he'd been experiencing in the past hour.

Most of Bill's torso was gone. There were exposed ribs and pieces of organs strewn about, but nothing that could hold Bill's lower half and upper half together. But Bill's top half was moving, moving away from his lower half! His hands were opening and closing, reaching for Sven's feet. Bill's mouth was opening and closing too, the teeth clicking much too hard against each other.

The bottomless mailman looked up at Sven, locking on with his one remaining eye. Like the others Sven had seen so far, the eye was a dull, empty blackness, and it was a relief to look away from it into the empty socket of the missing eye. The mailman inched forward, pulling himself along with his hands and chin, putting distance between the remains of his torso and his torn, motionless legs.

Bill's mouth ate grass as it gnashed its way to Sven, who knew that it wanted more. It wanted flesh. It wanted Sven's meaty calf. Sven could feel it in the black stare of the mailman's remaining eye. Sven stared in utter disbelief as the disconnected top of the mailman kept coming, it was so sickeningly terrible, it was so—Ivan snapped him out of it with a frustrated meow.

Sven shook himself, patted Ivan on the head—to maintain his own grip on reality and not at all to comfort Ivan—and walked to his car. He unlocked the car, threw his gym bag on the passenger seat and set the backpacking Ivan down in the passenger seat's foot well. Sven turned the key, and the engine started.

"Thank God for that," Sven said, thankful that bit of horror movie cliché was not coming to pass.

Ivan meowed.

"That would have sucked, if the car hadn't started."

Ivan didn't respond, maybe because it was obvious, or maybe because he was a cat and was beyond such mundane discussion.

Sven rolled the windows down a few inches so he could hear the outside world—the now dying outside world? He didn't want anything to sneak up on him. He pulled forward so that he could get out from in front of Lars's car, backed out of the driveway and turned onto Lewis Mountain Road, putting the University of Virginia grounds behind him.

Killed Bill, who was not quite killed all the way through, kept on inching his way across the lawn, forgetting his legs behind him.

Chapter 24

Jane didn't have to wait long as she stood turning her knuckles white with the squeezing of the utensils. She had been in the kitchen for what seemed like only a few moments before the sound of dragging footsteps stopped outside the door. Something began to scratch at the door in short, fitful bursts, then stopped.

Jane swallowed, her eyes fixed on the door. Then she scratched the top of her head with her fork and wiped the sweat from her forehead with the back of her knife-wielding hand. She looked at the wine refrigerator and realized that she wanted a drink. It probably wasn't the best time for one, she thought, but then she changed her mind. It was the best time for a drink. How could there ever be a better time?

Jane edged closer to the wine refrigerator. The door of the little refrigerator was facing sideways relative to the door of the kitchen. She wouldn't have to turn the refrigerator to get a bottle out. That was good.

She held her breath as she put the knife and fork down on top of the refrigerator. She kneeled in front of the wine refrigerator's door and cracked it open, then listened. She heard nothing, so she opened the door a bit more. Then she listened again. She still heard nothing, so she opened the door farther, just enough to take out a bottle. There was still no noise from outside the kitchen.

Jane reached her hand into the wine refrigerator and closed her hand around the neck of a bottle. She lifted it, and began to pull it out, inch by tedious inch. When she had gotten the bottle halfway out of the refrigerator, the scratching came again, more frantic than before. Jane yelped and almost dropped the bottle, banging it against another bottle in the wine refrigerator. She cursed under her breath, pulled the bottle all the way out, and taking the knife and fork up again, she retreated to the back of the kitchen, clutching the wine bottle and her utensils.

The wine refrigerator sat in front of the kitchen door, its own smaller door ajar. Jane looked at it, but decided she wasn't going back over there to close it. It was unplugged now anyway.

Abruptly, the scratching grew louder.

Jane set her knife, fork, and bottle down on the counter. She opened a cupboard, stood up on the tips of her toes, and reached in. She took out a large, long-stemmed wine glass, and set it down next to the bottle. Then she looked around the kitchen, trying to remember what came next.

She remembered. She opened a drawer and took out her favorite foil cutter and a corkscrew. The foil cutter was built into a skunk figurine. The corkscrew was an ordinary corkscrew. Jane used the skunk to cut the foil off the top of the bottle, then uncorked the bottle with the corkscrew. The scratching stopped in time with the pulling of the cork.

Jane looked at the skunk and sighed. It had been a gift from Vicky. She was going to help Vicky and everything was going to be alright. She just needed a drink first.

After filling her glass to the brim, Jane took two large gulps and sighed. Then she looked at the bottle. It was a semi-dry Viognier from a local vineyard. Jane thought it was a bit too sweet for semi-dry, but she was sometimes wrong about these things. At that moment, the wine tasted like the most wonderful thing in the world, despite any possible inaccuracies in its avowed sugar content.

Jane picked up her glass again and brought it to her mouth. She took another big gulp, and just as she was in mid-swallow, there was a loud bang on the kitchen door, and then another, along with a tearing, splintering sound. Jane choked, spluttering wine out of her mouth. Some of it went on the floor, some went back in the glass, and some went on her hand, which she had brought up by reflex.

Jane's mouth dropped open in astonishment when she saw it.

Vicky's hand was sticking through door, boring its way through a mess of jagged splinters. There were splinters sticking in Vicky's hand and arm, but that didn't stop the arm from thrusting in and out of the hole it had made, from turning and twisting and digging out a wider opening for itself.

Then the arm retreated back through the hole, and was gone. It left just a little bit of blood around the splintered wood. Jane was surprised there wasn't more blood, because it looked like the splinters had cut Vicky up pretty good.

Hyperventilating, Jane picked up the bottle of semi-dry Viognier and began to pour herself a fresh glass. Then she stopped herself. What was the point of that? This was a serious enough occasion to obviate the need for all formalities. Jane brought the bottle to her lips and took a few healthy swigs. Some of the wine dribbled down her lip, and she wiped at her mouth with the back of her hand.

Then there came more banging, and two sets of Vicky's fingers were through the hole in the door, pulling at the splinters and rough wood, trying to make the hole bigger.

I have to do something, Jane thought, feeling trapped and hopeless. She looked at the wine bottle for answers and took another swig.

Then she took up the knife and fork again, and took a step toward the door, careful to stay away from Vicky's probing, excavating hands.

"Stop it Vicky," Jane said. "Vicky? Do you hear me? You're very sick, and you have to stop it. Okay? Can you hear me? Are you listening?"

A low, angry moan came through the hole in the door. Or was it a hungry moan?

"Seriously Vicky, I mean it. Stop it, or I'm gonna have to defend myself. I don't want to hurt you. Don't make me."

There was another moan.

"Really, don't make me. Please?"

Vicky tore a large piece from the middle part of the door. It wasn't big enough to get through, but at the rate Vicky was tearing through the door, it wouldn't be long until it was.

Jane knew she had to stop that from happening.

She was feeling the effects of the wine now, and slurred her words. "That's it Vicky, I'm sorry but I have to."

Jane brought the fork up and stuck it in Vicky's left forearm. There was little effect. A drop of what Jane could only interpret as stale blood leaked down one of the fork's tines, and dropped to the top of the wine refrigerator. Vicky's hands kept on scraping away, as if Vicky felt nothing. Another chunk of door came away with a hollow rending noise.

Jane shook her head, withdrew the fork, and fork-stabbed Vicky again, in the other arm this time.

That also had no effect, so Jane withdrew the fork again, and fork-stabbed Vicky again, in the shoulder this time—the shoulder that was now peeking through the rapidly enlarging hole in the door. Vicky still didn't react, and Jane didn't try to get the fork back this time. She left it sticking out of Vicky's shoulder, skewering its last weenie dog.

Feeling more light-headed than she should have from the wine, Jane backed deeper into the kitchen. "What am I going to do with you?" She picked up the wine bottle and took a panicky gulp. The wine was getting warmer, and didn't taste as good as it had when it was cooled to its appropriate drinking temperature.

Jane picked up another knife for the hand that had previously held the fork. She didn't know what to do next. Should she try to kill Vicky? Was Vicky still alive? And what the hell was that smell?

The knob began to shake, and the door rattled on its hinges.

"Don't come in here," Jane yelled, trembling. "Don't you dare. I'm late for work and you're making such a mess. I'm not gonna clean all of this up, that's for sure."

Jane looked at the Viognier, shrugged, and downed the last of it. Why not?

Then, with a rattle and the sharp splintering of wood, the door came off its hinges.

At first, Vicky tried to push past the dislodged door while it was still in front of her, jammed between her and the wine refrigerator. That wasn't working, and after too short a time, seemingly by trial and error, Vicky staggered backward, letting the door fall outward, away from its frame, and away from the wine refrigerator.

Then Vicky reversed, lurching forward again, and shambled straight into the wine refrigerator. It was as if she didn't see it in front of her. She bumped into it, backed up, and then tried to walk through it again, repeating the process.

"Now look what you've done with the door," Jane said, brandishing the knives at face level. "Stop it, or I'm gonna cut you, I'm not kidding this time. It'll be worse than that fork sticking out of you."

Jane pointed a knife-wielding hand to the fork sticking out of Vicky's shoulder.

"I'm gonna cut you right in the face."

Vicky walked into the wine refrigerator again, and she was getting the hang of it. Each time she walked into it now, she edged it a little out of position. A path was opening up through which she would soon be able to stagger.

"Now don't you come in here," Jane said. "I'm warning you."

Jane ran up to the wine refrigerator and pushed it back into position while Vicky was backing up from a bump against it. Vicky reached out and tried to grab Jane, but Vicky was too slow and awkward in her movements. Jane sidestepped out of the way and swiped at Vicky's outstretched arm with a knife. It put a gash down the length of Vicky's forearm. Vicky didn't react, and no blood came out of the gash.

Vicky reached for Jane again. Jane backed up now, and began to look for a way out. Could she get around Vicky? It didn't look that way. Vicky was slow-moving enough, but the space was too small to get around her without getting grabbed, and if there was one thing Jane wanted to avoid, it was Vicky's grip and slobbery, diseased mouth—although the mouth looked much drier now than it had before...not that a dry mouth meant Jane was into it, of course. Vicky was trying to bite her, of all things. The gall of some people!

She and Vicky weren't working out as roommates anyway, Jane thought, and wished there was a man around to help, someone bigger than Vicky.

Jane gave the empty Viognier bottle a sad look, picked it up, and threw it at Vicky's head.

"Take that you beast," Jane said.

The bottom of the bottle made a nice thunk against Vicky's forehead. Jane was proud of the throw. I should've kept up with my softball team, she thought, and then wished there was a bat that she could swing at Vicky's head. She gave a quick thought to retrieving another wine bottle and swinging that, but decided it was better to avoid getting too close to the wine refrigerator, where Vicky was now doggedly stumbling back and forth, intractable in her pursuit of Jane.

Jane backed yet deeper into the kitchen. She turned to the window, and saw her way out.

Chapter 25

Lorie tried to shake off her sudden disorientation. She felt off-balance, like she was about to fall over, like the feeling she got when she stopped too suddenly after a sprint, only worse. She instinctively backed away from the entrance into the living room, bumping into Evan.

"Hey," Evan said, "watch it."

Lorie felt better at once. "There's a weird smell in there, like..." but Lorie found that she didn't know how to describe it. "I wouldn't breathe in if I were you." Lorie didn't want to breathe it either, but she thought her mom might have been hurt, so she had to see what was the matter.

She pinched her nose, stared at Evan until he rolled his eyes and did the same, and walked into the living room. Two of the lamps by the sofa, one an antique, were smashed to bits on the wood floor.

Lorie felt a stab of regret on seeing the broken antique lamp. It had been her grandmother's, and her grandmother had always tried to keep her from playing with the patterned beads that hung from the lampshade. But they had been fun to play with, and made a fun jangling sound when—

Then Lorie saw her mom, and immediately forgot her grief over the ruined lamp.

Chapter 26

But it wasn't that easy.

Jane pulled and pushed on it, but the damn window just wouldn't open far enough for her to get out. It was hard to reach to begin with, being positioned above and behind the sink, and even when Jane climbed into the sink, she couldn't get enough leverage to budge the old, stubborn thing open wide enough.

Deciding on an alternate course of action, Jane climbed out of her perch in the sink, and took out a heavy cast iron pan from under one of the counters by the stove. She swung the pan at the glass. The pane cracked and broke, but not completely, so Jane kept swinging at it. As Jane beat on the window with the pan, the wooden cross-hatchings on the window began to crack along with the glass, and Jane knew that given just a little more time to work on the window, she would be able to break out and escape.

But time wasn't forthcoming. Jane heard a scrape, and turned to see that Vicky was now in the kitchen, having pushed past the wine refrigerator.

Jane reached for a knife with her non-pan hand, just as Vicky—much more deftly than before—grabbed for Jane's reaching hand.

Vicky's fingers closed over Jane's wrist just as Jane's fingers closed over the knife's handle. With a strength that startled Jane, Vicky began to pull Jane's hand up, toward her dry, gaping mouth, toward cracked, broken lips that resembled the lips of a person who had just come crawling out of the desert, lips too dry to bleed.

"Let go of me!" Jane screamed, struggling against Vicky's grip.

Jane's mind began to flutter off somewhere as she looked into Vicky's eyes, as she couldn't help but stare into them, powerless to resist the cold feeling that now washed over her.

No escape.

No way out.

She began to scream, and barely heard her own voice.

Chapter 27

Milt took a few puffs of his inhaler, then picked up the empty Coca-Cola bottle and held it in front of his belly like a shield. He gulped down some aromatic, battle station air, then belched in fright.

He had read enough comic books and played enough video games to know exactly what he was looking at right now. It was a zombie—one of the walking dead.

Milt wondered for a moment if the zombie had walked into the store that way, and if he had been too preoccupied with procuring the Twelve-Gemmed Hammer of Azrael to notice.

No, Milt thought, I certainly would have noticed a zombie walking into the store, wouldn't I have? Milt thought it was more likely that the zombie had walked in as a man, and transformed into a zombie while browsing the store. That meant that there was a zombie virus running amok, and—wait a second, zombies? There was no such thing as zombies, this was just some idiot troublemaker trying to scare Milt—probably the landlord's costumed agent. Milt was well aware of his landlord's contempt for Milt and the comic book store, and this was just the kind of thing his landlord might do to try to intimidate Milt into leaving.

"I am afraid your crass tactics are not going to have any effect on me," Milt said, fury filling his fat cheeks as he spoke. "You and that villain Mr. Trevena are going to have to compensate me for all of this damage. And let it be known that I shall never leave this place. It suits my temperament quite perfectly."

The man in the zombie disguise moaned in response.

"Are you listening to me, you ruffian? Answer me! Are you unable to formulate a rejoinder on account of your trifling wit? Perhaps a higher concentration of mono-syllabic words is in order. I will not leave here. And that is a poor mask. Mr. Trevena would have made a better zombie au naturel than you do in your absurd makeup and thrift shop attire."

Apparently, a rejoinder did occur to the man—part of his lower jaw fell off. It landed on the carpet and bounced twice before sputtering to a stop by Milt's bursting furry slippers, which were straining admirably against the pudgy girth of Milt's feet.

Milt reexamined the man's mask and observed bite marks on the man's face and neck. There were chunks of flesh missing, and with the piece of lower jaw now missing, Milt could see the man's tongue hanging out and askew, raw bone and jaw muscle peeking out from behind it.

Milt considered this for a moment.

So it was not a mask. Milt's mind found itself struggling for purchase, as his body put forth a commendable, though unattainable effort to recruit muscle fibers—any muscle fibers—into action for immediate flight from this obvious predator.

Milt had to do something quick, or the zombie was going to get him. It was lurching toward the battle station, getting closer with each rigid spasm of its legs. Miltimore the Sword-Wielder would know what to do, and in a timid, unbelieving sort of way, Milt knew what he had to do too.

A karate yell flew from Milt's mouth.

It had no effect on the approaching zombie, so Milt struggled to his feet and lumbered his great body around to face the wall behind his battle station. From it, his shaky hands pulled his replica, 39 inch Conan the Barbarian Sword of Crom, which he had modified to resemble Miltimore the Sword-Wielder's sword by coloring the hilt black and darkening the blade with charcoal, so it looked more like a sword that was used, and not one that just hung around for display purposes. Milt figured that Miltimore the Sword-Wielder used his sword, and its gleam would have dulled over time by way of contact with blood, bone, sinew, gristle, wine, women, and the countless other adventuring objects that Milt's replica sword was never to encounter...until now.

The sword looked authentic, and it felt that way too. It was heavy, and it was a product of sound planning that Milt took care to eat well, or he might have more difficulty wielding the sword than he already did.

As the zombie approached, a quick realization dawned on Milt. For years, he had made a ritual of sharpening the sword with stones. He did this while he watched the Conan movies and polished off Snickers ice cream bars, usually as a reward for another glorious life conquest—in the virtual world. The last time Milt had done this was last month, when he set the record for the longest World of Warcraft continuous playing session at eighteen days, four hours, thirty-two minutes, and seven seconds. When Milt had woken up at his battle station two days later and realized the enormity of his accomplishment, he took his sword down into the basement, popped in the first of the Conan movies, got out his sharpening stones and ice cream, and set to work.

Now he knew there had been a reason for all of that. All the while, he had been preparing for this moment, for this day. The monster had leapt off the comic book page to confront Milt, and Milt was ready.

Milt raised the sword in front of his body in a shaky, awkward jiggling of arms. The zombie reacted to Milt's sword-brandishing by moaning and hastening its stumble toward the battle station, its ruined jaw gyrating sideways, click-clacking as it swiveled.

Locking eyes with the revolting jaw gyration, Milt raised the sword over his head, feeling a sticky, chocolate-infused part of his shirt come unstuck from his body.

Then, when he judged the zombie close enough, Milt belched up some peanut shards, and brought the sword down with all of his sword-wielding might.

Chapter 28

As soon as Sven turned out of his driveway, he saw them.

Lewis Mountain Road wasn't a very wide street, but it wasn't very narrow either. It fit four cars shoulder to shoulder.

Ahead of him, Sven saw bodies in the road, similar in complexion to the things he had encountered so far that day. The ones in the road stood, pale and deflated, and Sven knew they would be hungry.

There were four of them, scattered about the street. They didn't look at each other, and they didn't react when Sven pulled out, shifted into drive, and began to creep up the street toward them.

The closest one was Charlie, who lived three houses up from Sven. Charlie was 34 years old, and lived at home with his mother. The two of them owned a popular Scottish Pub on the Corner, called The Pub. Charlie liked to call it, The Pube. Sven thought this was very funny, but he also understood that most people couldn't appreciate that kind of basic humor. It wasn't crass like everyone said, it was just good, basic, caveman humor. You had to have a certain level of testosterone in your body to understand it, and Sven did. Poor Charlie, Sven thought, he had a lot of potential.

The next was Linda, a professor of economics at the University of Virginia. She had always been very nice to Sven, and when he saw her that way—the way she was now—he had to look away. Linda lived across the street from Charlie, and at the moment she was standing across the street from Charlie too.

The next grey bodies were farther down the street. They stood together, and Sven didn't know who they were. Judging from their backpacks and relative lack of pudginess, Sven guessed they were college students.

Sven drove up the street at 10 miles per hour, being careful to...he wasn't sure what exactly, just being careful. Ivan had found a comfortable spot in the passenger seat's foot well next to his backpack, and was cleaning his face with a paw.

They passed Charlie and Linda first. Neither Charlie nor Linda moved. They both looked pale, emaciated, and very obviously in need of medical attention, if medical attention could do them any good at this point. Sven rubbernecked, overcome by a dreadful curiosity, then made himself drive past his now-former neighbors.

The two college kids were farther up the street, in the middle of the road. Sven saw that he would have to drive around to their left to avoid them, because there was a car parked on the right side of the street next to where they stood.

Unlike Charlie and Linda, the college kids did react to the car's movement, and from a distance. They each raised their heads, locked their black eyes on Sven, and began to creep in the direction of the oncoming car.

Sven's mind flashed on that movie, The Happening. Everyone Sven knew hated that movie, but he liked it. It made sense, it was about how people were screwing up nature and nature would come back to get them one day. It was bad to mess with nature. Sven had a feeling that whatever was happening that day, like in The Happening, was happening for a reason. Something was out of balance, and the illness that was now ravaging his street was probably there to restore the balance, except Sven hoped he wasn't part of the balance restoration. Right now it was a matter of living long enough to find out.

When he drove closer, Sven saw that the college kids were an item. Their fingers were laced together and they wore matching outfits.

As he drove around the staggering couple without any trouble, he noticed their skin. It looked dry as paper, like they were all dried up, devoid of moisture. Sven glanced at the rearview mirror. The grey couple had begun to turn after him. Whatever joy they were sharing they would not spread to Sven, Sven was getting the hell out—

"Help!" a woman's voice screamed. "Someone, please! Help me!"

Sven searched for the imperiled screamer, but saw no one.

"Sven!" the voice screamed, startling Sven into slamming his foot on the brakes. It was Jane.

"I'm trapped in here! She's trying to..."

Sven took his foot off the brake and careened into Jane's driveway. He hit the brakes, raised the windows all the way, and put the car in park. He could see Jane now, through her kitchen window.

He got out of the car, put Ivan in the backpack, and slung it on. Leaving Ivan in the car to roast—or worse—was out of the question. The sick people were unusually strong, and Sven was sure they could break into a car for something they wanted, maybe for a cat. As long as Ivan rode in the backpack, he would be able to make a run for it if something happened to Sven.

Sven leapt painfully from the driveway onto the front lawn, then ran to the window where Jane was. Seeing the state she was in made his heart drop. She was screaming, and flailing a knife and cast iron pan at her clearly diseased roommate, who looked just how Lars had looked, and was trying to bite Jane's arm.

Without a word, Sven tore the screen off the outside of the window, then began working on the window itself, which he quickly realized was jammed.

It was designed like many of the windows in his own house, so that it could be pushed out from the inside. Sven pulled at the bottom of the window, but it wouldn't move. It was stuck, and there wasn't enough clearance for Jane to get out through.

Sven pulled hard on the left bottom corner of the window, ignoring the stinging pain in his chest. The corner came free, providing a narrow, slanted opening in the side of the window that still wasn't practical to climb out through.

Jane screamed again, flailing harder with the pan and knife, inspiring Sven to redouble his window-pulling efforts. Jane had already begun to climb through the gap between the frame and the side of the window that Sven had managed to slant outward. Her right leg dangled out the window as she pushed into the frame with her shoulder, still flailing her kitchen gear at Vicky. They pushed and pulled together, Sven pulling with all of his weight, Jane leaning against the window with hers.

Then there was an awful tearing pain in Sven's chest, and the window broke the rest of the way out of its frame with an impressive snapping of wood.

Jane fell from the window onto Sven, but she didn't come down all the way.

Her left leg was caught.

Inside the kitchen, Vicky had hold of Jane's calf, and was pulling it toward her open mouth. Most of the way out the window and supported by Sven, Jane swiped at Vicky with the knife, having lost the cast iron pan in her fall.

The knife lodged in Vicky's cheek, but Vicky was dogged in her struggle for Jane's prized calf. Sven wasn't going to let Vicky win. He wrapped his arms around Jane's middle and pulled.

They fell backward onto the grass. Jane was free, and her calf was whole. They lay there panting for a moment, Sven telling himself this was no time to lie down, pain or no.

Then Jane screamed again.

Vicky's gnarled hands and raggedy parts of her forearms were still latched on to Jane's shin. One of the forearms was detached from the rest of Vicky's arm well below the elbow, and the other forearm was detached just above the elbow. The clinging body parts looked bloodless.

Jane's eyes were half-closed as she lay panting, as if she could get away from Vicky's detached hands and forearms by refusing to acknowledge their presence. She crawled backward, away from the house, but Vicky's clingers remained.

Jane looked at Sven, her eyes pleading. "Get them off me, please."

Sven reached for the twitching hands around Jane's shin. Reluctantly, he began pulling on the fingers. When Sven pulled on one finger, the others would tighten, and when he let go of one he had pulled, it went back to its place, holding on to Jane's shin.

Confused by this, Sven looked up. Vicky was looking down at him with sunken black eyes and a gaping, hungry mouth. The tattered stumps of her arms were pointed at him.

Sven swallowed and resumed pulling on the fingers. He was less delicate now, snapping the digits off one by one until the hands were fingerless and could be pried off.

When the hands were removed from Jane, Sven turned to find Ivan watching them from a comfortable spot at the bottom of Jane's lawn. Sven felt his empty backpack. Ivan must have jumped out during the window-pulling.

Jane's eyes were wide as she stared up into her kitchen, where Vicky stood framed by the broken window. "Let's get out of here," she said, wiping at her face. "Please, please let's go away from here."

Without a word, Sven put Jane in the car, set Ivan in her foot well, got in, and started the engine.

Chapter 29

The sword stuck.

This kind of thing never happened to Miltimore the Sword-Wielder, Milt thought. He had barely been able to keep his grip when he sliced through the zombie's head. Then the sword caught on something impenetrable at the base of the monster's neck. Letting a shudder jiggle its way through his body, Milt knew he would never forget the slippery rattle that had made its way down the sword as it lodged in place.

The blade had hit the zombie's head off-center, and had come down through the zombie's right eye.

The right side of the zombie's head began to fall away, exposing what Milt interpreted as dehydrated brain matter. It made Milt think of smoker's brain, if there was such a thing. It looked like the analog of smoker's lung—shriveled and brown and not healthy-looking at all.

The monster began to fall forward, and Milt was overcome by a wave of revulsion. He let go of the sword and stumbled backward into his battle station, stepping into the Coca-Cola cooler with one slipper-clad foot and knocking over his urine receptacle with the other. A smell hit him then—not just that of the urine pouring onto the floor or the iced raspberry potpourri toppling out, but a strange, curious smell that seemed to be coming from inside the zombie. Of course Milt knew that zombies were rotten creatures, and yet the smell wasn't that of decay as Milt would have expected. It was...it was...well, it was wonderful.

Reflecting on the marvelous odor, Milt fell backward onto a Star Wars theme chess set, removing it from mint condition status with a decisive crunch. Milt's body was pumping adrenaline too furiously to take notice of the jagged chess piece fragments digging into his padding.

Milt huffed and puffed and finally rolled upright onto his knees. He looked down at the twitching zombie with its head split open, lying in a pool of iced urine and raspberry potpourri. Then Milt proceeded to hurl as he had never hurled before.

As he expelled the contents of his voluminous, multi-compartmented stomach—a Coca-Cola-coated mass of partially-digested miniature Snickers bars—Milt remarked at the lack of blood flow from the zombie corpse. It was as if the zombie's flesh were all dried out.

That made Milt picture bags of salted zombie jerky hung up for sale in the Wegmans meat aisle.

With that salty vision clear in his mind, Milt's hurling hastened.

Chapter 30

"Mom? Mom? What's wrong?" Lorie walked into the living room to find her mom on the floor, slumped against the couch cushions. Lorie was holding her nose, and on a different occasion, hearing her own nasally voice might have made her think of those people on TV that inhaled helium and then talked like chipmunks—not today. Her mind was filled only with fear and concern for her mom.

Lorie put her hand on her mom's forearm, and gasped at how cold the skin was to touch.

"Are you okay? Can you get up?" Lorie asked in her nasally voice.

Lorie's mom didn't respond, and Lorie looked over her shoulder for Evan. He was standing at the entryway to the living room, unmoving, as if under a spell. Lorie saw that he wasn't covering his nose like she was. She pointed sternly at her own clamped nose, but he made no response, as if he didn't see her or what was happening in the living room.

"Mom?" Lorie shook her mom by the arm, hoping for a response, but there was none. Her mom's other hand lay still on the shaft of a shattered lamp.

She must have pulled it down when she fell, Lorie thought. Looking at her mom's face, Lorie couldn't believe how pale she was, and how loosely her eyelids hung open, as if her eyes had gotten smaller and retreated further into the back of her head. Lorie pulled on the forearm again, and there came a tearing, popping sound from her mom's shoulder that made Lorie stop, aghast.

"We have to get help," Lorie said in panic, looking over her shoulder at Evan.

Seeing that he wasn't moving, Lorie began to get up to call an ambulance. There was something very wrong and Lorie needed to get help. As she was getting up from her crouch, she felt something cold. It grabbed and squeezed her wrist hard, very hard.

Surprised, Lorie took her fingers off her nose for a second, then replaced them as soon as she could smell that foul, too-sweet odor again. Feeling suddenly disoriented again and turning back to her mom, Lorie saw that it was her mom that had grabbed her wrist and was holding it tight, and...her eyes, her mom's eyes, they weren't right in their sockets anymore, they weren't her mom's eyes, they were...they were all dark, dull black, like dusty marbles, and they were wrong. They were so wrong.

Horrified, Lorie struggled to free herself from the ice-cold grip, but she wasn't strong enough. She wanted to use her other hand, but she was too afraid of the smell in the air to take her hand away from her nose. So she dug in with her feet against the floor and tried to wrench her hand free, but it was no use against that grip. Then Evan's dad was there, stumbling in from the balcony, and, and his eyes were black too, and he was so pale, and so uncoordinated. What was happening? It was like a nightmare, like her and Evan's parents had become monsters.

This has to be a dream, Lorie told herself. What else could it be? She thought about uncovering her nose and taking a deep breath. Then she would certainly wake up. But something kept her from doing it. It all seemed too real to be a dream, and her wrist hurt so much—that was too real to be a dream.

Lorie's mom began to pull on Lorie's wrist, and Lorie wasn't strong enough to resist. The mouth under the dull black eyes fell open, and Lorie understood what was to happen to next if she didn't get away.

She began to struggle fiercely, kicking her legs and trying to pull her wrist free, but keeping the fingers of her other hand firm over her nose. It was no use. She was being pulled closer, and the muscles in her arm, shoulder, and back were burning, beginning to give out. She wasn't strong enough.

Lorie looked up as her mom was pulling her hand into her mouth and saw Evan's dad, now standing over her and reaching with two stiff arms for her, mouth agape. His hands brushed against her hair, grabbing, but not catching hold.

This is it, Lorie thought, not a dream and no way out.

Then she had an idea, and with the last of her failing strength, she resolved not to breathe and took her right hand away from her nose. With it she reached across her mom's legs, grabbed the detached top of the fallen lamp, picked it up, and brought it around in an arc, smashing it on top of her mom's head. The ice-cold grip loosened at the moment of impact. Lorie fell backward, and began frantically crawling away on her back.

Feeling her own body lurch violently into confusion, Lorie pinched her nose again, scrambled up, and tackled Evan, knocking him over and into the dining room.

"Wake up!" Lorie yelled. She took her hand away from her nose and began rubbing her bruised left wrist, which she now saw was beginning to swell up.

"We have to get out of here! Evan, come on, snap out of it. Something's wrong, we have to go."

Lorie shook Evan with her good hand, and he blinked.

"What happened?" Evan asked. "It was like I got lost and forgot—"

Evan stopped mid-sentence and his jaw dropped, face suddenly rigid with shock and terror. Lorie turned around to see what it was that had Evan speechless, though she had a feeling she knew what she would see.

Lorie's mom and Evan's dad were both at the dining room's threshold. Lorie's mom was on her hands and knees, staring up at Lorie, her head tilted up and back much too far. Evan's dad was standing, his arms outstretched and lips parted to show a stiff, protruded, bloodless tongue.

Then both parents began to move into the dining room, and the foul odor hit Lorie and she was moving backward, stumbling, and falling over herself to get away from it. She grabbed Evan's arm and pulled him with her. He let out a squeak and then they both turned and were running to the front door.

Lorie grabbed for her backpack and she and Evan went out the front door, and the daylight hit Lorie and she saw her street, and her apartment complex, and there were people running, and she began to hear screams, and the panic was tightening her chest, and—

Lorie took Evan's hand, and they began to run.

Chapter 31

Sven sniffed at the air and considered asking Jane if she'd been drinking. Thinking better of it, he pulled out into the road.

When he was most of the way to Alderman Road, his phone rang. Sven picked it up out of the cup holder and looked at it in astonishment, surprised that it was working. His mom was calling.

Sven picked up and looked at Jane. She had drawn her knees in to her chest and was looking down at Ivan.

"Hello?" Sven said.

"Sven! Sven are you okay?"

"I...yeah, I guess. I've got Ivan and Jane in the car. We're—" Sven hesitated as he pushed a button to put the call on speaker. "Mom? Do you know what's going on down here?"

There were a few clicks of static, then Sven's mom's voice was back.

"Sven I'm so glad you're okay. I'm so glad you're safe. I just about died when we heard what was happening."

"We're okay at the moment. Are you okay where you are?"

"Yeah, New York is fine, we're not affected by this thing, so don't worry about me. Just make sure you—"

There was a click of static.

"Mom? Hello? Mom?"

Sven was turning out of Lewis Mountain Road now, taking a right onto Alderman. He pulled over onto the sidewalk, hoping for better reception.

"Mom? Hello?"

The phone clicked. "Yeah," Sven's mom said. "Are—there?"

"I'm here mom, what were you saying?"

"Sven, this—really important, can—hear me?"

"Yeah, what's important?"

"Sven, listen—only Virginia—affected, you have—stay away from—"

Static took over the line again.

"Mom? Damn. Can you hear me?"

Some garbled noises came out of the speaker.

"What?" Sven asked.

"You—to stay away from—"

"Mom?"

"—stay away—"

"What?"

"—don't—"

The line went dead.

Sven picked up the phone and tried to reestablish the connection. After six tries, Ivan whimpered, and Sven gave up.

"We're gonna die," Jane said. Her voice was calm.

Chapter 32

Milt wiped at his mouth and tearing eyes with a trembling, pudgy hand. His stomach contents were on top of the zombie now, obscuring its nasty head fissure and helping to contain the strange, sweet and sour smell emanating from the insides of the dead creature.

Glancing about the disarray at his battle station as he shook the Star Wars chess fragments out of his back, Milt felt a powerful sense of pride filling him. If he was not now standing in the abode of a mighty warrior, there was no such abode.

The shop floor was covered with blood, sweat, Coca-Cola, tears, half-digested Snickers candy bars, raspberry potpourri, non-mint condition themed chess piece fragments, urine, and zombie—although there was hardly any blood involved—all of the aforesaid components chilling by virtue of ice cubes strewn at random, artistic counterpoints throughout the muck. It was a scene worthy of any comic book, and Milt had achieved it in reality, in real-time.

Milt stood up. His right foot sloshed into the main collection of urine in a depression in the carpet, but he paid little attention to the furry slipper that was now soaking up his reprocessed Coca-Cola. Milt found the hilt of his sword and pulled it up out of the filth-covered zombie. The sword must have dislodged when the zombie fell, or maybe I'm getting stronger, Milt told himself, and settled on the latter.

The sword was in desperate need of wiping. When Milt looked at it, he had to fight to suppress a renewed urge to hurl. This wasn't a day to spend dry heaving. For one thing, he suddenly felt hungry—probably because his stomach was now empty for the first time in who knew how long—and for another, he was bursting to see how far the zombie infestation had gone.

Milt took ginger, dainty steps over the decommissioned zombie and tiptoed to the back of the store, as if the usual slipper-stifled thunderclaps that were Milt's footfalls might wake the dead zombie in the battle station. The usual thunderclap series was absent today anyway, as Milt's tip-toeing now went: thunderclap, slosh, thunderclap, slosh, and so on.

Milt almost dropped his sword when he saw what that damned zombie buffoon had done. The back of the store, which served as the entrance to Milt's underground lair, was in a pitiful state of destruction.

An aisle of priceless, vintage video games on 5.25 inch floppy disks was knocked on its side. The rare disks were everywhere. Milt let out a panicky belch when he took this in—the disks were so priceless, no one had even dared purchase one yet, and now Milt might not be able to save them.

There were Xena: Warrior Princess DVDs strewn all about the floor, mixed in with the floppy disks, and—

"No!" Milt shrieked, and put a pudgy palm to his right temple to steady himself.

The Commodore 64—Milt's prized Commodore 64—was in shattered ruins all over the floor. The zombie had destroyed one of Milt's most-cherished possessions. Milt cursed the grotesque, mindless beast. He patted a piece of the Commodore 64 and said, "I am truly sorry that this is how you have met your end. We have shared some magnificent times together, have we not?"

The Commodore 64 didn't respond.

Milt tried to choke back a sob, looking away from his destroyed friend. As the thunderous sob shook out of his body, beating Milt's efforts to stifle it, something else came in to replace it.

It was the want—the need—for revenge.

Chapter 33

Sven and Jane drove for a while and said nothing. They were too shocked to speak.

The roads were littered with cars—cars and the shambling infected. Sven was forced to drive slowly because of all the cars, and milling infected people, stumbling and reaching for Sven's car when it passed.

The infected people's resemblance to television zombies was striking, too strong for Sven to ignore. They were in a plague movie, he was sure of it.

He drove on the shoulder most of the time, and even that part of the road was interspersed with cars facing in all directions, making it necessary to zigzag all over the road to make progress in a single direction. The fastest Sven was able to drive was 25 miles per hour, and he could only maintain that speed for short stretches at a time.

Most of the infected that Sven passed were still in their cars. They sat there, bumping against their doors, ostensibly attempting an escape, and apparently having forgotten how car doors work. When Sven drove past, the trapped infected stirred, becoming more animated in their struggling, as if Sven's passage had given them greater purpose to escape—to pass along their illness to Sven.

The infected that were in the road, out of cars, staggered and lurched in no ascertainable direction, at least until Sven drove closer. When he passed them, they too reacted to the car, beginning to follow after it until they vanished in Sven's rearview mirror.

Jane broke the silence.

"What the hell is going on here? I mean what the hell?"

Sven looked over at her, then turned back to the road. He knew exactly what was going on.

"They're zombies," Sven said, as if it were the plainest thing in the world.

"What?"

"Zombies, you know, like in the movies. They're undead, walking dead, you know, zombies, monsters, trying to get us."

"What? Zombies? Are you crazy? There's no such thing as zombies. What is wrong with you? That was—that was my friend and she...she's sick, that's all, and..."

"Calm down. I'm not trying to make light of it or anything. That's just what's going on. I don't know why, but they're trying to get us, and I'm going to stay alive."

For a few minutes, Jane said nothing. Then she said, "There's gotta be a better explanation than that."

She reached for the radio and tried to tune it. She couldn't find any stations that weren't static, but went on fiddling with the knob anyway.

"I mean," Sven said, "it's probably some kind of virus, a disease. It's spreading and making people sick and rabid or something. How else do you explain the attempted biting?"

"Why don't we have it? Do we have it?"

"I don't know. We haven't been bitten for one thing, right?"

"Right."

Sven was relieved Jane's flesh was still intact. "Beyond that, I don't know. It might be in the air for all we know, or radiation or something. If we can outrun it, get away from it, hide from it, that's what we need to do."

Jane pointed to the other side of the road. "Look." Sven followed her finger and saw there was a car moving there—not just moving, but being driven. Sven slowed and rolled his window down. He honked the horn and waved at the other car. The car didn't stop, or even slow down.

"Maybe they're in a bad mood," Sven said. "We're better off on our own anyway." Sven sped the car up again, and was driving as fast as he could while avoiding the stopped cars and walking infected.

Ivan meowed and looked up at Jane. "He remembers you," Sven said.

As if on cue, the cat jumped into Jane's lap and purred. Sven looked over as Jane scratched Ivan behind the ears.

"Yeah," Jane said. "I remember him too." She wiped at her face. "Sven? Where are we going?"

"We need to stock up on supplies—food, water, weapons, gas—and then we need to find a place where we'll be safe. Somewhere not very residential. I figure the worst place is around the University, with all the kids that live close to it. We'll drive north on 29, get supplies, and find somewhere to hole up until this whole thing blows over."

Jane seemed to consider this for a while. "Why did you say we'll do better on our own?"

Then a loud, shrill noise pierced through the car, and Jane screamed.

Chapter 34

Lorie was running hard, feeling her lungs filling with power and propelling her away from the terrible scene she'd just witnessed.

Lorie knew she was a great runner for her age. Or at least she knew that was what the track coaches always told her. She did feel like a great runner when she ran—the sense of surroundings flashing past, the air rushing against her, and her body working at its hardest all made her feel so alive. Whether or not she was as great as they said, she loved it.

Glancing over her shoulder, Lorie saw that Evan was far behind her, clearly having trouble keeping up with her pace.

"Come on," Lorie said, glancing back at Evan. "You have to run a little faster. You can do it. We're almost there."

Lorie slowed down to let Evan catch up, and then he was alongside her, panting hard and flailing his arms inefficiently as he ran.

He barely managed to choke a few words out in between gasps and gulps for air. "I can't keep up. I need to stop."

"We'll rest when we're somewhere safe. We're almost there, we just have to get away. Come on Evan."

"I'm trying."

They kept running down Barracks Road toward Route 29. There were stopped cars everywhere, and—and the sick people were in them, moving and wriggling like snakes trying to get out. It was like they didn't remember how to get out, though, and once Lorie had realized that she felt a lot safer, though still not very safe. Most of the people who would be out would be in their cars—Charlottesville was a driving town. A few of the sick people were on the street, but they were so slow that Lorie and Evan could easily run around them, and Lorie realized they would be alright so long as they stayed far away from the sick people and didn't run into a big group of them...or became disoriented like what had happened earlier.

Lorie didn't know what was happening, but she thought she knew a safe place that she and Evan could go.

They were almost there.

Chapter 35

Ivan got up on his hind legs and licked Jane's face. Sven hit a button on his watch, turning the alarm off.

"Can that thing be any louder?" Jane asked, visibly irritated. She was rubbing her eyes and petting Ivan at the same time. "You late to an appointment or something?"

"Sorry," Sven said. "That's my protein alarm. It rings every two hours."

"Your what? I don't remember you having a protein alarm."

"Yeah, I didn't back then. I'm more serious now. The alarm goes off every two hours, to remind me to have protein."

Jane let out an exasperated sigh and stopped petting Ivan. "Are you serious? Stuff like that is why we didn't work out. What kind of person thinks about protein when the world is ending? And why do you need reminding about protein? Isn't that all you eat anyway?"

"I eat other things. It's a reminder to have protein at regular intervals, so that my muscles don't start to break down. Otherwise my body will eat its own muscle, you know that...it's how I get work. And what's wrong with thinking about that, even now? I don't plan on dying, and eating at regular intervals can only increase our chances of making it through, keeping our energy up."

"I think there are bigger things to think about than protein and muscle right now, that's all."

Sven sighed and didn't answer. He looked at the road and tried to gather his thoughts. Taking one hand off the steering wheel, he reached over to pet Ivan. The simple movement sent a stretching, burning sensation across Sven's chest and up his neck. He drew his hand back and put a tentative finger to his wound. He flinched. It hurt worse than before.

After a few minutes, Jane said, "I'm sorry, I know you just saved my life, I guess I'm freaking out, and it's you and me, and all these things."

"I know," Sven said. "Can you hand me a protein bar? They're in the backpack."

"Sure," Jane said. Her voice was calmer now, sweeter, obviously trying to make up for her previous outburst. She found the protein bar in the backpack, opened it, and handed it to Sven, who was waving his hand around toward her, grasping for the bar.

"I need to try to eat. I got hurt kinda bad this morning when...well, I think we've had similar enough mornings. It's not a good day to start off injured."

Sven took a bite. The chocolate peanut butter bar was chewy and filling, and unusually tasteless.

Jane looked over at him. "Are you alright?"

The pain was getting worse, and Sven wondered when he'd next be able to see a doctor about it. "I'll be fine."

Jane went back to petting Ivan, whose happy purring filled the car. If it weren't for the gruesome, unambiguously apocalyptic scene through which they were driving, Sven and Jane could've been mistaken for a happy couple driving to a happy picnic, with a happy cat in tow.

Chapter 36

She had to run away, what else could she do? It was run away or get bitten. Lorie wasn't even sure if the people back in the house were still her parents, if the people around her were still people. They looked more like movie monsters than people now. They were saggy, deflated, and lifeless...and where were the ambulances and police? Where were the authorities to help?

Evan was with her, so that helped. She knew they were doing the right thing by getting away.

Then Evan was tugging at her arm, trying to get her to slow down again. Lorie looked at him. He looked so pale and out of breath. Obliging him, she slowed down to a walk and Evan gave her some grateful nods in between his gulps for air. They were close to Route 29 now, and none of the sick people were in sight, so Lorie figured it might be alright to walk for a bit and let Evan recover.

"Where are we going?" Evan asked when his breathing had become less ragged.

"To my coach's house. She'll know what to do. She always knows what to do. She's just across 29. We're almost there."

"Why do you think she'll know what to do? What if—what if she's just like the others now?"

Lorie shook her head violently. "No, she's fine. She wouldn't be like that. I know she's fine, okay? We'll be safe there."

"I don't know. Maybe we should try to find some police. Or hide. Yeah, maybe we should hide until people come to help."

"No. We can't hide. Don't you see how the...how they come after us when we pass, they're gonna get us if we hide. I know it. We have to get to my coach's house, she'll know what to do, and she'll keep us safe."

Evan coughed. "What's happening? Do you think it's like a cold or something and they'll get better?"

"I don't know. I hope so."

Lorie and Evan walked the rest of the way to the intersection of Barracks Road and Route 29 in silence.

"We just have to cross now," Lorie said, "and then it's a little bit farther, and we're there."

"I don't know," Evan said. "Look at all those cars stopped in the road, and the people inside them and wandering around. I still think we should try to find somewhere quiet and hide until help comes."

"No. Help might never come. We're going to have to cross. Come on."

Lorie looked out across the street. She was searching for a safe route across through the tangle of stopped cars and wandering sick people. It didn't look good.

Then there was a loud crash close behind them.

Lorie turned, took it in, and froze.

In her mind, she grabbed Evan, jerked him from the sidewalk and onto the street, then she started to run, pulling him along through the gaps between the cars.

In reality, the sight before her was so chilling that her insides seemed to congeal into a solid, immovable lump.

She stared at the car whose front end was now wrapped around a tree. Were it not for the tree, the car would have mowed her and Evan down, and that would've been the end. Lorie cursed herself for being so unaware of her surroundings as not to spot a car barreling down at them.

The driver was probably sick, she thought. The driver—

He had been thrown through the windshield toward Lorie. His body...what was left of it...it...Lorie found herself unable to look away from the destroyed man.

Both of the driver's legs were mostly torn off below the knee, and what remained there hung by thin strands of skin and sinew. The rest of his body was more or less intact, but scraped and cut with shards of glass sticking out in the worst possible places. Lorie was focused on the shard of glass sticking out of his eye, an injury that seemed not to bother the driver at all.

Then the driver began to drag himself toward Lorie and Evan, rumbling out moans as he went. Lorie cringed as she watched the strings that connected his partially severed legs stretch thinner.

Lorie found herself becoming lightheaded as she watched, found herself becoming oddly numb, in addition to her feeling of being frozen by the carnage.

Evan nudged her, then forcibly turned her around.

Lorie snapped out of it.

"Run! Come on, we have to get across now!" she yelled, but she could still just barely make herself move.

Then she noticed that Evan too was stopped, standing there, staring at the crawling, ruined man. He stammered something that Lorie couldn't make out.

"Come on, we have to go," Lorie said, as she pushed Evan in the direction of Route 29. "Come on." Why was he frozen now, after having snapped her out of it?

Then the driver—the once-human now who-knew-what—was too close. His lower legs were gone, left behind, the thinning strings having finally snapped. Lorie saw practically no blood, and no recognition in the driver's face of the fact that big parts of his body had just come off.

The driver reached up, trying to grab Evan, who still stood stubbornly in place, ignoring, or not hearing Lorie's shouts. The driver touched Evan's sneaker, giving the laces a clumsy fumble, then withdrew its pale, shriveled hand. All this time Lorie was tugging at Evan's arm, trying to drag him away, but he was bigger than she was, and his body, set on staying in place, along with Lorie's sudden lack of coordination, made it a losing battle.

The driver reached out again, grasping for Evan's ankle.

Then Evan must have snapped out of it, because he started to run, and Lorie, relieved that he was finally moving, ran after him.

They ran into the street. Evan was frantic in his clumsy run, and Lorie was trying to keep up with him and rein him in at the same time, so he didn't run into something...or someone. They were now in dangerous territory.

"Slow down," she said. "We have to be careful here."

Everything looked so wrong. There were stopped cars everywhere, and there were no people out, except for the sick ones staggering about or sitting in their cars.

The ones that sat in their stopped cars, trying to walk out of the closed doors—trying to get out, to grab Lorie and Evan, they came alive as Lorie and Evan passed by, and then slumped back in their seats when Lorie and Evan got farther away. How could any of this be happening? How could this be real?

They were in the middle of the road and Evan was beginning to climb over the divider, when Lorie saw a group of the sick people staggering in her and Evan's direction. There were six of them.

"Hurry up," she said, starting to climb over the divider behind Evan. "We'll have to run for it."

The sick people were slow, but they weren't slow enough that getting around them was easy. They tried to grab and their movements were unpredictable. Lorie understood that it was best to keep as far away from the sick people as possible. She wondered how far away a safe distance was. She decided that she didn't know, but that she and Evan weren't far enough.

"There's a whole group of them over there," Evan said, pointing to a different group of the sick people that Lorie hadn't noticed.

"They're still far away," Lorie said. "We'll walk up the road a little, and then come back once we're across. I think we can make it. Just make sure to stay away from the car doors."

Lorie began to cross the northbound side of the road, with Evan alongside her.

She kept the two groups of sick people in her sights.

Chapter 37

"Can I have one more?" Sven asked.

He had finished the first protein bar and his amino acid tank wasn't quite full. Sven knew that his wound healing would require more amino acids than he needed when he was uninjured, and he wanted to be as close to one hundred percent as he could get. He needed to be one hundred percent.

"I still don't know how you can eat right now," Jane said. She ripped open another protein bar and handed it to Sven.

Taking it from her, Sven thought he saw her suppress a smile.

"You remember?" Sven asked. "I was eating this flavor of protein bar when we met." Sven smiled. "You looked very cute trying to do your stability ball chest presses or whatever that was supposed to be."

"Of course I remember." Jane smiled back. "You came over to me dribbling protein bar down the side of your mouth, offering to show me how to do a real exercise."

"I wasn't dribbling."

"Yes, you were."

"Well you didn't let that stop you from seducing me now did you?"

"Me? Seduce you? Ha! You were all over me with your cheesy trainer come-ons." Jane deepened her voice in imitation. "How about a free assessment? And I'll throw in some free sessions too. How about it? You won't regret it. I'll put some muscle on that body, tighten it up some, yeah." Jane resumed her normal tone of voice. "Like I needed any tightening up."

"We can all use some tightening once in a while," Sven said, a little hurt. "Was I really that awkward? I mean you did sign up, didn't you?"

"Yeah, I did, didn't I? Oh don't worry about it, it was a cute awkward, and you know you're a good trainer, I'm just teasing anyway."

"Well, I wish I was back at the gym right now. In fact, I'm supposed to be training a client right now. He needs it, he's tiny."

"Let me guess, you put him on a squat routine?"

"I tried to, but the guy refuses to cooperate. He says squats are dangerous, says he read it in a lawyer magazine somewhere. Oh yeah, he's a lawyer."

Jane laughed. "Figures."

"I don't understand how anyone would hire a guy like that, you know? He looks like he'd blow over in a strong wind. No, not even a strong wind, any wind. He won't listen to me either, but I guess as long as he keeps paying me I should be happy."

"He hasn't made any progress at all?"

"He's put on maybe two, three pounds of muscle all year. It's something, but he's also gotten pudgier. He keeps telling me that he can eat more now that he works out so much. He read that in some lawyer magazine too. He doesn't listen to me when I tell him to watch what he eats. Maybe I should—"

"Hey!" Jane said, interrupting Sven's musings. "There are kids in the road!"

Jane pointed at two teenagers who were running down the side of the road, the same way that Sven was driving. The kids looked frantic, and the boy was having a hard time keeping up with the girl.

There were two groups of infected converging on the kids.

Sven nodded. "We have room..." He began to slow down, then hesitated. "Do you think we should pick them up?"

"What? Of course we should pick them up, why wouldn't we?"

"Well...in movies like this, what usually—"

"In movies like this?" Jane interrupted harshly. "In movies like this? This is not a movie, Sven, what is with you, they're just young kids! We have to help them."

"Right, but they'll slow us down, and lower our own chances of surviving. Like I was saying, in movies like this, the larger the group gets, the worse it becomes. The problems start, there's infighting. Someone always ends up getting bitten. It gets bad. I just think we should be careful about picking people up. We can't fit everyone in the car."

Jane glared at him.

Sven sighed. "But you're right, they're just kids. We can't leave them out here like this."

"Damn right we can't, pull over and let them in."

Looking at the teenagers in the road ahead, Sven wanted to help them, but he had a bad feeling about taking them on, about opening his doors to outsiders, about having more people to worry about. There were so many possibilities, so many things that could go terribly wrong, and Sven was certain that the number of potential disasters increased in direct proportion to the number of people who clumped together to try to survive.

It was a thought worthy of an actuary, and though it was based on Hollywood-inspired premonitions, it held firm to Sven's nerves, with no hint of release.

Now resolved to let the kids into his car, Sven felt the events of the day spiraling out of control. He thought it curious that an event as seemingly minor as taking on a couple of refugee teenagers caught in this strange plague could feel so off-putting. He tried to see the problems that the act presented in relation to the greater problem of the general zombie infestation, to convince himself that opening his doors to them was the right thing to do, but that didn't work to ease his mind.

The events of the day seemed to be having a cumulative effect on Sven's stress level, and he suspected that the day's events would only get worse.

Chapter 38

"Hey," Evan said weakly, "look."

He pointed to the road behind Lorie and she turned around. There was a car coming up the road, zigzagging its way around the stopped cars. Lorie could see two people in the front, and it looked like one of them was pointing to her and Evan. Instantly anxious, Lorie bit her lip.

"Well," Evan said, "let's go wave them down, they can help us."

Lore hesitated. "I don't know. We don't know them, what if they're not here to help? I think we should keep going. We can't stand around here anyway, those things are getting closer."

Both groups of sick people were closing in, dragging themselves toward her and Evan.

Evan nodded, and Lorie could see that he was still out of breath. Poor guy, she thought, why didn't his dad make him exercise ever? Maybe he has asthma, yeah, it might not be his fault, or his dad's fault, maybe he was just born that way. Lorie promised herself that at the end of all this, she would take Evan to the track and make him get some exercise. It would do him and his pale skin some good, that's what her coach would say. Lorie hoped her coach was alright, but had begun to doubt that she was.

"I'd rather be with them," Evan said, pointing at the car, "than on our own. They're adults, and driving, they'll help us."

Lorie looked at the approaching car. The man and woman in it looked like they were arguing about something. That made them look more adult-like.

Lorie wasn't sure what to do, but she understood that Evan had decided to try his luck with the car and the people in it. She didn't want to leave Evan alone, so she stood with him while he waved the car over.

As it got closer, Lorie could see that a very large man was driving it. He wasn't fat. He was like those people on TV, like a wrestler or something. The woman next to him was very pretty, though she looked as if she'd been crying. The woman smiled at Lorie as the car stopped in the middle of the road alongside Lorie and Evan. The big man couldn't get the car any closer to the curb because of all the stopped cars lined up along the narrow sidewalk.

The woman in the car rolled her window down, and that's when Lorie saw the cat, and thought maybe these people could be trusted.

"Come on," Evan said, and ran eagerly up to the car.

Lorie followed, keeping her distance.

Chapter 39

Jane couldn't believe what Sven had just said about the kids slowing them down. He could be so cold and heartless sometimes. Of course it was true, but it wasn't something to be said out loud. They were kids.

"Hi," Jane called out to the boy, who had run up to the car. "Come on, get in, we're going somewhere where we'll be safe." Wait, Jane thought, where are we going? That was an important thing to discuss at some point. She was sure Sven was taking them somewhere safe though—or at least he was trying to take them somewhere safe—and if he wasn't she would make him.

The boy looked relieved and turned around. "Come on," he said to the girl, who was still standing a few car widths away, "they're gonna help us, see?"

The girl was hesitant, and she looked suspiciously at Jane and beyond her, at Sven. Jane couldn't blame her, but there were two packs of infected people approaching, and there wasn't time for too much suspicion.

"Hi," Jane called to the girl. "We're trying to get away too, maybe we can all help each other. How does that sound?"

The girl walked closer to the car and looked Jane in the eye. She looked like she was considering Jane's offer, but she still said nothing. Jane could see the girl was in shape, like she was on a sports team, and she had a certain resolve in her eyes, like she was set on something, maybe just on getting through the day, and that was no small resolution.

The boy was now pulling on the rear door handle, without success.

Jane turned to Sven, making no effort to hide her frustration. "Can you unlock the back door please?"

"Okay," Sven said, and clicked something.

The boy opened the door and climbed into the backseat.

Jane turned back to the girl, who was still standing in the road.

The girl walked a little closer.

"What's your cat's name?" she asked.

"Him?" Sven asked. "That's Ivan. Ivan Drago."

The girl let out a quick laugh, then put her suspicious face back on.

"Those things are getting pretty close," Sven said, and put his hand on the gear shift.

"Sven!" Jane snapped, and slapped his big caveman hand.

Jane turned back to the girl. "What's your name?"

"Lorie."

"Jane!" Sven yelled. "We have to go, now. Just get her in the car already."

What was wrong with that man? He knew nothing about sensitivity.

Jane turned to Lorie. "I'm Jane, it's very nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you too," Lorie said shyly, "and your cat."

Ivan meowed.

Then Jane felt a jolt, and heard the slam of the rear door. She looked backward, and saw that the pack of diseased humans behind them had overtaken the back of Sven's car. They were walking into it repeatedly, shaking it in its suspension. The boy in the back must have snapped the door shut when he saw them get closer. Damn, Sven had been right, they did need to get out of there, and fast.

Jane turned to Lorie again, and it looked like Lorie was beginning to forget her fear of strangers. She came all the way up to Jane's door, and Jane began to open it for her to get in, but then a diseased, rotten-looking arm reached out, clenching and unclenching its hand.

Lorie ran.

Chapter 40

Lorie ran, cursing herself for not getting into the car when she had the chance. The woman seemed nice enough, and the man was scary, but he had a cat, so how bad could he be? Lorie liked the cat's name. Ivan was a good name for a cat, and she totally got the Rocky IV reference.

Lorie glanced behind her. The car was driving after her, a sick person now attached to the back of it. Lorie felt like it was all her fault. She had let those things get too close, and what if the one on the back got in and got the cat, or Evan?

But they were strangers, and she knew not to jump into cars with strangers. Maybe today was different, because of what was happening, but maybe it wasn't. Lorie's mind flashed to all the kidnapping stories her mom had told her, to teach her by example she called it. Did kidnappers have cats? Some probably did, but the people in the car didn't seem like kidnappers, and Evan was in there now.

That sealed it. Lorie had to help Evan, so she knew she had to get into the car.

Then Lorie heard the screech of brakes.

She stopped running, turned around, and stared. Lorie watched as the big man got out of the car and had a look at the thing hanging onto the back. He ducked his head back inside the car and pulled something out.

Panting, Lorie walked a little closer to get a better look, careful not to get too close to any cars with the flailing sick in them. The woman—Jane—opened her door just enough to peer out, then stepped out onto the street. She was saying something to the big man, but Lorie couldn't hear what it was. Evan wasn't budging, as far as Lorie could tell.

Lorie walked a little closer, walking around a few stopped cars with trapped sick people inside them. They were chomping and thrashing about, but they still had their seatbelts on. Lorie tried to look away, but it was hard not to look. They barely even looked like people anymore, how could this be happening?

She turned back to the big man. He was like an elephant. All muscle, but surprisingly fast and agile. Lorie could see what he had taken out of the car now. It was a jump rope, the leather kind. Lorie had one of those...back home.

The man was whipping the sick man on the back of the car with it. He was jumping forward, whipping, then jumping back and looking thoughtful, over and over. After one especially hard whip at the sick man, who did not react at all, the big man stood back and rubbed his chin.

"Don't come too close," Jane said, snapping Lorie out of it. "Just wait until Sven gets that thing off."

The man's name was Sven? What kind of a name was that? He did look like a Sven though, even though Lorie had never met a Sven before, she had a feeling that was what they all looked like. All muscle and brawn and jump ropes.

"I won't," Lorie said. "But how's he gonna get it off with that rope? Doesn't he have anything bigger?"

Jane shrugged. "I'm sure he'll figure out a way."

Lorie considered this, and turned back to look at Sven, who looked to be in some pain, seemingly thinking about how to get the sick man off. Why was the sick man still clinging to the back of the car, instead of trying to get at Sven? Maybe that's what Sven was trying to puzzle out too.

Then Sven made a loop with the jump rope. Lorie thought she knew what he was about to do, and she was right. Sven lassoed the sick man's head with the loop of the rope, careful not to get too close, and began to pull.

The sick man wouldn't loosen his grip, and Sven pulled harder. There were some ripping sounds, and then a pop, and the man's head went flying into the air in an arc toward Sven.

Lorie tensed in shock.

Sven stared the head down, backed up into position, and gave it a good, hard kick with his right foot. The head sailed away into the other side of the road—the southbound side.

Lorie was both horrified and impressed. That had been a pretty neat trick. She wanted to clap, but thought better of it. That probably wasn't appropriate just then, what with it being disrespectful to the sick man. She gave Jane a weak smile instead. Maybe these people were alright after all. They were protecting Evan and—

"Look out!" Jane yelled at Lorie.

"What?" Lorie said, startled.

"Behind you!"

Lorie half-turned, but then it was too late.

One of the sick—a woman—had come out of nowhere, and now had taken hold of Lorie's arm, and was bringing it up to her open, dribbling, broken-looking mouth.

"No!" Lorie screamed. "Get away from me!"

Then Jane was there with her, trying to pull Lorie away, to no effect. Then Sven was there, and he was pulling at the woman's head to keep her from biting Lorie. Sven was even bigger up close, all muscle.

The woman's head came off, with an odd, faint fizz instead of a pop.

Lorie made herself look away from the woman's headless body.

Relieved for only a moment, Lorie's body went rigid again. "Get it off, get it off me please."

The woman's hand still gripped Lorie's forearm tightly, and it took both Sven and Jane working together to pry the fingers away.

Then they all ran into the car. Sven got in on his side and Lorie got in with Jane into the passenger seat. Sven shifted into drive and off they went, Lorie climbing into the back to join Evan, who was sitting still, looking pale and frightened.

Chapter 41

A thought dawned on Milt as he crouched in front of the Commodore 64. This was to be a day of change, and he had to be brave. He stepped over the ruined relics on the floor, shuffled into his dim lair, and found a rag with which to wipe his sword. Milt held the rag in his hand and wiped the congealing crud off his weapon. He almost cut himself while he was doing it; the sword went through the thick rag like tissue paper. He had done a good job with all that sharpening.

Milt carried the filthy rag back into the store and threw it on top of the zombie, grimacing in disgust. He looked at the mess long enough to content himself that the zombie was no longer twitching, then went back into his lair to wash his hands with Star Wars disinfecting soap. When his hands were clean, he got two Snickers ice cream bars out from his emergency supply, sat down on his mattress in the basement, put the sword down next to him, and munched.

When he had finished eating, Milt got out the sheath and belt for the sword, sheathed the sword, and put it in the belt, which he then fastened around his belly. He had some trouble coordinating this, and the sword belt clattered onto the floor a few times before he got it right. The belt was tight around his big-boned middle, even on the last hole of the belt.

They don't make sword belts for real men anymore, he thought.

In sheathing the sword and affixing the belt to himself, Milt had begun to notice that hefting the heavy, ten pound sword around was hard work.

He took two deep puffs of his inhaler, found his spare, and stuffed both into his back pocket. He put on his black trench coat and marched back up to the store.

Milt emerged from his store, a spongy, trench-coated, gargantuan would-be vanquisher, the sword dangling between his legs.

He had to shield his eyes from the bright light with a fat forearm, and he hissed a belch. He hated being outside in the light, but there would be so much to do now that the zombies were here, now that Milt's time had come.

After a few moments, his eyes began to adjust, and Milt lowered his arm. He shifted the sword belt so that the sword wasn't dangling between his legs but jutting out from his side.

Milt hunched over and began to creep, putting the soggy slipper-clad foot carefully in front of the dry slipper-clad one.

No, Milt decided, he wasn't going to creep. Milt stood up a tad straighter—as straight as his atrophied back muscles would allow—and decided that he was going to stalk. Yes, he was going to stalk his zombie prey.

So resolved, Milt began to stalk, to hunt. He channeled his video game mindset into reality. He would be the hero of this world, he told himself, just as he was the greatest, most ingenious hero in the World of Warcraft virtual world. In the World of Warcraft, Milt could do anything he wanted. He could kill, and steal, and loot and plunder. Now...now that the real world had changed, he could do all of those things in real life.

Milt had one hand on his sword and the other on his back pocket where his inhalers were. He was thinking about how good it had felt to dispatch the zombie in his store, notwithstanding the remarkable bout of hurling that it had brought on. Milt decided that he would rule this new apocalyptic world, and that he would reward himself for each of his kills with his favorite movie watching, sword-sharpening, and Snickers ice cream eating ritual. Maybe he would even have to branch out and think of some new rituals. There were so many options now, so much to do.

For the first time in years, Milt didn't miss his computer, although he was starting to thirst for some Coca-Cola.

Then the sword belt unfastened and fell, Milt's feet tangled in it, and he fell into a sweaty, belching heap on the strip mall sidewalk.

Chapter 42

Sven kept checking the rearview mirror as he drove. The headless man or zombie or whatever he was still clung to the back of the car, but at least he wasn't trying to get in anymore.

It had been a close call with the girl just now. Sven didn't like that. He wanted to avoid situations just like that one. But there was no one to blame. Jane was right that they had to help the kids and the girl must've been scared out of her mind. It wasn't her fault that she hadn't jumped into the car with them right away. She seemed to have snapped out of it now, and it looked to Sven like she was in higher spirits than the boy.

"So what are your names back there?" Sven asked, trying to be friendly.

"I'm Lorie."

"She already told us her name," Jane said. "Remember?"

"What?" Sven asked. "Sorry, I must've been distracted by all the zombies trying to kill us. My fault."

"They're not zombies," Jane snapped.

"They seem like zombies," Lorie said.

Sven nodded. "Zombies it is, or infected, or whatever, so long as we get away to safety, it doesn't matter."

"My name is Evan."

"Cool," Sven said, "I'm Sven. Nice to meet you both."

Lorie giggled at this, and Sven thought he saw the queasy-looking boy suppress a smile. Sven hoped the boy wasn't going to puke in the car. Sven didn't like to clean puke, and seeing as how the car was their only safe place right now, he didn't want kid puke in it. He sighed. He would deal with that when the time came.

"Let me guess," Sven said. "You think I have a funny name."

The kids shook their heads, grinning broadly now. Sven looked over at Jane, who seemed happy too, all things considered. There was still a clinging decapitated zombie on the back of Sven's car, there was that to consider.

"It's Norwegian," Sven said.

"He's from Norway," Jane added. "They like to work out a lot there." Jane shot a smile at Sven.

"That's right," Sven said. "In Norway we lift weights six hours a day, starting in kindergarten."

Lorie frowned. "No you don't."

"Yeah," Sven said, "it's true."

"I don't like to lift weights," Evan said.

"Well," Sven said, "if you lived in Norway, you'd learn to like it. You'd have to."

Evan coughed and looked thoughtful.

"So do you kids go to school together or something?" Sven asked.

"Yeah," Lorie said. "We just started high school together."

"Oh," Sven said, "that's exciting. Is there a good gym in your school? Good sports program?"

"Sure," Lorie said. "I run track."

"I'm on the chess team," Evan said, chiming in.

"That's not a sport," Lorie said.

"Sure it is," Evan said.

"Is not, you're just sitting down the whole time, how can it be a sport? There's no running or anything."

"It doesn't have to be running for it to be a sport. There's someone you're playing against, an opponent. It's a mental sport."

"There's no such thing. What do you think Sven?"

Sven knew that chess was no sport, but why hurt the kid's feelings?

"I don't know that much about it," Sven said, "but maybe it is."

Lorie shook her head, "He's just trying to be nice."

"Hey," Jane said. "Are you guys hungry?"

"No," Evan said.

"Kinda," Lorie said.

"What kind of delicious treats have you brought on this trip?" Jane asked.

Sven was fine with sharing his and Ivan's rations, but now they would definitely need to stop and pick up more along the way. It made him nervous.

"Well," Sven said, "I've got jerky—elk and beef, granola bars, cat food, and protein bars."

"Let me guess," Jane said, looking back at the two kids. "You want the granola bars right? Definitely not the cat food."

They nodded. Sven liked that Jane was good with kids, and that she was there. He probably would have picked the kids up if she hadn't been there, but what would he have done with them? Jane was good with stuff like that.

Jane got some granola bars out and handed them back to Evan and Lorie. They thanked her, and proceeded with their munching.

Sven's mind wandered back to the clinging zombie. When would that thing fall off? Would it ever fall off? Was it infecting them just by being so close? It had no teeth left now that its head was gone, at least there was that.

"Do you guys know what's happening?" Lorie asked. She wasn't smiling anymore.

Jane turned around to look at Lorie. "We don't know yet, honey. It might be some kind of virus, like a flu. We're just gonna try to avoid infected people and sooner or later this will all clear up...I hope."

"Will the sick people get better?" Lorie jerked a thumb backward, at the shadow of the headless zombie clinger.

"I don't know," Jane said. "I..." she trailed off.

Sven knew the decapitated zombie was beyond help, but it was probably best not to focus on that. Sven saw that Lorie kept looking back at the headless creature, and he wished he could have gotten the thing off, but its grip was too strong, and Sven hadn't wanted to get too close. The shaking and rattling of the moving vehicle was doing nothing to dislodge the zombie either.

They came to a traffic light and Sven stopped out of habit. The traffic light was off, and there was nothing to wait for. Sven looked left and right, and in all directions for any movement, but all he saw were scattered, stopped cars. They were yet to come across any other moving vehicles, after that first one that had ignored them.

Sven slowly pulled out into the intersection.

All of a sudden, Ivan let out a loud hiss. Sven looked over and saw that Ivan was up on the back of Jane's seat, hissing in Lorie and Evan's direction.

The brief moment that Sven had looked away from the road was enough.

They hit something.

Chapter 43

There was a shaking, and Ivan skittered back down into the woman's lap. He remembered the woman from before. She was a nice woman, and she belonged with him and Sven. Ivan knew that, and it was good. Ivan liked the girl in the back too. He didn't know her very well, but she smelled nice, and maybe she could stay with them too. But the boy, the boy was bad. Ivan couldn't understand why Sven and the woman had let the boy come with them—to come into the moving safe place. Why would they do that? Couldn't they smell the bad smell? Ivan could see the smell, it was coming off the boy like the heat out of a radiator. Ivan liked radiators. They were warm. But the boy was rotten, and Ivan didn't like that. The smell was so bad that Ivan didn't even want a treat at that moment—not even a fish treat. He was a boy to run from, and to warn others to run from. Ivan bared his teeth and loaded up another hiss in the back of his throat.

Chapter 44

As luck had it, Milt's belly broke his fall, and he didn't even so much as scrape his hands on the hot pavement—surprisingly hot for the late spring morning.

Milt floundered on the sidewalk for a few moments, as he struggled to untangle himself from his flowing trench coat and the sword belt. Maybe the trench coat had been a mistake, he thought. Maybe sunglasses would have been a better option. But the trench coat was good, Milt reminded himself, for protecting his tender flesh from the sun's harmful rays.

There was no time to go back and change now anyway. Milt gathered his strength, and with a mighty heave, he rolled himself over, got to his knees, and stood up. He picked up his sword belt and refastened it.

By the time Milt caught his breath, his eyes had adjusted to the sunlight, allowing him to take in the state of the strip mall for the first time since he exited his shop.

It was a post-apocalyptic strip mall if ever Milt had seen one. It was like a virtual reality zombie apocalypse. Milt made himself blink. Except that it wasn't virtual. It was real.

Zombies staggered about, bumping into cars and storefronts and each other. What idiots, Milt thought. They didn't look or act much differently now that they were zombies than they had when they were people. They weren't great warriors, that was for sure. Milt saw that there were many zombies still in their cars, turning from side to side and pointlessly flailing their limbs. They weren't getting out. Had the idiots forgotten how to unbuckle their seatbelts and open their doors?

There were no walking zombies close to Milt. The closest ones were several storefronts away, and they weren't reacting to Milt's presence. Milt scanned the area until he spied the closest zombie. She was an old woman zombie, and she was in her car.

Milt looked down at the hilt of his sword and saw that his knuckles were white around it. He loosened his grip and watched as a bead of sweat squeezed itself out of his palm, slid down the hilt and then down the sheath of his sword. It dripped onto the pavement without a sound, leaving a tiny wet mark. Milt took a deep breath and waited for the droplet to evaporate.

It didn't take long, and when all signs of the droplet were gone, Milt wiped his right palm in his hair and unsheathed his sword. He lost his balance as he drew it and had to step sideways to keep from falling. It was a heavy sword, as Milt noted each time he wielded it, and Milt was starting to feel a soreness in his forearm from handling it.

He plodded over to the car with the old woman zombie in it, licking his lips nervously as he went. The sword wobbled in his hand as he took heavy steps toward the car, and he sliced a wisp of hair off his head and almost cut himself before he regained control of the sword. Milt stopped when he was a few feet away from the driver's side door, and peered in through the half-lowered window.

The old woman zombie looked back at Milt and moaned: "Bahhh."

Milt jumped backward and dropped his sword. The clatter of the sword scared him even more than the old woman zombie's moan, and he had to take a puff on his inhaler to recover his composure.

Before picking up the sword again, Milt pulled a miniature Snickers bar out of his back pocket and tried to pop it into his mouth in one swift motion, as he was accustomed to doing. The bar wouldn't cooperate. Milt looked into his hand, confused as to why his deft Snickers popping hadn't taken effect and the candy wasn't in his mouth, calming him down. In his hand was a distinctive Snickers goo, with bits of wrapper mixed in—the unseasonably hot spring weather wasn't helping Milt's cause.

Milt brought his Snickers-covered hand to his mouth and licked off all of the Snickers goo and wrapper pieces. He sucked on the warm chocolate, nougat, and caramel until all that he could still feel in his mouth was the plastic wrapper. Then he reached into his mouth and pulled out the wrapper pieces, scraping the remaining globs of sticky peanut matter off the outgoing wrapper bits with his teeth. Milt felt much calmer then. The molten candy bar had worked its magic.

He took a deep breath, tugged on his pony tail in triumph, bent over, and wrapped his hand around the hilt of his sword.

"Ow!" Milt yelped, and a quarter of a peanut spluttered out of his mouth, landing on the hot pavement next to the sword. The hilt had heated up in the sun, and it was hot to the touch. Milt wondered what to do next. What could he do?

He considered taking off his shirt to handle the sword, he considered going back into his shop for some water to pour on it, and he considered urinating on the thing. A warrior must do whatever is necessary to get the job done, he reminded himself.

But Milt wasn't going to go the way of a shirt, or water, or even urine. He reached into his back pocket, and withdrew a warm, squishy miniature Snickers bar. He squeezed the bar between both of his palms until the sticky paste was all over his hands, then he rubbed the paste on the hilt of the sword, feeling the goo get warm and melt more completely as he did it.

It worked. Not only did the chocolate glop cool the hilt of the sword so that Milt could pick it up, it also enhanced Milt's grip on the sword nicely.

With the sticky-hilted sword in both of his hands, Milt turned back to the old woman zombie trapped in her car. He raised the sword up in front of his body, pointing it toward the zombie's head.

"Blah," the old woman zombie said. But Milt didn't drop his sword this time, he didn't even flinch.

He focused a glare on the zombie's throat and stabbed with the sword. He missed the first time, hitting the half-lowered window, but recovered his sword and stabbed again. It hit home this time, producing a faint ripping sound as it disappeared into the back of the zombie's throat.

The old woman zombie stopped moving, and she didn't say, "Blah" anymore.

Milt looked at the length of the sword that was still exposed. There wasn't any blood running down it, as would be the case in the Conan movies. The zombie was dry as far as blood went, and that made sense to Milt. He wasn't sure why, but it did.

He pulled the sword out of the zombie's neck, and the zombie slumped forward in its seat, coming to rest on the steering wheel. The car let out a brief honk, and then was silent.

Milt took a puff of his inhaler, proud of himself for not upchucking this time. He felt like something had been lifted from him, and he knew he only wanted one thing. He wanted to slay another zombie. He could see now that zombie slaying was his destiny. And he was going to achieve his destiny.

The trench-coated, self-proclaimed warrior, one of his hands glued to the hilt of his sword and the other glued to his inhaler, set a course for the nearest wandering zombie.

Chapter 45

Sven jerked his head back to look at the road, but whatever they had hit was gone.

What was left was a disgusting black and green residue, like slime that had sat out in the sun for too long, coating the hood and bottom portion of the windshield.

Satisfied that the car's integrity was intact, Sven turned on the wipers and went back to weaving through the stopped traffic.

He shot a quick glance at Ivan, wanting to keep his mind from wondering about the nature of the crud now spraying from his wipers. "What were you hissing about Ivan? Those are our friends back there. Lorie and Evan are our new friends. Be a nice cat."

Ivan hissed at the backseat again, but the hiss was more subdued this time. Then he settled back in Jane's lap and looked up at Sven.

"Bad Ivan," Sven said. "No more fish treats for you if you keep that up."

"I think something has him spooked," Lorie said, pointing to Ivan's fluffed-up tail.

"I don't blame him," Jane said.

"Cats don't like me much," Evan said sadly. "Dogs either...or ferrets. Do you think it's because I play chess?"

"No," Jane said, "of course not."

"Hey," Lorie said, "what did we hit back there? Was it one of them?"

"Could be," Sven said. "Whatever it was splattered pretty good huh?"

Jane grumbled something under her breath.

"Yeah!" Lorie said. "Take that zombie monster!"

Sven agreed. "If they keep taking it, we'll keep giving it to them. We're gonna get through this, we're gonna survive." Sven looked at Lorie in the rearview mirror. "You with me kid?"

Lorie gave Sven a conspiratorial grin. "All the way."

"Okay," Jane said. "That's enough of that. This isn't a game."

Then Sven's alarm went off again.

Evan screamed. Ivan bared his claws and hissed.

"Protein time," Sven announced. "Has it been two hours already?"

"Sven..." Jane said, her voice accusing.

"Oh," Sven said. "Sorry Evan, it's just my protein alarm. It reminds me to get my protein so that my muscles keep away from catabolism—from breaking down, from eating themselves."

"Oh," Evan said, "like the zombies are trying to eat us I guess."

"Exactly right," Sven said.

"So now we're all calling them zombies?" Jane said. "Just like that?" Jane sighed and turned to the backseat. "It's okay Evan. I screamed a lot worse than you did the last time his stupid alarm went off."

Evan looked relieved and puzzled at the same time. "How does that small watch make so much noise?" he asked.

"It's a high-protein watch," Sven said, and gave Evan a grin in the rearview.

Jane turned to Evan, shaking her head. "Never mind him," she said. "He's nuts. Here, look, I'll give him some protein, and he'll stop bothering us."

Jane reached into Sven's backpack, took out two protein bars, unwrapped both of them, and thrust them into Sven's open mouth at the same time.

"See?" Jane said. "That shut him up pretty good."

Evan laughed, nodded, and went back to looking out the window.

Sven bit a piece off both protein bars at the same time, gave them a contented chew, and considered.

"Can I have one?" Lorie asked.

Jane shook her head. "You don't want one of those. They're terrible. They taste like sand, and are impossible to chew up properly."

"Here," Sven said, handing one of the bitten protein bars to Jane, "break her off a little piece so she can try it."

Jane took it, and looked back at Lorie. "It's really not any good, you sure?"

Sven saw Lorie nod in the rearview mirror, and Jane broke a piece off for her to try and passed it back. Sven heard sniffing sounds, then chewing.

"So what do you think?" Sven asked.

"It is hard to chew," Lorie said, "but I kinda like it."

"You're probably just starved," Jane said. "I didn't have time to grab any real food, what with..." she trailed off. "We'll pick something up on the way, right Sven?"

"Yeah," Sven said. "We're getting there, it's just gonna be very slow going, already is."

Then Sven saw a break in the stopped cars and clear road in front of him.

"Looks like I spoke to soon," Sven said, and hit the gas.

Speeding up, they took a half-blind turn. Sven had on a grin, happy not to be zigzagging at 10 miles per hour in and out of stopped cars.

"Maybe we should keep taking it easy," Jane said. "We'll get there in the end."

"But this way," Sven said, "we'll get there a hell of a lot fas—"

Sven hit the brakes as hard as he could. The car fishtailed, and then began to skid. Because they had been in the midst of a curve in the road, two of the car's tires came off the road for a moment, and Sven felt the car unbalance.

After a moment of perceived weightlessness, the car wobbled back onto all of its tires and resumed the skid.

Brakes and tires cried out for mercy.

The car was fast approaching a large group of zombies, who, by all appearances, were crossing the road.

Chapter 46

Lorie held on to the seat in front of her while the car skidded, her eyes glued to the road ahead. She knew that Sven wouldn't be able to stop in time, so she braced herself for the impact, but made sure to keep her eyes open. Lorie was right, Sven was unable to stop in time. They came to a halt within the zombie pack, knocking a dozen over, and setting the rest to banging and scraping against the car.

The car was suddenly dim, all but a few shape shifting patches of sunlight blocked by the churn and flail of zombie limbs.

Breathing hard, Lorie let go of the seat in front of her. She spun around to look at the mass of walking dead that now surrounded them.

What were they going to do now? How were they going to get out of this? The mass of zombies or monsters or whatever they were was so thick that Lorie couldn't see past it to any kind of safety.

Then Lorie's field of vision began to swim, the zombies' banging and rubbing against the car disorienting her.

"What are they doing in the middle of the road like this?" Sven asked.

"What are they doing?" Jane repeated angrily. "What are they doing? Who cares what they're doing? What are you doing driving so fast? And what are they going to do to us now?"

Sven turned around to look in the back of the car. He nodded at Lorie, who now had Evan burrowing into her back to get away from the monsters outside. Lorie nodded back at Sven, put an arm around Evan, and turned back to watch the staggering figures circling the car. Evan's face was pressed into her shoulder, and it felt very hot. It felt wet too, like Evan was crying.

"You're right," Sven said, and to Lorie his voice sounded shaky. "I really messed this one up." The zombies' moaning and scraping were growing louder, and the car began to shake.

Lorie slid herself and Evan away from the windows so that they were huddled in the middle of the backseat. The figures outside were clawing at the car, but none of them reached for the door handles. It was like they didn't know how they should be trying to get in, even though the doors were locked.

"Can you drive through it?" Jane asked. She was breathing hard, but Lorie saw hard eyes behind the panic, and it was reassuring.

"Yeah," Sven said, "okay, let's try that. Okay."

The big man eased his foot off the brake and the car inched forward. The monsters became more frantic in their clawing and banging, and their moans became more agitated. The moans were dry, like chalk on a blackboard—not the point of a piece of chalk on a blackboard, but the broad side of a piece of chalk on a blackboard, like when you wanted to fill in the outline of a picture. That wasn't how people were supposed to sound, all dried up like that.

The car stopped, settling into place.

"What's wrong?" Lorie asked.

Sven looked confused for a moment as he looked down at the steering wheel, the gear shift, and back outside. Then he began to jerk at the key, apparently trying to turn it. He shifted the car into park, then tried to turn the key again.

"It's dead." He tried the key again, still nothing. "It must have shut down when we were out of control."

Sven turned the key to the left, then to the right.

Still nothing.

Lorie understood what was going on right away—the same thing had happened to one of her friends in the middle of a driving lesson. The engine had automatically shut off after her friend spun out. Then Lorie remembered the worst part of the story. Her friend's engine hadn't turned on again for several minutes. It didn't look like they had minutes to spare.

"No, no, no," Jane said. "Why won't it start? This can't be happening, this can't be happening!"

The car was shaking harder now, and Lorie was starting to think that she might be at the end of the ride. It was no good to think like that, but she couldn't keep the thoughts out. Those monsters would get in, and they would bite and tear and—

Ivan hissed at Lorie, and swiped a clawed paw in her direction. Lorie ducked out of the way, and Ivan hissed again.

But he wasn't hissing at her, Lorie understood, he was hissing at Evan. Hadn't he hissed at Evan earlier? Lorie wasn't sure.

Lorie pushed the overheating Evan gently away from her and propped him up against the middle of the backseat.

Then she suddenly found herself entranced, watching the keychain that hung from the ignition, jangling in time with the car's rocking.

Lorie began to feel faint, as if she were floating away, up, up, and—

The door was ripped open, and Lorie saw a gnarled, shriveled hand—no, it was more a claw than a hand—reaching for her feet.

Chapter 47

Lorie screamed.

Jane couldn't believe the engine wouldn't turn, and now one of the sick people had ripped the door open, and it was getting into the car with them. As hopeless as she thought their situation was, Jane had to help the kids. She wasn't just going to let those things grab Lorie and Evan. She was going to go down fighting, and she was going to see to it that they all would.

She frantically glanced around the car for some kind of weapon, but found none. Before Jane realized what she was doing, her body was in action. She threw herself into the backseat between Lorie and the intruder just as its shriveled hand closed around Lorie's ankle. Another one of the sick people was trying to push through into the car, but with the first intruder blocking most of the door, there was only room for the second one's grasping arms.

The grasping arms were in Jane's face, and Lorie was being dragged across the floor of the backseat, toward the flailing crowd outside.

"No!" Lorie shrieked as she struggled. "No! Help me!"

"Sven!" Jane yelled as she yanked on the girl, trying to keep her inside the vehicle. "Start the car, start the damn car!"

Lorie was trying to wriggle away, but even with Jane trying to keep the intruder out and Lorie in place, the girl was still being dragged out.

Then a grasping arm caught hold of Jane's hair and pulled.

The pain was sharp, causing Jane to grit her teeth. She saw one of the grasping arms with some of her hair in its hand, then the hand opened, the hair fell, and the hand was grasping for her once more.

Ignoring the pain and the grasping hands, Jane made herself focus on Lorie. She had to save Lorie.

Jane leaned into the backseat with her back, putting herself between Lorie and the zombie.

The zombie? Encountering the dehumanizing term playing in her self-talk startled Jane, but now was not the time to reflect on political correctness.

Pushing the thoughts out of her head, Jane pressed her shoulders into the seat, brought her right knee up into her body, and kicked the zombie in the head. She did it in a pressing motion, connecting her heel with the bottom of the zombie's chin.

There was a horrible snap, and the zombie fell backward into the grasping zombie behind it.

Bolstered by the successful kick, Jane got on the offensive. She kicked with her left leg, roundhouse-kicking the slumping zombie, propelling him backward into the zombie behind him. Then she got up off the seat in a crouch and followed up with a sharp side kick—the best she could manage in the cramped space. The first zombie and the grasping arms of the second fell out of the car, and Jane rushed forward, grabbing the door to shut it before more of the surrounding throng could climb in.

She pulled, but before she could close the door the grasping hands were back, clawing for her hair again. They were making it impossible for Jane to shut the door, and she found the door being wrenched open again by the crooked, lifeless hands of other zombies who were now stepping over their fallen, broken-necked comrade, kicking him under the vehicle.

The zombies were clamoring for a piece of the action, and Jane knew that she was going to have to oblige.

"We really need the car to start," Jane said, and then she intentionally loosened her grip on the door, letting the zombies pull it open a little wider.

Chapter 48

Sven was bent over the ignition, taking the key out, putting it back in, turning it, praying, turning it again.

Nothing.

He paused, took a breath, and told himself that this was going to be the one. He turned the key with a hopeful, frantic twist of his wrist.

Nothing.

Damn safety features, he thought, damn you all to hell.

Was there another solution? Sven tried to figure out what to do next, but being surrounded and breached by the mob of zombies, Jane's karate-kicking in the backseat, and Ivan's hissing to cheer her on, all made it very difficult to think clearly.

"Lorie," Sven said, "are you okay?"

"Yeah, that thing grabbed me, was pulling me out, but I'm okay now. What do we do?"

"I don't know."

"You wanna try it again? It should come back on, if it's like my friend's car it should. I think it turned off because we spun and then kind of crashed."

Sven groped for the ignition, about to turn the key again.

With his fingers sweating on the key, but just before he turned it again, a thought occurred to him. What if it didn't work? What if this was it? If the automatic fuel cut-off was to blame, then the engine should start again. The back door always worked too, until one of the zombies had broken it open. What if the engine wouldn't turn, and they were all devoured in the car? Sven shot a glance at his hissing, skittering cat and an even deeper sadness swept over him.

Sven gave the key one more twist. To his surprise, his worry didn't materialize.

"I got it," Sven whispered, in disbelief.

"I got it," he repeated, loud enough for everyone to hear.

Sven twisted around to check on the situation in the backseat, aggravating the morning's injuries.

Jane's jaw was set and her eyes were brimming with rage. Sven had never seen her so powerfully angry—not even in their worst arguments with each other before they broke up. She looked really hot.

But what was she doing? Was she opening the door? She was about to let them in!

"Ja—" Sven started to say, but then he realized what she was doing, and though he knew he should begin plowing through the throng, he couldn't look away.

Jane opened the door wide enough for two of the zombies to poke their heads in. They were trying to bite Jane, gnashing and clicking their teeth, but Jane leaned back to keep herself just out of reach.

"Give it to 'em," Lorie said, and Sven saw that the girl was massaging her red ankle. "Give it to 'em good."

And Jane gave it to them alright. Sven watched, unbelieving, as gentle Jane—the Jane that would pick up spiders with pieces of paper and let them out of the house rather than kill them—he watched as she opened the door just wide enough, then swung it at the zombies' heads, bashing them repeatedly with the edge of the door. Sven couldn't help but wince at all the cracking and crunching, but Jane continued to stare down the zombies as she crushed their skulls, her face showing no emotion but anger.

After more than enough bashing, the two zombies with their destroyed heads fell back into the throng, and Jane pulled the door shut, closing it with a crunch on eight or nine grasping zombie hands. Lorie was helping Jane hold the door shut against all the squirming, undead fingers.

Jane spun around. "What the hell are you waiting for? Let's get out of here!"

"Let's go, let's go," Lorie said. "Come on."

Sven turned back to the dashboard. His body was locking up with panic now. He had taken his foot off the brake already. Why the hell wasn't the car moving?

Think Sven, think.

Of course! Sven shook his head, this really wasn't his day for being sharp, and it was exactly the day he had to be sharp. All of their lives depended on it.

They weren't moving because the car was in park. Sven shifted the car into drive, and took his foot off the brake again. Mercifully, the car began to move. Sven floored the gas pedal. The car lurched forward, and began mowing down the zombies in its path. The zombies groaned as the car plowed into them, but the ones that hadn't been plowed did not clear out of the way. They waited patiently for the car to mow them down and go over them, and it did. They were good zombies that way. Sven felt the snap of bones under the tires as he went over them.

As they gained speed, the mass of zombies began to thin out, and Sven spotted clear road ahead of them. Lorie must have spotted it too, because she let out a happy hoot.

After they broke away from the throng, Sven slowed and checked his mirrors to assess the damage. They were dragging four zombies with them—the ones with their hands caught in the door.

Without consulting anyone, Sven decided on a course of action. He spotted a cluster of three zombies who were milling in place and aimed the car so that the zombies hanging on to the right side of the car would be swept off by the zombies in the road.

"Get away from the door," he said. "Now."

Sven floored it.

Impact.

The car shook as the hanging zombies made contact with the zombies in the road, bones crunching and shattering. Sven looked over his shoulder and saw that Jane and Lorie had moved away from the door, anticipating the impact. The collision wrenched the door open, and sent a spray of disintegrating fingers, palms, and forearms—brittle remnants of the infected—into the backseat.

But all of the clinging zombies hadn't been swept off. There was still one hanging on to the open door. It wore a long-sleeved, black and white striped shirt, its legs dragging on the pavement as it held firmly to the car door.

Jane was kicking at the Waldo zombie but she couldn't make solid enough contact to get the thing off.

"Hang on," Sven said. "Get deeper into the car. I'm going to get that thing off."

Sven looked back at the road. It was mostly clear now, except for a scattering of stopped cars, the vehicles on the road now thinning out. Sven could see the Waldo zombie streaming from the car in his right hand mirror. Sven gripped the wheel tightly with both hands and found his target—a stopped UPS truck in the road at the next intersection. He sped up and aimed again.

"Hold on back there," Sven said. "I'm going to peel this one right off."

There was a bone-crushing clunk, and the Waldo zombie was gone. All that remained was one striped-shirted zombie arm, streaming from the open car door.

Chapter 49

Lorie was beginning to calm down. She crawled over to the open door, and with the toe of her running shoe, began to flick zombie pieces out into the road. Most of the bits were fingers and forearms; the zombie flesh was so dry and brittle that it barely seemed real, and the parts crumbled so much that it was hard to get all of them. How could they be so strong and so breakable at the same time?

Once Lorie had flicked all of the zombie parts that were large enough to flick, she looked at the smaller bits of zombie flesh that were now reduced to a powder, packed tightly into the grooves of the backseat foot well.

"Sorry Sven," Lorie said. "I don't think that's gonna come out without a vacuum. They're so...they're so dry. Like crumbly cheese."

"That's okay," Sven said. "We'll figure something out when we have a chance. Good mental image by the way—the cheese I mean, disgusting. They are really dry. I wonder if that means anything."

"Probably that they're dehydrated," Jane said. "Right? I mean what else would it mean and how would that help us?"

"I don't know," Lorie said. "Maybe it's important." She thought that it was.

"The first one," Sven said, "the first zombie that attacked me this morning, he was my friend, Lars. He wasn't like that. He looked like he was deflating or something, but he was bleeding. And the second one I saw, my neighbor, he wasn't dry either."

Jane nodded. "Vicky wasn't dry like this either."

Lorie shook her head. "But that was a while ago, maybe they're all changing somehow. It's like a cold or something, and it goes in stages. Now they're all dry and crumbly, and maybe later, they'll be all better and it'll be over."

No one said anything for a while, and Lorie remembered that her ankle hurt where one of the zombies had grabbed her. She poked at it. It was tender, but she didn't think it would be a problem for her to get around. She wouldn't be able to run as fast though, that was for sure.

"Are you okay?" Jane asked.

Lorie looked up. "Yeah, I'm fine. My ankle's a little sore but it's gonna be okay."

"She's a tough kid," Sven chimed in. "How's Evan back there?"

Lorie turned to look at Evan, and realized that she hadn't heard him say anything for a while. Come to think of it, she didn't remember him moving in a while. He was huddled in the left corner of the backseat, his face in his hands, his body turned away from Lorie and Jane. He wasn't moving.

"Are you alright?" Lorie asked. "Evan? Are you feeling okay?"

Evan didn't respond.

"He's probably just had a bit of a shock," Sven said. "We all have. It's understandable."

"Evan?" Lorie asked again.

Evan still didn't respond, and he wasn't moving.

Lorie slid over along the backseat and reached for Evan's shoulder. Just when she was about to touch him, Ivan hissed, and Lorie turned to see that the cat had jumped on top of the front passenger seat's headrest. Ivan's tail was fluffed up and he was swiping at an invisible something in the air.

"Ivan!" Sven said. "What's gotten into you?"

"It's okay," Lorie said. "I'm sure he's had a shock too, like you said."

Ivan hissed and swiped again. Then Sven swerved around something, and the cat lost its balance and skittered down the front of the headrest, making a deft landing in the seat. Then Ivan got up on the armrest next to Sven. The cat looked straight at Lorie.

"Hi," Lorie said. "It's okay," and she extended her hand to Ivan. He sniffed at it, then rubbed his head in it.

"Good cat," Lorie said.

Ivan meowed.

Then Lorie turned back to Evan and was about to put her hand on his shoulder when she felt claws digging into her legs. Startled by the sudden pricks of pain, Lorie turned away from Evan to find Ivan balancing in her lap, hissing and shadow-swiping at her arm.

It's as if he's trying to tell me something, she thought.

"Ivan!" Sven said again. "Be nice. We're all in this together. I'm sorry Lorie, he's usually very nice. I don't know what to tell you. He is a nice cat most of the time, really."

"It's okay," Lorie said, looking at Ivan. She was half frightened and half curious. Cats had always liked her before. Maybe this one didn't. There was a first time for everything. Or maybe he was trying to tell her something. It was a silly thought, and Lorie knew it, but she couldn't shake it.

"Here," Jane said, "I'll take him," and pulled the screeching cat off Lorie.

"Evan?" Jane asked. "Are you alright?"

Lorie turned back to Evan.

"Evan?" Lorie asked.

This time he reacted. He took his hands away from his face, resting them on the window, and began to push his slumped body upright.

Ivan hissed again, and Lorie turned to see that Jane was barely able to restrain the cat in her arms. Something obviously had Ivan spooked.

"Evan," Lorie said, "it's gonna be fine. We got away. We're gonna find a safe place and we'll be fine."

Lorie put her arm on Evan's knee as he turned to face her. She meant to comfort him. He was taking it worse than she was, and he needed a friend. She could usually make him feel better about things.

But when Lorie saw Evan's face, she pulled her hand away.

Chapter 50

Evan was pale-faced, shivering, and looked like he was on the verge of death. Jane didn't like it.

"Lorie," Jane said, taking the girl's arm. "Go sit up front with Sven, okay honey? He needs all the help navigating that he can get."

The girl nodded, and climbed over the armrest into the passenger seat. When she sat down, she looked back fearfully at Evan, seeming glad to be away from him.

Ivan began to calm down, prompting Jane to relax her grip on the cat that just a few moments before had been frantic with terror...or something. Jane had never realized how strong cats were, or at least how strong this particular cat was. She knew that if Ivan had fought against her grip a little longer, he would've gotten away and inflicted whatever damage he had intended.

"Evan?" Jane said. "How you doing over there?"

"I don't feel that great," Evan said. "Maybe I'm carsick or something."

Jane nodded, suspecting motion sickness wasn't it at all. What if Evan had the same thing that Vicky had—that all the zombies were afflicted with? Could they all catch it from him? They were all in the same car together, after all. Jane thought back to that moment earlier in the day when she had scolded Sven for being reluctant to take Lorie and Evan on. She began to think he had been right in a way. They could all be in serious trouble now, if it turned out Evan had the zombie flu or whatever the hell was going around turning people into monsters. Turning Vicky into—

Jane felt herself choking up with tears and made herself stop.

"Maybe we can stop soon," she said, "and get you some Dramamine. Do you want some water or maybe a bite to eat right now? That might make you feel better."

"No thanks."

"He hasn't been feeling well for the past few days," Lorie said, turning around. "He has a cold."

Evan nodded. "Yeah, but I was feeling better today and I was going back in to school and..." he trailed off.

"Okay," Jane said. "Well, we'll get you something as soon as we can. Maybe try to sleep for now, if you can."

"I'll try." He put his head back in his hands and turned away to lean against the window.

He doesn't have any zombie virus, Jane thought, feeling silly. He has a cold. He's had it for days. The boy was going to be fine. She let out the breath she was holding.

He's going to be fine, Jane told herself again, but in spite of the positive self-talk, she began to feel in her pockets for any sort of weapon. She didn't have anything. The utensils she had used earlier in the day were gone, used up along the way. Her gun was in her bedroom, back on Lewis Mountain Road, now miles away.

"We have to get some weapons," Jane said.

"That's where we're going," Sven said, "we're gonna stop at the gun store up the way."

"Good," Jane said. "I know the one."

Jane felt unsteady and exposed, holding on to the door for fear that it would open again, in a car with two teenagers, one of whom looked to be on the verge of death, her bodybuilder ex-boyfriend, his cat, and no weapons.

Ivan looked up at Jane, tilted his head to one side, blinked, and licked her nose.

Chapter 51

Sven saw the next wall of zombies in time. He tapped the brakes, and the car stopped well away from the gathering of infected, no out-of-control skidding, no screeching of brakes, no arrival in the midst of the zombies.

"Sorry," Lorie said. "I didn't see them in time, I guess I'm not that good at this navigating thing."

"It's okay," Sven said. "I'm having trouble concentrating too. Probably getting low on protein, and I could use a nap."

"How do we get around them?" Lorie asked.

Sven looked at the milling zombies and shrugged. There was no getting through this many of them. There were hundreds of them—many more than in the previous encounter—blocking the whole road with their aimless staggering.

Wait, no, now they were going somewhere. Or were they? It looked liked there was a subtle shift toward—

"They're starting to come for us!" Lorie said. "Look, they're turning."

The girl was right. One by one, the zombies were falling away from their group and starting off toward the car. Others were joining the departing zombies and Sven got the sense that the whole mass of them would be coming for him soon, its zombie particles peeling off one by one, as if they were the many components of one collective monster.

Sven put the car in reverse. "We gotta get around them, and fast." He began to back up.

He'd slowly backed up about fifty feet when Lorie said, "Over there," and pointed to an entrance into a small strip mall that had a hibachi restaurant in it.

"Good call," Sven said, and he shifted the car into drive and drove into the strip mall. "Maybe there'll be a back way out."

"I really hope there is," Jane said from the back of the car, "I really hope so."

To the left of the hibachi restaurant was a fireworks store. Sven made a mental note of it and drove around the back of the restaurant. Behind the restaurant was a hardware store, and beyond that Sven could see a road—a way out.

There was a field adjacent to the hardware store, and Sven could drive through the field to get onto the road. The only problem was that there was a ten foot tall, steel-reinforced fence blocking access to the field. There was a gate in the fence. Sven drove up to it and stopped. There was a large lock securing the thick chain that held the gate in place.

"I'll be just a second," Sven said, and stepped out of the car. It hurt when he straightened up, but that was to be expected after almost being crushed before breakfast.

"Where are you going?" Jane asked.

"I need to find something to open the gate with. If I'm not back in a few minutes...I don't know, just try to drive through it or something."

The cloying odor was there, stronger than before, turning Sven's stomach and throwing his concentration off. The distant grunts and moans of the now approaching zombies seemed to add to his mental and physical unsteadiness.

"If you're not back in a few minutes?" Jane asked. "What do you expect us to do? Why don't we just try to drive through the gate now, or back around or something?"

Sven looked back toward Route 29, coughed, and then turned back to Jane.

"There's too many of them over there, and I don't want to risk damaging the car by driving into the fence. Then we'd be on foot, and...I gotta go, hold tight."

"But—"

Sven hobbled quickly into the hardware store, his chest and neck throbbing with pain at each step. There was no time to argue with Jane, the zombies were getting closer by the second.

A quick glance at the gate, the chain, and the lock had sent Sven spiraling into confused desperation. Why was there a reinforced gate, complete with a mean-looking lock and chain, blocking off an empty field...in Charlottesville, a town where people sometimes left their unattended cars running while they shopped? Getting the gate open might be a problem.

The lights in the hardware store were on. Sven looked to the left, then to the right, reading the aisle signs throughout the store. His eyes stopped on the sign that read, "Carpentry," six or seven aisles away, and he limped off in that direction, trying to minimize the movement of his upper body.

The store looked and sounded deserted. The only thing that Sven could hear was the faint whirr of the overhead fans and the buzz of the fluorescent lights. There were half-full shopping carts and baskets strewn throughout the store, as if the customers had left in a hurry. Reminding himself that he didn't have time to take in the sights, Sven began to limp faster.

He passed "Kitchens," "Lighting," "Home Projects," "Plumbing," and two unmarked aisles filled with nuts and bolts and power tools. Just as he was turning into the Carpentry aisle, he heard an unnerving plop.

Sven whirled around painfully, and saw the source of the plop right away. A little girl zombie was, as far as Sven could tell, feasting. She had long brown hair, wore a backpack, and resembled the zombie equivalent of a fifth grader on her way to school. Sven wondered what a kid was doing in a hardware store to begin with, and though this wasn't a good time to reflect on minor details, Sven's mind scanned through the possibilities anyway.

Maybe she and her mother had stopped here for some gardening supplies on the way to drop the girl off to school. Maybe that was her mother that the child was feasting on. Sven thought on this for the briefest of moments, and although there was no way he could know for sure just by looking, he felt sure that the cute little child zombie was devouring her mother.

Whoever the woman was, the zombie girl was eating greedily of her body. As he stared, shocked and unable to look away, Sven thought he understood where the plopping sound had come from. The woman's heart was out of her chest, sitting on the tiled floor in an expanding puddle of dark blood. The arteries and veins were torn, and the thing looked like a mess—not like the hearts in anatomy books in school.

It was a ruined thing that sat there in its growing blood puddle. Sven felt nauseated, and then that terrible smell hit him again, and he began to forget what he had come in there for. Was he looking for someone? For something? Why was there a heart—

Sven staggered backward and regained some of his mental faculty. He realized that he needed to get something to protect himself from that smell, it was a dangerous thing to get caught in, like a putrid invisible netting.

They must have masks of some sort in here, Sven thought as he pinched his nose. Then as he was turning into the Carpentry aisle again he caught another glimpse of the heart, and again he stopped in his tracks, unable to look away from the disgusting scene unfolding before him.

Sven's eyes went back and forth from the torn organ on the floor to the girl zombie gnashing her way through the flesh of the slumping woman's neck. The zombie girl's mouth and face were covered with gore, and she looked different from the other zombies that Sven had just seen, more like the zombies in the morning had looked. She didn't look dry or brittle at all, didn't look like she was made of crumpled paper. She looked strong and powerful in her disease, if that meant anything.

Why had she set the heart on the floor like that? What was so special about—as if in answer, the zombie girl turned to look at Sven. Her face was worse than anything he had ever seen. The black eyes shone like obsidian pearls from some other world—a world where carnage was all there was, and all that there would ever be. Sven felt a chill pass through him as he looked into those eyes. The blood and unidentifiable globs of flesh covering her face were nothing next to the eyes—the black, unpitying eyes.

Thankfully, mercifully, the girl turned down, averting her gaze. She looked down at the heart, picked it up, and squeezed it into her mouth with a violent slurping. Then Sven was retching, backing away as he did it, watching half-digested bits of protein bar and ribeye make their way out of him. He regretted losing that good food, that protein, but he couldn't help it. The sight of that girl and the remains of what was probably her mother and the heart—it was all too much for him to take.

Sven turned away while trying to get his stomach under control, and ran.

Chapter 52

Sven ran down the aisle, trying not to think about the girl and her backpack and the heart. He was looking for something, but it wasn't in this aisle. He turned into the next one, breathing hard, his stomach burning. The acid taste of vomit tinged his mouth, and a dread was spreading through him that he couldn't control. He began to think about Ivan, Jane, Lorie, and Evan. They were out there, they were depending on him. He got a hold of himself and made himself look harder.

There it was.

Actually, there were several.

He decided to ignore the price tags on the sledgehammers, and go for size. Price was not a factor today. He could have the most expensive one today, he told himself. Who was going to stop him? But that wasn't the way to pick out sledgehammers anyway. He needed one that was heavy enough to get the job done. He needed one that could break open the lock on the gate.

Sven hefted each of the sledgehammers at a time, bouncing them in his grasp and weighing them by feel. Each bounce of the hammers pulled sharply at his injury, but he ignored it. Time was running out, and he had to get back to the car. He chose the longest, heaviest of the four, hefted it onto his shoulder, and began to walk out of the aisle.

He reached the end of the aisle, turned left toward the store's entrance, and there she was: the zombie girl with the backpack and black eyes, who moments before had ravenously sucked down her mother's heart.

The girl's lips were parted in a sick, half-grin. She reached for Sven with a grasping hand and began to lurch toward him. Sven reacted in one swift motion, without thinking.

He tugged hard with his right hand, which had been holding the sledgehammer in place on his shoulder. The sledgehammer swung out in a diagonal, downward arc, and took the zombie girl's head off. Though Sven felt no resistance in the shaft of the sledgehammer, it wasn't a clean blow.

This zombie was not dry, and the splatter of blood, flesh, bone, and brain matter was a scene any zombie movie director would've been proud of, or, perhaps more accurately, would've gotten sick over. It made Sven sick, and he began to move past the standing, headless girl, toward the door. He thought about wiping the sledgehammer, and about getting another one altogether, but there was no time for that.

As he ran to the door, he shot a glance over his shoulder. He tried to keep himself from looking, but he couldn't help it. The girl's body still stood there, motionless and decapitated. How was it still balanced like that? And the part of her head...the part that was still jutting out of her neck, it was so wrong. Sven could feel the image tattooing itself into his brain. It hadn't been a clean blow at all.

Sven burst through the door and was outside. He was clutching the sledgehammer and half-dragging it as he went, not wanting to come in contact with its now-tainted head. A wave of the sick, cloying odor hit him and his vision seemed to turn a shade of grey. He realized then that he had forgotten about the masks.

He trudged on toward the car, hoping everyone in it—everyone he was now responsible for—was still alright. The car looked as it had minutes before. The doors were all closed.

I could not have been inside for more than a few minutes, Sven told himself, but he wasn't sure. Time seemed to fade and stop each time he encountered that awful smell, and when he stared into the girl's black eyes, he felt as if he'd been snatched out of time altogether. But it could not have been a long time, because Sven saw that the zombies were just now starting to overtake the outside of the hibachi restaurant.

There was still time.

Sven positioned himself in front of the car. Looking into it he saw an expression of relief sweep over Lorie in the passenger seat. Ivan hopped up on top of the dashboard and wagged his tail. Jane nodded at Sven from the back of the car. Sven didn't see Evan, but the kid was probably still asleep or passed out. They were all alright.

Relieved, Sven turned to the gate. It was held shut by a thick, gleaming chain, two of whose links were secured by an overly large silver lock.

He put his right leg in back of him for purchase and swung the sledgehammer up with both of his hands so that it was over his head and to the right, being mindful not to drip any of the girl's head matter onto himself.

Trying not to breathe in too much, Sven focused through his increasing numbness and brought the hammer down. The head of the hammer struck the lock dead-on with a clank that reverberated up Sven's arms and made its way into his injured chest. He winced from the pain and dropped the head of the hammer, resting it on the ground.

Then he looked up at the gate, and his heart sank.

The lock was bloody, but still intact.

Chapter 53

The closest zombie that Milt saw was on the sidewalk, two storefronts over from Milt's now-zombie-contaminated comic book shop. Milt waddled toward the zombie, and when he got closer, he saw that he knew this particular zombie—or at least he had known the human that the zombie once was.

The zombie's name tag said, "Francis," and his uniform bore the Hollywood Video logo. Milt thought it appropriate that the dying brand's employee was now a zombie. Milt had never liked Francis. Francis was a know-it-all, always eager to barge into Milt's store and show off his movie knowledge. Francis had always been too happy and energetic, and Milt was pleased to see that the self-styled movie buff was now stumbling, apparently unable to get his left leg to bend at the knee.

Francis moaned as he advanced, raising his right arm sideways, its fingers stiff and unmoving. Milt raised his sword at the awkward flap, jutting his belly out as he did it. Francis didn't react to the sword in any way, and only continued to stumble toward Milt, eyeing him with dull, dark eyes.

When Francis was two feet away from Milt, the zombie's mouth opened, and Milt brought his sword down as hard as he could, splitting Francis's head in two.

The left side of Francis's head peeled away from the right side and drooped toward the ground. Then Francis began to fall over, and Milt took a few plodding steps backward to avoid the zombie's falling body. The body reminded Milt of a scene in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, in which the T-1000's head was split in two for a few moments before it mended itself back into shape. Francis's head wasn't going to be mending itself, Milt remarked triumphantly.

He withdrew the sword with ease, taking pleasure in the fact that the sword hadn't stuck this time. He looked at the sword, and then at Francis's body on the ground in front of him. It did not bleed.

"If it bleeds we can kill it," Milt said to himself, recalling the line from Predator. "But the converse isn't true—this one doesn't bleed, and yet I have killed it."

Grinning broadly, Milt wondered why all these movie scenes were coming back to him now. Maybe Francis had inspired him. Maybe Milt had learned something from the know-it-all in the end.

He kicked Francis's body in the ribs a few times until his hefty leg became fatigued.

Then he looked up, and for the first time since he'd left his comic book shop that day, Milt felt afraid.

Chapter 54

Sven struck with the hammer again, and again, and again. Most of the blood, flesh, and bone fragments on the head of the hammer had sprayed off on the first blow, splattering the gate, fence, and ground around where Sven stood. He suspected it had gotten on him too, but he was too focused on breaking through the gate to stop and check, and he didn't want to find evidence proving his suspicion.

Overcome by disbelief at the lock's strength, Sven paused to rest the sledgehammer on the ground so that he could catch his breath. He was careful not to breathe too deeply, but the disorientation was getting worse. With it he began to feel a numbness nipping him underneath his fingernails, beginning to creep up his fingers.

On impulse, he whirled around to face the back of the hibachi restaurant, and there they were—three zombies apart from the larger cluster had set a direct course for Sven. There were two men and a woman, all dressed like office workers. They weren't covered in any sort of gore, and but for the shambling gaits and the appearance of their pale, deflated bodies, they wouldn't have looked that far out of the ordinary.

There was still a little time. Sven turned back to the gate and struck again.

From the corner of his eye he saw the beginnings of frantic movement in the car.

It was going all wrong, the zombies were getting too close.

In the midst of a backswing, Sven heard a creak and then the slam of a car door. He half-turned, almost dropping the hammer and twisting uncomfortably.

"What are you doing?" Sven asked.

"Buying you some time," Jane said, and disappeared around the back of the car. "Don't stop, keep going at it will you?"

"Right," Sven said, and turned back to pounding the lock with the sledgehammer. After striking the lock two more times to no avail, Sven looked over his shoulder at Jane. She was crouched next to the back of the car on Sven's side, rooting in the gravel. She was scooping up handfuls of it, apparently being selective in her scooping, and flinging the rocks at the three approaching office zombies.

The zombies reacted to the barrage of rocks by slowing in their tracks and groaning, but they didn't give up their pursuit. At least she was slowing them down, and perhaps making them angry, if the groans were an indication of anything.

Sven swung at the lock four more times, but still it wouldn't break open. He was in so much pain now that he wasn't sure he could continue. It felt as if his chest had torn open, and the stiffness in his neck was getting worse by the second, and that damn smell was getting stronger, making things fuzzy, and the numbness was gripping his hands now, and—

Balancing with the sledgehammer, Sven wobbled around to face the approaching office zombies. They were getting much too close now, and though Jane kept up her gravel-flinging, she was backing up closer to Sven in her crouched position, balancing with one hand on the side of the car.

A heated frustration filled Sven's body, turning his vision a muddy grey-red. Thinking went on hold.

Sven raced forward, oblivious to the pain in his body. He swung the sledgehammer back as he ran, then brought it sideways into the nearest approaching zombie's rib cage. There was a horrible crunch, and the zombie folded over on its side and fell to the ground. Without stopping to look or think about what he was doing, Sven took another backswing, and then the head of the sledgehammer connected with the second zombie's chin in an upward swipe. Sven took another backswing straight over his head, and brought the hammer down on the top of third zombie's head.

Panting and regaining some semblance of conscious thought, Sven surveyed the damage in front of him.

The first one Sven had struck was crumpled, shoulder and hip touching like a crushed soda can. But the broken zombie still moved. The legs pushed on the ground and thrust the bent body forward, mouth snapping and tie trailing in the gravel.

The second one—the one Sven had struck on the bottom of the chin—was mostly headless, except for a piece of flesh at the back of the neck still connecting body and head. Sven wasn't sure if that qualified as headless or not. The body twitched a little, then lay still.

The third one wasn't crawling or twitching. Its head was smashed in at the top, and there was a dark, gelatinous ooze coming out of its ears, and—

Sven had to look away. The gore seemed to be accumulating in his brain, as if the more he saw of it the sicker it made him, with no reachable point of saturation. He shook his head and took a shallow breath, reminding himself not to breathe too deeply of the tainted air.

Then Jane pointed at the first one, still making its way toward them. Her face was pallid. "Maybe you're right. Maybe it is just like the movies and you have to—you have to get them in the head. Sever the spinal chord or destroy the brain and all that."

Sven looked at her. "What? So you were paying attention to all those zombie movies we watched? You always said you hated them."

"Just because I hated them doesn't mean I didn't get the plot. It's a simple enough concept to grasp, and yes, even women get it."

Sven nodded, raised the sledgehammer, and brought it down on the crawling zombie's head, flattening it with finality. The thing stopped moving and lay still.

Sven looked at the three dispatched zombies on the gravel path. These zombies were mostly dry, and that was alright. He caught himself in the unusual thought. No, it wasn't alright, but it was better, better than that girl standing there with her backpack and no—

"I think they're all dead now," Jane said, moving toward Sven slowly and extending her hand to him. "Come on, let's finish up with the gate, we gotta get out of here quick."

Sven blinked and looked away from the three mangled office worker zombies. "I don't know if you've noticed, but that damn lock won't break."

"I've noticed, there's no need to get all snippety about it."

"Snippety? Snippety?"

"Put your legs into it or something, come on." Jane smiled, but Sven could see she was forcing it.

"I guess if we're stuck here," Sven said, "then we'll have to get in the car and try to drive through them, or go by foot."

Jane shook her head. "Both very bad options."

"Yeah, very bad."

Sven was back at the fence, facing the gate. He raised the sledgehammer high up over his head, then he had a thought.

"Wait," Sven said. "That's not right." He lowered the hammer to the ground and rested it in front of him.

"What?" Jane asked, but Sven was already in motion. He hefted the hammer off the ground in front of him, swung it forward, and then reversed its motion and swung it behind and around his body, gaining momentum and bringing it in a vertical circle that terminated at the locked gate.

Sven missed the lock, and hit the chain instead. The link he hit shattered, and the recoil from the blow shook Sven's body so much that he let go of the sledgehammer and let it fall to the ground. The chain slid out of place and clinked onto the ground.

"Thank God!" Jane shrieked. "Let's go, come on," and she was already climbing into the backseat as another wave of zombies—five in this one—was gaining ground on the car.

Sven was so surprised that the chain had broken that he stood looking at it for a moment, until a honk broke through his idleness. He turned and saw Lorie's hand on the steering wheel, then Jane climbed over from the back of the car and into the driver's seat. Jane honked, lowered the window, and said, "Come on, come on, open it!"

Sven kicked the chain to the side, picked the vertical bar that held the gate in place out of its hole in the ground, and pulled. The gate began to move outward, then stopped suddenly, shaking in place.

This can't be happening, Sven thought. He tried pulling again, then realized that the vertical bar had slipped out of his hands and caught in the gravel, restricting the gate's movement. He raised the bar and pulled again. Cool relief swept over him as the gate swung open all the way.

There was another honk and then Jane drove through the opening. Sven dragged the sledgehammer after her and began to close the gate. He pulled it back into place, letting the vertical bar grind to a halt in the gravel, without replacing it in its hole. Maybe the zombies wouldn't know how to work it.

They definitely wouldn't, Sven told himself, they don't even remember how to get out of their cars.

He threw the sledgehammer down and hobbled to the car as quickly as he could. As he was making his away around the back of the car to get into the passenger seat, the back door opened and the boy toppled out onto the field's untended grass.

Evan began to retch in violent spasms, and Sven realized at once that they were all going to have a big problem. The kid was very, very sick.

Chapter 55

Across the parking lot, Milt saw two separate groups of men and women—mostly men overall—running and screaming and breaking things. Many of them had baseball bats or clubs of some sort. Milt quickly retreated to his storefront, slinking into position before his display window—the window that housed the singular dark, dusty curtain that kept light out of the store.

He exhaled forcefully and pressed his bulk to the window, making his impressive warrior's body as unobtrusive as possible. He peered over his shoulder at the looters.

Wait, what was he doing? This was Milt's day, his time had come, and he would not cower. He would not.

Milt peeled himself off the window, and marched straight for the looters, who were riding shopping carts full of wares—stolen wares no doubt. He avoided the wandering zombies in the parking lot, and was careful to stay away from the cars in which zombie drivers sat and flailed in their stupid, undead misery.

Then he situated himself in an empty spot in the parking lot under the beating sun. He glanced over at a tree-shaded spot with a covetous eye, but that spot had cars under and around it, and the cars weren't empty. Milt sighed, belched, and addressed the looting shopping-cart surfers, who had stopped in the midst of their illegal revelry to regard Milt in his full glory. Some were pointing at his sword, others at his belly. Milt swiped at his sweaty forehead with the back of his left hand, smoothed down his pony tail, wiped the back of his hand on the hip area of his t-shirt, and began his speech.

"Hear me anarchists and evildoers. This is not a time for petty theft. This is not a time for inconsequential rebellions against the establishment. No, this is a time for redefining yourselves. This is a time for waging war against the undead enemy under a proud common banner."

Milt looked at the looters. There were twelve in all, one group of five and one group of seven. It looked like they might all be together, or familiar with each other, or something. It wasn't clear what their relationship was, except that they weren't fighting each other. There were three women and nine men. Two—a woman and a man—were Hispanic. The rest were white. They were all watching Milt with a wary attentiveness, and this bolstered Milt's resolve.

"This is a time to unite, to remake humanity. It is a time for leaders to rise up. And here I am. I have risen, and I stand before you now, ready to lead you into the future."

Milt thought he saw a few of the ruffians chortle, but that could not have been it. This was no chortling matter.

"And so, my disciples, I say unto you, come together under my banner—the banner of Miltimore the Mighty, Miltimore the Sword-Wielder!"

Milt raised his sword high up into the air and gave a fierce battle cry.

When he lowered his sword and wiped some sweat from his face—it really was a hot day for destroying zombies—the sniggers among the looters were unmistakable. But Milt ignored the chuckles, the looters were likely uneducated, and their crass behavior could be excused.

"What say you to this, my soon-to-be followers? It is clear that you are in need of strong, experienced leadership."

One of the men, a lanky, hoodlum-type wearing a backward cap, baggy jeans, and oversized white t-shirt, stepped forward. Milt's stomach fluttered.

The hoodlum spoke up.

"Oh yeah? And you have experience? In what?"

"Yeah," the Hispanic woman chimed in. "Who are you? And why do you have a sword?"

Milt couldn't believe the audacity of these people.

"As I said previously," Milt began, "I am a sword-wielder, ergo I carry a sword. I am extremely experienced. I have gone on thousands of quests, and have slain numerous toothsome beasts in battle. Therefore, I have the requisite experience to lead you, and—"

The Hispanic woman pointed behind Milt. "Look!"

Milt lumbered around and saw a throng of approaching zombies. He turned back to the looters and began to plod toward them.

"Hey man," the hoodlum said, "you stay away from us. You're attracting those things to us." The hoodlum was backing away, and backed into one of the shopping carts full of pilfered loot. "Some hero you are. You're nothing but a nerdy freak."

"Yeah," the Hispanic woman said, "stick to slaying dragons or whatever it is you do. Just stay the hell away." Then she took hold of a shopping cart that was resting against a car, pulled it back with a scrape, and pushed its clattering mass toward Milt.

Milt tried to sidestep, but he tripped on his own feet and fell sideways onto the hot pavement, dropping his sword with a resounding clang. He tried to get up by rolling onto his back and then rocking back up and over onto his front. It worked after a few tries, the hot pavement leaving Milt's body unpleasantly seared. He slowly picked himself up amidst the laughter of the looting scoundrels, got to his feet, and retrieved his sword. The pavement sear had brought on a profuse bout of sweating.

"As you wish," Milt said. "Go as you have come, leaderless and without hope. But heed my words, you are marching straight into a post-apocalyptic oblivion."

Eye rolls, shrugs, and nervous chuckles made their rounds through the misguided raiders, and they took off, pushing and towing their shopping carts toward Route 29, where, Milt assumed, an escape vehicle awaited them.

No matter, Milt thought, they shall doubtless perish at the hands of the undead. They were too stupid anyway, he knew, and didn't deserve the honor of his leadership.

There was a pressing matter at hand—the approaching throng. Milt lumbered back around to assess the situation so that he could begin to formulate his battle plan. He gulped at what he saw, and jammed a sticky inhaler into his mouth.

He took a few puffs, but then realized that he was doing it more out of habit than need. He could breathe just fine. In fact, he was breathing better than he had in years, in spite of all the allergens floating in the air, seeking him out to torment him. Maybe it was that wonderful fragrance in the air. It reminded him of the way his battle station smelled when he had been engaged in his World of Warcraft pursuits for more than nine hours at a time. There was always a magical shift in the air at the nine hour mark. But this smell was different, more complex, enhanced.

It seemed to be associated with the zombies somehow, and as the group of zombies staggered closer to Milt, the magnificent aroma became stronger. He remembered it from his encounter with that first zombie in his store, but the smell hadn't been this concentrated. It had likely been diluted by the smells of his battle station, his store, and then of the vomit.

Then he understood what the scent was. It was his destiny's perfume. Yes, Milt told himself, that's what it is. That's what it had to be. He smiled, raised his sword, and belched.

The zombies were gathering in around him.

Chapter 56

Jane was outside in an instant, holding Evan's body, probably so that the kid didn't knock into anything and hurt himself while he was projectile vomiting. Sven watched, and noted that he had never seen anyone throw up with so much force before. He kept his distance from Jane and the boy, and looked down the length of the field to the road that he planned to drive onto if—no, when—the boy got better.

Sven looked back at the gate. There were zombies gathering at the other side of it now, but not all of the group of undead that they had just gotten away from. He could see eight at the gate, and the rest of the undead seemed to have lost interest in Sven and his group.

Maybe the zombies were attracted by the humans' smell, or by noise, but whatever it was, it seemed they were not communicating, and they had certainly lost a good amount of their intelligence. As Sven had guessed would happen, the zombies at the gate weren't even trying to open it, acting as though they had no idea that opening the gate was even an option.

Somewhat relieved and breathing clearer air, Sven turned back to the car and walked closer. Lorie was outside now too, looking worried, but—Sven noticed with a growing curiosity—also keeping her distance from Evan and Jane. There was something about that girl that reminded Sven of himself, as weird as that was.

"What's wrong with him?" Lorie asked.

Jane shook her head, looking despondent. "I don't know. Maybe all the stress of the day, and you said he wasn't feeling well before."

Lorie nodded.

"He's burning up," Jane said. "We need to get him something for his fever. He's barely conscious."

Sven walked closer, and put his hand a few inches from the boy's pallid forehead. Sven felt heat on his hand without even touching the boy.

The sounds of the zombies on the other side of the fence carried over to Sven, who found his ears suddenly tune into the sounds of gravel being kicked and stamped and turned over by the milling of the zombies' feet. There were groans too, but his mind was drawn to the zombies' gravel-kicking.

"I should've..." Sven began, but he didn't finish. He looked at Evan, and then back at the gate.

"I'm not sure when we'll be able to stop again, the way things are going," Sven said. "And there's a drugstore right there." He pointed to the drugstore next to the hibachi restaurant.

"What? You can't go back over there. How are you going to get through all of...all of them?" Jane paused. "You can't, we'll find another place, we'll—"

"I'll come with you," Lorie said. "I'm not afraid, at least not anymore. Evan needs our help."

Lorie began to walk to Sven, but Jane's voice stopped the girl in her tracks. "You most certainly are not going over there with Sven, and Sven isn't going over there either. We'll have to find somewhere else. Come on, let's get in the car."

Jane was holding Evan, now limp, in her arms.

At least he's done throwing up, Sven thought, but then wondered if an unconscious boy was better than a vomiting one. Probably not.

"I'm going," Sven said. "Look, that large group isn't interested in us anymore. There's just a few of them at the fence, and I'll be quick. Nimble even. But you—" Sven looked at Lorie, "—you have to stay here and help Jane and Evan. Okay?"

"I can be more help to you on the other side of that gate," Lorie said, looking Sven in the eye.

"Maybe, but for now you're staying here," Sven said, and then he strode off painfully into the thickening stench, the sledgehammer poised on his shoulder.

Chapter 57

Jane was yelling something in Sven's direction. He was certain she was trying to call him back, but he couldn't make out the words. He could hear them well enough, or at least the sounds of the words, but as he walked into that putrefying odor, the words lost their ability to hit home, didn't connect to each other, didn't translate into thoughts.

Sven remembered Evan though, he remembered he had to help the boy, and so he kept reminding himself to breathe sparingly. He took a few quick snorts of the cleaner air as he walked to the gate, resolving that once through the gate, he would close his mouth and take small sniffs at the air before determining that it was safe to breathe. Sven hoped he could remember to do all of this as he got closer to the fence. He would have to be quick.

By the time he got to the fence, the zombies had gone still. They were no longer milling and anxiously looking in his direction. They were standing on the other side of the fence, facing Sven, unblinking, unmoving, and otherwise seemingly transfixed by his nearness.

Sven made every effort to look away. By the time he did manage to avert his gaze, he had seen more than enough.

The zombies on the other side of the gate were all chewed up. There were nine of them there, not eight as Sven had previously estimated, and they were a sight almost as horrific as the mostly headless standing girl in the store had been. The nine zombies looked like they had been fighting with each other, and biting each other, and ripping off gobbets of each other's flesh, and some were missing parts of limbs, and eyes, and one had a nose that wasn't quite all there anymore, and—

Get a hold of yourself Sven, he told himself, and took a deep breath. He deftly stuck his fingers through a gap in the gate, grabbed hold of the vertical bar, and raised it from its stop in the gravel. He tightened his grip on the hammer, gritted his teeth, flung the gate open, and lost all control.

He was off the mark with his first swing, but that didn't matter. The five inches of shaft behind the head of the sledgehammer made contact with the first zombie's ear, the head of the sledgehammer hooking behind the zombie's head. There was so much force behind the swing that the side of the zombie's head flattened, and the ear came away like a clipped fingernail, flying up into the air.

The sledgehammer kept going, and smashed into the face of another zombie, pushing its nose into and through its cheek. Sven twisted with the swing, and the momentum was so great that he fell on his side and lost his grip on the hammer, losing it in the gravel.

He was on the ground now, and the zombie with the smashed face was next to him, staring at him with one leaking, exploded eye, as the numbness began to creep into Sven's body, began to seep into his mind.

Then three zombies were on top of him—over him, clutching at his track pants, and, it seemed, trying to pull the pants off him. A primitive part of Sven awoke from its slumber, and he growled with so much ferocity behind it that the three zombies stopped their pulling for a second.

And a second was all that Sven needed.

He rocked up to a sit-up position and grabbed the hair of the two zombies who were on the outside of the group standing over him. He cringed as soon as his hands closed in on the wiry, matted hair, much of which fell away at his touch. But he had enough purchase, and he twisted, breaking one of the zombie's necks, but not getting enough rotational force to break the other one.

The broken neck was an unexpected bonus, and not the maneuver Sven was trying to perform. He continued with his original plan, sweeping his arms across his body and toward each other in a brutal pectoral fly that brought the two zombie heads into a crunching, moaning collision with the head of their zombie compatriot in the middle. The three skulls dented, collapsing and spewing coagulated blood and other unidentifiable, too-dry goop.

Sven let go and let the three broken, crushed heads fall away from him. The three pant-pulling zombies, though dead, were still clutching doggedly at Sven's track pants.

As his vision grew hazy, Sven crawled backward, holding on to the awareness that there were still more zombies around him. He kept crawling backward, but those damned zombies kept their firm grip on his pants. Reluctantly, and cursing the zombies under his breath, he wriggled out of his track pants, losing both of his cross-trainers in the process. He wanted to rip the zombies limb from dry, rotten, disgusting, putrid limb. And he would have, if he wasn't dying to take a breath. But he knew he couldn't breathe there, not yet.

He stood up and got his bearings. The gravel hurt, cutting into Sven's socked feet, and he felt uncomfortably exposed in his boxer shorts among the zombies.

This would never happen in a zombie movie, Sven thought. Nothing is ever how it's supposed to be in the movies.

There were only four moving zombies left, and they were blocking Sven's path around the side of the hibachi restaurant, over to the drugstore.

Only four, Sven thought, and he would've spat had he not been holding his breath—the head-crushing maneuver had let out too much of his air already. He danced around the dwindling group of undead and picked up the sledgehammer.

Sven was consumed with anger, and he let it take control of him. There would be no more merciful headshots.

He didn't see their faces, didn't see their clothes, didn't see the people they once were. He just swung.

The head of the sledgehammer found home in the first zombie's rib cage, tearing through clothing and skin, and launching shattered, splintered bones into the air. Sven pulled on the shaft of the hammer, and as its head pulled out of the rib cage, the zombie's sternum came with it, strands of dry flesh and sinew offering little resistance.

The zombie began to topple, and without waiting for it to fall all the way to the ground, Sven took a full backswing and connected the head of the hammer with the side of the next zombie's kneecap. The zombie's whole leg bent sideways at the knee, and in spite of the wild anger that had overcome Sven, he cringed. He could almost feel the unnatural bend of the leg, and the sight recalled the sound of nails scratching across a chalkboard, as unconnected as that was.

The zombie's destroyed leg buckled in a series of sharp cracks, and Sven saw a jagged piece of bone rip through the top of the zombie's thigh. The zombie fell over onto its side, then settled on its back, hands reaching up, trying to grasp Sven's bare legs.

There were two left standing, and Sven's lungs were burning now, crying out for air. He sniffed at the air cautiously, and then snorted all of it out, feeling the dizziness rush into him. The taint was there, as strong as ever. He would have to move faster.

Rushing forward, he swung the hammer diagonally and downward. The head of the sledgehammer smashed a zombie's shoulder, and initiated a series of cracking that ended in the zombie collapsing onto its knees and then falling onto its face. It didn't even twitch.

He struck the remaining zombie in its stomach with the shaft of the hammer, and ran around the creature while it was stumbling backward, off balance. Then Sven brought his hammer down again, on the back of the zombie's neck. There was a snapping, tearing sound that was growing familiar, and the zombie fell forward.

Sven relaxed his grip and let his burning muscles loosen, but he didn't let go of the hammer. He was still holding his breath and beginning to suffocate, but he took a brief look at the fallen zombies still clawing for him and the zombie parts strewn around him, dumbstruck at what he had done.

Then he ran back to the gate and shut it, being careful to lower the vertical bar into its proper place, and put on his shoes. As he did so, he saw he was bleeding through his socks, and hoped that one of the zombies that he had just destroyed was the idiot that decided to forego pavement in this part of the strip mall. It was unlikely, none of them were dressed like they had that kind of power. He considered the track pants for a moment, but there wasn't time to pry off three pairs of dead zombie hands, so he left them.

Sven looked through the fence at Jane and Lorie and the unconscious boy. Their faces were hard to make out at that distance, and Sven wasn't sure he wanted to see their expressions. He was sure they had been watching him, except for Evan of course, who even at that distance Sven could tell was out of the game.

He felt ashamed, and it wasn't because he had lost his pants. Sven turned away and ran around the hibachi restaurant to the drugstore, dodging four zombies that tried to grab him with their gnarled hands. He shouldered the drugstore's door open, burst in, and fell on his hands and knees, gasping for breath.

In the background, the door bing-bonged a welcome.

Chapter 58

Jane watched Sven dispatch the zombies on the other side of the fence. She had feared for him, but once he passed through the gate, the fear left her. He had become someone else, something else.

It was not the Sven that she knew who fought on the other side of that fence. It was not the Sven she had once dated. It was a monstrous killing machine, a survival machine, a machine that was going to see that she and the two hapless kids they had met would make it through whatever sickness had befallen their city.

While she watched Sven reduce the zombies to pieces, she had a passing thought that she should cover Lorie's eyes, or make her turn away, or something equally parental like that. She was holding Evan, who was a dead, unconscious weight in her arms, so he was in no danger of seeing the violence. She could tell Lorie to turn away, not to watch, but she didn't. What was the use? In the world that had dawned this morning, this was the kind of thing that needed to be seen—by everyone, young kids included. There was no shielding Lorie from reality, and there was no shielding herself. The truth had to be faced. Jane had to face it, and Lorie had to face it too.

Once Sven had felled the zombies, Jane turned to Lorie, who was looking toward the gate. Jane heard a clanking sound and turned back to Sven, who was closing the gate behind him. That was good of him to remember. She had no idea Sven could be this resourceful, and so stupidly brave. Then Jane turned back to Lorie and saw what was in the girl's eyes.

There was no fear in Lorie's eyes, only concern—concern that must have been for Sven, and for Evan. Jane considered that she herself might be the only one in the group that was terrified. The girl was far braver than she, and the boy probably would have been too if he wasn't—the boy...

Jane looked down at the unconscious boy in her arms. Was he turning into one of them? Into a zombie? Should she say something? How could they be sure until it was too late? She looked at Evan's pale, drooping eyelids, and was ashamed that the first thought that came to her—her instinct—was to leave him behind.

But she resisted.

"Get in the car," Jane said. Lorie obeyed, without a word. Jane placed Evan into the backseat, and was startled by Ivan's hiss. That made her feel worse about everything. Ivan was right, her instinct was right, the boy was wrong, too much like Vicky had been, but how could she just leave him there? How could she just leave him there to die?

Jane held Evan's head up as she put a seatbelt around him, then let his head nod down to his chest. It was a terrible mistake, and she knew it.

Then Jane closed the rear door, got into the driver's seat, and backed the car up to the gate without getting too close. She put the car in drive, resolving to keep her foot on the brake while she waited for Sven to return.

Lorie put a hand on Jane's. "He's going to come back. I know he will."

Jane nodded, but she wasn't sure. And they were running low on fuel.

Chapter 59

The air was amazing. Fresh, clean, and free of that sickening foulness.

But, Sven thought, what if it hadn't been, what if it had been contaminated? He would not have been able to hold his breath any longer and he would've been...he would've been...what exactly?

There would be time to wonder about that later, Sven told himself, and scrambled to his feet. He began to jog down the first aisle. Too quickly, he was in half-darkness, and had to backtrack to the entrance to feel around for a light switch.

He felt around on the wall with his free hand, and when he couldn't find anything, he gave up. There wasn't time to search for the light switch. Sven reentered the first aisle, and started on a slow jog back into the dimness, scraping the head of the sledgehammer along the floor as he went, and hoping that the medicine he needed would be in a relatively lit part of the store.

Sven felt a hitch, a tug at his arm, and then he was sprawled face-down on the floor, his bare legs cold against the tiles. The sledgehammer had caught on a shelf-divider at the bottom of the aisle, Sven had been holding on tight, and had been pulled down with the hammer.

Exactly the kind of thing that doesn't happen in zombie movies, Sven thought, exactly.

Reluctantly, he let go of the sledgehammer's shaft and slowly, painfully pushed his chest off the floor, settling on his knees. He unhooked the head of the sledgehammer from the aisle, put the head of it on the floor, and used it to pull himself back up to his feet. Behind him, on the other side of the glass door, the four zombies that he had dodged were now congregated, and others were coming up to join them. That was bad.

The zombies locked eyes with Sven, and began to scrape at the door with their undead nails. There were six now, two up against the door and four behind them, vying for a closer spot. Then the four in back were pushing up against the two in front, and—

Bing-bong, the door said, and the zombies were inside.

Chapter 60

Sven, wearing shoes and socks but no pants, began to retreat into the darkness. But what if there was something lurking in the back of the store? What if there were other zombies back there? There was no smell in the drugstore, but what did that really mean?

I should have tried harder to find that damned light switch, he told himself, but now it's too late.

Moments after the six zombies entered the drugstore, it was filled with their stench. That didn't surprise Sven. But then the zombies did something unexpected. They didn't come at Sven in a mindless way—not at all. They split up. Sven hoped it was by accident, and was the result of the six-zombie bottleneck at the store's entrance that formed when they stumbled in. But what if they were hunting him—hunting him and planning it out?

An image of the Pac-Man video game flashed in Sven's mind, and that was what he was—Pac-Man. Sven brought the sledgehammer up to his chest and backed up into the aisle. Two zombies were coming at him, and two had disappeared to the left and another two to the right. It all seemed too well-rehearsed. He could hear the four zombies that were out of sight stumbling through the store all around him, but amidst his shallow, ragged breathing, the beating of his heart, and the stumbling, rotting creeps in front of him, he couldn't place where they were. It was like a house of mirrors except with sounds and shambling, tripping noises coming from all around him.

Sven reminded himself to slow his breathing and made a conscious effort to breathe in very short sniffs through his nose. He had to get out of there, the air was getting worse with every second.

He did the only sensible thing left to do. He charged at the two zombies in front of him. There was no room to swing the sledgehammer from side to side in the narrow aisle, so he raised it and brought it down, aiming for the top of the nearest one's head. Sven missed, and the head of the sledgehammer grazed the zombie's forehead, taking off a sheet of rotten flesh and all of its nose. Because of the hammer's momentum, when Sven missed, he was carried forward in a twisting motion, and almost fell into the zombie he had just grazed. Sven regained his balance, moving backward away from the two zombies just in case they had come within grabbing distance in his moment of vulnerability. He looked up, and in the dim light he saw that the nose-less zombie with the sheared forehead had fallen backward into the creature behind it, and the two were trying to get back on track in their stumbling toward Sven.

He rushed at them again, but this time, instead of swinging the hammer in the tight quarters, he jabbed with it, knocking each of the zombies in its head. There were cracks, twitches, and the zombies fell backward. They weren't out of commission, but Sven took the opportunity to sidestep past them, being mindful to avoid their biting mouths and grasping hands.

Sven, now holding his breath again, ran to the entrance of the next aisle and searched the visible parts of the store with frantic turns of his head. He had to get what he needed and he had to get out of there. There were no more zombies outside the door and there was no more wretched bing-bonging, but he had no idea how many of the creatures were in the dark store with him, and with every step that he took, he imagined one of the things taking a merciless bite of his exposed calves, quads, or hamstrings. There was a lot to bite, and Sven couldn't help thinking that him being pants-less was a zombie's dream come true. But he wasn't going to go down without a fight.

Jogging across the front of the store, Sven caught sight of two shambling zombies that must have been the ones who had split off from the group of six at the entrance. They were in the middle of the aisle he was looking into, so he ran to the next one, wanting to avoid a confrontation and get out of the place as fast as possible. Then he saw something. It wasn't what he needed for the boy, but it would be helpful—to him and to everyone waiting in the car.

He took four packages of surgical masks from the shelf in front of him, ignoring whether each package held one or multiple masks. There was no time for counting right then, and the more masks the better. Sven tore one of the packages open, pulled out a mask, and put it over his face.

It helped. Sven was surprised by just how much it helped. He could breathe more or less normally without getting too much of the taint in the mask. The burning in his lungs cooled. Sven threw the open package away and tucked the remaining three packages under his arm. Then he had a thought, and grabbed a fourth unopened package for Ivan. Ivan certainly wouldn't like having a mask put on him, but it was better than being eaten by zombies. He tucked the fourth package under his arm with the other three.

The packages were awkwardly shaped and cumbersome to carry, and they reduced Sven's range and ability with the sledgehammer. That could be a problem, but there was no time to look for a bag now.

Sven, masked, a little calmer, and breathing in a steady rhythm though still shallowly, tiptoed to the next aisle. And there it was. For a second, as he stared at the acetaminophen pill bottles in front of him, he thought his luck was turning. Then, as he propped the sledgehammer up against the aisle and reached for the pills, something grabbed his left ankle. Sven fell, both from the pull and from his own surprise, dropping all the surgical masks and sweeping at least ten bottles of acetaminophen off the shelf.

He looked at his ankle, and, sure enough, a set of rotten fingers and the rotten hand to which they belonged were holding fast.

Apparently, the aisle hadn't been empty when Sven tiptoed into it. A zombie had been lying in wait, and now it had snared its prey. As the thing began to pull at his leg, Sven stretched out his right hand for the sledgehammer propped up against the shelf. It was just out of reach.

Chapter 61

Milt counted the zombies that surrounded him—a ragged mass of fourteen. He then proceeded to commend himself on his rapid counting abilities. Of course, as a former video game designer, math was one of his strong suits. He had always been good at it.

Milt's arms were beginning to tire under the weight of the sword, so he carefully leaned the flat part of the blade against the front of his shoulder. Then he took a good look at the fourteen zombies. They were of all shapes and sizes, but it seemed they were nonetheless united in one common pursuit—Milt's savory flesh. Of the fourteen, three were children—two boys and one girl, eight women, one younger man, and two older men, or older gentlemen, as they were likely to be called, and to call themselves, in the not-so-deep South of Charlottesville, Virginia.

They were shopper zombies, and though still quite piddling in Milt's eyes, he felt more respect for them than for the looting hooligans he had so effectively made flee only moments before. An enemy—even a zombie enemy—was easier to respect than a gang of thieving scoundrels. Milt looked from black zombie eye to black zombie eye, and he resolved that their stumbling owners would not have even a nibble of the delicacy that was his tissue.

The zombies were closing in at a fast shamble, so Milt began to plan his offensive. He would pick off the weakest ones first, and he decided that the most logical way to go about that was to go from smallest to largest. His sword would build up momentum that way, and all fourteen would fall victim to his mighty blade. Milt wanted to make a quick job of it, because he was starting to grow hungry. He could feel the harbingers of his first stomach rumblings making their way up his esophagus, spurred on by the delicious aroma in the air, which seemed to grow stronger as the zombies drew nearer. There was no time to waste.

Milt picked out his first target—the smallest of the children—a little boy zombie. Little boy green, Milt thought he might call him, for the green tinge of his coarse zombie skin.

"Prepare to meet your maker," Milt said to the staggering boy.

He began to heft the Sword of Crom from his left shoulder. A combination of the heat and low blood sugar must have been affecting him, because lifting the sword became a struggle, and his hands couldn't keep it centered. The sword slid inward on his shoulder, and the blade came to a painful rest behind Milt's ear. Milt lurched the whole of his massive body instinctively away from the source of the pain. The sword then came away from his ear, slid off his shoulder, ripped out of his hands and clattered to the pavement.

There was a moan, and Milt remembered the boy zombie. He looked up and saw that little boy green was closer than ever, and he was reaching up to grab Milt—but the smell in the air—it was so good, so enticing, so wonderfully fragrant.

Milt took a step back, away from the little zombie and put his hand behind his ear where the sword had cut him. The area stung when he dabbed it with his palm. Milt brought his hand down and looked at it. There was a lot of blood, and he was surprised the pain wasn't worse. But there was no time for first aid, this was a battle, and Milt was a mighty warrior, after all.

He rubbed his hands together, rubbing the blood into his palms. Then he bent down and picked up the sword, his hands steadier with it after the brief rest.

There were more moans now, coming in twos and threes, and Milt had to take several steps back to avoid the slowly-grasping arms. He raised the sword, and right before he brought it down, an odd thought struck him. He was looking from zombie to zombie, and it seemed to him that they—the vile undead beasts—were looking at him with a sort of reverence in their eyes. It made Milt almost feel a sense of compassion, or was it kinship? No, that was ridiculous, these were zombies for Milt to dispatch to the netherworld. And so he would.

Milt brought the sword down with a ferocity that wriggled his fatty folds. Little boy green's face split open, and the zombie fell backward, spluttering a viscous goop from his hacked, yawning mouth.

The remaining two children would be next, and they were very conveniently lined up side by side, moaning their child-like zombie moans as they dragged their feet closer to Milt. Milt drew his sword back over his right shoulder, heaving his belly out to counterbalance the ten pound weapon. Then he pulled his belly in and whipped the sword down and sideways, slicing clean through the two children.

After completing the slice, Milt scuttled a few steps away, shock creeping into his mind. This was more gore than he was used to...and it was so real. Video game violence couldn't hold a candle to what he was seeing now. But in spite of what he saw, he kept his grip firm. This was all part of being a hero, humanity's last champion.

The right top corner of the girl's head was gone, leaving cleaved skull and brain matter exposed to the hot sun. She peered up at Milt through one half-broken eye that the sword had touched, as she tottered on her feet. It seemed the feet had forgotten how to drag, and her body was trembling.

The boy was in worse—or perhaps better shape, depending on how one looked at the situation. He was on the ground, unmoving. Milt's sword had been lower to the boy's body when it carved him up, and the top wedge of his torso, from left shoulder to right sternum, was detached from the rest of his body. Milt had a good view of spine and rib cage, but no blood.

Then the girl fell forward on top of the piece of her head, and she lay as still as the carved boy.

Only the adult zombies were left, and there were eleven of them, gaining ground. Milt stepped backward, clattering into a shopping cart that one of the uneducated hooligans must have left there to get in his way. He cursed them under his breath, and, regaining his balance, spotted his next two victims, who were at the rear of the zombie pack.

The two Southern gentlemen zombies were at the back of the undead group, their old legs struggling to drag on in time with the others. They were falling behind, and that made them vulnerable.

Milt grinned, and capered around a car to get past the adult zombies in his way. He noted that it wasn't the lightest of capers, and the ground may have trembled under him just a tad. Nevertheless, there had certainly been an inspired bounce to his step.

When he was behind the undead throng, the whole group began to turn back toward him, pivoting in place by rocking from foot to foot. It was a slow process, and it gave Milt time to assess his overall situation in the parking lot.

Except for the group behind which he'd now crept, the lot was clear of other walking zombies. He saw some of the undead in slow motion flails inside their cars, but he ignored them for the moment. He could always go back and take care of them later, once he'd dealt with the shoppers now before him. Comforted that no other zombies were sneaking up on him, Milt refocused on his next victims.

The two Southern gentlemen were as they should be. They each wore seersucker suits—one a pale blue color, the other a salmon—and they each wore a bowtie, although from Milt's current angle he couldn't quite make out the patterns. Their moans were hoarser than those of the rest of the group, and they didn't smell quite as enticing, but still slightly delightful. The two Southern gents were turning more slowly than the rest of the group, and Milt got the sense that they might end up at the back of the pack once more before they had even turned the full way around to face him.

He took a deep breath and raised the Sword of Crom, feeling the bloody chocolate-stickiness of his grip. He had a growing awareness of wanting to get out of the heat, to cool off, but he had to take care of the mess in front of him first. That was the life of a warrior. Sacrifices had to be made.

"How'd ya'll like a mint julep?" Milt mocked in his best Southern drawl, which he knew to be superb.

A dry, enthusiastic moan came from the salmon-suited one, and two equally dry, but not quite as enthused moans came from the pale blue-suited one.

"Oh, excuse me kind sir in the blue, would you prefer a well-aged Bourbon whiskey, on the rocks?"

That made the pale blue-suited zombie turn faster and moan again. Milt had figured out their drinks of choice. He had a true knack for reading people, and, as it were, zombies.

Milt eagerly brought the sword straight across, with as much tiredness as eagerness. He was excited to see the damage it would inflict, and he couldn't hold it in place any longer. Milt wasn't going to take any more chances leaning the blade against himself, that was for sure. He learned from his mistakes, he was no fool.

His aim was true. The sword went through the necks of both Southern gent zombies in a single cut.

The pull of the sword's follow-through was so strong that it brought Milt forward, staggering a few steps to keep from losing his balance, but his grip on the sword stayed firm. It seemed that the blood and chocolate on his palms provided for a better hold than chocolate alone.

Milt turned back to the Southern gentlemen and felt his soul light up as he watched the heads separate from the necks and slip off, the bodies crumple to the ground, heads and bodies falling into a heap. One of the heads—Milt wasn't sure which one because the heads were now separated from the gentlemen's garments—landed on top of both bodies and rolled off the heap in Milt's direction. He stopped it with the tip of his sword and looked at it. This one looked even drier than the others had been. Were they all just dehydrated? What was going on? Milt gave the head a wobbly kick, sending it at the next closest zombie in the throng. He was impressed at his own deft kick. I could've been an athlete, he told himself, I could've been anything I wanted to be.

And then there were nine.

Milt apprised himself of the approach of the rest of the zombie pack and took a few steps backward, evaluating the group's next weakness. There had to be another exploitable hole in their collective armor.

As he was backing up, Milt remembered to look down. He remembered that he wanted to see what kind of bowties the two older zombies had been wearing. He smiled when he made them out. The salmon-suited one had on a white bowtie with mallards on it, and the pale blue-suited one had on a brown bowtie with leaping salmon on it. Milt was impressed. These had been very dapper Southern gentlemen indeed. He had dispatched two exceedingly worthy opponents.

Then, in part because he was still looking at the critters on the bowties, Milt tripped on a jangling something and fell backward. His sword flew from his hands and clanged away from him, and he landed on his rear end on the hot pavement. The momentum of his voluminous body kept him moving backward, and he rolled onto his back, feet dangling in the air. It was a good thing he had a lot of bulk in his back to cushion the fall, otherwise he could have been injured. He felt a burning pain behind his ear and then he was staring up at the sky.

It was getting dark. By the looks of it, a storm was approaching. Milt considered how fitting it was for a storm to be gathering, in time with the zombie outbreak. The storm and the zombies together were a portent of great societal upheaval, and Milt knew that. It was the upheaval that would bring him to the top and make him the supreme ruler—once the zombies had been dealt with of course, and that would be like child's play to a warrior such as—

Something grabbed his calf, and then something grabbed his ankle, and his shin, and his slippers—they were taking his slippers! The audacity of the creatures! And then Milt's mental witticisms lost some of their steam as he tried to struggle away from the zombies. They were all there now, clutching and tugging at his feet and lower legs, which were still hanging in mid-air.

Milt twisted and turned and kicked his legs, knocking some of the zombies back. He rolled over onto his left side feeling nausea enter him as if through the hot pavement. Then he began to crawl backward, pulling with his left elbow, supporting himself with his right palm, and kicking away with his feet. His eyes searched for the sword, then found it.

"Damned be you denizens of the underworld," Milt managed to splutter as he crawled away. He had spotted the sword, and the zombies had already overtaken it, stumbling dumbly over it while their gnarled hands reached for Milt's body, while their mouths opened and closed, jaws creaking. That was the first time Milt noticed the creaking of their jaws, and he found it more than a little off-putting.

Then, obviously angered by Milt's clever affront, the zombies clamored for him with more fervor, and then they had him.

Chapter 62

The feel of the zombie's cold, raggedy hand on Sven's bare ankle was unsettling. Sven was wearing no-show socks and regretting it. Even a thin layer of sock between the tattered hand and Sven's skin would've made it a little less uncomfortable, but Sven didn't own long socks, ever since that day at summer camp when one of the counselors had explained that long socks, especially when they are pulled up, create a nerdy look—a look that invites teasing and bullying.

Well, Sven thought, the cool socks I'm wearing didn't keep this bully away. Nope, not at all.

And the hand, it felt so horrible as he struggled against it, its skin stretched and crackled each time he tried to pull his leg away, and he imagined sinew and coagulated blood lumping up against each other and tearing. The hand just wouldn't let go. The grip on his ankle was almost as vise-like as Lars's grip on Sven's wrist had been. Why did they always have to grab wrists and ankles? What was that about?

Sven struggled against the grip, twisting his leg in the dim aisle, pulling on the shelves with his hands, trying to get away. But the monster wouldn't let go. As Sven pulled himself back, the zombie came with him, and to make matters worse, the zombie was pulling itself up, and its open mouth—Sven could see it was full of half-broken, shattered teeth—was getting closer to Sven's exposed leg.

Then Sven heard the door bing-bong again, and he was sure it was all over. He couldn't help but think of the ridiculousness of the scene, and of the fact that if he hadn't risked his life trying to help Evan, he might have survived. But he didn't regret a thing.

With an eye toward the open door, now bing-bonging out of control, Sven kept pulling.

Chapter 63

The bing-bong caught Lorie off guard, and she paused in the drugstore's doorway for a second. Then she heard a muffled voice say, "Get your rotting hand off me," followed by a grunt. She tiptoed quickly over past two aisles until she found the voice's owner. It was Sven, and she had come just in time.

For a moment, Lorie was too surprised to act, and it didn't help that she was holding her breath and the lights were off. Why were the lights off? Was that really necessary? It was like one of those stupid movies where everything is always going wrong. She looked down and saw Sven—she was pretty sure it was him—on the floor, wearing a surgical mask, wearing sneakers but no pants, and trying to wriggle away from—

Lorie saw the zombie on the ground, and even in the weak light she could make out the thing's smashed teeth, trying to find their way into Sven's leg. Sven was reaching for something—the sledgehammer.

She picked it up—barely. The thing must have weighed a hundred pounds, and she had watched Sven swing it around like it was a tennis racquet. It took all of her strength to lift the sledgehammer just five inches off the ground. But, she decided, that was all the vertical lift she needed for what she was about to do.

"Lorie? Is that you? What are you doing here?"

"Saving your life," Lorie said, and brought the sledgehammer straight down onto the zombie's forearm, just above the wrist. She was using the sledgehammer like a plunger, smashing, bringing it back up, and smashing again. She made her way through the zombie's forearm, crushing and splintering bones, and pulverizing the muscle and skin. It didn't take long, even with the paralysis that she felt slowly seeping into her.

After six or seven crushing blows, the bones connecting the zombie's wrist and forearm were crushed, and after another six or seven, the zombie's hand hung off the rest of the arm by a few disgusting strands of skin and tendon. Lorie kicked them away, Sven stood up, and the two of them retreated from the crawling zombie.

Lorie was breathing in shallow huffs, and her arms and upper back were burning from handling the sledgehammer. It had gotten even heavier in her hands, but she wouldn't let go, still holding it with the head facing down and in front of her.

She looked at Sven. He was staring at her, wide-eyed and unblinking, but she couldn't read the rest of his expression behind his surgical mask.

"What? What is it?"

Sven blinked. "Nothing," His voice was muffled from behind the mask. "Nothing. Let's go, let's get out of here."

He reached for the sledgehammer and Lorie gratefully gave it to him. Then he picked up some packages from the floor of the aisle and a few pill bottles.

"Is that all we need?" Lorie asked.

"I think so, and it's all we can manage right now. Come on."

Lorie and Sven bing-bonged out the door, Sven in the lead. She couldn't help but notice the man's legs. They were humongous. Hugiferous is what the boys at school would have called them. His hamstrings and calves were thick with muscle. Especially his hamstrings—they looked like rippling, layered sheets of power. They weren't runner's hamstrings, but they were awe-inspiring. Lorie knew it wasn't the time to be looking at such things, but she couldn't help noticing how Sven's legs looked like an explosion of muscle mass out of his boxer shorts.

No wonder the zombies want him, she thought, with all that protein he carries on his body. She stifled a grin, and followed the incredible hulk out. When she peeked out from behind him, she knew that they were still in deep trouble.

Chapter 64

Sven was shielding the girl with his body. She had just saved his life, this little girl who couldn't have weighed more than ninety pounds at the most. Her doggedness in freeing Sven was almost disturbing. Sven didn't think he would ever forget the look on Lorie's face as she pounded away at the zombie's forearm, crushing it into a dry pulp. The unforgettable mental images were really building up that day.

And things had just gotten a whole lot worse. There were at least thirty zombies outside, and it was as if they had been waiting there politely, because they weren't blocking the door to the drugstore, and they didn't attack as soon as Sven and Lorie got outside. Instead, the zombies milled about in a wide undead arc that closed off the only two possible escape routes back to the fence—the way around the side of the hibachi restaurant, and the way around the side of the fireworks stand. Sven and Lorie were blocked in, trapped. Sven raised the sledgehammer menacingly, but he didn't know what he could do with it against so large a group of undead.

"In there," Lorie said, and Sven turned to the girl. She was pointing at the door of the hibachi restaurant with one hand and pinching her nose with the other. He thought about unwrapping one of the surgical masks for her, but they needed to get to safety first.

"Right," Sven said, and he fell in step behind Lorie, who was already crossing the short distance from the still bing-bonging door of the drugstore to the door of the hibachi restaurant. From within the drugstore, Sven could see shuffling movement in the dark, and just before he and Lorie got inside the hibachi restaurant, the arc of undead began to move toward them, as if they had been waiting for Sven and Lorie's next move.

Once Sven was inside, Lorie said, "We have to block off the door with something," and she was right. Lorie began to pull on a table.

"Here," Sven said, "put one of these on first," and he put his surgical mask packages down on the table and gave one to Lorie.

She wrinkled her nose at the wrapped object. "I guess that'll do better than me running around pinching my nose. It helps against the smell?"

Sven nodded, and pushed the table up against the door while Lorie fiddled with the surgical mask's wrapper. When Sven turned back the mask was on, hiding most of her expressive face.

"Now we match," she said, and that's when Sven noticed what she was carrying.

"Have you had that with you the whole time?"

"What this?" Lorie pulled the thing out of her pocket. "I picked this up before I went in looking for you. Thought it might be useful." The girl's eyes seemed to be completing a grin beneath her mask. "Or at least fun. Just because the world is ending or whatever doesn't mean we shouldn't have any more fun, right?"

"Right." Sven smiled under his mask. They were in a tight spot, but he was glad it was her in there with him. She had a sense of humor. Maybe later, when they got somewhere safe—if there were any safe places left—they could light up that firework that Lorie had grabbed and watch it explode, announcing their triumph over the zombies...or mark humankind's passage into extinction.

"So," Sven said, "now that we're in here, what's the plan?"

"Well there's gotta be a back door or something. All restaurants have back doors."

"Sounds good to me." Sven pointed to the table they had put in front of the door. "The door opens out, so if those things suddenly remember how to pull on doors and climb over hip-high tables, we might be trouble."

"I think we might be in trouble anyway."

Sven turned around, and saw that some of the staff of the restaurant had joined the ranks of the undead. Two hibachi chef zombies were stumbling toward him and Lorie.

"Is that all?" Sven asked. "We can take them."

Lorie nodded and said, "At least the lights are on in here," and they began to approach the hibachi chefs.

A knife gleamed on one of the cooking tables. Sven picked the knife up, and with a whipping motion he flung it at the closest hibachi chef, mimicking the motion he had seen countless times in the movies.

The knife spun through the air as Sven had intended. The knife hit the hibachi chef in the chest, and that was where reality diverged from Hollywood fantasy. The butt-end of the knife hit the chef, and the knife bounced off and fell to ground, clattering.

"Not quite how they do it in the movies," Sven said, and shrugged.

Then, before Sven could stop her, Lorie dashed toward the chef, picked up the knife that had fallen to the ground, lunged forward, and stabbed upward through the zombie chef's throat, plunging the knife all the way in, up to its black plastic handle. The zombie fell backward, losing its chef hat and clutching at the air one final time.

Sven dropped the surgical mask packages and pill bottles, and under his mask, his mouth fell open. Jesus! Who was this girl? Sven didn't know what to do next, he almost felt afraid of Lorie.

"But," Lorie said, "like in the movies, you gotta get them in the brain. Good thing that was a long knife."

"Uhh, beh," Sven stammered. Good thing that was a long knife? He was speechless.

Lorie put her hands on her hips. "Well? Come on, let's go."

Sven picked up the things he had dropped and an idea occurred to him. "Hey, about what you just said—the having fun part."

"Yeah?"

"How would you like to blow this place up?"

Chapter 65

Jane stood next to the car stewing. She couldn't believe that Lorie had run off like that. The girl was going to get hurt, or worse. Jane had run after her, trying to stop her, but Lorie was so fast, and then she was on the other side of the gate, running around those things, and Jane had Evan and the car to look after and—

Jane took a deep breath. What's done is done, she told herself. She poured some of Sven's water on some paper towels from the trunk and dabbed at Evan's forehead. She had taken the boy outside after parking the car close to the fence, hoping the fresh air might revive him some, but it hadn't. Now she was starting to think she should put him back in the car. She just didn't know what to do with him, didn't know how to make him better.

The paper towels seemed to fill with steam as soon as they made contact with his skin. Jane was worried about the boy, and she had already been worried about Sven, and now that Lorie had run off, well, she was worried about everyone. And all she could do was sit there and mind the car and the sick boy propped up against the rear door. She had to. Someone had to.

Though she was mad that Lorie had run off, Jane had to admire the girl's bravery. Jane didn't think she would have done that when she was Lorie's age. Jane wasn't sure she would do it now, but then again, things always seemed different when you were younger, and maybe this whole thing wasn't that scary to Lorie, at least not the way it was to Jane. But that didn't really make sense either. Jane decided that the girl had guts, and settled on that.

"Why aren't they back yet?" Jane asked.

Evan didn't respond, and Jane shuddered at the reminder of the non-responsive Vicky she had encountered that morning. She was still there—Vicky—still standing in the kitchen perhaps, looking out onto Lewis Mountain Road, in the house that they had shared. Jane didn't think she could ever go back there now, could ever live there again after what had happened there, after what she had done. She had gotten drunk and fork-stabbed her roommate. Yes, it was true that her roommate had become a zombie, but gulping down wine and fork-stabbing her, had that really been called for? Who the hell did that—zombie plague or no?

She shot a nervous glance at the gas gauge. She had been eyeing the gauge constantly, watching the boy one second and looking through the rolled-down window at the dashboard the next. The car was very close to empty, the boy was surely dying, and Ivan was hissing at her like it was going out of style. Jane was sure that she had never been this stressed out before, and she wished with all of her being that she could rewind the day and go to her stupid, boring accounting job where the term "zombie" was a joke to refer to co-workers.

Jane had given some thought to turning the car off to save gas, but she had decided against it each time, telling herself that Sven would only be another minute longer. Then after Lorie had left, Jane kept telling herself they would be back any second, and it was certainly not a good idea to turn the car off at this point. She was afraid of running out of gas, and of the car not starting back up. But Sven and Lorie were taking so long. It had been over twenty minutes. What the hell were they doing over there? They were just supposed to get something to knock down the boy's fever, and there was a drugstore right next to the restaurant.

The fact that they were taking so long meant that they were in trouble. They had to be, there was no other explanation Jane could think of.

The way Jane saw it, she had three choices, three ways to deal with the situation, and they were all bad. First, she could call out to Sven and Lorie through the gate. Maybe they would hear her, and maybe not. Whether or not Sven and Lorie heard, the zombies would, and Jane was sure they would be attracted to the noise. There was something that attracted the creatures to people. It could've been in the way non-zombie people smelled, or in the way they moved, or in the sounds they made. It could've been all three or some combination. Even if noise didn't attract the things, Jane wasn't going to risk it. If she yelled for Sven and Lorie, the zombies would come, and they would block the gate, and then Sven and Lorie wouldn't be able to get to the car.

Jane had tried using her phone to call Sven, but that was no use, it just kept giving her that same stupid message about the circuits being busy, and she wasn't sure he'd taken his phone anyway. It was good that she had kept his number in her phone though. She had thought about erasing it, to make a clean break and all that, but he did live on her block and she did want to stay friends. It wasn't as if she was going to move away just because they broke up, and it wasn't as if she was going to get drunk and call him just because she kept his number in her phone—although she had—but that wasn't the point. It was good that she still had his number because at some point in this calamity the circuits might unbusy themselves and the phone could become a lifeline. Jane sighed. That point was settled, there was no way for her to contact the rest of the gang—that was how she was beginning to think of their little group, and she hoped there was still a gang to think of when this was all over.

Second, Jane could go searching for them. She could put Evan in the backseat, take the keys, lock the car, and go through the gate. But Ivan wouldn't have that. It seemed the cat wanted to tear the boy apart, although he wouldn't come close enough to do it. She was uncomfortable about leaving the two alone together even if that had been a real option, and it wasn't. She couldn't leave the boy. She had a bad feeling about him for all the obvious reasons, but she couldn't just leave him to die alone, and—she caught herself being too dismissive—he wasn't dead yet, he might still pull through. And she had no weapons. If she did get through the sporadic clumps of zombies on the other side of the fence, how would she help Sven and Lorie if they were in trouble? She would likely just make matters worse. No, leaving the boy and cat alone in their getaway vehicle was not an option.

Then there was the third option.

The only option.

Jane opened the rear door and placed the boy on the back seat, ignoring Ivan's spitting protests and wondering why options always seemed to run in threes. She closed the door and stepped back into the field.

She looked up at the sky to the north, in the direction they were traveling—assuming they ever got back on track. There were dark storm clouds in that direction, and they were heading south, toward her.

She took a deep breath, opened the driver's side door and climbed in. She closed the door and rolled up the window.

"Shut up Ivan will you?"

Ivan quieted his hissing.

"I'm sorry, I don't want to yell, I just—it's a bad day okay? Please be nice."

Ivan lowered his head and meowed, making Jane feel even worse about yelling at him. She wished this nightmare would end. How could it even be happening in the first place?

Probably some damn government experiment in biological warfare gone wrong. Or a terrorist attack.

Damn people, she thought, damn them all to hell.

Jane put her foot on the brake and shifted the car into drive. Then she gently released the brake, and drove away.

Chapter 66

This is it, Milt thought, the honorable death of the greatest warrior that ever graced the universe with his most generous presence.

The end.

Death at the rotten hands of the zombies. At least it was an interesting way to die. Then terror overtook him, and gone were his deliberations over the comparative merits of the various means by which a person may meet death.

Their hands were clamped so tightly, so firmly, around his ankles, and no matter how hard he kicked or pulled or tried to crawl backward, the undead talons that held him wouldn't yield.

Milt was overcome by a sudden mourning when it occurred to him he might never consume another Snickers bar, or quench his thirst with the delightful sparkle of Coca-Cola. That was the worst thing of all, because whether he died or was transformed into a zombie, the worldly delights of food and drink would become forever off-limits. He was sure that zombies didn't eat...that they couldn't eat, except of humans. He figured that if they did still have the capacity to eat human food, they would be doing so now, instead of trying to eat Milt. If only they could still know the pleasure of sticky peanuts and nougat and caramel and if—

There was a thud, and then a crunch, and Milt's eyes darted up to see a zombie's head explode into a spray of eyes and nose and teeth and brain...desiccated solids but no blood. Then there was another thud and another crunch—crunchier this time—and another head turned into a vile spray of its shattered component parts. Milt recalled the destroyed Commodore 64 lying in its spray of electronic innards, and didn't feel the bite of loss he had before. Then another head exploded, and another.

The pull on Milt's legs lessened, and he saw that the zombies who were holding him in their undead grasp were all headless—headless but still holding on, relentless. No...wait, they were falling backward, away from him. They were dead, and they couldn't let go because their hands weren't working anymore. But what had made their heads explode? Was it divine providence intervening on Milt's behalf so that he may live out his glorious destiny? It must—

"Are you okay?" came a voice next to Milt's head. "Damn they're still holding on, let me see if I can get the hands off."

Milt turned in surprise to see that a man was there, and in his hands he held a baseball bat. The bat looked like it had seen better days. It was splattered with a generous coating of zombie gobbets of all shapes and sizes. Milt was quite confident that there was an eyeball on it, flattened down so that it looked like an imperfect square with a shriveled and twisted optic nerve hanging from the back. At the end of the optic nerve was a warped brain globule. Milt didn't know if that was the right terminology for it, but it seemed correct enough. The globule stared at him, and made him extremely uncomfortable, but it also gave him an idea.

He waited until the globule was out of sight, along with the bat it rode in on, and then executed his plan. The man with the bat had lifted it over his head like a woodchopper ready to strike at the decapitated zombie's arms...and, that was when Milt commenced his globule-inspired maneuver.

He pushed himself up on his left elbow as far as he could go and shifted the great bulk of his big-boned back to the right, trying to rock over onto his right side. It took two attempts, and he was there. Then, putting all of his strength into it, Milt pushed off his right side, twisting his body back to the left.

The maneuver went exactly as Milt had intended. His legs fluttered around as he rolled over, and the torque exacted on the zombies' arms was too much for their brittle undead bodies to handle. There were snaps and cracks and a sound similar to that which paper makes when it is ripped, and Milt was free. He kept rolling until he came to rest against the side of a car.

The headless zombies that had held him now had torn bits of sinew sticking out where their arms and forearms had once been. The front of the zombie line was destroyed, and Milt was, at least temporarily, out of harm's way.

The baseball bat man went at the rest of them, dispatching the remaining five zombies with precisely aimed blows to the head. They all fell, decapitated or mostly so, to the pavement.

And then there were none.

Milt propped himself up on one elbow. He looked down and was filled with disgust when he saw that around his ankles and lower shins, detached zombie hands still held firm to him. There were five hands in all—two on his left leg and three on his right—and two of the hands were barely hands at all, they were torn up to the point of only having two fingers apiece, and bits of bone and tendon where the backs of the hands and wrists should have been.

The other three hands were relatively whole, but they were coming apart in a fleshy, wiry mess. It was a revolting sight.

Cringing, Milt looked away and at the man with the baseball bat. The man had on flip-flops, blue shorts, a yellow polo, and a University of Virginia baseball cap pulled low on his head. He was panting, and his eyes were darting among the zombie bodies, as if looking to see if any of them still posed a threat.

"Are you in league with the damned, or are you as yet uncontaminated?" Milt shouted. "If you are in league with the ill-fated zombies, you shall meet the edge of my proud blade."

That reminded Milt. Where was said blade? Milt looked around for it but didn't see it. Then he spotted its hilt, covered in his own dried blood, the chocolate coating no longer visible. The sword stuck out from under a mangle of zombie parts.

"What? I just helped you get away from those things, of course I'm not with them. I'm human, not bitten or anything. See?" The man brushed his short sleeves upward to reveal his upper arms, then picked his t-shirt up, revealing a midsection devoid of any visible fat. "See? No bites, still human."

What a show-off, Milt thought. "Well, that is fine, but be more careful next time, there are zombies about, as you may have guessed."

"You're welcome?"

"Yes, you are welcome to join me in my quest. You may be my squire. You may call me Miltimore the Mighty."

Milt stuck out his hand to the man, who was obviously some sort of simpleton, but that was alright. It wasn't a day to be exceedingly selective in one's alliances.

The man looked at Milt's hand and shook his head. "We'll shake later, looks like you got a lot of blood there, and I'm not taking any chances today. Oh, and you're bleeding pretty good from your head."

"I am certainly not infected. What is your name, young squire?"

"My name is Brian." Brian seemed to be speaking slowly, like he had some kind of learning impediment. "And you're being really weird. I think you have heat stroke. Let's get out of the sun and take care of that wound."

"Very well. That will do. Allow me to retrieve my sword first."

After getting to his feet, Milt trundled to the pile of destroyed zombies, eagerly inhaled their aroma, bent over, and clasped the hilt of the sword. He pulled, and with the sword came a spray of zombie bits, and with the spray, a resurgence of the wonderful smell.

Then Milt began to lumber after Brian, who was already walking toward a patch of shade underneath some trees at the edge of the parking lot. As he lumbered, Milt pictured himself an agile stalker, returning from a victorious battle in which he had saved his cowardly squire.

"I've got a first aid kid in my car," Brian said. "I think there are bandages in there. Why don't you sit down and rest for a moment?"

"I must confess that is not a bad idea." Coca-Cola bottles were dancing in Milt's head. "Do you have any means of carbonated refreshment in your vehicle?"

"What?"

"Are you not aware of fizzy, carbonated refreshment? I believe in your world they sometimes refer to it as pop."

"Pop? No, I don't drink that stuff."

"You don't drink the nectar of the gods? What is wrong with you man?" Milt was beginning to huff and puff in disbelief, and he wanted to go back to the smattered pile of dead zombies, to prod and poke at them, and to be engulfed in their sublime aroma.

"You really need to try to stay out of the sun, and it's understandable if you've had a bit of a shock. Just try to calm down, if you can I mean. I'm freaking out myself. I mean can you believe what's going on? It's crazy, just plain crazy."

Milt pondered on that. "I stipulate that it is not crazy. I stipulate that it is the next stage in evolution." Then Milt added with distaste, "Our evolution." He knew it was really his own evolution to which he was referring, and not Brian's. But even Milt had to admit to himself that he could not foretell what was to come, and Brian, in his role as squire, might grow to become an admirable servant.

"If you mean like a disease or something," Brian said, "I guess you could put it that way, yeah. Do you think that's what it is? A disease?"

"Perhaps, that seems to be a logical conclusion."

Brian knelt beside Milt's heaving body. Milt saw that Brian had gauze, a little spray bottle, and some tubes of ointment in his hands.

Milt was suspicious at once. "What are you doing?"

"I'm bandaging you up, remember? You're bleeding all over the place, and for all we know that'll attract more of those things."

Milt didn't feel like he was bleeding all over the place, but when he looked down he saw that the left side of his shirt was covered in blood. He turned his head to look at his shoulder and flinched at the pain. The left shoulder of his t-shirt was sopping with blood, and Milt felt light-headed at the very sight of it. The sudden wave of light-headedness made him realize that he had begun to get dizzy some time ago. Maybe the squire was right about the heat stroke. After all, Milt did try to avoid the sun at all costs. It had never been a friend to his particular constitution.

"Now turn your head and keep still for a minute," Brian said. "I don't think it's serious, or even deep. The scalp tends to bleed a lot with even a small cut."

Milt reluctantly obeyed. "Are you a medical man then?" Milt didn't want a lecture about the size of his body. Doctors—back when he had gone to them—always lectured him about his diet and weight loss. But they knew nothing of his accomplishments, they were ignorant fools, just looking to be paid for nothing more than lecturing him.

"No, not really," Brian said. "I used to be an EMT, so I've seen worse."

"Worse than the zombie apocalypse in which we now find ourselves?"

"No, I mean worse than the cut on your head. Just hold still a minute."

Milt felt a spray of water behind his ear and liquid dribbled down his head and onto his shoulder. Then Brian was dabbing warm ointment out of a wrinkled tube on Milt's cut, and then the bandaging began. Milt watched as Brian ripped off a piece of gauze from its roll and brought it up toward Milt's head.

"Ow!" Milt yelled, feeling a searing pain as Brian plastered the gauze into place on top of the ointment. "Please be more careful, I am quite fragile."

"Oh grow up, it's barely a nick." Then Brian was unrolling a bandage. He began to wrap it around Milt's head.

"Are you really going to wrap that thing all the way around my head? I'm going to look ridiculous."

"Sorry, I gotta do it. The gauze won't stay in place by itself."

So Milt let Brian finish, but he wasn't sure he believed the man's claims.

"There," Brian said. "All done."

Then Brian plopped himself down next to Milt and began to hum a tune Milt found annoying, but Milt was too tired and his head pulsed too much for him to care to reprimand Brian.

Milt looked down and was again filled with revulsion, although the revulsion now seemed to be colored by a certain kind of respect for the zombies. Their very bodies were an example of doggedness—they did not let go even in death, even after their appendages had been severed from the rest of their bodes.

"Now, good sir," Milt said, "if you please, would you be so kind as to remove those feelers from my lower regions?" He pointed down at the tattered, once human hands.

Brian chuckled. "You really must have had a shock. Yeah, of course I'll help." He began to pry off the fingers, and after a few minutes of struggling with the hands that seemed intent on holding on forever, Brian was able to remove them. He got up, threw the destroyed hands into the nearby woods, returned, and sat down next to Milt again.

"Thank you," Milt said. "I appreciate your efforts."

"You got it. Looks like we'll be alright here for a little while. I don't see any others coming."

Milt was glad to hear that Brian was taking to his role. Brian was using the word "we" to refer to the two of them. Milt might whip his squire into shape yet. Milt told himself it was vital, in dealing with subordinates, to never run out of tasks to give them, so he began to rack his brain for an assignment to give to Brian. He didn't have to rack long, as there was a whole slew of desires waggling their beckoning fingers at Milt.

"Will you be so kind as to fetch me a pop, as you call it? I am quite sure that yonder store has a most plenteous supply of Coca-Cola." Milt pointed a shaking mitt at the Wegmans across the parking lot. He needed some Coca-Cola. That would help soothe the pulsing in his skull.

The squire suddenly smiled and said, "Hey, do you play Dungeons and Dragons or something? Is that why you talk like that?"

Milt gasped. "Excuse me? How dare you presume such a thing? I most certainly do not play Dungeons and Dragons or something. That travesty of a pastime went out of favor years ago. I am a World of Warcraft player—the greatest in the world. Perhaps you've heard of me? I am called Miltimore the Sword-Wielder, but of course you may call me Miltimore the Mighty, if you so wish. I should add that I speak the King's English, pity you have not heard of it...I can detect that quite well."

Brian nodded. "Right. It's all starting to make sense. You probably dress up and go to conventions and stuff. I've heard about people like you...my ex-roommate, he had a friend, and he would always dress up like this Greek god, or Roman, I don't know, I forget the name, but he would wear a—

"I most certainly do not dress up. Please refrain from categorizing me alongside those lunatics."

"Okay, okay. Tell you what. I'll call you Milt, you'll call me Brian, and we try to survive this whole mess. Then each of us can go back to our lives, and, to top it all off, we might be famous. Then your story will be told and known the world over. Milti—how did you say it?"

"Miltimore."

"Right, you'll have your fame, we'll be alive, and everything will be fine."

"Foolish optimism, but that is forgivable in your case, you are young and no doubt misguided, as is the rest of the youth."

"What?"

Milt sighed. "Never mind, never mind. I suspect that you are simply bursting to regale me with your life story. Though I am sure it will be quite a stale account, you may nevertheless proceed."

"My life story? No...but you're lucky I woke up when I did. I was napping in here—" Brian jerked a thumb back at the car they were leaning against, "—and then there was all this noise, and I woke up, and there you were, on the ground about to get torn up by those zombies."

"Excuse me? I most certainly was not about to be torn up by any zombies. I was doing just fine on my own. I was toying with them you see, and I was just about to banish them from this realm, and they...wait a second, you were sleeping in your car? What is wrong with you? Are you homeless or something? I am not sure that will do at all."

"You're worse off than I thought." Brian opened one of his rear doors and began rummaging in the mess back there.

"What are you doing? I say now, apprise me of what it is you are searching for back there."

"Here," Brian said, handing Milt a bottle of water. Brian closed the car door and sat back down next to Milt. "Drink that, it'll make you feel better. Just don't drink it too quickly, you might get sick."

"I most certainly shall not," Milt said grudgingly, but took the bottle anyway, intending to use its contents topically, to cool his body.

"And no, I'm not homeless...I was just tired. It was a long night and I stopped by here some time around two or three in the morning, and—"

Milt couldn't believe it. "You have been asleep in your car here since last night? We are well into the afternoon now. I must say, I do fear for my safety being in your presence. Do you have a home, or is your vehicle your regular abode? It is not even a trailer."

"I have a place, I was just passing through, and it was late, and Wegmans has a great selection, I'm sure you know that...I needed some snacks. So I stopped, but then when I got out Wegmans was closed already, so I went back to my car, and then I got really sleepy and passed out." He shrugged.

Milt looked at Brian dubiously. "You live around here then?"

The simpleton looked uneasy for a second. "No, not here. I was just passing through last night. I live in Charlottesville."

Now Milt was suspicious. "That's a long journey from here. What are you doing here?"

"I'm here on business."

"And what, please be so kind as to enlighten me, is it that you do as your so-called business?"

Brian seemed to hesitate, not answering right away, and that added to Milt's suspicions. "I'm a delivery boy I guess. It's no EMT job, but I do alright. What do you do?"

"My spider sense informs me that you are trying to change the subject. We shall get to what it is that I do in but a moment. Please elucidate the nature of your delivery business for me. What sort of goods do you deliver, and to whom do you deliver said goods?" Milt's stomach must have reacted to hearing him say the word "goods," because he felt a pang of hunger at its utterance. The hunger began to gnaw away at his stomach, which at that moment could have had no more than a few remaining scraps of nougat and caramel to transfigure into the energy which Milt's brain and body required to function.

"I deliver nutritional supplements—protein bars, protein powders, amino acids, acai, goji berries, cat's claw, you name it, I get it and deliver it. Coconut water is getting really big right now—coconut water with acai in it too."

"Nutritional supplements you say? A likely story. Would one of those nutritional supplements happen to go by the name of marijuana?"

"Weed? No, I don't sell drugs, just supplements."

"So you rationalize your crimes away by re-categorizing a drug as a supplement?"

"What? I don't see what you're getting at."

"You mean to tell me you weren't high on your weed when you stopped here last night for snacks? I've seen a documentary or three about people such as you. I know about the cravings."

"Well, I didn't say I never touched the stuff, just that I don't sell—"

"Aha! I have caught you, you felonious scoundrel. But do not fret, admitting that you are a ravenous scourge is the first step in overcoming your darker nature, we have made a great deal of progress already."

"I don't sell drugs!"

"Liar! The untruth of your statement is plain. I can see it in your criminal eyes."

"I'm not a criminal."

"Oh," Milt began to lament, "he states that simply because he has not been caught he is not a criminal. What a poor misguided wretch. It is obvious you have been sent to me for a reason. I will be your guide in escaping your dastardly past. This is the zombie apocalypse. It is a time for change if ever there was one."

"Dude you need to lighten up, for real."

"Don't lose hope, my young ignoble squire, you will pull through. I have the utmost belief in you."

That satisfied Milt. He had done his job to admonish the drug dealer, and at Milt's incontrovertible mandate, Brian was sure to reform. Milt's good work was done, and it was time to eat.

Brian was beginning to stammer something, but Milt cut him off. "Do you have any sustenance remaining in your vehicle that you would be so kind as to share with me? It seems that I am overcome by hunger, and yet I do not think it is the time to venture into Wegmans just yet."

"Yeah, I got some stuff, I'll check, nothing I like, no good Wegmans snacks anyway." Brian opened the driver's side door of his car, half-sat in it, and started rummaging around up front.

"Here," Brian said, offering Milt a packet of sunflower seeds. "That's all I've got—two packs of those and the other one's for me. I need my strength too. They're my emergency rations. I hate sunflower seeds, so I keep 'em knowing I won't eat them unless I really have to."

Milt took the packet with a harrumph, he was certain he had seen Brian look disdainfully at his belly.

A judgmental drug dealer, Milt thought, how ludicrous.

"Don't you have anything else?" Milt asked as he tore open the packet. "Anything with chocolate or peanuts...a Snickers bar perhaps? Or at the very least a Milky Way and a packet of salty peanuts?"

Milt began munching on the seeds, hoping that it would make him feel better. He hadn't felt anything like this shade of terrible since the last time he ventured out in the daylight, and even then he hadn't been outside this long. This was much worse, he needed to get inside into some air conditioning, but he wasn't ready to move yet. His field of vision had begun to spin violently, probably spurred on by the tightness of the bandage around his head.

"No, I don't eat stuff like that much, sorry. Let's just go over to the Wegmans and we can get a whole bunch of stuff."

"Not yet, let's give it a few minutes."

"Why don't you wanna go into Wegmans now? It's probably where we'll be safest, no? The skies sure don't look friendly right now, those clouds are fixing to soak us real good if we keep sitting out here."

"I think the tree above us will do," Milt said, spraying half-chewed sunflower seeds out of his mouth. "We should not go poking around the Wegmans just yet. I am still indisposed, and need my rest before we continue. Furthermore, there are sure to be more zombies inside the Wegmans. We need to formulate a plan before we go in there. I am familiar with that particular store, and its sprawling layout contains many hiding places for the flesh-hungry."

Brian nodded. "Okay, I guess that makes sense. You actually think it's safer out here though? I mean we'll need food and water soon anyway, and we'll have to go in."

Milt was annoyed now, but he wasn't going to tell Brian the real reason he wanted to remain seated. Milt's head was spinning faster and faster. He attributed this to the sudden interruption of his feeding regimen, and until the spinning passed, he didn't think he would be able to move his great bulk anywhere at all.

He swallowed the rest of the sunflower seeds, crumpled the pack, and threw it on the ground next to him. "You don't see any of the damned wandering out among the cars, now do you? We will be fine out here, and we will move into the supermarket once I have formulated a way of doing so. You can trust that I am going through scenarios in my head at this very moment, and my calculations are not yet complete. If you desist in your interruptions, I stand a chance of finishing more quickly."

"Alright, if you say so. I'll keep a look out for the zombies...feels weird using that word to talk about what's actually happening."

Milt gave Brian a cold look, hoping to silence him. Brian shrugged, picked up his baseball bat, and began to pace while he kept watch.

At first, Brian paced back and forth in front of Milt, apparently ignorant of Milt's annoyed glares. Then Milt found a sunflower seed in a fold under his tongue and spit it out at Brian, hitting Brian's shorts. The seed stuck there, cemented by spit. Brian noticed, and rather than saying anything, he shifted his pacing over to the other side of the car.

Some time later, Milt began to feel better, a little bit more like himself. His head wasn't spinning quite as much, and the pain behind his ear had lessened.

"I am well enough now, I believe, let us proceed," Milt said, letting it slip.

"So you are ill! I thought so. Is that why you didn't want to head over? You can't get up?"

"That's not the reason at all."

"It's nothing to be ashamed of."

"Let us journey now." Milt reached for the sword next to him, and tried to make his way up onto his feet.

"Here," Brian said, offering both of his hands, "grab on to me."

Reluctantly, Milt accepted Brian's help, and just as Milt was most of the way to vertical, there was a blinding flash of light, followed immediately by a violent thunderclap. Startled, Milt fell backward, plopping to the ground, and bringing Brian down with him.

"Get off me!" Milt yelled. In addition to the discomfort of having the drug dealer wriggling on top of him, Milt felt a very uncomfortable change of pressure in the air, like his ears needed to pop.

Brian kept struggling, apparently trying to get off Milt, but whenever Brian's hands pushed, they sunk deeper into Milt's generous flesh.

Clearly the man is playing games, Milt thought.

Finally, Milt gave Brian a push and the squire flew backward, toppling to the pavement. Milt opened his mouth and yawned, but his ears wouldn't pop, and the uncomfortable feeling didn't go away.

"Thanks," Brian said as he got up, "I was kinda stuck there."

Milt nodded distractedly, because he was staring at the smoldering pavement not more than a few car lengths away.

Brian turned to look too, and he turned pale when he saw where Milt was looking.

"If we were on a wet field," Brian said, "we'd be dead. Probably lucky to be alive at all. Zombies and lightning, how do you like that?"

"It is just a coincidence."

"I don't know."

"That is just the drugs talking."

"For the last time—" Brian began, but another flash of lightning and its accompanying thunderclap drowned out his words.

Brian ran back to where Milt was and crouched next to him. The lightning had struck farther away this time.

"Do not get too close to me now," Milt said. "I am sensitive about physical contact."

"Sorry."

Brian sidled over a few inches. Milt looked over, and saw that his squire's eyes were wide with what seemed to be horror, staring intently at the spot where lightning had struck moments before.

Milt thought about saying something to reassure the simpleton, but before he could formulate an uplifting speech, the rain began.

The sky opened up, and great sheets of rain hurtled downward as if catapulted to the earth by a great, water-launching giant.

"Now that," Brian said, voice trembling, "that's something else."

Milt didn't say anything, because he was watching the kind of deluge that he had only read of in comic books. Though he had told Brian the storm was only a coincidence, Milt knew that it wasn't. It was another sign telling Milt that his destiny was coming for him, and he had a feeling that at that very moment, his destiny was gathering itself up to draw closer.

He gripped the hilt of the sword. The blood was washing off it now, made wet by the droplets that passed through the thick tree cover above. The droplets cooled Milt's overheating flesh, and he felt overjoyed and more rejuvenated with each little plop of cool wetness.

He hadn't known it before, but rain was quite a pleasant thing.

Milt closed his eyes, belched, and understood that he was a flesh and blood comic book hero.

Chapter 67

"Would I?" Lorie said, her heart leaping up into her throat. "You pretty much read my mind! I'll get some matches." Lorie walked back to the restaurant's entrance, thinking that this muscle guy really got her, picked up a few packs of matches, and put them in her pocket, but not in the same pocket as the firework.

Sven nodded. "Okay, let's check to make sure we have a way out of here first, then we'll turn the gas on."

"Aren't you forgetting something?"

"What's that?"

"Your one hundred pound hammer for one thing, and that second chef zombie."

"Right."

Lorie watched Sven pick up the hammer, his legs flexing, and flexing and rippling even more when he lifted it over his head and smashed the second zombie chef's head.

Maybe that's how you're supposed to do it, she thought, put your legs into it.

Lorie told herself she would remember to lift with her legs—she had heard the boys at school say that before—the next time she had to use a sledgehammer, if there was a next time.

The zombie with the crushed head fell against a wall and onto the ground. Lorie felt a tinge of regret at that. She had really enjoyed stabbing that first one. Or was it more appropriate to call what she had done skewering? It had been a long knife...a very long knife. She smiled.

Oh well, she thought, it was nice to watch too.

"So what do you reckon that's called?" Lorie said. "Hammering? Sledging? Or sledgehammering?"

"Uhh, I'm not sure."

"I like sledging. Can we call it that?"

"Yeah, okay, you got it." The big man paused. "I need some pants."

Chapter 68

Sven pushed open the set of saloon-style swinging doors at the back of the restaurant and found himself staring into the kitchen. There was a CD player on, playing Asian-sounding background music. The music was complemented by the sound of simmering water and a soft, dull clanking noise. At first glance, the kitchen looked empty.

Lorie brushed passed Sven and strode into the kitchen.

"There's no one here," she said, tilting her head and throwing up her hands. Then she went around the kitchen island.

"The noise is coming from here." She pointed to a pot. "Just a ladle boiling away in some soup. Guess they were in the middle of cooking up lunch."

"Guess so," Sven said, and heard a click. "What was that?"

"Just turning it off. No need to boil it too long. And we're gonna blow the place up remember? Don't wanna do it with us inside."

"Right," Sven said. The girl was a step ahead of him.

"That looks like the back door over there, come on."

"Wait, shouldn't there be more people back here—inside the restaurant I mean? How could there only have been the two chefs? Who's running the place?"

"I don't know. Maybe they all stepped out to smoke and they're the zombies outside. Maybe they didn't all make it to work. Maybe the two chefs always get the place ready by themselves. Who knows? Who cares? Let's see what's behind door number one."

"It's the only door. So I hope it's something good."

Sven put his hand on the doorknob, turned it, and waited, readying himself to jump backward at the slightest sign of the undead. He was holding the sledgehammer up and to his right, and he was starting to feel his muscles wearing out from lugging the thing around. Sven was a power athlete who focused on explosive strength in short bursts. Though he did his cardio, he wasn't used to carrying heavy objects for that long, especially injured as he now was. Sven shook his head, and made a mental note to devote some more of his training to muscular endurance...if there was ever to be any more training.

"Come on," Lorie said. "Open it already. I bet Jane is getting really worried about us. She was pretty worried about you before I went over here, and I don't think she was thrilled that I went after you. If there's something waiting for us behind the door, I'm ready for it."

Sven glanced over at Lorie and saw that she had picked up a cast iron skillet and was holding it like a baseball bat, ready to strike.

"It's a lot lighter than that thing," Lorie said, gesturing at the sledgehammer, "and the girls at school would be proud."

Sven laughed, turned back to the door, and pulled. The door opened a few inches, letting in some of the warm, moist, outdoor air, then caught. There was a thump, and the sound of wood scraping against the kitchen's tiled floor, and Sven thought he heard something else, like the sound of another door, but somewhere farther away, behind them. He thought of the shoddy barricade they had set up in front of the entrance.

"Did you hear that?" Sven asked.

"Yeah. All the more reason to hurry. You want me to see what it is?"

"No. Stay here, I might need your help with whatever's on the other side of this door." It was half-lie, and he said it in part to keep her in the kitchen, away from whatever was now shambling about the restaurant behind them, but it wasn't all lie, because Lorie really could help, she had proved that already.

Sven pulled on the door, scraping its bottom along the floor, cutting it into the tile.

"Guess they don't use this door much," Lorie said. "Or maybe those things have been messing with it today, trying to get in."

"You trying to make me feel better?"

"Sorry." Lorie changed her skillet hold, lowering the skillet and readying it behind her as if she were about to swing at a tennis ball with it.

Sven pulled on the door again, and not making much progress, he stepped to the side and peeked out through the five inch gap into the outside world. He couldn't see any zombies, just gravel in some shade and a piece of the fence. He didn't see any sign of Jane or the car, but then he didn't see the gate either, so he figured they were too far over to see that part.

There was another thump from somewhere in the restaurant behind them, and then the sound of something clattering. Then silence again.

"I guess I should stop being so gentle."

Sven looked over at Lorie, and she nodded. She looked like a funny little animal with that mask on her face, like a raccoon or something. On second thought, the masked face made him think of Ivan, and he felt a pang of worry. He wanted to know that Ivan was alright, and soon.

He lowered the sledgehammer and stuck its head around and behind the bottom of the door. The door was not a door. It was ajar. Sven hated that joke, but it always made its way into his brain, and for once, it came at an appropriate time. He thought about bringing it up to Lorie but reconsidered. It wasn't the best time for jokes.

He pulled on the sledgehammer. There was a rending, grazing sound and splinters came off the bottom of the door and powdery bits of tile were scraped off. The door opened all the way.

Looking through the open door, Sven still saw no sign of zombies.

Lorie came over to stand at his side. "Looks like we're good. But...but we should probably peek out some more."

Sven nodded and raised the sledgehammer up, resting it on his shoulder. That made him remember his injury, and he realized how tired he was, how wound up.

"You ready?" Sven whispered. "We might have to make a run for it and forget about blowing the place up. If they see us and start coming, we need to get back to the car."

Lorie dropped her head a little. "Yeah, that's true." She seemed to be considering something, then stretched her fingers and renewed her grip on the skillet. "Okay, I'm ready."

Sven stuck the sledgehammer outside, waved it around in a circle, pulled it back inside, and listened.

Nothing.

Then he stuck his left foot out, wiggled it, pulled it back inside, and listened.

Nothing.

Then he took a deep breath through his mask, which was now moist, and poked his head out.

He looked to the left, to the right, and ducked back inside.

"We're good," he said, but something outside had been off. There were no zombies, but it was like something was missing, like—

There was a loud clatter from behind Sven and he spun around to find that a plump, female Asian zombie had wandered into the kitchen and was now shambling through some pots on the floor, oblivious to their rattle.

"We have to shut her up," Lorie said. "She's gonna attract more zombies." And then the girl ran up to the plump zombie and swung the skillet.

There was a ping, a shallow pop, and the zombie fell to the ground on top of the clattering pots. Lorie stood over the Asian zombie, her arms and the skillet she held trembling.

"Like a tuning fork," Lorie said. "Pretty cool huh?"

Sven swallowed and looked at Lorie.

"You...when I...I...I'm not sure who's chasing who anymore," he stammered.

"Let's go turn that gas on. You promised."

Lorie placed the skillet down on top of the dead zombie's stomach, went out of the kitchen and into the dining area.

Sven followed, feeling unsure of himself—unsure of everything. He glanced back at the open door and saw the fence, but he wasn't sure what he was trying to find there.

There were no more zombies in the restaurant that Sven could see. There were a good number gathered around the front entrance, staring in through the windows and slits in the front door. They alternately stood and milled about, peering in, walking around in a shambling circle, and then peering in again. It was as if they were waiting to be seated, waiting to be served.

Sven looked away and walked to the cooking table closest to him. He put the sledgehammer down and began messing with the gas knob. Once he was satisfied that the table was spewing forth gas at full blast, he moved to the next table, and visited each of the cooking tables in the dining room, turning up the gas all the way. He glanced at Lorie as he went, and though he couldn't see all of her face, her eyes were hungry. The girl had been reluctant to get into Sven's car just an hour or so earlier, and had seemed shy. Looking at her now, as he prepared to blow up a hibachi restaurant, he wondered what he had gotten himself into.

But he was glad she was there. She was cool, and as long as her bloodlust was focused on zombies, on the undead, how could he blame her for it? It was a survival situation, and she was being as cold and realistic about it as he was. So what if she was enjoying it? So what if she was enjoying it a lot? Was that wrong?

"Come on," Sven said. "Let's get out of here before we pass out from the fumes, and become zombie lunch."

"I'd rather be caught by the gas fumes than that other smell. Their smell."

Sven looked at the girl's eyes. "Yeah. Me too."

He gathered the remaining surgical masks and the pills, and followed Lorie, already blazing the trail, back into the kitchen. He watched as she turned the knobs up on the stoves like a pro.

"How we gonna light this all up?"

"I've never blown a place up before," Sven admitted. "But I know we'll have to do it from a distance. Let's go."

Sven stood at the open door, waiting for Lorie to join him. She looked unsure of something, then found a butcher knife, walked over to the zombie she had taken care of earlier, and picked the skillet back up.

Lorie turned toward Sven and he saw her eyes widen, and then she was springing forward and yelling, "Look out," and Sven instinctively moved toward Lorie, away from whatever it was that she was reacting to, and stuck out the sledgehammer in the opposite direction.

He turned in the direction of the door in time to watch four zombies yank the sledgehammer from him. Two tried to bite it, breaking their teeth, and then all four let it slip from their collective grasp.

They were falling over each other to get in, and then they were inside.

Chapter 69

Jane drove through the field, sniffling, tears streaming down her face. She was trying to make herself stop, but she couldn't.

A voice in her head kept saying, "They're dead. They're not coming back."

But they can't be dead, she told herself, I can't deal with all of this by myself.

Even as she thought it, she knew it wasn't true. Though she was wiping her eyes and nose and that infernal voice kept talking in her head, she knew that she could deal with this by herself, and that if Sven and Lorie were gone—if they really were gone—she wasn't going to die without a fight.

The car dipped and rocked a few times as Jane drove over some unseen divots hidden in the tall grass. She slowed down, preparing herself for the jolt, it came, and then she was over the curb dividing field and street, grateful that Sven had an SUV.

The street in the back of the field was almost completely empty. It felt deserted. There were only two stopped cars, and she figured the road was only lightly used, probably just by the locals. She was a local, and she couldn't remember ever driving on it. From what she could see, it seemed that part of the road looped back onto Route 29 North, and another part branched off into some eastbound, wooded back road that Jane was sure she had never seen before.

As she felt the drying of tears on her cheeks, she decided that the coast was clear. She accelerated gently, turned onto the part of the road that she thought led back to Route 29, and pulled into the Exxon that was not more than a few hundred feet after her turn. Jane slowed after she pulled in and took a careful, deliberating look about the place, trying to see if there was any visible movement on the property. She saw none, and pulled up alongside one of the two pumps that were closest to the road.

She turned the car off and pressed the unlock button on the driver's side door, hoping that would unlock the gas door, and slowly, quietly, pushed the car door open, listening hard for any noise.

Not hearing anything, Jane stepped out on her tiptoes. Her brain was going a mile a minute, and if she had made any mistakes, she didn't know it. So far, so good.

It had been a short trip. From where Jane stood, she could see the field and the fence to which she had to return as quickly as possible.

"They're dead. They're not coming back," that sadistic voice said again.

She almost responded to it out loud, then caught herself.

They're not, she told herself, God help me they're not.

The voice made it harder, because it had made Jane wonder. Was the voice sadistic, or was it the voice of reality? And was there a difference?

"They're dead. They're not coming back." It came at her again, and Jane felt her head begin to spin.

Ivan meowed. He was looking at her, tilting his head in that curious cat way that Jane couldn't resist.

Thank God for that, Jane thought, and almost started crying. The cat seemed to have snapped her out of the depths.

"I'll give you a treat when everyone's back safely in the car," she whispered. "You're a very good cat you know that?"

And everyone will be back safely in the car, she told herself. They will be.

"They're de—" the voice began again, but Jane cut it off.

"No," she said out loud in a hoarse whisper. "No they're not." And they would need gas for their escape, and it was best for her to get it now, while she could. They might not have another chance like this one.

Jane tiptoed two small steps over to the pump, took the nozzle, and pressed, "Pay Inside." There was no sense in charging her credit card or paying for the stuff. Not on a day like this. And she didn't have her bag with her anyway, and no bag meant no wallet.

She turned back to the car, holding the nozzle, and realized that she had forgotten to open the gas door. She didn't even know if unlocking the doors had unlocked it.

Jane looked at the gas door for a moment. It looked like the kind you had to press in for it to pop up and out so you could open it. She bit her lip and pressed. The gas door popped up, and Jane sighed with relief.

At least something's going right, she thought, and then she heard the moan.

She didn't know how to react at first, so she just stood there, nozzle in hand, staring at the open gas door and the gas cap that she had yet to unscrew.

The voice in her head came back, and it had found something new to say.

"They're dead. They're not coming back. And I'm dead too. Actually, we are all coming back...as those things."

Jane resisted the urge to cry out, forced her muscles to unclench, to relax a little, and unscrewed the gas cap with frantic turns of her free hand. She stuck the nozzle in and squeezed the pump handle.

"Come on, come on," Jane said, looking at the fuel reader on the pump's base. There was another moan, and Jane wasn't sure if it was her imagination or if the sound had in fact gotten closer. Then the numbers began to tick away the fuel, and the gas was flowing...or rather, trickling. Jane gritted her teeth when she saw the absurd slowness with which the numbers on the pump were turning.

There was another moan, and Jane looked down the row of pumps, behind her, and at all the visible angles she could see behind the car. She took a quick glance back at the empty field. There was no one—no zombies, no Sven, and no Lorie—at least not that she could see.

Then the moan came again, along with a dragging sound, and it was unmistakable then, whatever it was had gotten closer. Jane put the pin on the pump handle in place so that she didn't have to hold it while it pumped. That way she could walk around the car and assess the situation. If the thing was dragging along the ground somewhere, she might have enough time to fuel up, or maybe there was something she could distract it with and keep it away while the pump was working.

She took her hand off the handle and began to tiptoe up the driver's side of the car, looking under it and around the front as much as she could. She had gotten as far as the front tire when she heard the click. She stopped, thinking that this couldn't be happening, not on this day of all days. But then she turned to the base of the pump and saw that it was.

The numbers had stopped ticking away at 1.84 gallons. The pin had popped loose.

There was another moan, closer still, but Jane still didn't see anything, and 1.84 gallons wasn't going to cut it. She took a quick look back at the field—still no one.

She dashed to the nozzle—no use being stealthy at this point, she realized, the thing was clearly after her—squeezed the handle, and popped the pin back in place with a clack. She fixed it there with her thumb, willing the pin to stay this time.

Jane backed up from the nozzle and listened.

Nothing.

"They're dead. You're dead. We're all dead."

No, no, stop it, she thought, trying to stifle the panic. She was trying to listen for the thing.

"They die. You die. We all die—"

There was another click. Jane turned to the base of the pump. This time, the numbers had stopped ticking away at 3.27 gallons. Progress, but not good enough. Sven's SUV held at least 15 gallons, and probably more.

She turned back to the field—still empty.

She reached a hand out for the nozzle, stepping forward to reach it. She squeezed the handle, put the pin back in place, and let go.

The pin clicked right away.

Jane replaced it.

It clicked again.

Cursing to herself, she knew she would have to squeeze the nozzle and hold it.

She did, watching the ticking numbers crawl by as the gas pumped. Why did it have to be so slow? Were the other pumps there faster? Had she picked the slowest one of all?

The ticking numbers were at 6.46 gallons.

"Dead but not. Rotting and walking. Just like Vicky. Remember Vicky?"

Jane fought to keep the image out of her mind.

She glanced back at the field and around her.

Still nothing.

She tried to focus in on the fence, to see behind it, but it was too far.

As she was turning back to the nozzle, a moan sounded with unmistakable finality. She thought she heard an echo come after it, and then she felt something grab her foot.

Chapter 70

Lorie had already planned for something like this. In fact, she was expecting it. She expected everything to go wrong now, and there was sense in planning for every disaster.

She was glad she had the surgical mask on, because she didn't want Sven to know, to see, that she was smiling. Not only had she been prepared for this, but she had hoped for it.

Sven was backing up toward her and holding his arm out to shield her from the zombies, but she was too quick, and she ran around the big man.

"No!" Sven yelled, but she had already flung the skillet with all of her strength. The skillet spun through the air and hit the side of a zombie's face with a dull thud. The zombie began to stumble, but before the skillet had even fallen to the ground, Lorie was airborne. She was in full flight, with the butcher knife held in both of her hands behind her head, ready to be brought down to slice the zombies into eternity. Her knees were bent and her feet were tucked behind her as she flew. She was gritting her teeth.

Lorie brought the butcher knife down, splitting a zombie's face down the middle, lodging the butcher knife—she was sure—in the thing's brain. It felt incredible, a rush better than any rollercoaster.

She fell on top of the destroyed zombie, and backpedaled to Sven before the other zombies could grab her. One down, she thought, as she bumped into one of Sven's bare legs.

The big man seemed to be stammering something.

Lorie was transfixed by the blade of the butcher knife and the way it disappeared into the zombie's face. But it was only for a moment, she knew the other three had to be taken care of, then she could have another look. She needed to have another look.

"Come on Svensky," she said. "Let's do this."

The three zombies were through the door now, fully in the kitchen. They were beginning to raise their arms to grab at Sven, like those stupid zombies in the movies always did, and that gave Lorie an awfully wonderful idea.

"Lorie, we can just herd them in this way and run around the island to get out. We don't have to fight them, we need to get out of here."

She was rummaging through the knives, looking for something big, preferably bigger than the butcher knife she had just used. Not finding anything that fit the bill, she sighed, and took a butcher knife in each hand.

"Lorie! Come on, we have to go."

Lorie couldn't go, Lorie needed to do something first.

"Fine, yeah," Lorie lied. "Let's do that, let's get them in on this side and then run around."

She came over to join Sven, who was leading the zombies in, on a direct path from the door toward the swinging doors that led into the restaurant's dining area.

A few more shambling steps and there would be enough room behind the three zombies for Lorie and Sven to make their escape.

Lorie locked her eyes on an undead elbow and bit her lip, once again glad that she was wearing a mask. Sven was already looking at her funny, and she thought her expressions under the mask might be a dead giveaway—or rather, an undead giveaway...

When there was enough room behind the zombies to get out, Lorie darted forward and chopped with both of the butcher knives. The butcher knife in her left hand cut through a zombie's elbow with a crunch, and the butcher knife in her right hand came down into the same zombie's shoulder, sticking in it.

She released her grip on the butcher knife that had lodged in the zombie's shoulder and darted back, intending to take another swipe with her remaining butcher knife. She had liked the cutting crunch through the elbow, like the zombie's bones and flesh were baked dry. It wasn't like cutting through butter, or meat for that matter. No, not at all.

That was when Sven grabbed her, pulled her through the open door, and maneuvered her through a smattering of zombies to the gate.

He set her down and she stopped flailing with her knife arm, beginning to regain her composure.

Then she looked through the gate, and her heart sank, although not all that much, because she was expecting all kinds of disasters now, and what she saw, or rather, what she didn't see behind the gate, was one of them.

Lorie looked up at Sven, who had slowed as he was pulling up the locking bar and was now looking into the field. He had spotted it too.

Jane and the car were gone.

Sven opened the gate, and she and the big man solemnly stepped through the opening before Sven closed it behind them. They walked a few steps into the field and then stood there together, in silence.

Lorie took her mask off and spoke first. "The air's a lot better out here." Sven didn't react, so Lorie went on. "Do you think she'll come back? You guys know each other right?"

He was looking into the distance, eyes searching. "Yeah," he said slowly. "She'll come back." Then his gaze fell on Lorie. Sven took his mask off and glared. "What happened to the shy little girl from before?" he asked accusingly. "The one that wouldn't even get into the car with me and Jane...and Ivan?"

She had to think about that for a moment, and stomped around Sven, setting dandelion seeds in flight as she went. Lorie didn't know the answer to that question. She felt different, that was all—different from before, but like herself—like how she should feel.

"I don't know," she finally said. "We need to get you a new hammer."

Sven shrugged, and Lorie hoped that he would give up on this line of questioning, it was making her a little uncomfortable. So what if she wanted to hurt some zombies? Was that really wrong? They were trying to hurt her, after all. They had already taken her mom, and...

"No," Sven said, "I'm gonna need something a little more practical."

Lorie nodded. "Okay. Hey, listen...I have to tell you something."

"What?"

"There's, uh."

Sven looked at her.

Lorie pointed. "The, uh."

"Holy crap!" Sven said, and skipped backward in a most un-Sven-like manner, away from Lorie, but of course that did nothing to get the zombie hand off his ankle.

So he can be light on his feet when he wants to be, Lorie thought, and had to suppress a giggle when she noted how much like a ballet dancer he had just looked.

She had ignored the hand before, pretending that it wasn't there and that it would fall off on its own. But it hadn't fallen off, and apparently Sven hadn't noticed it, so she felt like she had to bring it up. She wondered if she should have brought it up earlier, but quickly dismissed the notion.

Lorie's mask hung down around her neck, and she wished she still had it on, because she couldn't help grinning, and Sven saw it. She got the sense that he was judging her, so she said, "Here, I'll help get it off," and kneeled down to pry the fingers off.

It was harder than she thought it would be, and when she looked up at Sven watching her, she could see that he was enjoying her frustration. She could pull one finger loose, but then whenever she pulled on another finger, the first finger would grip again, so she could never pry off more than one finger at the same time. She tried to use each of her hands on one finger and pull at the same time, but that seemed to just make the whole hand tighten, like one of those Chinese finger traps. The fingers were cold and crumbly, and not exactly pleasant to touch.

"Hey!" Lorie said. "They should call this a zombie finger trap!"

Sven looked down at her, clearly not amused anymore.

"Okay," he said, "let's try this. You get the pointer out."

Lorie pulled on the pointer, sticking it out with a crackle. That made the thumb that Lorie had just been pulling on retract and re-grip Sven's ankle.

Then Sven reached down, put his massive hand around the zombie hand's pointer, and pulled it backward. There was a tearing sound, and the pointer ripped off the hand, pulling up strands of flesh from the back of the hand with it. Sven gave it one more tug, snapping the threads, and threw the pointer into a patch of dandelions.

"I get it," Lorie said, and pried another finger up, the middle finger this time. Sven tore that one off too, and tossed it into the dandelions as he'd done with the first. They did the pinky next, and after that, the hand came loose. Lorie took it and tossed it into a different dandelion patch than the pointer and middle finger and pinky had gone—just in case the thing could reassemble...not that she thought it would, but just in case.

"Thanks," Sven said.

"Any time." Lorie thought for a moment. "Do you think we're gonna make it through this?"

"I think so."

"Do you think there'll be more zombies?"

He gave her a strange look, but didn't answer. That was answer enough. Lorie bit her lip and tried not to smile. Her hand was giving the butcher knife handle a good coating of sweat.

Sven and Lorie stood in the spot in the open field where the car had been. Lorie could make out tire tracks in the grass. Jane had driven off, alright, and who could blame her?

When there were zombies, it was every man and woman for him or herself. True as that was, Lorie was glad Sven was still there, looking ridiculous as ever, pants-less and bending over to rub his ankle where the zombie hand had been.

Then Lorie looked up, and saw that the sky was darkening.

Chapter 71

The first thing Jane did when she felt the hand on her foot wasn't to look down. She knew what it was, and the voice in her head confirmed what she was thinking.

"Here it comes, dead, dead, dead. Just like in the movies. You'll be famous. What a treat!"

No, she didn't look down, and she didn't loosen her hold on the nozzle, if anything, she was squeezing harder than ever.

The first thing she did was to look back at the base of the pump.

The ticking number read 8.12 gallons. That was better, but still not good enough. She was not going to fail at this task, she was not. The voice was wrong.

Then Jane looked down at her foot. She tried not to focus on the hand itself, but it was hard not to look at it in wonder—in horrified wonder. How could this be happening?

The flesh of the hand was ripped and torn, and there was dry blood caked across it. The fingers looked too thin to be those of a person, like the fingers of a skeleton that had been crudely wrapped with flesh-covered pieces of paper. The bone of the forefinger peeked through, the flesh that should've surrounded it scraped off. The jutting piece of bone winked at Jane, and she shuddered with revulsion.

There was another moan, possibly one of triumph.

"No," Jane said, "you're not gonna get me." She didn't understand how the thing had snuck up on her like that, but it must have come from the next row of pumps, and gotten under the car after she stopped. But she had been so careful, so discerning, that she couldn't help but get angry at herself for not checking just around the next pump—not that she could know that was where it came from, but it seemed the most likely possibility.

Jane braced herself against the car with her free arm and pulled her foot back. It inched back, revealing some of the zombie's wrist and forearm from under the car. But the zombie didn't let go.

She looked back at the ticking numbers. 10.19 gallons. 10.23 gallons. 10.27 gallons. 10.31 gallons.

She looked back down at the grotesque hand. Its fingers were gripping the toe of her foot more tightly, and it hurt, like the sides of the front of her foot were being squeezed together and there wasn't much give left.

Jane looked back at the ticking numbers. 10.91.

That would have to be enough.

In pain and overcome with a sudden surge of fury, Jane jerked the nozzle, gas still flowing out of it, from the car. She bared her teeth and thrust the nozzle down, stabbing the monster's forearm above the wrist.

There was a moan that Jane interpreted as a whimper, and the torn fingers around her foot released their disgusting, excruciating grip. Jane pulled her foot back at once, and watched for a few seconds as the gas seeped from the thing's forearm and hand, through small ruptures in its skin. Its flesh really was like paper, like ruffled paper, and in the moment that Jane watched the forearm with the nozzle sticking out of it fill with gas, she thought she could see the texture of the zombie's skin change. Then the back of the hand and a spot above the wrist burst, churning out gas and small bits of crusty flesh.

Trembling, Jane opened the door and jumped back into the driver's seat. She looked over to see Ivan curled up on the passenger seat, resting his head on his paws. On hearing Jane approach, Ivan picked his head up, meowed, then let out a resigned hiss aimed at the back of the car. He then put his head back down on his paws and closed his eyes.

A slight moan came from the back of the car.

Jane spun around, straining her neck a little, and saw that Evan was looking a little better.

He blinked his eyes and said, "Where's Lorie?"

Filled with a renewed resolve, Jane turned back around, started the car, and pulled out of the gas station. She was sure she could feel the crunch as she drove over the nozzle-stabbed zombie.

It was a day for stabbing, she thought, and it had gone from fork-stabbing to nozzle-stabbing. She cringed, then remembered Evan's question.

"We're going to get her," Jane said. She turned the car around, and hoped that the words she had spoken would come true.

Chapter 72

"It looks like it's about to rain," Lorie said. "Let's get this lit up while we still can."

Sven watched as the girl took the firework out of her pocket and fiddled with it, propping it up on its built-in stand. She set it up so that the front part of the rocket peeped through the fence, pointing a direct course to the hibachi restaurant's open back door.

"It's nice this fence is here, huh?" Sven asked dumbly. He didn't know what else to say, he felt a little scared of Lorie after what she had done back in the restaurant. It was a good thing she was on his side—was she on his side? He hoped so.

Sven's ankle hurt, and his foot was numb. The zombie hand's grip must have cut off all blood flow to his foot and toes. He was surprised that he hadn't noticed it before, probably on account of all the adrenalin, and not having a moment to stop and do a self pat-down.

He wiggled his toes in his shoes and felt some movement, but it hurt to walk on the foot, like it was asleep. Sven put a tentative finger on his chest and pressed. It was getting worse, as was his strained neck, and the way things were going, he wouldn't be surprised if the benching accident had popped some important blood vessels. He was racking up injuries that day, and that didn't bode well for him as the day wore on.

Lorie looked up from her task. "Yeah, so what are we gonna do if Jane doesn't come back?"

Sven didn't know what to say. She had to come back. Why had she left in the first place? She wouldn't just abandon him and Lorie like that, would she?

"Something must have happened, but she'll come back, I know her."

"It doesn't look it," Lorie said. "I mean it doesn't look like anything happened. There aren't any zombies here, what would she have been driving away from?"

Sven looked at Lorie, who was crouched behind the firework, making her visual measurements. She turned around and looked him in the eye, and he was sure they were both thinking the same thing. Jane had been driving away from them, not away from the zombies, but from them.

Lorie confirmed his thought. She said, "You think the fewer people are together the better their chances? You think we should be striking out on our own?"

"No. No, I think the group can get too big and get in trouble that way, but it's probably better not to be alone. Then again, what am I relying on? I've never been in this situation before, and it's not like we can really use what we've seen in the movies as examples of how to behave."

Lorie gave a nod and smiled wanly. "Thanks."

"What? For what?"

"For giving a real answer. I don't know either, how can we, right?"

Sven shrugged. "I could use a steak right now, and a nap."

"Maybe this'll all be over soon enough." Lorie turned back to adjust the firework, then back to Sven. "Okay, you ready to get in on this?"

Sven took a deep breath and sighed. "You bet." He crouched down next to Lorie. She dug in her pocket and withdrew a book of matches. She ripped one out, folded the top of the packet back to wedge the match in the lighting strip, and, with a pull and a crack, expertly lit the match. She looked at the flame for a second, and Sven could see she was grinning. Sven felt he was grinning too, and was amazed that Lorie could make him feel a little bit like a kid, even while they were in the midst of an infection that might claim their lives.

She lit the rocket's wick.

"Alright," Sven said, "let's back up a little."

But Lorie didn't react. She looked up at the sky, then down at the lit wick, then at the match that was slowly burning its way down to her thumb and forefinger. Then her grin grew into a broad smile. She brought the match to the rocket's wick again, this time lighting it as far in on the exposed part of the wick as she could.

Then she moved to the side opposite Sven, giving the rocket about ten feet of clearance. At least she was moving backward with him, to get farther from the restaurant's explosion. The fence was a good distance away from the restaurant, and Sven wasn't sure how far they really needed to back up to be safe. Would there be a fireball? Would there be flying glass and cooking pots and shrimp? Would there even be an explosion?

"Why don't you back up a little more?" Sven asked. He was giving the rocket at least fifteen feet of clearance. He didn't feel comfortable around exploding things, but Lorie obviously did. She didn't hear his request, and he figured she was far enough away...so long as she stayed put.

Then the rocket exploded off its stand with a loud pop, kicking up a clod of smoking dirt behind it. Sven saw the fire of the explosion glint off the blade of the butcher knife Lorie was clutching, and then he turned to follow the rocket.

It flew straight into the restaurant's open back door.

"Bull's-eye!" Lorie cried, and Sven couldn't help smiling.

He resumed backing up, and he was glad to see out of the corner of his eye that Lorie was backing up too. He was bracing himself for an explosion, for the loud bang, for the rattling ground, for the shattering glass.

But nothing happened.

Lorie crossed over to Sven, eyes still locked on the building.

"I guess we messed it up," she said.

To his own surprise, Sven felt disappointed. "Nothing in real life works the way it does in the movies."

"Guess not." Then Lorie's face brightened. "We'll have to try again."

Lorie began to walk toward the gate, swinging the butcher knife in her left hand as she went.

"What? No, not—"

Thunder erupted from inside the restaurant, and for a moment, it lit up like an unimaginative, rectangular jack-o-lantern. Then the building was gone, and a dark cloud was moving up and out toward the fence.

Lorie tottered backward, dropping her knife, and Sven grabbed her and pulled her around. It seemed like it took forever as he tried to keep his balance on the shaking ground. Then he put his arm around her and pushed her down onto the grass as gently as he could, covering her with his own body. With his free hand he reflexively covered the back of his head.

Then it began to rain. But it wasn't rain. Little bits of something stung at the backs of Sven's bare legs, at his back, which wasn't so bad because it was covered, and at the back of his hand covering his head.

He lay there, terrified, expecting to feel a big piece of something land on his back, or on his head, and end his day. He wondered if he should have picked the girl up and run, but falling on the ground had been his instinctive response.

No big piece of anything came, and the falling bits sputtered to a stop. Then Lorie and Sven both rolled over and sat up, coughing in the dust. Lorie helped Sven up, and they retreated toward the road, distancing themselves from the expanding dust cloud. They stopped at the edge of the field, and Lorie narrowed her eyes at where the restaurant had been.

"It looks like we got it pretty good," she said, then coughed.

Sven wiped at his legs and the back of his neck, trying to get the coating of dust off and trying to avoid the small burnt spots on his skin. "I don't want to blow anything up anymore."

Lorie laughed. "You have to admit, that was pretty awesome. Look—" Lorie was poking in the grass with her toe, "—there are roasted zombie pieces all over."

Sven looked, and when he saw that she was right, he shuddered in disgust. He disgusted himself further when he noted that the charred zombie bits reminded him that he needed to get some protein into his body to heal faster—definitely not zombie protein though, that was surely contagious.

"I don't mean to ruin the mood," Sven said, "but we need to start thinking about finding some shelter. Food and shelter."

Lorie looked down. "So it's just you and me now. I miss my mom. Sorry. I mean. She's one of them now, a zombie. She and Evan's father, they were together, you know, and, now..."

"I'm sorry. My best friend, he..."

"This is the worst huh?"

"As bad as it gets."

Lorie turned away and wiped at her face. Sven felt about as bad emotionally, as depressed, as he had so far that day. It had come on so suddenly.

They stood in silence for a while.

Then Lorie turned back, her voice cracking as she spoke. "So where to Mr. Svensky?" She made her trembling lips into a smile.

He had no idea. "Okay, let's think for a minute. There was a ton of them on 29 before we turned in here. We couldn't get around them. We can try to cut deeper into the woods there." Sven pointed into the thickening woods to the east, knowing he didn't want to go that way. "Or we can loop around toward 29 and see if we can hole up somewhere. But we need supplies, and weapons."

Lorie's head perked up, and she jogged back toward the fence. She bent down to pick something up, and came back over to Sven with her butcher knife.

"Where will we get weapons?" she asked.

"There's a gun store up the road. I drive past it all the time. It's not that far from here now. And, I've only been in there once with one of my gun-nut friends, so I don't remember for sure, but they have a lot of hunting supplies, so I bet they have some kind of survival food."

"Locking ourselves in a place with guns seems like a pretty great idea to me. Let's take our chances with that." Lorie pointed to the woods. "I'm not going in there, we'll probably get shot by a human, and wouldn't that be a stupid ending to this whole zombie mess?"

Sven grinned. "It'd be appropriate. Have you seen Night of the Living Dead?"

"Seen what?"

"Never mind."

"I'm really hungry. I'd love a—"

Then Lorie ran behind him, and Sven turned to see his car making its way down the winding road toward the field.

Chapter 73

Jane stopped the car next to the field, without going over the curb. She left the engine running, rolled the windows down all the way, and stepped out of the car. She was trembling, and her stomach was in knots. She could still feel where the zombie had squeezed her foot, and it felt like it wasn't going to go away. She glanced down to make sure the hand really was gone. It was.

Sven and Lorie were there, walking toward her, and they looked alright, thank God for that.

Then Jane heard a scraping sound, and she whirled around to see what it was, but it was only Ivan, who excitedly leapt past her, through the car window. He landed gracefully in the grass and drew near to Sven and Lorie, sniffing at each of them with a cat's head-tilting curiosity. He must have finally smelled something that satisfied him, because he began to meander around the two, rubbing against their legs and purring.

Jane turned to Sven. "Did you get it? Did you get something for Evan?"

"Yeah," Sven said, and he showed her a bottle of pills. She took it and looked at the label. It was what they needed, at least as far as getting the boy's fever down.

"Okay," Jane said, then took a bottle of water from the front of the car—the one that she was now reserving for Evan—and opened the rear door to find Evan lying on his side across the seat. He looked a little better. His skin wasn't quite as sallow, and he was awake.

"How you doing?" Jane asked.

"My throat hurts."

"Let me see how your fever is." Jane reached out and touched the boy's forehead with the back of her hand. She was dimly aware of Sven and Lorie watching her as she went about looking at the boy. They weren't saying anything.

Evan was still hot, and his face was slick with sweat.

"Here," Jane said, popping the pill bottle open and taking out a pill. "Take this and wash it down with as much water as you can drink. It'll make you feel better, then in a few hours—four to six I think—we'll give you another one." Jane knew the pills, and she remembered taking them herself when she was sick—which had been most of the time when she was growing up. The package hadn't been as shiny back then, but the pills even smelled the same way they had years ago.

"Okay." Evan nodded and obeyed, gulping the pill down with a loud swallow.

"Now lie down and relax. I'll keep the door open so you can get some air in here."

Jane backed out of the car, careful not to bump her head on the way out, then she turned back to Sven and Lorie, who were eyeing her curiously. Sven was covered in dust and there were little black, sooty marks all over his legs and shirt. He looked ridiculous standing there in a shirt, his boxer shorts, and sneakers. Lorie seemed to be keeping tabs on her surroundings. She looked from Jane, to Sven, then spun around, looking in all directions while brandishing her large knife. Then she looked back to Jane and started her cycle again.

Nothing will sneak up on her that way, Jane thought, maybe not even a zombie underneath a car. How had it gotten there? How had—Jane shook her head.

"What happened to your pants?" Jane asked, trying to lighten the mood. She was surprised at how much her voice shook.

"The zombies got 'em," Sven replied, then he walked around to the car, screwed in the gas cap that was still unfastened, and shut the gas door.

Jane nodded. "Yeah, I saw the whole thing. It would've been funny if you weren't almost killed."

"Look," Lorie said, pointing to where the restaurant had been. "We blew it up, and a bunch of zombies with it! I kinda hoped there would be fireworks coming out of it, but I guess we just used that one and it wasn't enough."

Jane gave Lorie a searching look. Lorie was acting strange, but then, considering the circumstances, who wouldn't be? They were likely each going crazy, making all kinds of mental leaps to deal with the reality of the situation.

"You guys did that? I thought there was an earthquake or something, but then I saw the dust, are you sure that was such a good idea Sven?" Jane looked at the pants-less giant, still as immature as ever.

He shrugged. "Sorry?"

"I think it's time we had a pow-wow," Jane said, "a serious discussion."

"About the restaurant thing?" Sven asked. "Come on, I mean there are more important—"

"It was my idea!" Lorie burst in. "It's not his fault, I made him."

"Enough," Jane said, and she must have said it effectively because it got both Sven and Lorie to stop interrupting each other with explanations. "I mean I think we should talk about what's happening, and what we know so far, so that we have a better chance of making it through this. For all we know, the whole planet is like this now. We need to think about what to do, about how to act."

"But," Sven began, "my mom said that only Virginia was affected."

"Only Virginia?" Lorie asked. "That sucks."

"Yeah," Sven said, and was beginning to say more when Jane interrupted him.

"Just because your mother says so," Jane said, "doesn't make it so. Things may have changed already. Let's start at the beginning, okay? We talk, then we go."

"Alright, alright," Sven said. "Way to take charge."

"Sorry, I don't mean to yell," Jane said. "I'm just freaking out, obviously, and I'm not gonna let them get me...one of them, when I was getting gas..."

"You got us gas?" Sven asked.

"Filled it up most of the way before I had to go."

"Good stuff, thanks." Sven looked thoughtful. "Actually, no offense, but let's talk while we drive. That mass of them could be making its way farther up 29, and then we might be blocked in here. I think regardless of what we decide is happening, we're gonna need weapons, right?"

"Right!" Lorie said. "Weapons!"

Jane looked down at the girl and saw for the first time just how big the butcher knife was, comically so in Lorie's grasp. Jane was about to say something, but then thought better of it.

"You're right," Jane said. "I'll drive."

They all got in the car, Jane turned it around, got on Hillsdale Drive, and off they went.

Chapter 74

Jane decided she was going to set the tone for their discussion, so as soon as they were on their way, she began.

"Okay, first, since you brought us all face masks, let's talk about that. Let's talk about the smell."

"I think that's how they get you!" Lorie cried, sitting up excitedly and gripping the back of the passenger seat in which Sven now sat. "It's like they hypnotize you or brainwash you or something, and you can't move and you're confused and then you're dead!"

"I think you're right," Jane said. "It's part of their disease or whatever they have, like a cloud they travel in."

"Yeah," Sven said. "It smells pretty terrible."

"So we wear the masks when we're around them," Jane said, "and try not to be around them in the first place."

Sven nodded. "Yeah, also, it sometimes sneaks up on you, I mean it's snuck up on me, so maybe we should try not to breathe too deeply while this is going on. I mean test the air—" Sven made sniffing noises, "—to make sure it's okay before we breathe in too much."

"That's what I've been doing," Lorie agreed.

"Okay," Jane said, "and I guess that brings us to what is actually happening. What do you guys think?"

"I don't feel so good," Evan said. "Sorry, I think I'm going to throw up again."

"Lorie," Jane said, "there are some bags back there, can you help Evan?" Jane hoped the girl would agree, because it wasn't a good time to stop, there were shambling zombies about, and Jane wanted very badly to get to the gun store without any more stops.

"Okay," Lorie said, sounding reluctant.

Jane tried to ignore the retching sounds from behind her and went on. "So it's some kind of illness? That's what it seems like to me, my roommate was very sick before she...well...you know."

"It's a virus," Lorie said, with a note of eagerness that Jane thought was a little odd considering the girl was holding Evan's vomit bag. "But we didn't get it, and so long as we stay away from the zombies, we won't get it. Right Sven?"

"I think she's right," Sven said, "exactly right. As unlikely as all of this is, it's happening, and it's just like in the movies, more or less."

"Yeah," Lorie said. "You have to get 'em in the head and everything."

"If it's just like the movies," Sven added, "getting the spine might work too."

As ridiculous as all of this sounded to Jane the accountant, she had to admit, "It is too much like the movies. And they are trying to bite—maybe that's what spreads the infection."

They all sat in silence for a while. Evan's vomiting let up, and Jane saw Lorie roll down her window and carefully toss out Evan's bag.

"So we have to not get bitten," Lorie said, "get weapons and food and go somewhere safe."

Jane heard a voice ring out in her head, and knew it was referring to the girl: "Some people are built to survive." She was a strong one, like Sven. They were so much alike it almost seemed too much of a coincidence that they should have ended up together like this.

"We're going to do just that," Sven said, and Jane saw him begin to rustle in his duffel bag under the seat.

Ivan meowed.

"I know," Sven said. "I'm hungry too," and he got something for Ivan and something for himself. Jane glanced over to see that Ivan was wolfing down something crunchy, and Sven was starting on a new protein bar.

"Hey," Jane said, "what was it your mom said? When we were just starting out?"

"I don't know," Sven said, "there was too much static."

"Right, but she was telling us to stay away from something, she said stay away from, and then the static would come on. Stay away from, and then nothing. What goes in the blank?"

"Probably the zombies. Stay away from the zombies, don't get bitten. That makes sense with the smell too, so stay away from the zombies to keep from their stench, and stay away to avoid getting bitten."

"Yeah..." Jane said, "I don't know. I think there was something else to it. It was in the way she said it. To me, it sounded like even though she was saying, stay away from blank, the way she was saying it, I heard it as her telling us not to do something, something internal to us, and not the zombies."

"What?" Sven asked. "I don't get it."

"I'm not sure I do either," Jane said. "It's just a feeling anyway, probably nothing, but it keeps coming back to me as something that's important. I don't know, maybe it's just the stress."

"What if it has something to do with protecting ourselves?" Lorie asked. "Like garlic and crosses against vampires. Wait no, I mean protecting ourselves by not touching the infection. Maybe it's something around us. Maybe people are getting it from doing something."

"That could've been what my mom was trying to say," Sven said. "But I don't know."

Out of the corner of her eye, Jane saw that Sven was gobbling down the rest of his protein bar and fiddling with his cell phone, while Ivan sat in Sven's lap and looked on. "My phone still isn't getting a signal. Probably everyone is trying to call everyone and tell them what to do. You'd think at least the radio would work. I don't know enough about these things."

"Me neither," Jane said. "So what if you're right Lorie, what if it is something that we have to stay away from, besides getting bitten? What if it's like pollution or cell phones or a TV program or something?"

"The cell phones aren't working," Sven said.

"And there's no TV to watch right now," Lorie said. "Then again, my mom and Evan's dad, they...they weren't doing anything like that. They were just on the balcony, and then—hey! Maybe it's the leaves or pollen or something, like hay fever. My mom gets hay fever every year, and..." Lorie trailed off.

"I don't know," Jane said. "My roommate had taken sick all of a sudden, and then she turned."

"Lars," Sven said, "the first one I encountered, my friend, he was sniffling, but he wasn't that sick before he became a zombie."

"Vicky was really, really sick," Jane said.

"Neither my mom nor Evan's dad looked sick at all."

"What does that mean?" Jane asked.

"Maybe not a whole lot," Sven said, "just that the virus—if it is a virus—moves at different speeds in different people, or has different effects in different people. I guess that's possible, but it doesn't help us much."

Jane turned onto Route 29. They weren't far from the gun store now. She was trying to make sense of all of this, to fit it into a neat mental box. But zombies weren't that easily categorized. She didn't have a box to put them in at all. She tried to stuff them into the diseases box, but it didn't quite fit. Jane had a feeling there was more to them than just a plague. It was as if they were bad, the worst thing in the world so far. She wanted to talk to Sven about it, but she didn't want to bring it up in front of Lorie and Evan—Evan...she hoped the kid got better soon. He had been better for a little while, but now he looked bad again. Jane recalled some of the movies she had watched with Sven, but she still didn't know how to deal with the boy. She didn't want to think about it, but it had to be brought up.

When we get to the gun store, she told herself, I'll pull Sven aside—but not too far away from Evan and Lorie—and raise my concerns.

"Sven, look," Lorie said. "You were right." Jane glanced in her mirror and saw the wave of zombies that was shambling north up 29. They were moving slowly, but in another half hour or so, it looked like they would be blocking the inflow road that Jane had just taken. It was good that she had listened to Sven, and that they hadn't remained in the field to hash out their understanding of what was going on.

"Are they anticipating where we're going or something?" Jane asked. She was feeling paranoid all of a sudden as she weaved in and out of stopped cars and avoided the shambling zombies in the road. Every now and then, Jane glanced back at the mass of zombies that was slowly disappearing from sight. She was glad of that.

"I think there's something else," Lorie said, "something we're forgetting." The girl paused, as if waiting for her words to sink in. "Why do they get so dry? Some of them are like burnt wood or something, all crackly, and—I guess just dry, that's the best way I can think to put it."

"Yeah," Sven said. "We've seen a lot like that, some don't bleed much. Some don't bleed at all. Maybe that means something."

"Vicky wasn't like that," Jane said, remembering the spittle and leaky nose of her former roommate.

"Neither was Lars," Sven said.

"But Vicky was kind of dry," Jane said, reconsidering a little. "I mean I got her pretty good with the knife and fork I had...that I was defending myself with, and she didn't really bleed like a person would. Her blood just kind of oozed a little and then stopped."

"I bet," Lorie said, "I bet it goes in stages. They start like us, then they start to dry out for some reason. And I bet some take longer than others, just like some take longer than others to catch the virus."

Or to succumb to its effects, Jane thought, and stole a glance at the rearview mirror at the prostrate boy.

"Hey," Sven said. "Maybe there's a way we can turn that to our advantage—the dryness I mean. It certainly makes using blunt weapons against them easier. Their heads and limbs pop right off without the wet stuff holding them together. Maybe that's not the best term for it, but they are less held-together than we are."

Jane nodded. "Yeah, it's true. I wonder if they'll just dry up and go away. They might just turn to dust if we can stay away from them long enough, and then we'll be in the clear, we'll have made it."

The prospect of survival didn't exactly fill Jane with hope. There was a dread to it, asking what would come later. What would there be left with all of these people gone? With all of her friends—she wondered how many of them were still alright—gone? It was like those old black and white movies, where all the people die except for two or three, and then at first they're excited to inherit an empty world, but then they go crazy, kill each other a little, and then go crazy some more. It all just felt so bleak, like Jane was sinking into an inescapable depression.

"I think," Sven said, "that we've covered just about everything. There's so much we don't know, that we should focus on the things we can control."

Always the pragmatist, Jane thought. He was always focused on things he could control, always cold and calculating. She didn't know why, but what he had just said reminded her of how much Sven cared for Ivan, and Jane had always felt, back when she and Sven were dating, that he loved the cat more than he loved her. It was a strange thing to remember at that moment, but that was what Sven's statement made her think of.

"There are things," Sven went on, "that we can have planned out, so we know how to react when they happen, when things go wrong, and the way things are going, I'm sure we'll be coming up against more problems."

"Yeah!" Lorie said, bouncing off her seat violently enough for Jane to notice. "We have to plan for things going wrong, that's the best way to stay ahead of those things."

"For one thing, we have to know what we're gonna do if we get separated, like we almost did back there in the field. We have to have a plan for that, for a meeting point or..."

Jane thought she heard hesitation in Sven's voice.

"You know," Sven went on, "the meeting boint."

When Jane heard that, there, driving through the human hell that her city had become, there in that car with the silly man she had never stopped loving, with his cat, and with the two teenagers she now felt responsible for, when she heard that, it all came back, and she had to look over and smile at him. In spite of everything, she felt pulled back to a different time, before all of this had happened—a hopeful time.

Years ago, when they were still dating, Jane and Sven had gone on a trip to Egypt together. She loved to travel, and though Sven hated flying, he capitulated, and they picked Egypt. She remembered how Sven had told her that he had wanted to go to Egypt ever since he was a little boy, fascinated by the pyramids. She wanted to go just about everywhere in the world, and Egypt was close to the top of her list. So they had gone.

Their tour guide there was a man named Mahmoud. Jane wondered if he was still alive, or if he was like them, one of the dry infected. He was a great tour guide, a really nice guy, and when he gave Jane and Sven and the three Australians that made up their tour group free time to explore, Mahmoud would always set a meeting "boint" for the group to return to, after a designated amount of wandering time. Mahmoud seemed to be unable to pronounce the letter "p" in general, substituting it with the letter "b." Not that she was taking issue with Mahmoud's English, which was close to impeccable. It wasn't like she could ever learn to speak Arabic.

Ever since that trip, Sven sometimes had "meeting boint" episodes where he would imitate the way Mahmoud spoke. Sven really went overboard, he could be childish at times, and it took him an unreasonable amount of time to become bored with a joke that he particularly enjoyed. Though it had been annoying on more than one occasion, Jane wished she could go back to that place of annoyance—simple annoyance, simple, zombie-free annoyance.

"Why did you say boint?" Lorie asked.

"Yeah," Jane said, ignoring the girl. "We need to have a plan for that, but we should try to avoid getting separated at all costs."

"Why boint?" Lorie insisted.

"It's one of Jane's favorite accents," Sven said. "My imitation of Egyptian English. I'll tell you the story some other time. For now let's figure out this separation thing."

"We all need to be able to go on our own," Lorie said. "So we each need masks against the smell, and we have those now, and we need water and a little bit of food, and weapons...definitely weapons."

Jane glanced back to make sure that Evan was still asleep, then she said, "Yeah, that's good in theory and all, but one of us has to stay with Evan, so the separation thing kind of falls through, we can't leave him alone."

"And," Sven began, "what the hell is a safe place with zombies roaming the streets? When we find a safe place like that, you can bet we shouldn't be leaving it. But if something happens, I mean, maybe..." Sven trailed off.

Jane sighed. Everyone was trailing off. Everyone else must have been thinking dark thoughts too, of getting separated, of no safe meeting boints, of being surrounded and overwhelmed, slowly bitten to death by those flesh-hungry, unashamed monsters.

"We stick together until Evan is better," Lorie said firmly.

Then Jane saw Woodbrook Drive in front of her, and began to look for somewhere to turn in.

"We're here," Jane said.

She spotted the familiar gun store's parking lot and drove into it, very slowly. "Look safe to you guys?"

"Looks quiet," Sven said.

"Yeah," Lorie said.

It did look quiet.

Jane parked in front of the store, then reconsidered, pulled out, and backed up to the store's entrance. It wasn't a parking spot, but she didn't think anyone would mind that day.

Chapter 75

Sven put Ivan into his backpack. The cat gave Sven an unhappy meow, but didn't try to jump out. Sven wasn't going to leave Ivan in the car, not now, and not anymore. There would not be any more separation among the group members.

Sven saw Jane watching him as he packed up Ivan and a water bottle.

"We're all gonna stick together from now on," he said, then jerked a thumb at the back seat. "The kids too. And we can't leave the car running, or unlocked either. We can't have someone come along and steal it, leaving us stranded. That'd be game over."

"Okay," Jane said. She turned the car off and pocketed the keys. Was Sven comfortable with that? With her having the keys? He told himself that he was. Then he turned around to look at Lorie and Evan. Lorie looked chipper, and Sven was sure she was excited to get into the gun store. She would probably try to make off with half of the weapons in there. Evan looked pale and sleepy, but at least he wasn't throwing up anymore.

"Now don't go grabbing any guns," Jane said to Lorie. Her shoulders slumped and her gaze fell to the floor, looking beaten.

"But how am I supposed to defend myself?" Lorie asked. "From the zombies?"

"Guns are very dangerous, Lorie," Jane said.

"So how come you're getting some for yourself?" Lorie asked.

"I've had training," Jane said. "I've been shooting for a long time."

"Training?" Lorie asked, excitement creeping back into her voice. "Then you can train me, right?"

Sven wasn't sure how to deal with this situation. Yes, there were zombies about, but did that mean they should let high school kids arm themselves with guns?

"Let's stick to blunt objects for now," Sven said. "You were really good back there with the pan, and with the sledgehammer too."

"I was better with the knives," Lorie said. "And I'm not going to give up this one." She reached down for her butcher knife. Sven saw that she had been resting it on the floor, with one of her feet pressing down onto the blade. She was being careful, he had to give her that.

"I'm not gonna fight you for it, that's for sure," Sven said.

Jane looked like she was on the verge of saying something, then didn't.

"Evan," Lorie said, "are you well enough to come out with us? We're just going into the store to stock up on things."

Evan looked unsure of himself but nodded. He seemed to be turning greener with each nod. "Yeah...I'll come. I'm okay."

"Let's go then," Sven said. "Before all those zombies behind us catch up. Any sign of those things?" Sven surveyed the parking lot in front of him and turned back to look through the dimmed rear window toward the gun store. It was hard to make things out back there.

"The undead?" Lorie asked. "I don't see any around here. The store entrance looks all clear, but I can't tell if any are inside."

"We look good from what I can see," Jane said. "Just don't get too close to any of the cars. They could be under the cars too."

"Ready?" Sven asked.

"Ready," Jane, Lorie, and Evan said. Ivan meowed, and if Sven had to interpret it, he would've interpreted the meow as, "Not ready, I don't wanna go." But it wasn't up to the cat.

"Sorry," Sven said to Ivan. "It'll be okay soon. Lots of fish treats, I promise."

Sven gripped the straps of the backpack from which Ivan's head peeked out. He opened his door, and stepped slowly out of the car. His troupe followed, all moving carefully, to the gun store's entrance. Sven realized they must have looked odd—two adults, a cat, and two teenagers, sneaking into a gun store in the middle of the day. The thought made Sven look up. Actually, it didn't look much like the middle of the day anymore. The clouds were coming in strong.

"Let's make this as quick as possible," Sven said. "The zombies are coming, and it looks like a storm is too."

"It just keeps getting better," Jane said, and gave Sven a wry smile. She put on her mask, and Sven, Lorie, and Evan followed suit. Then she pulled open the door and went inside.

Chapter 76

Sven walked in quickly after Jane, slinging the backpack with Ivan in it onto his back. Jane had begun to move a little too fast for Sven's liking, and he was trying to keep up with her to make sure she wasn't walking into a zombie-infested store, while also keeping Lorie and Evan in sight.

The gun shop looked deserted. It would be a huge bonus, a huge relief if it was, but there were aisles, and Sven could see a corridor behind the counter leading somewhere—probably to a storeroom, and there was likely a basement—so there were lots of unhappy possibilities lurking in the unknown.

Then one of these unhappy possibilities emerged into Sven's field of vision. Evan gasped and Jane stopped in the midst of her mad dash to the gun display. The zombie had appeared from behind an aisle, and it was wearing plaid and overalls that did little to contain its immense belly. The face looked dry and misshapen, and Sven guessed that the thing's belly had been even more massive before it got infected and dried up. As if to confirm that it was drying up, a piece of the zombie's earlobe fell off as the zombie lurched toward Jane, who stood watching it, frozen in her tracks.

Ivan hissed, and kicked Sven in the back a few times through the backpack.

Then Lorie was running, and she left Sven's field of vision.

"No," Sven said, "where are you going?"

But the girl was gone. She had left Evan standing close to the store's entrance, still wearing his shocked, pallid expression.

The zombie was getting closer to Jane, and she must have snapped out of it, because she climbed over the counter and began to rummage through the guns in the display. When Sven saw her do this, he noticed that most of the display was empty, and there was a lot of empty space behind the counter too, as if people had gone through the place already and cleaned it out. Sven and his gang were late to the party.

Then Lorie was back. She ran out of the bow and arrow aisle wielding her butcher knife. She made straight for the plaid zombie's left, overall-covered leg and swung hard. The knife cracked something and stuck deep into the top of the zombie's calf, but it didn't go through. The plaid zombie lurched to the side, off-balance, and then was overcome by the weight of its great belly. It fell sideways, thundering to the ground with a terrible crunch as the leg that Lorie had chopped bent sideways below the knee.

On the floor, the zombie floundered back and forth around the mass of its belly, then lay relatively still, though it still made small flailing, clutching motions with its hands. The hands looked tiny relative to the rest of its body, making Sven imagine a tyrannosaur in its death throes.

It was such an odd sight that Sven had trouble looking away, and Lorie's eager ferocity to dispatch the plaid zombie hadn't broken Sven's curiosity at the thing, because he'd already been exposed to her overactive fighting spirit.

What did break his concentration, however, was the gunshot.

He had been watching the great, undead flailing beast on the floor of the gun shop, when, all of a sudden, a black hole formed under its eye and the top left side of its head fell away, as if its skull were a misshapen fortune cookie. The movement of the tyrannosaur-like arms stopped, and the zombie lay still.

Sven turned to the counter, where Jane stood, holding a gun in both hands, still aimed at the plaid zombie's body. Lorie and Evan were watching Jane too, and their looks were somewhat apprehensive behind their masks. Sven was surprised that Lorie looked apprehensive after she had just sunk a butcher knife into a zombie. Maybe he was wrong, and that wasn't Lorie's apprehensive look. Maybe it was her admiring look. It was hard to tell behind the mask.

"I see you're still a good shot," Sven said.

Jane began to do something with the gun, then she picked up a shoulder holster from somewhere behind the counter and put it on. She holstered the gun and gathered up some boxes of ammo and a few magazines.

"Do you shoot a lot?" Lorie asked, wide-eyed.

"A couple times a week," Jane said. "Sometimes more. Are there any bags back there Lorie? Good ones? We're gonna need some durable packs to carry this stuff."

"I'll go look," Lorie said, and disappeared into the aisle from which she had run like a crazy mini-butcher.

Sven looked around the store, but he had no idea what to pick up here. He wasn't into guns, and knew next to nothing about them. People always assumed that because he lived in Virginia he went hunting or at least shooting all the time, that he owned guns, and that he took pride in owning them. But none of those things were true, and he knew he'd have to defer to Jane's expertise on the matter.

"Any advice on what I should pick up?" Sven asked.

Lorie came back with three sturdy-looking, camouflage duffel bags and two travel backpacks—the kind with water reservoirs connected to drink tubes with bike valves.

"Are there any more of the camel water backpack things back there?" Sven asked.

"Yeah, plenty," Lorie said. "They're kinda heavy though. I'll get the rest." Lorie disappeared back into the aisle.

Jane began filling one of the duffel bags with the boxes of ammo and the magazines. "Well, if you still shoot the way I remember, we need to get you a shotgun."

"Thanks," Sven said, then added, "I wasn't that bad, was I?"

Jane raised a dubious eyebrow at him. "Let's find you that shotgun." Then she reduced her voice to a whisper, "Of course, this is the zombie apocalypse, so if you want to try some of these handguns, I'm not gonna stop you. Just warn me before you try to shoot them."

Sven harrumphed. He could shoot a gun if he wanted...kind of. But Jane was right, a shotgun was a better idea, so he began to look for one.

"What about me?" Evan asked. "What should I do?"

Sven was about to tell the boy to look for some granola bars and water, but before he could say it, Jane said, "Why don't you help keep watch at the door? That's really important right now and we've been neglecting it already."

"Okay," Evan said. "I can do that." He walked toward the front of the store.

"Psst," a voice whispered.

"Psst," it came again. Sven turned around and saw that it was Jane, motioning for him to come over to her.

Sven walked over to her. "I thought I was supposed to be finding a shotgun."

"And you will," she whispered, "but I want to talk to you about something...in private."

"Alright." Sven looked down into the display case and saw that it hadn't quite been picked clean—not all the way. There were a few guns left, and there was a very long knife that caught his eye. Jane began to say something, but Sven kept looking at the knife. The metal was mottled, like it needed a good shining. That made Sven wonder if the knife was sharp. He peered down into the case, and saw that the label under the knife said, "Machete, dating back to—"

"Are you listening to me?" Jane asked, looking annoyed.

"What? Oh, sorry I...sorry, what were you saying?"

"The boy! I think he's got it, the sickness."

"You mean...you mean he's turning into—"

"Not so loud!"

"Sorry." Sven lowered his voice. "You mean he's turning into a zombie?"

Jane nodded. She wasn't packing anymore, and she looked dead serious.

Sven couldn't believe it. "Evan?" he asked.

Jane nodded again.

"No," Sven said. "That doesn't make any sense. He just has a cold or something. It's been too long for it to be that."

"I thought you might say something like that. Yes, okay, it's been a long time, but maybe it's just taking longer in him."

"Lars turned very quickly, and I haven't seen any sick people out, just zombies. I don't think he has it, but even if he does, what are we supposed to do? Leave him behind?"

"No we can't leave him, and maybe he doesn't have it. Of course I hope he doesn't have it, but he's very sick, and we should be careful."

"Did you tell Lorie about this?"

"No. Maybe it's better if we don't."

"Yeah, it's probably better that way. What do you mean by being careful, tying him up?"

"No, nothing like that, maybe just not getting too close to him, not sharing his food and water, watching him closely."

"Okay. Sounds reasonable enough."

"Okay," Jane said, and went back to peering behind the counter.

"What are you looking for?" Sven asked.

"The right kind of ammo, there's not too much left to choose from."

"Okay." Sven was glad she knew what to look for, because he certainly didn't.

Then Sven was peering into the display at the machete again. There were two of them, each lying on top of a leather sheath. They both looked old and authentic to him, the blades stained by age and use, even though he didn't know how old and authentic machetes should look. He came around to the counter to join Jane and knelt behind the case where the machetes were. The sliding plastic panel was unlocked, and whatever knives or guns had once kept the ancient machetes company were now gone. Whoever had been through the display earlier that day must not have thought the big knives were worth the trouble.

Sven pulled out the machetes and their sheaths, stood up, and lay the treasure on top of the counter. Then he was holding a machete in each hand and looking at them, turning from hand to hand, feeling wonder sweep over him.

***

All of a sudden, Sven was in a jungle, with vines, and a tiger, and a beautiful, sun-tanned woman clad in animal skins. She had a strong, lithe body that had an unmistakable power to it...she was the most alluring woman that Sven could imagine. She winked at Sven, then disappeared behind a wall of vines. Sven stepped forward, and then he was opening the wall of vines with the machetes, and she was—

***

The sound of a throat clearing brought Sven out of his reverie. His heart sank to find that the jungle had gone. He turned and saw that Jane was watching him with a concerned look on her face, arms crossed.

"Is there something you want to tell me Sven? You're on the verge of slobbering."

"I...uhh...sorry, I..." Sven stammered, feeling confused. The jungle had been real—much more real than this.

"I like them," Sven finally said when he got his brain back on track. That was an understatement. He liked them a lot. He may have loved them. He felt about the knives the way he had felt about his basement gym when he had first set it up, like there had been a hole in his life until that moment, except the feeling about the knives was stronger.

Sven looked up to see that Jane was now watching him with a puzzled look on her face, no longer looking as concerned as before.

"Okay," Jane said, "fine, keep them, just don't hurt yourself."

"I won't," Sven said, and looked down at the knives again. He liked the weight of them, the way he could feel the muscles in his forearms and biceps flex when he held them. They felt like natural extensions of his hands, and Freddy Krueger with his knife hands popped into Sven's mind. Freddy's gloves had always made Sven think of garden shears. But the machetes he now held...those would never be mistaken for garden shears. They were so glorious and full of character and—

"Why don't you go see about some pants?"

"What?" Sven looked up at Jane again.

"Pants. Pants. Maybe there are some lumberjack pants in the back or something."

"Oh," Sven said, and he looked down at his bare legs and understood. Pants were a good idea, that was true.

"Nice knives," Lorie said, appearing out of nowhere. "And yeah, there are some pants back there. I think there's a pair that's just for you actually." Her eyes twinkled, and Sven got the feeling he wasn't going to like these pants one bit.

"Well," Lorie said. "You gonna let me show you your new pants or what?"

Sven nodded, reluctantly sheathed both machetes, and placed them on the countertop. Letting go of them was uncomfortable, like there was pull of electricity that he felt in his wrist from the knives' handles when he let go. It felt like something was being wrenched from inside of his forearm. It didn't feel good.

"Are you coming?"

Sven looked up to see that Lorie was already walking away from him, motioning for him to follow. He tried to figure out what to do with the machetes—he wasn't going to leave them on the counter—and when he realized that he couldn't fasten the sheaths to his boxers without his boxers falling down, he took both machetes in his left hand and followed Lorie.

Lorie led Sven down an aisle and around into another one, until she stopped and pointed to a shelf that was full of garments. Sven glanced around and saw that the aisle was dotted with hunting jackets, boots, hats, backpacks—all kinds of outdoor gear. But there wasn't that much of it. Whoever had been through the guns had also been through this part of the store, and had made a mess of the place. Hats and mismatched boots were strewn about the floor, and there were bare spots on the shelves that Sven assumed hadn't been bare earlier in the day. Then again, he hadn't been to the store in a while, and maybe the bare spots were now a fixture.

Lorie pulled something off a shelf and offered it to Sven.

"Here they are," Lorie said.

"What is it?" Sven asked.

Lorie rolled her eyes. "Pants, remember? The pants. These are the pants."

Sven thought she sounded frustrated—probably picking it up from Jane. That was all he needed—a mini-Jane on his hands poking fun at him. He remembered the pants now, and of course he did need some, he was just getting a little distracted, that was all.

"Are you sure these are the rights ones?" Sven asked, looking at the pants dubiously.

"They have to be."

"Why?"

"Well, they're totally you, and they're the only ones left. So it works out."

Sven looked at the pants that Lorie was holding and took a step backward.

"How do you figure that they're totally me?" Sven asked. The pants were a dark green—it seemed that all the hunting gear was either camouflage or dark green—and they were decorated with ducks. Sven saw the pants' label and had to correct himself—they were mallards.

"They're ducks!" Lorie cried, as if that explained everything.

"They're mallards," Sven corrected her, feeling very witty indeed. He had acclimated to Virginia life enough to know what a mallard was, though his first instinct was to call all ducks, "ducks."

Lorie frowned. "Whatever, they're...protein! And you love protein, so there you go."

Sven nodded. "Duck is delicious," he had to admit, "fatty and delicious."

"See?"

"Okay, okay, I'll take 'em. If they're the last ones what choice do I have?"

He took the pants from Lorie, unfolded them, and without letting go of the machetes, began to put them on. That didn't work because Sven hadn't taken his sneakers off, and his left foot got caught in a pant leg. After he shook off the pants and his stuck shoe, he removed his remaining shoe and put the pants on properly, all the while keeping a firm hold on the machetes.

The pants felt puffy and ridiculous, but Sven couldn't deny that the mallards were making him hungry. They looked happy and delicious swimming around on his pants. The pants were especially loose on Sven at the waist, but they had a drawstring at the top, and after Sven tightened it, the fit was workable.

Sven attached one machete to a belt loop on the right side of the pants, and one machete to a belt loop on the left side of the pants. Then he checked the buckles on the sheaths and the belt loops to reassure himself that they were solid and that the machetes wouldn't come off. He thought about jumping up and down a few times to make sure the knives didn't fall off, but he didn't want to aggravate his injured, and now somewhat-singed body.

He looked up and saw that Lorie was watching him approvingly. "We'll call them Sven's duck pants," she said. "Maybe it'll start a trend."

"Mallard pants," Sven corrected.

Lorie looked suddenly upset, so Sven said, "No, no, we'll call them duck pants, like you want, okay?"

"No," Lorie said, "it's not that. I mean, will there be anyone left to follow in your duck pants trend, to even know about this, or about us? What if no one's left? What if we're the last ones and even we don't make it?"

"We'll make it. Don't worry about any of that right now. We'll make it and we'll find others and this whole thing will end. It's bad, but there's a way out of it. There's gotta be."

"What if it's the end of the world?"

"Well then we'll go out in style." Sven pointed down at the pants, and Lorie looked. "Right?"

"Right."

Then the girl hugged him, and he hugged her back.

"Sven," Jane's voice called from behind him. "I'm about ready, let's see about that shotgun and go."

Lorie let go of Sven and walked away, turning left at the end of the aisle. Sven thought he heard a sniffle.

He walked back to the counter, where Jane was going through the bags and kits Lorie had brought up.

"I'm trying to make sure we don't have anything we don't need," Jane said. "We need to bring as much as we can that's as useful as possible, and doesn't weigh us down too much."

"You're right," Sven said. She was very right, and seemed much less distraught then before, except that she was patting the gun in her shoulder holster every so often as she spoke.

Then her eyes dropped to the floor and she picked something up from behind the counter.

"Here," she said, "I've got one for you. The shotgun stand was about empty, and this was the only pump-action left. I hope it's not damaged or anything. Looks new to me."

Jane turned the shotgun over in her hands, checking it over for something. She made some of the moving parts click, then nodded.

"Looks good?"

"Yeah, looks fine. All you do is load the shells in here." Jane pointed to an opening in the shotgun that hadn't been there a moment ago. "Pump and shoot, and pump and shoot. It's really very easy, and you don't have to get close like you'll have to with those knives." Jane nodded at the machetes strung on Sven's belt and he covered them defensively, protecting them from her look.

"I'm not gonna take them away or anything," Jane said. "I'm just saying."

"Oh, okay."

"Here." Jane handed the shotgun to Sven and he took it, the metal cool against his palms. He turned the shotgun over and peered into the barrel.

"Sven! Don't do that!" Jane grabbed the gun and spun it around so it was facing down. "Always away from your body and down." Then she put the gun down on the counter.

"Sorry. You look good with that thing," Sven said. "Real serious, like that Resident Evil chick."

"Maybe you were right to make me watch all those movies with you."

"I liked the movies, but I didn't exactly see this coming. I've gotta say though, after this—if there's an after this—no more zombie movies. I'm done, gonna make a clean break. Just vampires and killer robots."

"You won't get any argument from me."

Sven wondered if Jane was referring to a future in which she and Sven were together, but he didn't ask her. It was strange to be wanting that now, in the situation they were in.

Then she looked away, and the moment was over.

Sven looked back at the shotgun. He flipped his mask off and leaned over the weapon, inspecting it. It looked good as new, if a lack of scratches was any indication. He looked at the label. "Benelli SuperNova 12 Ga. Pump-Action," he read under his breath, with very little idea of what it meant. It certainly looked like a tough man's gun.

It was big, and black, and—he picked it up off the counter—had a nice weight to it. In his mind, he saw himself clubbing zombies with it, and occasionally shooting it, if he could figure out how that worked. The image pleased Sven, and his grip on the shotgun tightened. He began to fiddle with it, turning it over, touching the parts, playing with what must be the pump part of it.

Then he took the gun in both hands, put it across his body, and struck a pose.

"What do you think?"

Jane looked up at him and it looked like she was trying to suppress a smile, but the smile won out in the end.

"That's very you," she said.

"Thanks. I thought so. What do I put in it?"

Jane looked at Sven for a second, as if considering something, then turned around and picked out some boxes from the shelf behind the counter.

"These," she said, and began to stack up the boxes on the counter in front of Sven.

He began reading the tops of the boxes. Some of the boxes had a picture of a wolf on them, and were called, "Wolf Power Buckshot." The boxes said something about nine pellets. The other kind of boxes were called, "Black Magic Magnum," and had a picture of a roaring bear on them. Sven shrugged, figuring that the animals meant business, and began packing the boxes into the duffel bag that Jane wasn't using. When he was done stacking the boxes of shells, he put the shotgun into the bag too, making a mental note to read the small owner's manual that hung from its grip.

Then Sven's hands went down to the machetes. A glimmer passed through the air, but he wasn't transported back into the jungle as he'd hoped.

"You okay?" Lorie asked. "What are you smiling about?"

"What?" Sven said. "Oh, I don't know, just hungry I guess." He hadn't realized that he was smiling.

Lorie rolled her eyes, said, "Okay then," and ran back into the aisles.

Chapter 77

Lorie needed to find something fast. Sven and Jane looked like they were almost ready to go, and Lorie still hadn't had the chance to hide anything away. She liked the crossbows she saw, and she had thought about sneaking one into the duffel bags, but that wasn't a good idea. Jane would find it and forbid her from bringing it.

Jane hadn't said anything about the butcher knife though, Lorie remembered, as she walked to the front of the store and looked down at the dead fat zombie that lay there.

His head wasn't all there, and his leg was all messed up and bent out of shape, and there was her butcher knife, sticking into a nasty looking gobbet of flesh that was no longer part of the zombie's leg, It looked like it had detached and fallen away from under the knee, so it was probably part of the zombie's shin and calf that she was looking at, but it looked misshapen and malformed and it was a nasty pallid yellow on the inside.

Maybe the yellow is the fat, Lorie thought, a fat calf.

She reached for the handle of the butcher knife, but stopped before grabbing it. She didn't want the thing now that it had the zombie's stuff all over it. It could be infected, and it was just gross anyway.

Sure it was a nice big knife, but why should she settle for a contaminated butcher knife when she was in a store filled with other knives that were just as good, and maybe even better, like the ones that Sven had found?

Lorie straightened up from the zombie and looked up at Sven. He was standing by the counter, talking to Jane. They looked like they were discussing what to pack, and Jane was showing Sven something with the guns and ammo they were packing.

Those really are good pants, Lorie thought, and she smiled to herself when she remembered how she had cleared the shelves of all the other pants and hid them in the next aisle over. She had almost been unable to hide her delight when Sven believed her tale about the duck pants being the last pants in the store. It was a good trick, and Lorie was sure Evan would be impressed when she told him about it.

She walked to the entrance where Evan was standing.

"What are you up to over here?" Lorie asked.

"Keeping the watch," Evan said, then he sneezed and wiped his hand across his nose.

"See any zombies yet?"

"No, but it's getting really dark out there, and that can't be good."

"No, it can't be good, that's for sure. You feeling better at all?"

"Yeah actually, much better. It all seems like a dream, doesn't it? Today I mean. Just a bad dream and we're gonna wake up any second."

Lorie looked down at the threshold. "I don't think we are gonna wake up. I think this is it."

Evan didn't say anything. He turned around and went back to looking out at the darkening parking lot. Lorie got the sense that she shouldn't bother him anymore, and she turned around and walked into the first aisle of the store, reminding herself that she needed to get something good that wasn't a gun or a crossbow, and to get it fast.

As she walked down the aisle, her eyes were again drawn to the stuffed fish sitting atop their special shelves on the walls, and hanging from the ceiling. They were everywhere, and they had troubled her from the moment she walked in and spotted the first one sitting next to the cash register.

They were all bloated and shiny like they were about to explode in a fountain of fish guts. The mental image made Lorie cringe in a way that the zombie carnage didn't. The latter had little effect on her, but the swollen painted fish on the walls pointed at her with their stuffed fins, and some of them had spines, and their eyes seemed to be following her, watching her—

Lorie looked away from the fish, and resolved to avoid making any more eye contact with them. They were just dead fish, after all, and Lorie ate fish all the time. It shouldn't have been a big deal, and it shouldn't have been creeping her out as much as it was.

There was nothing in the first aisle worth grabbing. There was a lot of birdshot and two-way radios and stupid-looking hood ornaments, most of which were of an overall-wearing man holding a rifle in one hand and a beer bottle in the other. Lorie wondered for a moment if they were scented, but decided not to discover if they were—they probably smelled of beer, or gunpowder, or both. Then she wondered if beer or gunpowder were Harry Potter jelly bean flavors. Beer must have been, but gunpowder? Lorie wasn't sure, but she kind of wanted some jelly beans now.

"Stop it," Lorie muttered to herself, "stop getting distracted by these stupid things and get something sharp!"

She turned into the next aisle.

This one was filled with scopes and sights, replacement magazines, rifle cases, and weird-looking binoculars and goggles. Lorie went up to a shelf and picked up a pair of binoculars, examining it. The binoculars looked cool, and they were priced at $343.69, so Lorie figured they were worth taking. She ripped the tag off and powered them on, then put them to her face.

Everything looked the same, except it was now a dark shade of green, then she made out the user display, which showed that the internal battery was half-full. She began turning slowly, but she still couldn't make out Sven or Jane or Evan through the aisles. That's when Lorie realized that night vision wasn't the same as heat vision, and called herself stupid under her breath. She took the goggles away from her face, put them back on their shelf, and ran over into the next aisle.

There she finally found something useful.

Lorie picked up the package of throwing stars and unclasped its top. She reached in and plucked out two of the stars. They were small enough to fit in the palm of her hand, lying on top of each other. She looked at the remaining stars in the package—there were five left. She put the package back on its shelf and began to examine the stars in her hand. She took one in each hand and patted the points with the tips of her fingers. They were sharp, but not even close to as sharp as the butcher knife had been. Each star had eight points, and it looked more like a circle than a star, but Lorie figured that was alright.

With a star held loosely between the thumb and forefinger of each hand, she walked to the back of the store. There she picked out her first target and drew back each of her arms across her body. Then she rethought the motion, deciding to throw one at a time, and let her right arm fall to the side.

She flung the first star with her left hand, and missed. The star stuck in the wall with a reverberating boing.

Then she flung the second star with her right, and it hit home. It sank deep into its target, and there was no reverberation, no boing, just a thunk.

"What was that?" Jane's voice called from the front of the store. "Everything okay back there?"

"Yeah," Lorie called, "I'm fine. Just looking for more survival stuff."

"Be careful."

"Okay."

That must have satisfied Jane, because she didn't say anything more.

Lorie walked up to the star that was sticking in the target, reached up for it, and changed her mind. It was almost halfway into the bloated fish, and when she thought of pulling it out, she got the image of the fish deflating rapidly and shooting fish guts out at her. So she left the star in the fish and went back to the package of throwing stars. She picked it up, looked at it, picked out one more star, then put it back in its package.

They weren't practical, she decided. They wouldn't go deep enough to get the zombies in their brains—assuming that was what you had to do to get a zombie—and her aim wasn't that great with them anyway.

Lorie sighed and walked into the next aisle. As soon as she stepped into it, she knew that this was the one. She had been wrong about the stars, but this was so much different. She found exactly what she wanted, and put it carefully into her back pocket, then pulled the back of her shirt down as far as it would go to cover the bulge and the part of the thing that stuck out.

Her spirits were now officially lifted.

Then Lorie decided to get something for Evan. He was just guarding the door, and she was sure Sven and Jane weren't finding him weapons. Evan needed something to fight with just like the rest of them did. Lorie half-skipped into the next aisle and picked out two small, aluminum baseball bats—"Home Defense Bats," their tags read—one for Evan and one for herself. The bats were light but felt very solid, and Lorie was confident they would make a very nice cracking sound against the back of a zombie's head.

She tried to put her skipping under control and walked out of the aisles and over to Evan, with the two baseball bats behind her back.

"Evan..." she said, "oh Evan..."

Evan turned around. "Hey, what's that you got behind you?"

"You get three guesses."

Evan frowned. "Oh alright. Is it for me?"

"Yes, but that doesn't count as a guess." Now that Evan was turned away from the parking lot, Lorie found herself glancing behind him to make sure nothing snuck up on them.

"A t-shirt?"

"What? No."

"A chess set?"

"A chess set? We're in a gun store. That doesn't even count as a guess. You still have two more."

"I dunno, maybe there are deer chess sets or gun chess sets or something. There are all kinds of chess sets, you know, with all kinds of different figurines."

"Okay, okay, but that still doesn't count as a guess." Something about the air had changed, and it was making Lorie feel uncomfortable. It wasn't the zombie smell, definitely not that. But it felt like the pressure had changed or something, although Lorie wasn't sure what that meant. Her body felt stiffer than it had only moments before, and she had become impatient with Evan. "Come on already."

"Uhh, is it a...is it a knife?"

Lorie shook her head. "Nope, not a knife, guess again."

"Uhh, okay, is it a...is it a..."

Then Lorie's eyes moved beyond Evan, and she was staring out into the parking lot. She forgot all about keeping her arms behind her back and they fell to her sides.

"A bat!" Evan said triumphantly and sneezed. He took one of the bats from Lorie as she was backing up from the door.

Evan's smile faded. "What, what is it?" He began to move toward Lorie as he turned around, but of course he must have heard it now. Sven and Jane must have heard it too.

The sound was almost deafening—no, that wasn't the right word for it, the sound drowned out everything else.

"Wow," Sven said, coming up from behind Lorie and stepping in front of her. "That's some rain." He was shaking his head and had his hands on the knives on his belt. "Guess we better get moving right away."

Jane joined him in front of the door. "Don't you think we should wait this out? This kind of rain can't go on forever, and we won't be able to see anything if we drive out in it."

"What if it does go on forever?" Lorie asked. "Everything else has been going wrong today." They all turned to her, and she went on. "We have to leave. We have to leave now, they're coming for us, I know they are. We can't wait for it to end." Lorie was surprised at the sobs that suddenly tried to choke their way out between her words. She didn't know why she had lost her composure at the sight and roar of the rain.

"I'm with her," Sven said. "We'll just have to take it slow and be very careful."

Evan nodded and raised his baseball bat over his head. "Yeah," he added.

Jane sighed. "Okay, let's go then."

Jane and Sven went back to the counter where they'd been packing.

"I've never seen rain like that," Evan said.

"Yeah," Lorie agreed. "There's something wrong about it."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know. It's just wrong."

Lorie watched as sheets of rain fell onto the pavement and cars in the parking lot, sending watery explosions in all directions. Then she looked down and saw that the rain was beginning to seep in, under the door. She backed away, gripping the thing in her back pocket.

Chapter 78

The Beretta 92FS that was now slung at Jane's side made her feel significantly safer. Racking the slide and squeezing off that first round into the hunter zombie's brain had changed everything. The bit of recoil from the sleek, silver and black gun in her hands and the zombie's death rattle had given her hope—hope that they could all live through this.

"Come on," Sven said. "We gotta get moving again. With this rain, we'll be going even slower." There was Sven, always in a rush.

The skies had darkened so much that there was now more light in the store than outside. They were waiting for her at the door—Sven and Ivan, Lorie, and Evan.

"I'm coming," Jane said. "I just need to check I've got everything."

The dark camouflage duffel bag that she had taken for herself had two spare magazines for the Beretta in it—one that held fifteen rounds and one that held ten—they were the only two left, besides the one in the gun that held fifteen.

At least the magazines hadn't all been ten-rounders, she thought, and thanked God there had still been plenty of boxes of 9 mm Luger ammo. She had taken them all.

She had her gun now, heavier than the Walther P99 that she kept at home for self-defense. She had shot the Beretta before, and was comfortable with its feel. She had also packed a Swiss army knife and some flares just in case, though she didn't know what she would ever need the flares for.

"You guys have the survival kits?" Jane asked.

"Yeah," Lorie said, "two. They've got batteries, flashlights, a fire starter, emergency blanket, whistle, mirror—" Lorie laughed after that one, "—water purification tablets, and first aid stuff."

"Okay," Jane said. "Let's get some of the compact sleeping bags too. It doesn't look like we'll be sleeping in beds tonight."

That was good there had still been some left, and that everything was packed and ready to go. Jane arranged four sleeping bags on the counter. They hadn't been able to find any gas masks, so they would have to work with the surgical masks Sven had found.

Jane was still rummaging behind the counter, but she couldn't find the last thing that was on her mind. She gripped her Beretta, reassuring herself that it was still there, and then zipped up her duffel bag and came out from behind the counter with it. She walked briskly up and down three aisles, picking up four ponchos, and finally, spotting the knife sharpener she'd been looking for, grabbed that too.

"Okay," Jane said. "I'm ready, let's go. Just maybe put this on first." Jane handed Sven a poncho, he looked at it, shook his head, and handed it back to her. Jane guessed he didn't want it, fine, whatever. Just for that, she would tell him how ridiculous he looked in those duck pants, when they got to safety.

"I'll check to see if it's all clear," Sven said. "When you see me start up the car, all of you come out and get in." He picked up his duffel bag, which was bulging with the shape of a shotgun in it, along with the irregular shapes of the boxes of shells they had packed with paper and plastic bags to protect them from the rain.

Jane, Lorie, and Evan nodded to him, then he glanced over his shoulder to look at Ivan. "You might wanna duck," Sven said to his cat. "You're likely to get wet out there."

Sven opened the door, and as he strode into the rain, Jane saw Ivan drop down into the backpack, and out of sight.

Then Sven disappeared too, lost in the thick rain.

Jane stood there with Lorie and Evan in silence, feeling on edge while she put on her poncho. She considered wrapping up her Beretta and putting it in her duffel bag, but she didn't want to take it off. She needed it there, against her body, and she wasn't shy about wearing a poncho. They were taking excessive precautions with the ammo anyway, it would have to be submerged in water for a while to be ruined, but then again, it had been a disastrous day already, and the wrapping was a quick and worthwhile precaution to take, however unnecessary.

"Now you guys put these on too," Jane said. "Don't let him lead you with his bad example."

To Jane's relief, the kids obeyed and put the ponchos on. Why that made her feel relieved she didn't know, but it did.

It seemed that Sven was taking a little too long to get the car started, and that made Jane nervous. She began to glance back toward the far end of the counter, wondering about who or what might still be lurking deep inside the "Employees Only" section of the store. They hadn't checked back there, and she didn't want to be surprised by any zombies.

"How you feelin'?" Lorie asked Evan.

"Not bad, kinda dizzy, but okay."

"Maybe you're hungry," Lorie said, and Evan began shaking his head in protest.

Ignoring his head-shaking, Lorie proceeded to pull out one of the granola bars she had found in the back of the store. Then she made Evan take it.

"Come on," Lorie said. "Eat it, it'll make you feel better."

"Maybe if I only have half...will you split it with me?" Evan asked.

"Sure," Lorie said.

"No!" Jane cried, the word escaping from her mouth before she could stop it. "I mean, I mean you should eat a whole one, and you Lorie, you get your own whole one. You're both hungry and can't be sharing food like that...because Evan you need all the strength you can get, so eat it all." Jane paused. "Understood?"

The boy gulped, nodded, and began to unwrap the granola bar. Jane ignored Lorie's bewildered stare, but kept a sharp eye on the eating boy to make sure there was no sharing. Sven had reassured her about their situation, and Jane now thought that the boy did only have a cold or flu or something regular—something that wouldn't end with him becoming a zombie—but she was still going to play it safe.

The car's park lights finally came on, shining a fuzzy red through the downpour. It was a downpour worthy of being called a torrent, not that Jane would ever use that word in real life, it wasn't a word that people said, but when Jane read books and saw the word "torrent," this was the kind of rain she pictured.

"Okay," Jane said, looping her arm through the straps of their remaining bags and herding Lorie and Evan toward the door. "Try to keep the plastic tight around you."

Jane held the door open and watched the kids run out. Lorie opened the right rear door and Evan opened the left. Then they were in the car. Jane was relieved that Sven had remembered to unlock the doors. It was an easy thing to forget under all the pressure they were experiencing.

Then she stood there.

The rain was starting to pick up sideways, and her feet and the bottom of her poncho were beginning to get wet. She let the door close a few inches and kept standing there, looking at the car as it was washed clean by the pouring rain. Jane took a breath and her mind moved forward, toward the car, but her body stayed in place. She thought she heard a honk, but it was hard to hear anything through the noise of the storm.

Then a thick flash of lightning cut through the sky, and a few seconds later there came a loud thunderclap that jolted Jane into action. She ran to the car and got into the front passenger seat.

She knew why she was having such a hard time leaving, and it wasn't because she was hesitant about going with Sven, Lorie and Evan. There was something she was leaving behind, and she didn't know if she could.

Jane put her bags down in front of her feet and Sven began to pull out.

The windshield wipers were on full-blast but they were doing a poor job of creating visibility. They weren't really helping at all, it was as if the windshield was under a never-ending stream, and Jane had to try to understand the shapes in front of the car from behind a current.

Then they were moving through the parking lot. Sven drove slowly, carefully, looking stressed. Jane didn't blame him, she didn't know how he could see much of anything at all.

"Stop!" Jane yelled.

Sven hit the brakes hard, and it jolted Jane forward. Her foot hit something hard in the duffel bag in front of her and something clunked, probably a box of ammo.

"I have to get something," Jane said. "I'm sorry, I'll just be a second. I'm sorry."

Jane opened the door and was out of the car, running through the downpour back to the gun shop. She had to use her hands to find her way, placing them on the trunks and hoods of cars to keep from bumping into them. It felt like she was swimming, and the rain was so thick that it was hard to breathe.

Her squinting eyes found the "No Parking" lines on the pavement where she had parked Sven's car and she lunged forward, sighing with relief when her hands hit the glass of the gun shop door. She pulled the door open and burst in, a drenched, poncho-wearing disaster.

But she had to come back. She just had to. Why she hadn't just taken the thing in the first place was beyond her. It was a day for taking, and she wanted it bad.

Jane took sloshing steps behind the counter, leaving a trail of water as she went, and slipping part of the way until the strip of carpet behind the counter stopped her. She walked over to what she had left behind, and felt the carpet become sopping wet under her feet in an instant.

She pulled it out of the display in a sudden movement, and banged her wrist painfully against the display's plastic sliding door.

"Ow!" she yelped, but forgot about the pain as soon the cry had left her mouth.

It had been worth it to come back...so worth it.

She shuddered as she looked at the Smith and Wesson .460 XVR Magnum Revolver in her hands.

"Single action..." came a deep, slow echoing voice in her head.

It held five rounds.

"Five rounds."

It was massive. Mostly silver with a wooden handle.

"Revolver."

Without letting go of the gun, Jane began to dig around in the boxes of ammo for something suitable. She wanted at least Colt 45, and that was all she got. She turned over all of the boxes looking for .454 or .460, but Colt 45 was all there was. At least there was that, and a decent amount of it—six boxes of twenty rounds each. That would last for a little while. That would do some real damage.

"That's not a gun for a woman," another voice said, startling Jane out of her munitions-fueled euphoria. She knew this voice. It was her second shooting coach, the misogynist—Matt. He had been so nice at first, such a perfect gentleman. Then, after a few shooting lessons and a few dates, he had shown his true self.

A woman's place is at the stove, cooking me breakfast, he would say.

Sure, he would say, a woman should be able to shoot a gun, but a woman's gun, and never, never, a man's gun.

The relationship hadn't lasted very long.

For a moment, Jane wondered what had become of Matt, if the zombies had gotten him. Then she realized she didn't care. He had only wanted her around to showcase, and to cook and clean and protect his house with her woman's gun.

To hell with you Matt, she thought, and an image of a well-bitten Matt-the-zombie popped into her mind. She wouldn't hesitate if she saw him like that. The coldness of the thought struck her, and she opened a box of Colt 45 and loaded the revolver. It was heavy, but she could handle it. There was no such thing as a man's gun, or a woman's gun.

Jane reprimanded herself for all the voices she was hearing in her head. It wasn't like her to hear voices. Psychologists had a name for that. Jane thought it was schizophrenia but she wasn't sure. That wasn't her, her head was supposed to be screwed on nice and tight.

At least none of the voices belonged to Vicky, at least not yet. Jane wasn't sure she could handle Vicky's voice in her head. Poor Vicky. What had Vicky ever done to anybody? Sure she left crumbs about the place sometimes and had an aversion to using coasters that would have made any man proud, but she didn't deserve, didn't deserve to be—

"A woman can't handle a gun like that! It's too big! Recoil's too strong!" she heard Matt's voice shout. "You don't have enough muscle in your arms for that one!"

"Shut up!" Jane screamed, cocking the gun. It shook in her hands as she raised it, pointing down the aisle she was facing.

Who was he to tell her anything? He was probably still stuck at that dead-end job where he would never stand up to anyone, no matter how badly they treated him. She wondered if he really had been treated badly at all, or if he was the one doling out abuse. He had certainly made her feel bad...about everything.

"Shut up you—"

But she didn't finish because a rasping groan came at her from the "Employees Only" section. Jane froze, listening. She heard another groan, this one more guttural, and then she could hear the shuffling of feet. They could only be zombie feet, she decided, and she turned to the "Employees Only" section with the gun held out in front of her body.

She saw him, or rather, it. This zombie wasn't wearing overalls, but a pair of stained, well-worn jeans and an equally stained and well-worn t-shirt. The zombie's clothes had more holes than the holiest cheese. But it wasn't as funny as it could've been, because through the holes Jane could see dry, grey skin that flaked off with each of the zombie's shuffling steps.

Another groan came from the thing, and its hands rose up to stomach level. They opened, and began grasping at the air.

That's when Jane saw the hip holster with a revolver sticking out of it, hammer cocked. This man—back when he had been a man—took his Second Amendment rights seriously.

Jane took a hesitant step back with her right leg and bent her left leg at the knee. There she stood, in a lunging position, as the zombie approached. She aimed, cocked the revolver, breathed in, aimed again, breathed out, and squeezed the trigger.

The shot ripped through the air and most of the zombie's head disappeared. It had been a clean shot, removing the top half of the zombie's head above the jaw line. Jane saw teeth and a shriveled tongue, and a disgusting jumble of flesh and bone where the throat and spine must have been.

It made her think of her high school biology class where she had dissected earthworms and frogs and fetal pigs. Only this smelled much worse. Jane pulled on her surgical mask and stepped backward from the still shuffling zombie.

She watched as the shuffling slowed and the zombie began to totter forward. Jane was quick to react and poked the zombie's chest with the tip of her gun, pushing it backward, away from her. The zombie tipped backward and fell, arms still outstretched, hands grasping.

Jane's ears rang and she could feel some soreness in her palms from the revolver's recoil, but it was still in her hands, and her aim had been perfect.

So much for it being a man's gun, she thought, putting the notion to rest.

Jane leaned forward over the zombie, and she could see yellow-grey splotches all over its shirt and jeans. When she looked closer, she saw more of these splotches on the thing's exposed arms, neck, and the small part of its head that was still intact. The splotches looked like the dried remains of a thick liquid, and they made her shudder.

I have to go, she thought, they're waiting for me.

Jane regained her composure—which was becoming easier to do as the day wore on—and gathered all the boxes of Colt 45. She took a large paper bag from beside the cash register and put the boxes into it. She thought about taking the zombie's hip holster but decided she didn't want to go through the process of unfastening it. That required getting much too close for comfort.

She took another shoulder holster down from the rack behind the counter, took her poncho off, and slung the holster over her shoulder, on top of the shoulder holster with the Beretta in it. She stuck the revolver into the new holster.

Reluctantly loosing her grip on the .460 XVR, she let it hang at her side. There was too much weight on her left side now, but she would just have to deal with that. She put the poncho back on, then crumpled the top of the paper bag with the ammo in it, setting it on the counter.

Then she ran down an aisle, looking for some unopened ponchos. Not finding any, and feeling that she was running out of time, Jane grabbed a hiking pack and brought it up to the counter. She took a second paper bag and put it over the one with the Colt 45 ammo in it. Then she put the covered ammo in the hiking pack. That would have to do.

Jane ran to the door clutching the treasure. She was pounds heavier with the revolver, ammo, and additional holster, but she felt light as a feather. The .460 XVR had that kind of effect on her. She pushed the surgical mask down, tucking it once more under the plastic of the poncho around her neck.

"Single action," she whispered to herself. She loved those two words. Though the .460 XVR also worked in double action, Jane knew that the lighter trigger pull in single action would afford her better accuracy with the impressive weapon. All the men who used the .460 XVR in double action mode were fooling themselves, patting themselves on the back, and missing every target.

Jane shouldered the door open, bolted through it into the rain, and dashed to the car. The rain had let up just enough so that she didn't have to grope her way along the parked cars.

She wrenched the passenger door open and climbed into the car.

"What the hell was that about?" Sven asked, looking angry.

It didn't shake Jane out of her high spirits. "I forgot something, sorry."

"You got something good, didn't you?" Lorie asked.

The girl must have seen it in the way Jane was carrying her parcel of ammo.

Jane turned around. "Maybe." She smiled at Lorie, and Lorie smiled back.

Sven clicked the doors shut. He shifted the car into drive and they pulled out of the strip mall, onto Route 29.

As they left the gun store behind them, Jane began to think about the awful splotches on the zombie whose head she had just blown off. Though she wasn't conscious of it, her right hand was under her poncho, squeezing the grip of the revolver.

Chapter 79

Sven had a hard time seeing where he was driving. The rain was coming down in great sheets, and he could only drive a short distance at a time before having to stop and wait for the rain to let up enough to drive on. He was angry with Jane for running away like that, she could've been hurt in there by herself, but he made himself focus on the washout that was the road in front of him.

"You guys need to help me out a little," he said. "I can barely see anything, so if you see something, let me know as soon as you do." He had already scraped against several cars when he pulled away from the store.

Only moments later, Sven hit the brakes and just missed colliding with a mailbox. He had veered off course and driven onto a sidewalk at the edge of the road. No one had noticed in the dense rain.

Then there was a blinding flash of light and the car filled with screams. Everyone screamed but Sven, because his heart had jumped too far up into his throat for him to make a sound. A thunderclap followed immediately behind the flash, and the screams made another round through the car.

"It's just thunder," Sven stammered, "and lightning...thunder and lightning." The lightning had struck just across the road, on the southbound side of Route 29. Sven looked over to see that Ivan was hiding behind Jane's legs, ears twitching. "Poor Ivan."

"Isn't lightning only supposed to hit tall things?" Lorie asked. "That's what they tell us in school. That hit right in the road over there."

"You can't believe everything they tell you in school," Sven said. "My mom always used to tell me that too, about lightning, probably because she was told that in school, or by her parents. But yeah, it's not true. Lightning can do random things I think. And there's not really anything tall in the road here, it's wide open."

Sven backed up to give the car the minimum amount of clearance it needed to make it around the mailbox. Any more would have meant risking backing into something—the visibility in the rear was non-existent. "Okay, in this rain it might be more dangerous to go than to stay, so maybe let's wait a few minutes and see if it gets any better. I still want to get as far out of town as possible to get away from the residential areas. There's gonna be less of them the farther out we go. Here they'll find us—they seem to have a way of sniffing us out—and might get us just by outnumbering us."

"They're the ones that smell," Lorie said.

"Maybe we smell a certain way to them," Evan said.

"They smell awful," Lorie said.

"That makes sense," Jane said, "what you said about going somewhere with less people, somewhere farther out. Who knows how long the outbreak will last? Do you have a particular place in mind or are we just gonna drive and drive?"

"I know a place." Sven was growing more nervous. Was the rain never going to let up? It was a miracle they hadn't gotten into an accident already. "The Wegmans way down 29. We'll have food and supplies there, and if it's safe we can lock the place down and stay there. If not, then at least we can get supplies and keep going from there. We can go farther out somewhere to some farmhouse and take it over if we have to."

"I hope we don't have to stay locked up too long," Jane said. "Remember your mom said only Virginia is affected, then they'll be able to come in here and take care of it right? I mean the government, they've gotta be doing something about this."

"The radio's still no good," Sven said. "I tried it when you went back inside the store. And we don't know that's still the case. For all we know the whole country is like this...for all we know the whole..." he trailed off, not wanting to air that particular thought. If the whole world was affected, then maybe running was pointless.

"Wegmans is a great idea!" Lorie suddenly blurted. "I've been there. It's huge, and they have all kinds of stuff to eat. We can probably stay there for weeks, maybe months...as long as it's not..." the excitement was fading out of her voice, "as long as it's not full of zombies."

"I think it'll be alright. We're already doing much better, in terms of getting somewhere less populated. I can't tell if the zombies are wandering around us in this rain, but there are a lot fewer cars on the road."

"I think the rain is getting lighter," Lorie said, "right Evan? What do you think?"

If Evan responded, Sven didn't hear it.

Sven thought the rain might be getting lighter, but he couldn't tell. A cold sweat was seeping from his palms, coating the steering wheel and making him even more nervous.

Then his protein alarm went off again, and he shut it off with an annoyed slap.

"You don't want a protein bar?" Jane asked, sounding concerned.

He shook his head. His throat felt like it was locking up, and he wasn't breathing as deeply as he ought to have been—he couldn't. It felt like he had over-trained and under-slept. Sven's body wasn't happy.

"Evan?" Lorie's questioning voice came from the backseat. "Evan? Evan?"

Evan didn't respond.

Out of the corner of his eye, Sven saw Jane turn around.

"What's wrong?" Jane asked.

Sven didn't hear Evan respond. Jane and Lorie were whispering something to each other, then Ivan let out a loud, angry hiss.

"I know," Sven said, "it's some creepy rain out there, but we'll be okay. You can have all the cat food there is at Wegmans. You can pick out whatever it is you like best and eat just that. How's that sound? I bet they even have some delicious raw fish for you to tear into." Sven was surprised to find he was repulsed by the mental image of fish, and of food in general. His appetite was unusually absent, and he felt none of his usual enthusiasm about eating. None at all.

"Sven," Jane said, "any chance you can drive any faster? Evan's passed out again, and I'm sure the car ride and noise of the rain isn't helping. We need to give him liquids and soup and all that, and let him rest."

"I can try," Sven said. "We're most of the way now, but we need to get there in one piece. We'll get there, hole up, and hang out until this whole thing blows over. Evan will get better, and everything will be fine." Sven wasn't sure who he was trying to convince.

Ivan hissed again, looking as agitated as he had so far that day.

"Jane," Sven said, "can you try to calm him down? Maybe give him another treat or something?"

"Yeah, I'll try, he's been acting really weird." Jane gave Ivan a snack, which seemed to appease him. "Sven...about holing up at Wegmans, isn't that what people usually try to do in the movies?"

"Yeah," Sven said, but that made him think. It never worked out in the movies. Holing up with supplies and trying to wait out the zombie contagion usually ended in disaster. Wait, was it usually or was it always? Sven tried to think of a movie where it worked, but he couldn't. Then again, trying to fight the zombies usually ended in disaster too, unless you happened to have super zombie-fighting powers like the Resident Evil woman. "We'll see what the situation is, rest, stock up on supplies, and then take it from there." He wasn't sure where they would take it from there, but he was sure they needed rest, and they needed food and water.

"If the movies are any indication," Sven added, "we need to be on the lookout for people taking advantage of the crisis. We need to be on the lookout for them as much as for the zombies...if not more so."

Chapter 80

Cooled by the rainwater, Milt was feeling much better. Actually he was feeling quite good—as good as he felt after a moderate World of Warcraft pillaging victory. The pulsing in his head had calmed, replaced by the knowledge that the day's strange events heralded his impending rise to power, and perhaps even to fame, as the simpleton squire had suggested.

Leaning into the squire's car, Milt felt around his jaw line for a lump. He found one, and squeezed it greedily, until the pimple popped.

There was a painful prick, and Milt knew that he had pushed some of the infection deeper. That was good, because that meant there would be more to pop later, and it was more likely to be yellow and bloody and maybe even a little greenish. Those were the best, the most interesting of bodily expulsions.

He brought his thumb and forefinger up to his nose and sniffed at it. The smell was nothing special, and, bemused, he brought his fingers up for a closer inspection. The product of the pimple was pasty, but there was no hard, little kernel in it as Milt had hoped.

Next time, Milt thought. There was always a next time, and he relished the anticipation of it. He loved the sense of accomplishment that came with the pop. It was glorious. Milt wiped the pus on his jeans and smiled.

"So, any new ideas?" Brian asked. "About what's going on? Like maybe it's just a virus, or maybe some kind of radiation. I guess it must be some kind of infection, what with the biting and everything. Then again maybe it's pollution. People really are screwing up the planet pretty good these days, and I think what goes around comes around, you know?"

Milt felt his smile fade as he turned to Brian. Brian was growing increasingly pathetic. He kept asking about what was happening and why it was happening and what they should do about it and so on. He was a whiner, a childish whiner. He didn't understand things the way Milt did. But what could Milt do about it? It was so hard to find any kind of help that good help was most assuredly out of the question.

It was obvious to Milt that why and how the zombies had come didn't matter. It didn't make one modicum of difference. What mattered was that the world had changed, and the balance of power was shifting...shifting to people like Milt, people that had the guts, and the intelligence, to take control.

Brian might be mostly worthless, Milt thought, but I can lord over him for a while until he outlives his usefulness.

As simple as Brian might be, he might have a role to play in Milt's ascension. It wasn't Brian's fault that he was dumb, of course, and Milt did appreciate that the guy had bandaged his head, albeit a little too tightly.

Milt sighed. "No, no new clues."

"I sure would like to know what's going on," Brian said.

"I am sure we will find out presently," Milt said, responding to the drug-dealer turned squire. Brian had tried to play off the drug-dealing by saying he was in sports nutrition or something equally laughable. Not only was Milt combating the zombie infestation, but he was cleaning up the community by rehabilitating its criminals. He felt pride in having such a positive effect on the people around him.

Now they were waiting for someone else to come. Brian was convinced that there would be more survivors, and that they would come here. As much as Milt didn't want to admit it, he agreed with Brian. This was the place to go, it wasn't densely populated, and there were supplies. There was just the matter of clearing out the diseased monsters that were there.

"You gonna keep on using that thing?" Brian asked, pointing to the sword. "Don't you think that's a bit dangerous, you know, with how you're not feeling well and everything? You might cut yourself again. Maybe a blunt object would be better, or a crowbar or something. I've got a crowbar, do you want it?"

Milt tightened his grip on the hilt of his Conan the Barbarian replica sword, and looked at Brian. The squire looked so stupid with his muscles and lean body. What was the point of all that? Milt knew that sports rotted the brain. He knew that even before he met Brian, and Brian was yet another confirmation of that fact.

"Yes I will keep using my Sword of Crom, thank you very much, and I will have you know that I did not cut myself. I do not question you about the silly body sculpting routines in which you obviously engage, or about your perfectly ridiculous use of that baseball bat as a zombie-dispatching device. Therefore, please refrain from questioning my own zombie slaying and life choices. Oh, and I should add that I reject your offer of your crowbar, which is no doubt rusty and tetanus-ridden."

"I was just trying to—"

"Enough! Let us sit here in peaceful silence so that I may calculate our next move. That way we will be ready at a moment's notice. Why don't you listen to the pelting that the rain is giving the pavement and ponder the ecosystem, or something equally inane."

A few minutes passed, and Milt began to feel more at ease. Brian was, it seemed, actually capable of sitting still without making a sound.

But then, to Milt's great chagrin, the silence didn't last long.

"Hey!" Brian suddenly yelled. "Look over there!" He pointed into the center of the parking lot, the area where Milt had encountered the horde of shopper zombies.

"Yes, very good. That is the parking lot, and we shall cross it and enter the Wegmans when the rain has ceased. Now let us please resume the nice tranquil silence that we were enjoying before you just now decided to speak. I suggest that you pretend you are a monk of an order that requires taking an oath of silence as a condition of membersh— "

"No! Look! They're moving!" Brian jumped to his feet, and started hopping up and down, pointing to the center of the parking lot. "The zombie parts from before, the dead zombies, I mean the zombies without heads or whatever, they're moving! Look! Look!"

"That is utterly preposterous," Milt began, but when he looked where Brian was pointing, he wheezed out a gasp and then he was furiously pulling up the back of his jeans so that he could reach into his back pocket and get his inhaler. His bothersome alveoli had become uncooperative at the very instant Milt saw the writhing mass of undead, their limbs flailing without purpose under the heavy downpour.

Then Milt's ears filled with the sound of his own wheezing breaths, and everything went black.

Chapter 81

Lorie held the long, serrated hunting knife at her side. She'd taken it out of her back pocket as she climbed into the car, knowing that it would be impossible to sit with the knife in her pocket.

She was sure nobody had been looking—Evan was lying down and Sven was cursing at the pouring rain. Lorie slowly put the knife beside her, between her leg and the door, where nobody would be able to see that she was holding it. She didn't think Sven would care much about her having the knife, but it seemed Jane hadn't wanted Lorie to arm herself, and Lorie saw no need to inform anyone that she had found herself a notched knife to play with. It was nowhere near as big as the butcher knife, but she was happy with it all the same. She was looking forward to breaking it in.

Now they were slowly driving up 29, farther up than Lorie ever went, except when her dad used to pick her up and take her back to Arlington with him. Lorie's mom and dad had separated when Lorie was six, and then Lorie's dad died of a heart attack when she was eleven.

Her mom told her it had to with his stressful government job. Lorie didn't know that much about her father, and she was always working up the courage to ask her mom about him. Now she realized she might never know more about him than she already did.

Concentrating, Lorie gazed out the window and made the memory flit out of her mind and into the storm. She knew it would visit her again, but now wasn't the time to be a gracious host.

It had been years since Lorie was last up this way, and she didn't recognize anything. The rain was finally getting lighter, and through the breaks in the downpour Lorie caught glimpses of large expanses of woods, punctuated occasionally and briefly by strip malls.

The scenery they passed made her feel lonely and cold, even though it was a warm day and the storm hadn't brought more than a few degree temperature drop with it. The panorama they passed made Lorie feel cold all the same. She was grateful to be in a car, in some relative safety, with people who were as determined as she was to survive. That made her think of something, something that she recognized had been bothering her at some subconscious level of understanding.

"Hey," Lorie said, uncertain of where to begin, "so I keep thinking about all the bad stuff that might happen, all the stuff that can go wrong...not in a depressing sort of way, but to be ready for it. I think we should be prepared for anything right?"

"Right," Jane said, "of course. What's on your mind?"

"Well," Lorie said, "I think maybe we should talk about what we'll do if something goes wrong with the car. What's the backup plan for going on foot? Where would we go and what would we take?"

The silence that followed made Lorie uncomfortable, so she spoke again to fill the quiet. "I mean I think it's doable, we should just be ready for it, like if we split up the food so each of us has some, or if we just have everything in bags and ready to go, and...well," Lorie's voice changed to a whisper, "what are we going to do with Evan? We can't leave him, and I can't carry him."

"Jane and I will carry him," Sven said.

"Of course we will," Jane said, "we're not gonna leave him behind, if that's what you're asking."

Lorie looked over at Evan. He showed no reaction to their talking about him.

"Okay," Lorie said, "good. We can't leave him behind, I just want to put it out there that with the amount of stuff we've just taken, we won't be able to carry everything on foot. We'll be too slow, and..."

"You're right," Sven said, reassuring Lorie. "People come first, before weapons and ammo. If we get caught and have to leave the car for whatever reason, we leave the heaviest stuff behind and go on with the bare minimum that we need to eat and defend ourselves."

"I'm going to fill my pockets with extra ammo," Jane said. "So that if we have to ditch I'll have some to work with."

"I can take Evan over my shoulder," Sven said, "and Lorie, can you take Ivan in his pack?"

Lorie nodded eagerly, happy at the acceptance they had given her fear of going on foot. "I'll take him."

Ivan meowed.

"See?" Sven said. "Ivan agrees with the plan." He laughed, and then Jane and Lorie joined in. Lorie's laugh felt as forced and uneasy as Sven's and Jane's looked.

The plan worked for Lorie, and helped to set her mind at ease. She needed to know what to do in the eventualities that she could think up.

Luck favors the prepared, Lorie thought, as she lightly stroked her knife's serrations with the tip of her thumb.

The rain was getting lighter still. Through the rear window, Lorie saw some streaks of light peeking through the storm clouds. Turning back around and looking in the direction they were traveling, Lorie didn't see any reassuring streaks of light, but the rain was calming down all the same. The ominous sound of the pounding rain on the roof of the car had lessened to a smoother, somewhat less threatening background noise.

"We're just about there," Sven said. Lorie was glad to hear his voice. The car had gotten way too quiet. "How's Evan back there?"

Lorie was reluctant to check on him, for reasons she couldn't place. "I'll see how he's doing."

"No!" Jane snapped from the front, spinning around in her seat, looking like she was about to keep Lorie away from Evan by force if necessary. "I mean..." Jane seemed to be trying to make up for her overreaction. "I mean we should let him rest. We'll be able to stop soon, and then I'll take care of him properly. If he's able to sleep through this, we ought to let him."

"Okay," Lorie said. She held eye contact with Jane for a few moments, and found herself inexplicably sliding into the corner of the backseat, closer to the door, and farther from Evan. She watched him, thinking he must be really sick to be able to sleep at a time like this.

For a while, they rode in silence through the gloom.

Then the rain stopped, and Evan's eyes shot open.

Chapter 82

Twinkle, twinkle, the twinkling twinkles twinkled.

Milt opened his eyes all the way, and comprehension dawned on him. He was staring at the water droplets collecting at the bottom of a mud flap. He squirmed sideways, and saw that the mud flap belonged to a tire. He squirmed farther, and saw that the tire belonged to a car.

Then Milt turned his head to the left and screamed.

"It's alright," Brian said. "It's just me. I think you had a panic attack and passed out."

"Hogwash," Milt said. "Men such as myself are not prone to panic attacks. A heavy branch must have fallen from the tree above me, crashing into my skull and rendering me unconscious."

"Actually, I think it had something to do with that." Brian turned and pointed.

Milt looked, and he began to wheeze again, groping for the top of his back pocket.

"I'm all over it," Brian said, and handed Milt an inhaler. "I got it out of your pocket when I saw you trying to get it. I gave you a few puffs, and you came to."

Milt was infuriated at the invasion of privacy to which he'd succumbed while unconscious, but that didn't stop him from grabbing the inhaler and puffing on it.

The cold, medicated puffs felt magnificent in his lungs. The seditious alveoli unfurled and relented. Milt kept puffing as he turned back to the implausible sight in the parking lot.

It couldn't be! How could it? They were moving, grasping, clutching at the air, kicking their legs, and contorting their faces into masks unseen even in hell's lowest rungs.

He could even see the faces of the decapitated zombies twist and warp and snap their teeth as if chomping on imaginary hunks of human flesh.

Suddenly cold, he looked with surprise at the inhaler he still held in front of his face. His hand was pumping it violently, and Brian was clutching at his hand and the inhaler, trying to wrestle it away.

The squire was saying something, but the churn of the zombie parts had jolted Milt out of his regular bodily awareness, and so the squire's voice was far away and hard to make out, if it was there at all.

Then Brian wrenched the inhaler free, and Milt snapped back into himself at once.

"Take it easy on that thing," Brian said. "You'll OD."

"Th—th—they..."

"Yeah, they've been doing that for a while. I think it's got something to do with the rain, but they haven't put themselves back together or anything like that. They're just moving in their broken pile."

"They w—won't ge—get us?"

"No, they haven't come any closer. Pretty damn creepy though, huh?"

Milt made a gurgling sound.

Brian pointed up at the sky. "At least the rain stopped."

"M—may I ask why you s—said the thrashing had t—to do with the rainwater?"

"Because it didn't start until the rain began. Then the more rain there was, the more violently the parts moved. It was a lot worse than this while you were passed out. Then, when the rain began to let up, the thrashing let up too. Now the rain is gone, and the movement is dying down. I think maybe the rain feeds them. You see how dry they were before, the way their heads exploded when I hit them? It's as if they're made of sawdust. I bet they're not as dry now, I bet if we go over there and prod at the parts or hit them, they won't turn to dust, they'll be more like regular people parts."

Milt calmed, and his sense of self returned. "Preposterous. Truly and undeniably outrageous. How could you have seen or measured the degree of their undead rattling from your position here, and through the substantial rain? I am afraid it is impossible."

Brian looked crestfallen. "No, no, I'm pretty sure I saw it. The rain was thick, but that kind of thing is unmistakable. I'm not seeing things, no, I'm not."

Milt felt a pang of regret for ridiculing Brian. He had to admit that Brian had played a role in his revival, and in the prevention of a possible Ventolin overindulgence, sweet though that may have been.

"Although I am certain there is no relationship between the bizarre thunderstorm and the twitching parts, I commend you on your creative vision."

Brian shrugged, looking even more dejected. "I'm gonna check it out, and see what's going on in the store. I've had enough of sitting out here. I can't see any more zombies around, and you shouldn't worry about those dead ones, I don't think they're gonna put their heads back on and come after you. Try not to faint again, okay?"

"I did not faint, and you are not to leave at this moment, I forbid it. The time has not yet come for reconnaissance."

Milt wasn't going to admit as much, but he was fearful the zombie parts would reassemble, and begin to make their way toward him. Though he still looked forward to more zombie slaying in his immediate future, he most assuredly did not want to deal with any kind of zombies that could reconstruct themselves after being hacked to pieces. That was not a fair zombie game at all.

"Hey man, I'm hungry too, and I'm way too anxious to sit in one place. If you need me, yell." Brian began to walk away, carrying the baseball bat.

Milt felt his control over the squire slipping. That wasn't how the day was supposed to be going. "Wait, if you must leave on your wayward quest, please fetch Coca-Cola and Snickers and deliver the same to me, while I keep watch here."

Brian gave a wave without turning around, but didn't respond.

Shocked by Brian's rude temper tantrum, Milt clambered to his feet. The cut behind his ear throbbed slightly, but the throbbing wasn't nearly as bothersome as the bandage, which made Milt feel like he was trapped in damp fuzz.

He picked up his sword and sheathed it. Then he narrowed his eyes and watched the disobedient squire saunter off toward Wegmans, walking in a wide arc around the jumble of zombie parts.

The thrashing of the zombie parts was diminishing, and Milt's initial astonishment at the sight had passed. The zombies' death throes were markedly different from those of humans, but that was all the thrashing was—the dead zombies' equivalent of human corpses' twitching.

Milt continued to watch as Brian circled back to the center of the parking lot, now beyond the untidy heap of dead zombies. Brian was tiptoeing now, and he continued tiptoeing all the way up to the Wegmans entrance and stopped.

The doors slid open. There Brian stood for a few moments, peering into the store's entryway. Then the doors slid shut, and Brian must have been startled because he jumped backward a few steps, still on the tips of his toes, like a tap dancer doing an awkward jig.

The doors slid open again. This time, Brian quickly tiptoed inside, and then he was gone.

Milt harrumphed. The birds were starting to sing again, and there were now small patches of blue in the sky, letting in too much sunlight for his liking. He wanted to get inside too, but he would let Brian come back with his scouting report first.

Hungry though he was, Milt wasn't ready to go venturing into a sprawling supermarket, where zombies no doubt hid in dark corners. He decided that the shade of the trees in the parking lot outskirt where he sat would have to do for the present.

Milt got up and circled the car once, performing his own brand of reconnaissance. He looked in all directions and listened in all directions.

Nothing—nothing except for the light scraping and tapping of the zombies that were trapped in their cars. It was an odd thing to ponder: humans had climbed into the cars, and then, as if by some magical action of the cars, the humans had been transfigured into zombies, as if the car were some kind of zombie-producing device—a zombie-chamber of sorts. That would make an interesting comic book.

Then Milt slowly rumbled around, throwing pudgy-handed karate chops in all directions, to ward off any undead that might be stealthily advancing toward him.

Satisfied that he was alone, Milt walked over to the car's hood and scrambled up on top of it. Given his large frame and ample accoutrements, it was a challenging feat for Milt to accomplish.

When he had conquered the hood, he sat atop it, beaming with a plump pride that he was certain would strike fear in the undead hearts of zombies the world over. The world over? That was something else to ponder.

How far did the outbreak extend? Based on the state of the facts before him, could Milt reasonably conclude that the outbreak was confined to this strip mall and its immediate surroundings? In that case, what if Wegmans were the source of it all?

Milt shook his head. No, that can't be it, he thought. That scenario assumes too much—that for some reason Brian and I are not affected, even though we were here when it began. Would that make us immune? Why would that be?

He shrugged, gave a moment's thought to tuning Brian's car radio, then dismissed the thought. That would require climbing down from his regal roost, and that was no frivolous undertaking. That is quite a nice turn of phrase, Milt thought, complimenting himself.

The term "regal roost" was quite worthy indeed, and Milt was impressed with himself for coming up with it. The zombie apocalypse seemed to be making his mind sharper.

There will be plenty of time to determine what is happening, he thought. Knowing the cause wouldn't change what had already happened, and if he hadn't caught the undead influenza already, he was confident that it wasn't going to happen at this point.

The zombies had come, and it appeared to Milt that the outbreak wasn't localized. He didn't have proof of that, and he wasn't going to go adventuring outside of the strip mall yet, but he had a feeling that this type of event couldn't be localized.

Milt pushed the investigative thoughts away. He cleared his mind, and sought a state of battle-readiness. He closed his eyes and let his awareness spread through his expansive body, now resting on the slick hood of Brian's car. The car emitted intermittent groans under Milt's weight as he sat. Milt felt his body find a point of balance, and he brought his plentiful legs up to sit like a Buddhist monk in meditative repose.

Well...not exactly a Buddhist monk—a Buddhist monk probably wouldn't be clutching a sharpened replica sword that was now tinged with fetid zombie flesh. That was where he transcended the ordinary Buddhist monk. Milt knew that once a sword had been used to slay the undead, it instantly became more valuable, and more venerable.

Yes, Milt thought, the sword is a thing to be worshipped now, as am I.

The car's suspension let out a creak, and the hood dipped suddenly under Milt, before settling into a lower equilibrium with a clatter. Milt didn't lose his balance though, no, he was in the zone, and remained in position atop the car, with his sword piously laid out across his lap.

The rain was good, he decided, refreshing. It helped take the heat out of the air, and Milt felt rejuvenated, in preparation for the next round. There would certainly be a next round, a next chapter in all of this, he knew that.

For a brief moment, Milt was so at peace with himself that he didn't even want a Snickers bar, whether in standard form, miniature form, ice cream form, frozen standard form, or frozen miniature form. He didn't even have Coca-Cola on the brain.

In the perfect serenity of his repose, Milt recalled how he loved basements. It was the dankness of them, and the darkness too. If storm clouds could always be in the sky the way they were now, reminding him of his basement lair, he would venture outside more often.

That was a completely reasonable, normal thing—his love of the dank. It was cool and nice and he needed the dark humidity to think. Other people didn't understand it. They thought it was weird.

Well, the other people, they didn't matter now, because the world was changing for Milt, not for them. They were gone, they were zombies now, a throng of carnivorous sheep...and Milt...he stood alone, unique, the hunter, the predator...the zombie slayer.

Chapter 83

An other-worldly groan floated up from the back of the car. Jane was frozen in place by its ghostly tenor, and she had to will her body into action. She had been expecting this moment, trying to prepare herself for it, visualizing how she would react to it, but now that it was happening, she was locking up, just as she had with Vicky earlier in the day.

That's no way to be, Jane told herself, that's no way to be on a day like this, that's exactly the kind of thing that spells the difference between life and—

She jolted herself into action, making her muscles move by sheer force of will. Of course she knew he was only a boy, an innocent little boy who liked to play chess and probably never hurt any—

She pulled hard on the gun, pulling it clean of its holster. By the time she realized that it was the .460 XVR, it was too late.

In one swift motion, Jane had cocked the revolver, twisted her body, and extended the revolver at Evan.

The boy made a noise, and Jane thought it wasn't quite right, there was something off about it but she—

The large gun obscured most of Evan's head from Jane's line of sight, but she knew that shooting him in any part of the head, from this distance, with that gun, would be fatal.

"Jane!" Sven shouted as he hit the brakes, jerking the car to a stop. Jane's body hurtled against the dashboard, but she kept the revolver trained on the boy's head.

"Jane!" Sven shouted again. "What the hell are you doing?"

Out of the corner of her eye, Jane was aware of Lorie moving deeper into her corner, but of staying very focused on the action, readying herself to pounce.

Then the boy made a noise, the same noise that he had made before, and Jane realized that it was a scream, not a zombie moan. He was still screaming. Zombies didn't scream, did they?

"Jane," Sven said in a calm, slow voice, "it's okay, it's just Evan. Let's put the gun away."

Jane's finger quivered on the trigger, if she only pulled it a little farther, then...

The boy began to cry, his tears adding some streaks of color to the pallid skin of his face.

"Please don't shoot me," he said through trembling, tear-soaked lips, "please, please."

The boy covered his face with his hands and began to sob.

The gun stayed where it was.

Jane was appalled at her next thought. To her own disbelief, she found herself wondering about the splatter of blood and brain matter that would soil the car's interior if she did pull the trigger, and now that the boy was covering his face with his hands, pieces of his hands and fingers would be among the mash of blown up flesh.

These things are better done outside, she thought, the gun trembling in her hands. These things are better done outside? What kind of person thinks that when she's holding a gun to a boy's head?

He's a boy, she told herself, not a zombie, a boy, just a sick boy.

Jane made herself open her mouth, letting the air flow in. Her face was hot and she felt like something was sticking up into the back of her throat.

She pulled the gun back, emptied the cylinder into her hand, lowered the hammer, and put the gun away. She put the four live rounds into one pocket and the empty shell into the cup holder beside her, watching her trembling hands as she did it.

Ashamed and disgusted with herself, Jane said nothing, and thankfully, the unease in the car was so great, that no one else said anything either.

Jane was incredulous at what had just happened—she had felt so sure, and yet she had been so wrong.

Sven eased his foot off the brake, and they drove away in silence.

Some minutes later, when Jane had her breathing and mind under control, she turned to Evan. "I'm really sorry Evan. I was just startled that's all."

Evan nodded meekly, his tears still drying on his cheeks. "I know." His voice was snuffled.

"Are you feeling better? Your cold?"

He wiped at his nose. "I feel about the same. I had a bad dream I think."

Jane got a napkin out of her pack and handed it to him. "Here, use that."

"Thanks." He took the napkin and blew his nose.

"Soon we'll have a place to rest, to sleep, and no more bad dreams."

Evan nodded, but Jane didn't think he believed her. She didn't believe it either.

Chapter 84

Milt heard a fluttering, and he looked up to see four little birds alight on the branch above him.

Damn that Brian, Milt thought, parking under a tree into which birds eagerly flutter.

Milt hated birds. He didn't know what kind these were, but he knew he despised them. He had no doubt they were the ones that snuck up to his tiny basement window each morning to wake him with their terrorizing chirps and cheeps.

The chirps and cheeps were already beginning, and Milt felt the throbbing in his head instantly increase.

But I'm the zombie slayer now, he encouraged himself, surely I can take care of a few little birds.

Milt drew his sword from its scabbard and raised it, pointing it directly at the birds. They stopped singing and regarded him in a way that he interpreted as bewilderment, followed rapidly by cool indifference.

The birds resumed their song.

Thoroughly brimming with anger, Milt waved the sword at the birds, hoping to frighten them out of their perch.

The twittering birds refused to budge, and seemed to Milt to twitter with more resolve each time he whirled his sword at them. There was only one thing he could conclude—they were mocking him, and the birds, unreachable as they were, quite literally had the upper wing.

Milt continued to wave the sword about his head until his arms grew tired. He stopped, not having waved the sword for very long, and jammed it back into its scabbard.

Frustrated and out of breath, Milt decided to rest for a few minutes before continuing with his bird-flushing.

He was catching his breath from the sword-waving when the birds' chirruping took on a more frantic tone, and Milt was convinced the sound was hell-born. He had no doubt these creatures were harbingers of the damned: perhaps they themselves were the very cause of the zombie plague.

Milt decided to throw something at the branch, and not having anything suitable within reach, he would have to climb down from the hood of the car to find a throwing object.

He began to mentally prepare himself for his dismount, and he knew that even if he didn't find anything to lob at the birds, he would have to get off the car anyway, for he had to escape the infernal birdsong one way or another.

As he was sliding his great rear toward the front of the car, Milt lost control of his jiggling body and slid forward on the hood's slippery surface. He landed painfully on the car's front bumper, then toppled to the wet pavement.

The sword clattered to the ground next to him, and he jerked away from the noise, trying to avoid being sliced.

The car made several clanging noises, and Milt was uncertain whether they were noises of gratitude, defiance, defiant gratitude, or just a vehicular death rattle.

Milt got up onto his haunches, slamming his lower back painfully into the car's bumper as he tried to balance himself, then struggled to his feet.

He picked up his sword and cursed at the birds. The four little birds drew themselves up, flapped their wings at Milt, and flew away.

"Taunting devils," Milt muttered in disgust. At least, he decided, he could take pride in the rapid-fire way in which he had gotten up. That was an unusual accomplishment for Milt, who usually took upwards of half a minute to heave his great body up into a vertical position.

As he rubbed his lower back, Milt considered that perhaps he was being too hard on Brian. After all, the car's location was quite fortunate given the rain.

Then again the spot was an obvious bird attraction.

And yet again, parking without tree cover meant an overheated car to return to.

And yet once more, Milt remembered, Brian had done the parking at night, so the tree wasn't likely to have been a consideration then.

Brian had likely not been in a thinking state at all. He'd probably been strung out and high and all he could think of were snacks, or "munchies," as the marijuana tokers liked to call the packaged sweet and salty treats that marked a good high's progression.

In the munchies' context, the car's position was a testament to Brian's stupidity, in parking so far away from the Wegmans, at the far end of the parking lot.

Milt shrugged, admitting to himself that there may be other reasons that tokers take into account when parking their vehicles—reasons of which Milt had no knowledge. Perhaps there was no winning with this one, and perhaps Brian deserved no blame for his car positioning at all.

Finding himself suddenly empathetic, Milt resolved to be nicer to the baseball bat-clutching simpleton, whether he was a drug dealer or not. Milt decided that people deserved second chances, especially in the midst of the zombie apocalypse. He and Brian might be the last people on Earth, so Milt told himself he should make an effort to get along with the man.

Milt coughed at the mental image, realizing that he didn't want that at all. To be left alone with Brian as the final remnant of humanity: it was horrible to even consider as within the realm of the possible.

Still, Milt knew he'd been too hard on the aspiring squire, and, oddly enough, Milt was anxiously awaiting his return.

It wasn't only for Brian's quick return that Milt wished, but for the arrival of more company—of more uninfected human company, to be precise.

Wishing for company was an odd thing for Milt, and he knew it. He had always been comfortable with his reclusive lifestyle, and he was more comfortable alone than as part of a group. Being secluded, to Milt, was always preferable to social interaction. Until now? Milt needed—desperately wanted—more people to join his party, more people with whom to adventure in this wondrous post-apocalyptic world that was now ripe for conquest.

He didn't fully understand this feeling, but after a few moments of hands-on-hips introspection, he concluded that his new desire to interact with others must somehow be related to the restructuring of the social hierarchy brought about by the zombie apocalypse. Milt knew that he was a natural born leader—at least based on his video game abilities—and now the time had come for him to lead in real life, to lead the remaining uninfected humans.

Then, as if placed there by divine providence, Milt spied an SUV. He watched as the car slowly snaked its way through the stopped traffic of the access road into the strip mall, coming from the direction of Route 29. As it got closer, Milt could make out that there was a man and a woman in the front. The man was driving, and he looked big.

"Hey!" came a man's voice.

Milt snapped his head over toward the source of the noise to find that Brian had emerged from the Wegmans, and was jogging over to where Milt stood.

"A car!" Brian yelled. "Milt, do you see it? A car! People!"

Then Brian was beside Milt, panting with his hands resting on his knees.

"Well?" Brian said as he pointed to the SUV, "do you see it? I'm sure it's not zombies driving."

"Yes I see it," Milt said, containing his excitement. It was as if his wish was being granted. How strange, he thought, strange and delightful.

"Well aren't you excited, or at least happy to see there are other people still?"

Milt cleared his throat. "To be sure, your alacrity is misplaced. We know nothing of these newcomers, or of their intentions, which may very well be malevolent."

"What? No. People stick together in situations like this, to help each other."

"Unless they having pillage and plunder on the brain."

"Well, yeah, but..." Brian shrugged. "I guess we'll know very soon what they're up to."

The car was winding through the parking lot, driving away from Milt and Brian.

"We should go after them," Brian said. "They might not see us."

Then, as if hearing Brian's words, the car stopped suddenly with a screech of tires. It slowly began rolling again, and turned around a row of cars to face Milt and Brian.

"It seems," Milt said, "that they have now ascertained our whereabouts."

Brian nodded. "Here they come."

The car began to advance slowly toward the shaded, far end of the parking lot, as if its occupants were examining Milt and Brian from afar.

Milt scratched at the sticky spot around his left nipple, which was no longer as sticky after the rain. Then he took two cold puffs of his inhaler, and sprang forward in barely-contained anticipation.

From a distance, he looked like an enormous, rapidly advancing Jell-O Pudding Snack.

Chapter 85

Lorie sat at the edge of her seat. Her elbows were on the divider between the two front seats, and she was peering through the windshield as they slowly drove toward the far end of the parking lot.

She couldn't believe what she saw there. She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes and looked again. But it was still there.

An enormous blob of pudding was jiggling toward them.

Lorie blinked and looked again.

The pudding was wearing a trench coat and fuzzy slippers.

The pudding had a pony tail.

"Is that a pudding or a person?" Lorie asked.

"What?" Sven asked.

"Right there, next to the guy we spotted with the baseball bat."

"Oh, oh God, right. I didn't make that guy out at all."

"So you're going with person?"

"Yeah...I guess."

"You should sell him some sessions," Jane said weakly. "Not that the money will do you much good if the zombies take over." Jane let out a frail laugh, and Lorie could tell she was trying to make up for what had happened before, with Evan and the gun.

Lorie understood what that meant of course. She understood what Jane was thinking, and she hoped that Evan did not. Though Lorie had said nothing, she hoped that Evan interpreted the whole thing as an overreaction on account of Jane's understandably frazzled nerves. That was not an unreasonable interpretation given the way the day was going. Lorie fervently hoped that Evan was not...was not suspecting that he was...even if he was it would probably be better not to know, and—

"That," Sven said, "is not someone I can help."

"Why not?" Lorie asked. "Wait, look! He's got a sword. A sword!"

"How do you know it's a he?"

"Maybe we should go somewhere else," Jane said. "I don't like the looks of this guy."

Lorie wondered why Jane should be worried about a guy with a sword when they had so many weapons with them now.

"No, this is good," Sven said. "Real good."

Lorie thought she heard something strange in Sven's voice, and she looked over and saw that he was smiling. "What are you so happy about?"

"I know that guy."

"The pudding?"

"No, no, not the pudding, the other one, the one with the baseball bat, that's Brian."

"Hey, I think I remember him," Jane said. "He's the...he's the delivery guy right?"

"Right. Gets me my protein and supplements when I'm in a jam. He's a life-saver, a great guy too."

The car was now pulling up in front of the two strangers. Lorie watched, bewildered, as the pudding man waddled out in front of the car, the soft parts of his vast body joggling with each step. Then he put up his hand, palm facing the car, in a signal of halt.

Lorie stared at the hand, trying to make out fingers, but all she could see were weakly differentiated protrusions of pudge, emanating from the remainder of the pudding's arm. She decided it was a mitt, and not a hand at all.

"That pudding guy is creepy," Lorie said. "I don't like him."

"You haven't even met him," Sven said. "He might just be quirky." Sven sighed. "Then again, what's with the hand in our face?"

Lorie had a bad feeling about meeting the portly pudding. "I don't like it."

"We'll do our best."

Sven stopped the car and Lorie watched him put it in park and remove the keys.

"Wait," Lorie said, "are you sure you don't want to leave the car running?"

"I'm sure. We're digging in." Sven put the keys in a pocket of the duck pants and put his hand on one of the machetes. Lorie watched him staring ahead at the pudding, as if looking through the scene into another world—but that was silly.

Then Sven was getting out of the car. Jane opened her door next, and then Lorie scrambled out, clutching her knife at her side. She ran around the back of the car and helped Evan wobble out. Then she and Evan joined Sven and Jane, who were already standing in front of the car.

The pudding spoke first. "Halt I say! Please elucidate your intentions. As you may have discerned, there are zombies afoot."

Lorie could see the pudding clearly now, and though she understood that what he had just said could be interpreted as funny, there was something so weird about him that she couldn't laugh. It was clear he didn't mean it as a joke anyway, he was serious.

There was a bandage wound around his head, and it made his face bulge in places. To Lorie it looked like his neck had thrown up to form the blob of his head, and then the top of his head had thrown up downward at the line of the bandage to form his face.

The pudding wasn't a pretty sight, and he made Lorie think of the computer geeks at her school. The resemblance between some of them and the man now in front of her was striking.

"Ahem," the pudding went on with an air of importance. "I repeat, please apprise me of your intentions."

Sven looked at the pudding for a moment, then turned to the other guy, the one that he said was named Brian.

Brian was walking toward Sven. "I can't believe it. Sven? That is you right?"

Sven nodded.

"Thank God," Brian said. "It's just been me and Milt so far—" Brian gestured at the pudding, "—and I wasn't sure we'd be seeing anyone else."

So the pudding is called Milt, Lorie thought, makes sense.

"Excuse me!" Milt bellowed, raising his sheathed sword and shaking it at Sven and Brian. "I am in charge here, you will address yourselves to me."

Brian looked at Milt and shook his head sadly. "Milt, it's okay, these are friends. I know Sven from way back." Brian turned back to Sven. "Sorry, he's had a shock I think, he's alright though."

"We've all had a shock," Sven said, offering his hand to Milt. Sven's gesture reminded Lorie of her general unease, and she began glancing around the parking lot, making sure none of those things were approaching them.

"Oh very well," Milt said, and shook Sven's hand.

Lorie watched as the adults all made their introductions, quickly relating a summary of their respective day's experiences. Brian pointed and asked about the surgical masks, and Jane explained their experiences with the zombie odor so far.

Then Lorie and Evan were introduced. Lorie watched Milt's eyes grow wide after looking her and Evan up and down, and she wondered what it was about her and Evan that Milt was reacting too. She couldn't know that, but she did know that she didn't like him, and she wasn't going to trust him. He was the kind of guy to keep an eye on, even if the other adults dismissed him as just being "weird," or "having had a shock."

Lorie cleared her throat and spoke up. "It is very nice meeting you and all, but shouldn't we be getting inside? Evan needs to rest."

Sven nodded. "That is why we came here." He turned to Brian and Milt. "Have you guys been in the Wegmans? We were planning on holing up in there for a while until we know more about what's going on." He paused and looked uneasy. "Is there a reason you're out here and not in there?"

Brian looked like he was about to say something, but Milt beat him to it. "I concur, we do need shelter, and evening is fast approaching. Before your troupe arrived, I sent Brian on a reconnaissance mission into the Wegmans. He had just returned and was about to give me his complete report when you pulled up in your vehicle. Please Brian, you may proceed."

Brian rolled his eyes. "You didn't send me, Milt. Remember? I left. You didn't want me to go because you were afraid that those—" Brian made eye contact with Lorie and stopped mid-thought. "Never mind. Yeah, there is a reason we're out here and not in there, and I was about to tell Milt about the Wegmans when you guys got here." Brian smiled. "Damn it's good you're here Sven. You too Jane, it's been a while. And the kids too, of course. This is a real good sign. We're gonna pull through this. You guys have some mean-looking weapons and...we're gonna get through this right?"

"Please," Milt said, "put your blubbering under control and commence your report."

"Milt," Brian said sternly. "Relax, you need to sit back down in the shade. You have heatstroke."

"I have no such thing!"

Brian turned to Sven. "Do you see what I've had to put up with here?"

Sven shook his head and sighed. "Yeah. So what's the deal with the Wegmans? We need to rest, and Evan—" Sven pointed behind him, "—he's not feeling so good."

Brian glanced at Evan, who had by now sat down on the wet pavement. He was seated, and looked wobbly.

"Okay," Brian said. "I imagine you all know what's going on with the zombies...well...there's zombies in there." He jerked a thumb at the Wegmans. "A decent amount. I counted twenty-one, but I think there are a few more than that."

"That reminds me," Milt said. "Where is the Coca-Cola that you were supposed to fetch for me?"

Brian ignored Milt.

"Okay," Sven said. "Let's clean it up and lock it down. You in?"

"Of course I'm in," Brian said. "I'm sure as hell not gonna stay out here all night."

"Very well," Milt said, "I will lead you into battle."

"Maybe you should take it easy," Lorie said, locking eyes with Milt. "Aren't you hurt?"

"Thank you for your concern, little girl, but I am quite well."

"Someone needs to stay out here with the kids while we do this," Jane said.

Lorie was angry at once. "What do you mean stay with the kids? I was pretty good back there with those zombies in the restaurant, and in the gun store! Why do I have to stay out here?"

"Because," Jane said, turning to Lorie, "it's dangerous, and, well...you're kids."

Lorie pouted. "The children are our future and all that?"

Sven shrugged. "Lorie was really good with the knives back in—"

"Sven!" Jane hissed. "You're not helping. Look Lorie, if you stay out here and help to look after Evan, I'll give you a short shooting lesson. How does that sound?"

Lorie was speechless for a moment. "Yeah? Really?"

"Really."

"Let's shake on it." Lorie extended her hand to Jane, and Jane shook it.

"We have a deal," Lorie said.

"We do," Jane agreed.

"Alright," Sven said, "let's go."

He began to walk toward the Wegmans entrance.

Jane took a few steps after him. "Do you wanna leave Ivan with me?"

The cat's meowing head was resting on Sven's shoulder, the rest of its body hidden in the backpack.

Sven turned around. "No, Ivan stays with me."

He turned back to the Wegmans and took to walking again.

"Hey tough guy!" Jane yelled after watching him for a while.

He turned around.

Jane put her hands on her hips. "How would you feel about loading that shotgun, and maybe learning how to use it?"

Sven looked dumbstruck. He hung his head and walked back to Jane. "That's a good point. I'm getting a little ahead of myself."

Lorie looked on as Jane showed Sven how to load the shotgun and how to use it. Milt sniggered and pontificated the whole time, going on about the Queen of England and using what Lorie assumed was video game jargon. The guy was too much, and Lorie wished he wasn't around. She also didn't like the way he looked at her, her serrated knife, or Evan. Come to think of it, she didn't like the way Milt looked at any of them, like he was better than all of them.

After Jane had finished with him, Sven started off toward the Wegmans again, looking far less confident than he had before.

"Hey," Brian said, coming up behind Sven, "watch out for that area over there." He pointed to the middle of the parking lot. Lorie looked where he was pointing and saw a mass of zombie flesh, bodies and parts strewn about, soaked by the rain.

That's interesting, she thought, maybe Jane and I can do some target practice.

"Let's go around this way," Brian said, and he began to lead Sven around the perimeter of the parking lot toward the Wegmans entrance. Sven and Brian strode toward the store at a quick pace, and Milt trudged behind them, struggling to keep up.

Lorie watched as Sven and Brian disappeared into the Wegmans, and watched for a few moments longer until Milt disappeared too.

Then she turned to Jane. "I think it's time for my lesson," Lorie said, and grinned.

Chapter 86

The vegan with the handlebar moustache was hobbling down the road. He had two cartons of Luckies tightly clutched under his left arm.

At random intervals throughout his hobbling, he shot feverish glances over his shoulder, and took long pulls on his cigarette.

They're coming, he thought, the shambling, unstoppable servants of Satan.

The vegan stuck his cigarette in his mouth and took a hard drag, feeling his cheeks form deep dimples. While the cigarette hung from his mouth, he fingered the golden cross that dangled from his neck, a gift from his long-deceased, exceptionally pious grandmother. She had put the fear of God in him, and she had warned him that a day like this would come.

It is all in God's plan, she had said, and apparently, it was.

But what about me, the vegan wondered, what's in God's plan for me? He knew what his grandmother would have said, that the meaning and logic of God's plan were only for God to know, and humans could do no more than marvel at it.

Feeling a slight inspiration at the memory of his grandmother, the vegan let go of the cross, took the cigarette out of his mouth, and hobbled faster.

A few feet from the next intersection, the vegan stopped to pant through his cigarette, his bloodshot eyes searching for shelter—for a place to hide.

Nothing. Just another bare intersection.

I'm hobbling like a hobo, he thought, looking for a hiding place...true homeless behavior. He squeezed his wounded thigh and felt the pain rush upward through his body. It was terrible, but it wasn't ghoul-inflicted.

The vegan took his cigarette in one hand, and he reflected on the events of the day, feeling nicotine and pain course powerfully through him.

It had been such a wonderful morning. He had gone to work, and he and his co-worker, Rainee, had picked up their shipment of avocados, the bulk of which were destined for the Charlottesville Whole Foods, the balance to be delivered to Kroger. The vegan proudly refused to transport any animal products, and liked to call himself The Vegan Transporter. He relished the title.

He had felt incredible that morning. It was his ninth day on a fruit and vegetable juice fast, and he knew that for each day on a juice fast, he became one month younger, biologically. It was a miraculous process.

The vegan had just polished off a bottle of carrot and ginger juice in the avocado truck when they hit traffic—standstill traffic, no more than a few miles out from the loading depot. Then, as if on cue, Rainee passed out, slumping onto the steering wheel.

Rainee was a tiny woman, bigger than the vegan, and not a vegan herself, and he was depending on her to drive while he saved his strength for the heavy avocado lifting and unloading later in the day.

As the vegan was reaching over to tap her on the shoulder, Rainee rose from her slump, turning to the vegan. Her eyes opened wide, and...and he jumped out of the truck and ran, starting up the road the way they had come.

It didn't take him very long to realize what was happening. The stopped cars around the truck were no longer inhabited by their early-rising owners, but by what the vegan could only interpret to be ghouls.

It was the apocalypse. The dead were walking the Earth, perhaps in atonement for their flesh-eating sins—not that the vegan harshly judged the flesh-eaters in his normal life, but on this apocalyptic day, the thought occurred to him.

So he ran, and when he was too tired to run, he walked. As the day wore on, he noticed that the ghouls grouped themselves, and when he passed the groups, they began to shamble toward him.

Even in his spent state, it was easy for the vegan to keep away from them. They were slow, and he was very light and nimble.

The ghouls were not the ones that had hurt him.

It had happened after he had dared to sneak into an Exxon for some cigarettes. He smoked constantly as he made his way up the road, and when he saw the Exxon, he didn't want to waste the opportunity to stock up. The place looked deserted, and the nearest ghouls were more than a block away, shambling toward him at a snail's pace. It seemed like a good idea. What could go wrong?

So the vegan crept under the portico and around the pumps, pushed the door of the Exxon's convenience store open, and nervously walked in.

His suspicions had been correct. The place was empty.

Bolstered by his apparent good luck, he climbed over the counter into the attendant's spot, and found his preferred brand of cigarette—Lucky Strike—the only brand worth smoking. He was just tucking the second carton of Luckies under his left arm when the sound of shattering glass startled him, and he was covered by a sideways spray of shards.

He flinched, instinctively raising his arm to cover his face, but the sharp spray abruptly ended. The vegan inspected himself, and found that the glass-breaking had left him unscathed.

With his heart pounding and an unknown culprit lurking somewhere close by, the vegan climbed back over the counter as quietly as he could, trying to avoid cutting himself on the shards of window glass that were scattered everywhere. He set himself down and began to tiptoe to the door, wincing at every scrape of glass under his feet.

The vegan had just placed his hand on the door when a gruff, drawling voice called from behind him.

"Hey you, skinny boy, where do you think you're going?"

The vegan turned and saw a tan, obese man, clad from head to toe in leather. His fat, bald head was covered with a bandana that bore a burning skull featuring fiery eye sockets.

Confused and unsure of how to respond, the vegan just shrugged.

"Don't you know stealing's wrong? Just because the world's about ended don't make it alright. Don't you know nothing?" The leather-clad man's voice contorted with each word, and the vegan found himself growing more and more uncomfortable with every twitch of the man's leathery face.

The vegan resolutely pulled the door open and stepped through it, out under the portico. "I just..."

The leather-clad man began to trudge toward him, at a surprising speed given his size. "You just nothing. Now hand over those cigs." The man extended a fat, leather-gloved hand that seemed to want to burst. The vegan now saw that in the harasser's other hand was a tire iron, probably the thing he had used to break the window. "Now if you had taken some Twinkies or beef jerky or something, I might look the other way. You ever eat? You could use some food. But cigs...especially those—" he pointed a pudgy finger, "—those are for real men."

The vegan clutched the Luckies tighter and began to back away.

"You stay right where you are," the leather-clad man said, raising the tire iron in a menacing gesture.

The vegan wasn't going to do any such thing. He quickened his backward steps, and he was just about to turn and run when his right foot caught on the raised curb that led into the convenience store.

He sprawled onto the ground, twisting on his back. The vegan got his feet back under him to spring up and begin running, but the leather-clad man was already there, apparently having trundled over at a blinding speed.

The tire iron came down in a flash of tarnished silver, and the vegan felt it strike his thigh above the knee. There was no crack, but the dull pain shot downward, creating an agony of feeling in the vegan's knee, shin, and ankle.

Terrified, but still clutching the cigarette cartons, the vegan crawled backward to get away from the man and his tire iron. He got to his feet through the pain, and began to run.

"Yeah you better run," the man called after him. "You better be faster than that if you want to live through the day. You ain't no real man."

The vegan shot a glance backward to make sure the man wasn't coming after him, and he wasn't. The harasser stood there in his leathers, continuing to bellow at the vegan, but not leaving the shade of the Exxon's portico.

The vegan turned back and kept running until the man was well out of earshot. His leg hurt like hell, and although there had been no crack on contact, the vegan felt the pain of the blow in his bone.

After running a few blocks, he slowed down and settled into a quick limp that lessened the pain considerably. At least he still had the cigarettes, which he could easily have lost in the encounter. He wasn't sure how he'd held on to them, but apparently his body knew its priorities and had put the cigarette cartons into a death grip, and had kept the death grip even in the face of a tire iron attack.

That was some consolation. The vegan continued to look back throughout his journey, watching for the hefty trundle of the man in leather, but it never came. After some time, the vegan decided that the ghouls had taken care of the man, and the vegan fingered his cross once more.

The vegan shook his head. And now here he was, at another inauspicious intersection, exhausted, hungry, hurt, and with nothing to look forward to except the cigarettes. But that was as good a nothing as there could be, so long as it could be enjoyed in safety.

He looked both ways before starting across the intersection, noting that he wasn't looking out for the flow of traffic, but for ghouls and hidden human miscreants.

The ghouls, he had gathered so far, had no penchant for trickery. Seemingly unable to hide or stalk their human prey, the ghouls made their presence known far in advance by their obtrusive moans and odd, uncoordinated gaits.

He felt a familiar stinging pain in his fingers as he was crossing the intersection. The cigarette, which he had smoked down to the filter and forgotten to throw away, had burned down even further, down to the vegan's well-stained, cigarette-heat-tempered fingers. He flicked the cigarette away without a second glance.

As he crossed, he kept a watchful eye out for the cars nearest him, most of which held ghouls, apparently and inexplicably trapped in their cars. They stirred as the vegan passed.

They probably want me to let them out, he thought. Fat chance of that...although, if the man in the leathers were here, I might just do that...let them out and see who was faster. But the vegan knew the fat man would probably escape. He was shockingly fast in his movements.

The vegan crossed all the way and looked back. He didn't have a watch, but he knew by the sun's movement through the sky that he'd been walking most of the day, except when the sudden downpour had forced him to stop. It had truly been a storm of biblical proportions, and the vegan had ducked into an abandoned strip mall coffee shop in which he cowered and smoked until the storm passed.

I'm limping my way through hell, he thought, and wondered if there was going to be an end to all of this. Was he in purgatory or in some undefined sort of limbo? If this was hell, why wasn't anyone around to give him a tour? The vegan remembered Darren, a taunting meat-eater who always said, "Vegans go straight to hell," and, "Vegans are in league with Satan."

Having gone through the two packs he'd started the day carrying, the vegan broke in one of the boxes of Luckies, as he wondered if Darren had been right.

The vegan started in on his third pack of the day and resumed his northbound limping.

With his left eye and right corner of his mouth twitching in time, he tried to guess how far he now was from the Wegmans up the road. His home was too far, but the Wegmans...that might be a good place to hide for a while.

Chapter 87

The door slid shut behind Sven.

The shotgun pulled at the muscles in his right arm and upper back. It would have been alright, but his chest and neck were throbbing, shooting fresh bolts of pain into him with each step. He tried steadying the thing with his left hand and repositioning it in front of his body, but that only changed the direction of the pain.

On the day he needed it most, his body wasn't cooperating. He had been just about crushed, of course, but he expected some more adrenaline in a situation like this, something to dull out the pain and help work through it. Apparently, Sven's adrenaline supply was spent.

Now, walking into what he knew was a zombie trap waiting to be sprung, the adrenaline wasn't kicking in...and what if it didn't kick in when the zombies showed themselves? That wasn't something Sven wanted to think about, and it wasn't something he would allow.

"They're all over the meat section," Brian said. "It's really disgusting. They're...well...you'll see."

"Give me a second," Sven said, not daring to imagine what Brian was referring to. "Just give me a quick second."

"I too must gather myself," Milt said, resting his great body on some sacks of red potatoes. "The air conditioning in this facility is quite refreshing."

Sven nodded in his direction. The man was acting strange, but he could be forgiven under the circumstances. Milt, after all, had come in to help with cleaning out the inside of the Wegmans, and that earned him the benefit of the doubt in Sven's book.

The three men faced the expanse of the produce section. A long row of checkout aisles, accompanying cash registers, and shopping carts were to their left. The deli section and in-store cafe were to their right. The aisles that made up the bulk of the store were sectioned off to the left of the produce section, and Sven could only see their entrances and wonder what lurked within them.

"I'm fading," Sven said, feeling the day's exertions sapping his strength. Then he saw what he needed.

Sven did all he could to avoid stimulants. As a bodybuilder, the elevated cortisol levels and adrenal fatigue that came with stimulant use were things to be avoided, except in certain, very precise pre-competition stages.

But he made exceptions. One was long drives for which Sven needed to keep his mind alert. Another, apparently, was a zombie outbreak.

Sven strode to the cooler that marked the entrance to the first checkout aisle. He put all thoughts of muscle breakdown out of his head and pulled the cooler door open. It was full of energy drinks, as he had expected. He glanced at the variety in the cooler with distaste.

There was Red Bull, Surge, Amp, Starbucks and a number of other products Sven wasn't familiar with, except to the extent that he knew to avoid them. He considered resigning himself to drinking cold water, but that wouldn't give him the zombie-killing jolt he now needed. Sven's eyes settled on a drink, and he pulled it out of the cooler.

He rested the shotgun on top of the cooler, then opened the drink. Sven took a sip of the Starbucks Double Shot. Then he took another. Then he gulped down the remainder of the can's contents and withdrew a second can. He downed the second one in three gulps, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

Ivan meowed, apparently disapproving of the beverage.

Sven put his surgical mask on.

"Would you be so kind as to fetch me a Coca-Cola beverage?" Milt asked. "I trust there are some in yonder miniature refrigerator."

Sven nodded, pulled out a bottle of Coca-Cola, and tossed it underhand at Milt. Milt clasped his hands together in an attempt to catch it, but missed the bottle completely. It hit the ground and rolled away from the big man on the red potatoes.

"Here," Brian said. "I got it." Brian got the bottle and handed it to Milt, who was muttering strings of long words about his failed attempt to catch the bottle.

While Sven waited to feel the energy drink's effects, Brian visited the cooler, withdrew a bottle of water, and drank it.

"Still keeping healthy?" Sven asked. "Even today?"

"Always," Brian said. "Especially today, gotta be at my best."

Sven began to feel a jittery energy work its way through his body. He felt slightly less depressed now, and his mind began to click away at a rapid pace. It was time to clean this place up.

He picked up the shotgun and rested it on his shoulder, completely disregarding one of the main points of Jane's gun safety lecture. "Let's get this over with."

Brian led the way, taking them up to the end of the produce section, which terminated into a bread section. Between the end of the produce section and the bread section was a gap that looked out onto refrigerator islands and wall refrigerators filled with dairy products.

"There," Brian said, and pointed to the right, past the dairy islands, "they're all in the meat section down there."

Sven looked, but couldn't see any zombies from his angle. There were noises coming from the area to which Brian was pointing—sloshing, churning, and ripping noises, and Sven could easily imagine what they meant.

Now feeling the full onslaught of adrenalin from the energy drinks and his fear, Sven took the shotgun off his shoulder and held it diagonally in front of his body, pointing up and to the left. "I'll open up on them with this...and..." Sven wasn't sure what came next.

Ivan meowed.

"And we'll have your back," Brian said, giving the baseball bat a swing.

"Agreed," Milt said, removing his ridiculous-looking sword from its scabbard.

Sven's only consolation at that moment was the presence of the machetes on his belt. If he got into a jam, or if the theorized shotgun assault didn't take care of business...there would be the long, wooden-handled, wondrous—

He shook the thought off and walked out through the gap between the produce and bread, making no effort to conceal his presence...and then he saw them.

Chapter 88

Sven understood at once what the noises were. The zombies were chomping, munching, crunching...

It was utterly disgusting. Sven felt the Starbucks beverages rumble in his stomach as he stood there, transfixed by the zombies and their attack on the raw meat.

"That is a decidedly revolting vision," Milt said, coming up behind Sven. "If I may be permitted to say so."

"Yeah," Brian said. "Disgusting. Just how I left them."

Sven didn't want to come any closer, but he made himself approach so that he would have a better shot. He drew nearer, measuring his steps and raising the shotgun at the same time.

There had to be at least twenty of them, huddled around the meat refrigerators, ripping at all the raw flesh they could get their gnarled hands on. They pushed the shrink-wrapped pieces of meat at their mouths in feverish uncoordinated movements. Their arms and bodies jerked violently as they reached, grabbed, bit, slurped, and chewed. Their heads and necks were the worst to look at it—contorting with each snap and slurp and—

Sven had to turn away for a moment, on the verge of being sick in his surgical mask. The sucking and slurping noises were getting deep under Sven's skin, making him nauseated in the core of his bones.

He didn't have to listen to it much longer, however, because the zombies perked up and seemed to forget about the meat as soon as he turned back.

They turned to him, blood-stained faces splattered with bits of raw meat and gristle and bone, their mouths hanging askew, still full of half-chewed pieces of meat that were apparently forgotten in Sven's presence.

There was a tall one at the front of the pack, closest to Sven—it had to be over six and half feet tall. It slowly lowered a shrink-wrapped piece of meat from its lips. The meat looked like a pork chop that had been gnawed in the middle, through the shrink-wrap.

The towering zombie's arms jerked downward, hands losing their grip on the packaged meat. The pork chop plopped to the floor, meat-side down. Then the zombie's head cocked to one side with a crunch, setting itself at an inhuman angle. Its eyes snapped open wider to gaze at Sven.

Ivan hissed and began to claw urgently at Sven's shoulder. Sven barely felt it. There may have been shouts from behind him—from Brian and Milt maybe—but Sven could barely hear them now. It was just him and the zombies...all those hungry zombies, slurping at the bloody meat, drinking the—

Sven jerked his eyes away from the tall one at the head of the pack. He looked at the rest of the zombies, now watching him with the intensity of a collective predatory being. Their black eyes seemed to open even wider to take Sven in, to the point where he thought the dead eyes were so loose in their sockets that they would tumble out. But the eyes flopped in place, held there by some rotten fleshy wire that Sven didn't want to imagine.

The zombies began to move toward Sven, lurching and bobbing like a floating mess of rot. He could smell them now, the gut-wrenching, overpowering, nauseating, mesmeriz—

He pulled the trigger. The shot ripped through the air, shotgun jerking backward into Sven and sending pain into his chest.

Holes appeared in the tall zombie, the focal points of suddenly visible fissures in the zombie's t-shirt. Then the tall one's midsection seemed to cave in on itself and the zombie toppled forward, jaw snapping shut for the last time.

Two of the zombies behind their towering leader had also been hit by the scatter, but they continued in their dogged shamble toward Sven.

Sven took a deep breath through the stifling surgical mask, stepped back, and pumped the shotgun. He shot, pumped and shot, pumped and shot, pumped and shot, pumped and...nothing.

He pumped again and pulled the trigger.

Nothing.

And he pumped again and pulled the trigger.

Still nothing.

From where his mind was, he couldn't understand what was happening. Why wasn't it shooting? Why weren't the zombies being ripped apart anymore?

Sven began to stagger backward, still pumping the shotgun and pulling on the trigger. Nine of the zombies had fallen to his five shots, ripped apart by the scattering Wolf Power pellets. Sven didn't have the presence of mind to count how many zombies remained, but there were at least as many as were down, still standing, still advancing.

He finally understood what was happening—the shotgun was empty, he had to reload. He fumbled for the cartridges stuffing the pockets of his pants. He picked one out with a trembling hand, checked that the business end was facing away from him, and...fumbled it.

The cartridge bounced on the floor, plinking away from him, and began to roll.

Sven didn't watch to see where it would go. He reached in his pocket for another cartridge, trying to keep his hand steady. He glanced up as he withdrew the cartridge and his hand began to shake again.

The zombies were gaining ground, their faces sickening masks of blood and gristle. Sven turned the cartridge the right way and dropped it too, cursing the spasms of disquietude gripping his body.

I can't do this, he told himself, I mean, damn, I can do this. I can, come on Sven, come on.

He glanced to his left and saw that he had retreated deeper into the dairy aisle. He got his bearings, and reached for another cartridge.

This one's the one, Sven told himself, and it was. He successfully loaded the cartridge into the chamber, and shot it.

Two zombies in the front of the pack fell backward in a mangle of zombie flesh, landing in the path of the undead behind them.

That gave Sven the moment he needed to load the shotgun all the way—four plus one.

When he was done loading, Sven pumped and shot, ripping the five cartridges of Wolf Power pellets through the air, and through the zombies' putrefying flesh.

They fell in twos and threes, crumpling in on themselves and deteriorating into a mash of what Sven interpreted as pus-covered, clothed leather.

It only took eleven cartridges worth of Wolf Power to take out the contagion feeding on the meat section.

When the zombies all lay still, Sven made his trembling hands relax a little, reloaded the shotgun, and let the weapon hang down to the floor.

"That's quite a device you got there," Brian said, coming up from behind Sven. "You didn't need any support from us at all."

Sven turned around to face them. "I've never shot one of these before. It's...it's...loud." He looked down at the Benelli SuperNova in black synthetic, and wondered where it had been all his life.

Then he felt a rustle on his back and heard Ivan meow as the cat clawed his way out of the backpack, and regained his perch on Sven's shoulder. Sven figured Ivan must have hidden himself when the shooting started, and thought it unreal that the cat hadn't run away during all of that loud noise.

Sven turned his head and looked into Ivan's gleaming eyes. "You're a very brave cat, you know that?"

Ivan meowed. Apparently, he knew exactly how brave he was.

Abruptly, Milt trundled past Sven and toward the carnage in the meat section, then stopped amidst the destroyed zombies. He seemed to linger there a little too long, and Sven thought he saw the man inhaling deeply as he stood over the carcasses, as if enjoying the odor...but that couldn't have been right.

Then Milt waddled back to Sven and Brian, a strange look of wonderment on his face.

"Yes," Milt finally said. "Fine, fine...all well and good, but I am allergic to felines."

Ivan meowed.

He would be the type to be allergic to cats, Sven thought.

"That's too bad," Sven said, turning away from Milt and wondering why the man didn't try harder to fit in.

"And, not only am I allergic to those wretched animals," Milt waggled a well-padded finger toward Sven's shoulder at Ivan, "but I am afraid that I must inform you that I am a sufferer of felinophobia, which is a clearly demarcated subset of zoophobia...I assure you that my condition is well-documented. I have a copy of my diagnosis in my home. That thing you have on your shoulder cannot remain with us. Please release it into the wild, where it belongs."

Feeling livid with rage, Sven looked Milt in the eye. "Don't you point your fat finger at my cat. He's not going anywhere."

Then Sven turned to Brian, deciding to ignore the fat man's continuing inanities—he was now going on about his metabolism, probably trying to shift the blame for his obesity away from himself and onto some uncontrollable, albeit nonexistent genetic factor.

"Let's scour the rest of this place," Brian said, then nodded toward the pile of rotten gobbets, "and then I guess we gotta..."

Sven caught Brian's drift. "Take out the trash. Yeah."

Sven reloaded his shotgun, hands still trembling as he did it, and then he paused. "Why are these wet? The ones we've come across so far today, they've all been dry, coming apart like paper...these—" he pointed to the pile of pellet-ridden zombie parts, "—didn't explode into dust and fragments like the other ones. They're bloody and moist...more like people."

"Maybe it's the meat," Brian said. "They've fed, so they're healthier. Maybe it's the rain too. Who knows?"

Sven felt a growing sense of unease. "What if that means they're getting stronger?"

Brian shrugged. "We fight harder then, or try to figure out what's causing it. Maybe we can stamp it out at the source."

"I suggest," Milt said, "that we conference on that issue once we have secured the immediate area. There will be plenty of time for uninformed conjecture once we have removed the zombie threat from what is to be our new living quarters."

"Okay," Sven said. "You're right. Let's go."

The three of them set off to check the rest of the Wegmans.

Their inspection of the rest of the supermarket was for the most part uneventful. Sven followed close behind Brian and Milt as they searched the aisles, stockroom, and various back corners of the large store.

There were only four zombies that they could find apart from those that had been snacking in the meat section.

Three of the four were wandering up and down the water and sports drink aisle, two stumbling side by side in one direction and one by itself stumbling in the other direction.

Milt cut up the group of two with panting, diagonal slashes of his sword, and Brian took out the lone one with his baseball bat.

The last zombie was the worst of all.

They found it in the pet food aisle...in the cat food section.

Ivan alerted them to the zombie's presence with an unusually vehement hiss that startled Sven. After looking up and down the length of the aisle and almost walking past it, Sven finally saw what it was that had so unsettled Ivan.

In the middle of the aisle, the lowest shelf was moving intermittently, as if emitting sudden, fitful gasps. Sven hadn't noticed it until he stood by it for a few moments, then he jumped backward in disgust.

"What is it?" Brian asked.

"Look," Sven said, pointing down, "there's something in there."

"Like an animal? How could anything fit in there?"

As if in answer, a stack of Classic Salmon & Shrimp Feast, by Fancy Feast, turned over at them, sending cans rolling down the length of the aisle. Sven picked up a can that was rolling toward him and examined it. It was one of Ivan's favorite flavors. Sven pocketed it and refocused on the task at hand.

Another stack of cat food cans turned over. This time, the cans flew in a somewhat coordinated formation toward the opposing shelf.

Under the clatter, Sven thought he heard something else. "Did you hear that?"

Brian nodded gravely.

Milt squeezed by Sven and Brian and turned to face them, turning his back on the clattering cans. "Enough of this protracted cowardice. Obviously there is something lurking beyond these wretched feline victuals."

Milt stood there, looking back and forth between Brian and Sven, like he was expecting them to do something about it.

"If you think it's so obvious," Brian said, "why don't you take a look?"

"I was going to extend that courtesy to you—"

"No," Brian said, hopping backward to avoid another tumbling can. "It's all you. You got it."

Sven wasn't too hopeful for what they might find beyond the stacks of wet food, but he was now curious to see how Milt would go about this task, and if he would balk.

Milt looked uncertain. He glanced at Sven, then Brian, then back at Sven again. Then he straightened, harrumphed, and waddled over to the source of the commotion. Another can shot out, hurtling down the aisle away from them. Sven imagined that Milt would've jumped in surprise if he was a little lighter...but he wasn't, and he didn't.

Sven instinctively took a step backward as Milt stopped in front of the jangling cat food cans. Sven began to raise his Benelli, then lowered it, reminding himself that it wasn't a precision weapon, and shooting at whatever was lurking amidst the cat food would reduce Milt to a mishmash of shredded, fatty gobbets. Sven shuddered and wondered if that was a sight worse than the zombie carnage they had all witnessed so far. He didn't want to find out.

Milt bent over with some difficulty, and peered into the spaces between the stacks of cans.

"See anything?" Brian asked.

It seemed to Sven that Milt didn't, but the fat man didn't answer.

After peering into the low shelf for a few more moments, Milt straightened and turned to look at Sven and Brian with a look of annoyance. "I have completed my inspection. I conclude that there was a small animal hidden there, no doubt harmless, and we should proceed with—"

"You're just tired from all the bending over," Brian said.

"Excuse me?"

"You heard me, you weren't even low enough to take a good look."

"Well if you so firmly believe that you are capable of performing a better inspection, I suggest that you—"

A hand shot out through a jumble of cans and took hold of his scabbard.

Milt didn't finish his sentence, but he did scream.

Chapter 89

Evan looked on as the men walked into the large supermarket and the door slid shut behind them. Then he put his palms on the pavement behind him for support and turned to Lorie and Jane. They were talking about something—probably about guns and weapons and other things that Evan didn't like.

He wished it was yesterday again, and he was back at home, safe, and far away from all of this. He was a little more than halfway through the first Harry Potter now, and he knew that he was way late to the Hogwarts party. His friends kept teasing him about how he hadn't yet caught up with the rest of them in Harry's wizardly adventures. Evan had avoided picking up the books for a while, because he'd thought the series was just a dumb fad, but had finally given in two days earlier, and found that he couldn't put the first book down.

It really was very good. He was up to the chapter about Nicolas Flamel, and he wished he could go back to the safety of his room, close the door, and finally learn who this Nicolas Flamel character was.

Evan sighed. He could just ask Lorie, she knew—she was one of the kids that teased him about being so out of the Harry Potter loop—but that would take the fun out of reading it himself. Maybe the Wegmans had some Harry Potter books, and he would read them there, and then he would go back home, and everything would be fine—the same, just as it was before. The adults would fix whatever was going on. It was probably just some flu or something, nothing—

He remembered how his dad and Lorie's mom had behaved that morning, and he knew nothing would ever be the same. It wasn't just a flu, and for some reason, Evan hadn't remembered any of what had transpired earlier that day while he daydreamed about Harry Potter. He'd felt like that all day—floating in and out. And he was feeling even more loopy now.

Maybe this whole thing is a dream, Evan thought, and I'm sick in bed.

But he couldn't convince himself of that, because everything felt so real. Remembering that morning, and running away with Lorie—that made Evan not care about Harry Potter or Nicolas Flamel anymore. Not one bit. He wanted the nightmare to end...maybe the doctors could help his dad and Lorie's mom, and then everything would go back to how it was before, and—

Evan felt very thirsty all of a sudden. It was no ordinary thirst, either. It was a gut-wrenching dryness that he felt no amount of water could satisfy.

He struggled, tottering, to his feet, as if compelled by some primal drive, and began to lurch his way over to Jane and Lorie.

Jane was showing Lorie one of her guns, pointing to the different parts and saying something that didn't register in Evan's mind.

They looked up as Evan staggered closer, and he saw an expression of alarm travel across Jane's face. Then she set her jaw and all traces of the expression were gone.

"Can I have some more water?" Evan asked. "I'm so thirsty."

Jane nodded and went to the car. She retrieved Evan's water bottle and handed it to him, and it seemed to him that she was standing a little too far away from him, as if she didn't want to get too close. But maybe that was just the dehydration. Then again, she had pointed the gun at him in the car. Maybe she thought...the same thing that the fat man...

Feeling his insides cry out for water, Evan let his mind float away from that terrible encounter.

Even the pile of zombie parts in the parking lot had gotten the benefit of being soaked in the rain, he thought with envy, wondering if that was a strange thing to think. It seemed such a natural idea to have.

He eagerly unscrewed the cap and drank the water down in furious gulps. It helped to unglue the insides of his mouth, but it wasn't enough. He wanted more.

Evan asked Jane for more water, or rather, he tried to. His second request for water came out as a series of garbled hisses and splutters. His own voice sounded alien to him. He was finding it very difficult to coordinate his lips into the right movements, and then the wooziness hit him again, and there was a sharp pain in his gut, the world reeled, and—

He lay on the pavement, his head on something soft, not remembering how he'd gotten there. The fuzzy images in front of his eyes resolved and he saw Jane and Lorie looking down at him. One of them was giving him water to drink, and that was good, but it wasn't helping the thirst.

"Did I fall?" Evan asked, not sure if he had said the words, mouthed them, or just thought them.

Jane nodded, her lips in a horizontal line.

"The fat man," Evan whispered, "with the sword...he thinks I'm turning into a..." Evan trailed off, his mind dipping. Then it was back on track—on some track. Evan wasn't sure it was the right one. "I can see it...in the way he looks at me...like you...I think he's..."

Jane and Lorie began to turn fuzzy again, and he tried to get them back, to make the fuzziness stop, to—

In Evan's final glimmer of clarity, the name "Nicolas Flamel" flashed in his mind, and Evan realized his curiosity would never be satisfied.

Then the light winked out.

Chapter 90

Sven quickly crouched and let the shotgun drop a short distance to the ground, mindful that it point away from Brian, Milt, and himself. Then he sprang forward toward Milt.

Sven grabbed hold of the fat man's arm and began to pull backward.

From the corner of his eye, Sven saw Brian smashing at the clutching zombie arm with his baseball bat.

Milt's womanish screams rang through the air as Brian beat at the hand and Sven tried to keep Milt from being pulled down into the cat food.

"Take the belt off," Sven rasped, feeling the crackling of his damaged upper body. "Unhook that thing!"

"Never!" Milt screamed.

Milt screamed again.

Sven could barely believe that he was pulling with all of his strength, using his legs to brace himself, and yet he couldn't pull Milt away from the zombie's grip. The thing possessed inhuman strength.

Then Brian flung the bat down, apparently giving up. He began to back away, startling Sven. Was Brian giving up on Milt, leaving Sven to save the fat man by himself?

"What—" Sven began.

"Just hold on," Brian said, "just hold on a few seconds."

Sven kept pulling, trying not to wonder if Brian was abandoning him. He considered stepping around Milt to stomp on the undead arm, but decided against it. Brian's blows hadn't done any damage, and stepping around was a great way to get grabbed by the other, still hidden zombie hand.

Suddenly, Milts screams stopped, and he must have gathered himself, because he leaned backward, away from the cat food, and into Sven.

Sven lost his balance and fell, letting go of Milt, and hitting his head on a shelf behind him.

As he fell, Sven felt Ivan claw his way up over his shoulder and down his front, cat reflexes in full gear.

Sven rolled onto his side and out of the way just as Milt lurched backward and sat down, his backward movement pulling out the hidden zombie through a disintegrating screen of toppling cans. Sven's relief in having avoided being crushed by Milt's humongous backside quickly vanished, replaced by an enormous wave of revulsion that gripped the whole of his being.

Milt let out a shriek, and Sven thought he might have screamed too, if he could find his voice. The zombie was still holding Milt's scabbard, and was now edging closer, crawling on its belly like a snake.

A hiss ripped through the air, and Sven glanced over to see Ivan deftly avoiding rolling cans of cat food, his eyes locked on the slithering zombie.

It wasn't the slithering that bothered Sven. It wasn't the ragged flesh of the zombie's fingers, where its fingernails should have been. It was the zombie's face, or rather what was left of it.

It was instantly apparent to Sven that the zombie had been trying to pick its way into the cans of cat food, with its teeth.

Teeth hung in splinters from the zombie's bloody, open mouth, suspended by thin strings of gum. The skin around the mouth was cut and torn so badly that the face was barely recognizable as humanoid. Flesh hung in wet, bloody clumps from under the thing's eyes, and even its forehead and scalp were hacked up.

Scraggly shards of aluminum and tin stuck out of the zombie from all over its face and hands, and were so thick with blood that they were difficult to differentiate from the zombie's torn, hanging flesh. Wet cat food was all over the zombie's head, shoulders, hands, and arms up to the elbow. The whole mess stank.

As gruesome as all of that was, Sven's eyes kept flashing back to the teeth, and he found it next to impossible to look away. Even as his stomach began to heave, he couldn't make himself turn away.

An inappropriate thought occurred to Sven at that moment—that he would never have been able to be a dentist, not if it involved seeing sights like that, even on an irregular basis.

Then his mind took it further. Sven imagined a rubber-gloved hand wielding a set of pliers, approaching the zombie's mouth to tug its splintered teeth off their flimsy strings.

On the next heave, something long and black appeared in Sven's field of vision, joining the bright swarm of stars, and jarring him away from the churn of his revolting stomach. Then there was a loud bang, and the zombie arm turned into a wet mash of pallid skin, rotten sinew, and bone fragments.

Sven looked back at the long black object and followed it up to find Brian holding the Benelli, his face grim with terror. Brian must have aimed the close range blast perfectly, sending all of the pellets on a destructive course toward the zombie and the cat food in which it lurked.

Grateful for having been shaken out of his dental daydream, he got up to Milt's side and was about to help the man up when Milt scrambled to his feet, surprising Sven with the speed of his ascent. The man didn't look capable of getting to his feet as fast as he did, and though Sven didn't know why, that made him feel uncomfortable.

Once on his feet, Milt drew his sword from its scabbard, raised it up by the hilt, and stabbed downward, driving the point through the side of the zombie's mangled face.

That didn't stop the zombie, which continued wriggling its destroyed arm. Sven knew it was no time to get complacent, however, because pitiful though the thing now looked, it could still slither over for a bite, and that would be the end, assuming the bite carried the infection.

Pulling upward, Milt removed the sword from the zombie's face, raising a flap of flash and dislodging several shards of tin, toppling a large gob of wet cat food, and flinging a shrimp upward.

Sven never realized that he had such an eye for details, but he now found himself transfixed by the fine points of the scene unfolding before him. The cat food element made it so surrealistically repulsive that he couldn't help feeling awestruck by the improbability of it all.

Milt brought the sword down again, stabbing higher this time, and the point of the sword penetrated the zombie's head somewhere behind its temple, though it was hard for Sven to tell exactly where, through the blood, cat food, and folds of hanging flesh. The frayed end of arm below the zombie's elbow jerked up at the moment of the stab, then fell still.

Besides killing the thing, the stab seemed to speed up the flow of viscous ooze out of the zombie's mouth, and over the splinters of teeth, and Sven found himself in an even deeper trance, watching the ooze and wondering if its flow would succeed in tearing off one of the toothy splinters.

"This one's wet too," Brian said, jolting Sven from his morbid reverie.

Sven looked away from the mess. "It was strong as hell. The ones we've seen so far, the baseball bat would've taken care of them...not so with this one."

"I don't like it."

"Me neither."

"Ahem," Milt announced, "if you two could pay me some attention for a moment, the thing's hand is still latched onto the scabbard of my wondrous sword. I require some assistance."

Sven glanced at Milt, who was looking dolefully at the mangled zombie hand gripping his sheath. "It's mostly bone. You can handle it. Come on Brian, let's check the rest of this place out and get Jane and the kids inside."

"How do you think it got in there?" Brian asked as he and Sven strode to the top of the aisle, Ivan padding alongside them.

Sven stopped. "I didn't even think of that. Good question."

"Obviously," Milt called in an annoyed tone from behind them, "the zombie that I speared crawled into position from an unseen opening. I venture that you two cretins are standing quite close to it."

Brian whirled on Milt. "Cretins? Excuse me? Cretins? We just saved your life you ungrateful ball of pudge!"

"It would seem that your memory is quite short-lived. I was the one to spear the wretched undead creature with my zombie slaying sword."

"Yeah, but—"

"Let it go," Sven said, cutting Brian off. "We have bigger things to worry about. He's right though." Sven pointed to a makeshift tunnel through the bottom shelf of the pet food aisle that began at the end of the aisle. "The zombie must have crawled in through there."

"Why would it burrow in there like that?" Brian asked.

Sven shook his head. "No idea, but we can talk about that later. Right now let's—"

Sven's alarm went off again, startling him.

"What pray tell is that?" Milt jeered. "Have we reached the appointed hour for your weight training?"

Sven bit his tongue and removed the watch. He deactivated the alarm and then turned it off so that it wouldn't ring again. He put the watch down on a shelf next to a 15.4 pound bag of Evo Turkey & Chicken Dry Cat & Kitten Food.

Then, rethinking the placement of the watch, he grabbed it and jammed it into the crevice next to the Evo bag, so that it was out of sight.

"Come on," Sven said to Brian, taking the shotgun from him and continuing to ignore Milt, "let's get this over with."

Sven and Brian did as diligent a check of the remainder of the Wegmans as they thought time would allow, and upon failing to find any more hidden zombies, they made their way back to the entrance.

As Sven felt heartened by Brian's reassuring, optimistic presence, he was simultaneously discouraged by Milt's. On balance, Sven wasn't sure what the net effect of the new company was.

He knew that basing his actions on what happened in zombie movies was a poor substitute for carefully planning their survival, but he couldn't stop himself from recalling the infighting and general deterioration of the human group that always took place in movies, as the group grew larger. The infighting always got people killed...

Sven, he told himself, that's just what happens in the movies. It's not real. We'll figure out a way to get along, and it won't be like the movies.

Feeling worse after his own mental pep talk, Sven still wished their group was smaller, more maneuverable. Mostly, he wished that Milt hadn't joined them. The man's size and personality were too big to be ignored.

Chapter 91

Jane's heart leapt up into her throat when she saw Sven emerge from the Wegmans sliding doors and begin to traverse the parking lot. Brian and Ivan were alongside Sven, and Milt was following close behind them.

The joy was short-lived, however, because Jane was certain that what had happened to Vicky was now happening to Evan. The similarities were too clear, too salient to be ignored. She was even starting to get whiffs of that smell, coming from Evan. She would bring the boy inside, of course, put him down somewhere, and then...and then...

"What's happened?" Sven asked.

Jane looked up to see Sven standing next to her, clutching the Benelli in his trembling grip. The man looked more shaken than he had all day, and Milt and Brian didn't look any better off. They all looked like they'd come out of some nightmare and were still blinking in terrified disbelief.

Sven seemed to be experiencing tremors, and Jane could see the trembling travel up and down his body in waves. He had the expression of a man who was trying not to vomit.

She looked down at the unconscious boy and tried, but failed, to stifle a shudder. His sallow skin had begun to emit a pale fluid that coalesced into a dreadful film, like the gelatinous membrane of a disgusting horror movie monster.

Jane blinked hard, feeling suddenly stifled by the moist, late afternoon air. "He just passed out...was asking for water, drank some, fell...I dunno, he just..."

Jane looked at Sven, hoping for some supportive gesture. Sven must have tried, because he gave a nod and his lips twitched upward, but if he was trying to smile, the expression never reached fruition.

"We're good to go inside," he said. "We'll take the boy, and...make him comfortable as we can."

Jane nodded, feeling the pressure of tears build behind her eyes.

There'll be time for crying later, she told herself, now's the time to get out of harm's way.

Sven put the shotgun down and leaned over Evan. He began to scoop the boy up when Brian came up from behind him.

"Let me," Brian said. "You look like you need to ease up on the heavy lifting...yeah, I've noticed you're injured. I'll get the kid. And besides, you're pretty good with that thing. Mean kinda gun isn't it?"

Sven let Brian take the boy away from him and straightened up. "Thanks. I got into a bit of trouble this morning, pulled a few muscles I think.'

Brian nodded, not seeming to strain at all as he held Evan in his arms. Jane was relieved that it wasn't Sven holding the boy...not that Brian deserved any worse, of course, but she couldn't watch that happen to Sven, couldn't—

"I put it before you all that we leave the unfortunate boy behind," Milt said. "In fact, to be quite frank, I insist upon it. We cannot bring that thing inside with us." Milt pointed to Evan. "It is quite clear that he is on his way to becoming a human-devouring zombie. Therefore, he cannot remain a part of this tribe. Don't you understand? This is not a camping trip, this is the zombie apocalypse!"

Sven's mouth dropped open. "It's just a cold. He's had it for a few days." Sven was stiff and tight-lipped. He gave Evan a once-over and turned away.

"It is obviously much more than a cold virus. Look at the exterior of his countenance! We need to be rid of him or he will pass the virus to us! Then we will all be infected, and all of our efforts will be for naught. It is so simple a concept I cannot fathom how it is that you people are incapable of understanding."

Jane watched, feeling her body tense as Sven locked eyes with Milt.

"If the kid stays out here," Sven said, "you stay with him."

"You're going to regret this," Milt said, and began to trundle off toward the Wegmans entrance, snorting and harrumphing as he went.

Jane's mouth felt unusually dry. She went over to Sven and pulled him aside. "What if he's right?" she whispered. "What if..."

"I don't know, but we can't leave Evan out here."

Jane looked around and saw that Lorie was eyeing her and Sven suspiciously. Jane was sure the girl could easily have guessed what they were discussing, anyone could have.

As if in answer to Jane's thoughts, Brian walked over and said, "You're not considering what he said, are you? Leaving the kid out here?"

Jane looked at him, feeling her mouth get even drier.

"No," Sven said. "No."

"Even if," Brian said, "even if...we can't..." He shrugged and turned away.

Jane understood the frustration. What could you do in a situation like this?

They're all being so decent, Jane thought, except for the fat guy...but who's right?

Chapter 92

Jane felt oddly detached as she watched what was happening in front of her. It was as if she were floating several feet up above the parking lot, unfeelingly looking down at her own body and the bodies of the other survivors, as they went about a rehearsed repertoire of physical movements.

The air seemed to be thick with futility, with an inescapable conclusion, which, though it might be delayed, could never be avoided.

Jane watched with foreboding as Brian brought the unconscious Evan inside, Sven beside them. She followed, straining under the weight of the duffel bags from the car. She felt depressed and angry, though she was uncertain from where the anger was coming, and at whom she should direct it.

They entered the Wegmans and laid Evan down in the middle of the produce section, on the smallest sleeping bag from the gun shop, setting him up away from the supermarket's multitude of refrigeration units.

When Jane was unable to rouse Evan for a drink of water and another fever pill, she resolved to check on the boy at regular intervals, but not to stay by his side. With each passing moment, she grew more sure that Milt was right, and that the boy would become dangerous at any moment. Jane reflected on how long the boy had fought the disease off, keeping it from taking over his body long after everyone around them had already turned into zombies.

She said her mental goodbyes to the child and zipped him up into the sleeping bag as a final precaution. If he woke up as one of the infected, he would likely be unable to get out of the sleeping bag, or would at least alert the rest of them to his plight before he could do any damage. Then once he woke—the word "reanimated" occurred to Jane, and made her shiver—then they would...

She walked away from the boy and set up camp halfway up the row of checkout aisles, between the cash registers and an aisle containing magazines, paperbacks, and stationery. She set out the remaining sleeping bags for Lorie, Sven, and herself, and then began to check her munitions. The routine of the check dried her dampened spirits quickly and significantly, but the distraction was only momentary.

Jane jumped to her feet at once when she heard an irritating, scraping sound, overlaid by the sound of human retching. Then Sven and Brian appeared, pushing a dripping, overloaded shopping cart, scratching its wheels along the supermarket's polished floor.

Jane watched with revulsion as Sven and Brian carted out the dead zombies. They tried to conceal their loads with makeshift tarps, but it was little use. Blood and the now familiar viscous liquid drizzled from underneath the cart, leaving a trail of putrid sludge, smattered at irregular intervals with gobbets of rotten flesh.

It was a gut-wrenching sight, made all the worse for Jane because when they were done, she put herself on cleanup detail, mopping up the trail of zombie pus, while she strained to control the bouts of dry heaving into her surgical mask. She mopped up to the entrance and threw the mop outside, giving one last look to the pile of dead undead—she didn't know how to think of them yet.

They were so much like the zombies in the movies...whatever disease they had contracted stripped them so bare of their previous humanity that it was hard to see the creatures as people. Jane looked at the heap that had now grown to many times its initial size and felt as if she were sinking.

When the cleanup was done and Sven and Jane had recovered from their nausea, they figured out how to work the entrance shutter and lowered it. The sliding doors still opened and closed when they came near, but the shutter would keep the uncoordinated zombies out.

Sven pushed several rows of shopping carts up against the back of the shutter for good measure, and that made Jane think of Evan...of being trapped inside the supermarket with Evan, who was now most of the way—

"Hey where's Lorie?" Sven asked.

Jane shook her head. "I don't know, I haven't seen her in a while. On that note, where's Milt?"

"I don't know. I don't like this setup. It seemed like a great idea when we were driving up this way...but I don't trust that guy. He seems so unpredictable to me."

"I don't trust him either, but what can we do? Kill him? We'll have to keep a watch—a patrol."

"Between you, me, and Brian, one of us can be up at all times. That way we won't be surprised by the zombies, or by Milt if he decides to go crazy on us. I'll go tell Brian."

So Jane stood there, and watched Sven walk away to tell his friend. She put her hand on the grip of the .460 XVR, knowing that it would always be there for her, and hoping that Sven would be too.

Chapter 93

Ivan was watching the boy from a safe distance, tilting his furry head this way and that, curious about why Sven kept the rotten boy around. It was as if Sven couldn't smell the bad smell, as if Sven had no idea about the rot...the terrible, sickening smell. But then Sven must have been able to smell it, because he was killing the rotten people everywhere they went. Why was the rotten boy allowed to remain? The smell was so bad. What about the woman, couldn't she smell it? Why couldn't she? Soon the rotten boy would begin to move, to try to spread the rot into the others, and they would have to run again, or fight, fight and kill the—There was suddenly a stale, fusty odor in the air that drew an instinctive hiss from Ivan. It wasn't the rot. Ivan skittered away from the smell and turned his nimble body around, using his tail to keep balanced in the hairpin turn. A big man was coming, moving slowly and with great effort, wheezing and out of breath. Ivan flattened himself out, ready to pounce. But the fat man wasn't coming to Ivan. He was coming to the rotten boy. Ivan would've hissed a warning if it were Sven. Ivan even would have clawed at Sven if it were he that was approaching the boy in this particularly late stage of the rot. But with the fat musty man it was different. Ivan didn't care about stopping him. The fat man wasn't rotten, but the fat man was soft, not like Sven. The fat man didn't like Ivan, and Ivan knew it, could smell it. The fat man, Ivan decided, would get no warning. Then the fat man had something shiny. He was holding the shiny thing next to the rotten boy. Then...then? The fat man stood there holding the shiny thing, over the rotten boy. Then the fat man plunged the long shiny thing into the rotten boy. Then...then? Ivan knew at once that the fat man didn't understand. That wasn't enough. The rot was still there. Why would the fat man do that? The rot. It was there. It was still coming. The bad death was still coming.

Chapter 94

Lorie was creeping around the inside perimeter of the Wegmans.

I could get used to this place, she thought, it's definitely big enough for me. She was holding the hunting knife in her hand now, making no effort to conceal it. She had no intention of letting go of the knife, not then and not even if it made its way into a zombie's brain. She would pull it back out and reuse it. Use and reuse.

I will not be left without a weapon again, Lorie told herself.

She revised her circular route when she spied a red-faced Milt trundling out of the candy aisle, chocolate stains running down his chin. She stopped short of the far aisle and stood before an open refrigerator, feeling the cold air spill out onto her. She ignored the fat man as he waddled past her in his slipper-clad feet, grunting and muttering something about wizards and the apocalypse and zombie children.

The guy was a real creep, and Lorie wondered if he could be sectioned off at some far end of the store, or in an aisle—the candy aisle perhaps—so that she didn't have to see him. It was worth giving up access to all the candy in the store for that.

Lorie shuddered Milt's lingering creepiness off her and took a bottle of water from the refrigerator, savoring the feel of the cool, wet plastic against her palm. Instead of putting the knife down to open the bottle, she hooked it into her back pocket, then opened the bottle and gulped the cool water greedily.

Surprised when the water stopped flowing, Lorie lowered the bottle from her mouth and realized that it was empty. It hadn't felt like more than two sips and the thing was empty already. She scanned the refrigerator for another drink.

Anything would be more refreshing than the water, she thought, and decided on a large orange-colored Gatorade. She picked it up, opened it, and downed half of the drink before coming up for air. Then she took the hunting knife in her hand again, and began up the aisle, open Gatorade bottle in one hand and forward-facing hunting knife in the other.

She was a predator, meticulously stalking her prey. She just hadn't chosen the prey yet. Then, glancing into an aisle of frozen foods as she passed it, Lorie decided that she wanted some fruit. Fruit was good fuel. It was light and kept the energy up, and it was one of Lorie's snacking staples at track meets and in training.

I'll start with a banana, she thought, realizing how light-headed she felt, that should help steady me on my feet.

Then something in a dark corner of her mind lit up. It was a connecting cable—a mental one—that ran between her desire for a piece of fruit and something that the creepy Milt had said.

Fruit and, fruit and? What was it? Fruit and...

Lorie realized what was bothering her, dropped the half-full bottle of Gatorade, and broke into a run. It was the remark about zombie children, and maybe it was the way Milt had waddled past, more dignified than before, as if he'd done something, as if they should all be honored to be in his presence.

She ran, hunting knife pumping up and down in her right hand. She veered into the produce section, using her left hand to lean on a shelf to stop herself from toppling over. She couldn't see anyone there, and slowing to a walk, Lorie approached the center of the produce section, feeling cold apprehension gripping her more tightly with every step.

Lorie's blood turned cold when she saw him.

Evan was so still, so quiet.

Lorie didn't even need to see the thick red puddle forming at his left side to know—she felt her face contort with anguish and a sob choke its way out of her throat—to know that Evan was gone.

She wiped at her eyes and mouth, feeling confused. Why was he dead...and why was there blood pooling around him? How could that have—what could have happened to...

She stepped closer, her body resisting every movement closer to Evan, as if she could deny the fact that he was dead if she just stayed away from his body, as if she could turn around and he would become whole again.

She tried not to look at his face as she got closer, she didn't want to see it, to let it in, to admit to—

Then she screamed.

Chapter 95

Sven had taken the first watch. He, Jane, and Brian had decided that they would switch off in four or six hour shifts depending on how they felt. Brian offered to do a later shift, since he claimed that he was well-rested. Sven wanted to get his own over with, and didn't much trust himself to stay alert into the night. Jane didn't care which shift she got.

So they agreed that Sven would go first, followed by Jane, followed by Brian, and then the cycle would repeat itself. As he left Jane and Brian to fiddle with the radios and television sets, trying to find a signal, Sven wondered how many repetitions of their watch cycle there would be before the zombies went away...assuming the zombies ever did go away.

How long would they be hiding there? Was it really hiding? It was more like being trapped than hiding. Sven knew that he was assuming a lot. He was assuming that he and the rest of his group could survive long enough. What if they were overrun?

With that and other similar thoughts churning in his head, Sven began his patrol by marching straight to the store's organic section. The shotgun hung loosely from his right hand as he wandered up and down the aisles, searching for some much-needed protein.

He found a packet of Golden Valley Natural Organic Beef Jerky, gently set the shotgun down on the floor, and took the packet of beef jerky off its rack. He tore it open and withdrew a dried piece of meat. Sven looked at the jerky, turning it over in his hand.

Then he raised the jerky to his face and smelled it. His body began to spasm with nausea, and it took all of Sven's will to keep from throwing up. After he had drawn enough shuddering breaths to calm himself somewhat, he took another piece of jerky out of the packet, having dropped the first one in his bout of spasms.

I have to eat, Sven told himself, it's been all day, and I'm hurt. I need to keep my energy up.

His stomach growled as he held the dry, ragged piece of beef jerky in his hand, but he couldn't make himself eat it. His stomach felt like it was growling at least as much from revulsion as from hunger, so he decided the jerky wasn't appropriate right then, and he would find something else.

He gingerly set the jerky down on a shelf next to some Cheddar Bunnies, picked up the shotgun, and backed away. He knew he was better off eating something. It would help to settle his stomach. Maybe some cinnamon cookies or ginger snaps, or something with peppermint in it. He knew all of those things were good for settling one's stomach, knowledge garnered from his friendship with Brian.

It's good to know a holistic supplement dealer, Sven thought.

But that didn't change the fact that no matter how much he knew he should eat, and no matter how much he stared at the scrumptious foods in the organic section, the lump in his throat remained in place with finality. The way his body was feeling right now, eating just wasn't an option, regardless of the muscle loss that might result.

Despondent, Sven left the organic section and began to wander about the store aimlessly, looking for signs of the monsters that had taken over his beautiful town and stolen his appetite in the process.

And soon my muscles, Sven thought, soon the zombies will have those too, starving my hard work into oblivion.

He wandered into a back section of the store that was set off in a recess. The section was a series of bins filled with nuts, candy, and other dry goods, punctuated by an excessive number of weighing machines.

Sven walked over to one of the weighing machines and looked at it. It was the fancy kind where you could not only weigh the product you were buying, but the machine spat out labels to plaster onto your bags of gathered goods. Sven wondered how often people cheated, printing out a label for a bag with two pieces of chocolate, plastering it on, then adding fifty more pieces of chocolate. He decided that if the system was still in place, there probably wasn't all that much cheating.

He sighed and looked about the bins. Sven didn't understand how people could do that to themselves, eating garbage and living with the consequences.

With that in mind, he picked up a pair of chocolate eyeballs and began rolling them around in his left palm like a pair of Chinese Stress Balls. The chocolate eyeballs were poorly wrapped, and left brown smears on Sven's hand, and he decided that they were a poor substitute for the silver pair of Baoding Balls that he had at home.

Sven continued to look at the eyeballs in his palm, no longer twirling them now, and suddenly found himself putting the shotgun down and unwrapping the eyeballs.

Once the eyeballs were unwrapped, he took one in each hand and began to squeeze them, watching the peanut butter dribble out. Why he was doing this he had no idea, but it made him think about his and Brian's decision not to burn the bodies, to leave them in that putrid pile in the parking lot, to be taken care of by the elements.

Some of those bodies were sure to have empty eye sockets. Maybe the chocolate ones could—Sven shook himself away from the insanity.

I really am losing my mind, he thought, jungle hallucinations and now chocolate eyeball fantasies.

Throwing away the crushed chocolate eyeballs and picking up a fresh pair to unwrap, Sven wondered if leaving the bodies out there had been a mistake. What if rotting zombie corpses attracted more zombies?

He and Brian had decided not to burn them for two reasons. First, they didn't want to risk catching the Wegmans on fire, flushing themselves out of their new hideaway. Second, they didn't want to risk attracting any unwelcome human attention...or any at all for that matter.

Sven shrugged and tried to get his fingers unstuck from his palms. Maybe the pile would reassemble itself and attack the Wegmans. The way the day was going, that wasn't so unlikely.

Sven had squeezed most of the peanut butter out of his ninth chocolate eyeball when he heard the scream. He picked up the shotgun with a sticky, chocolate and peanut butter-covered hand and set off in a run.

Now, as he ran toward the front of the store, Sven's mind began to flash on the possibilities. Milt could have done something terrible. The surly, waddling beast had stormed off after Sven and Brian brought the unconscious Evan in, and who knew what he'd been up to since? How could Milt be so insensitive as to expect them to leave Evan outside to die...next to that pile of zombies in the middle of the parking lot? Milt was probably capable of anything.

Jane could have accidentally shot someone in the midst of her compulsive gun cleaning, munitions counting, and disassembly and reassembly of her new best friends.

Lorie could have purposefully stabbed someone—if that was the case, Sven hoped it was Milt that she had stabbed...and Sven knew he would forgive her.

Evan could have...maybe it was something to do with Evan. That seemed the most likely possibility. The boy had been much worse when Sven last saw him, probably close to death or...

If the scream wasn't on account of any of those possibilities, perhaps the zombies had already arrived, surrounded the Wegmans, and were now trickling in through an access point that Sven should have spotted and sealed before leading Jane and Lorie inside. How could he live with something like that? Knowing that he was responsible for the deaths of—Sven cut the thought off, comforting himself with the notion that if the zombies were inside, he wouldn't have very long to live with his shame.

As he ran, feeling the uncomfortable, more unnerving than painful crunch in his ribcage with each footfall, he tried to tell himself that it had been a good scream, that Lorie and Jane and Brian had finally gotten the radios or TVs to work and help was on its way. He tried to tell himself that was it, but he didn't believe it.

Reflecting on the possibilities as he slowed, Sven knew it could only be something terrible. He was fairly certain that it was Lorie who had screamed, and that girl wouldn't be screaming over nothing.

"Lorie!" he shouted. "Where are you? Lorie!"

Her scream—if it had been her scream—still hung in the air, and the air in the place seemed to grow colder the closer Sven drew to whatever it was that...

He burst into the produce section, last to the party. He no longer needed an answer.

Standing next to a disheveled pile of loose cherries, Sven felt the air choking him, closing tighter around his throat.

Lorie, Jane, and Brian stood motionless over Evan's prone body. Sven took two steps closer, hearing each of his footfalls in the stony silence. He saw the puddle growing out of the boy, engulfing him. Sven's entire body went rigid, as if gripped by ice. The air grew even colder, closing yet tighter around his throat.

"I did it," a calm, nasally voice said. It was Milt's voice.

Sven whirled, feeling air rip its way into his lungs, and then he saw Milt, standing before a vegetable refrigerator, glaring in their direction.

Carrots, cilantro, parsley, dill, kale, and collards framed Milt's enormous body—a strangely disturbing sight.

"My hand was forced," he said, unable to keep a wheeze out of his voice. "He was beginning to turn into one of the undead, and then he would have destroyed us from within. It was a heroic act."

Silence.

There was an eerie calm in the air.

Ivan padded in, passing in front of Milt and describing a wide arc around the produce section before coming up behind Sven. Ivan pawed at Sven's pants a few times, then leapt onto an empty display that claimed to hold Yukon Gold potatoes. Ivan crouched low and puffed up his tail.

Glancing at Ivan, Sven could see Ivan's muscles growing taut on his lean frame.

Then Lorie pounced.

She burst toward Milt, raising the knife she'd been carrying around since their departure from the gun shop. Her face was a tear-streaked snarl and then—

Abruptly, there was a tearing sound, and Lorie's body lurched and caught. She was motionless for a split second, a look of confusion flowering on her face. She looked down, and the confusion wilted into terror.

Then Sven looked down, aghast at once at what he saw.

Evan's hands had burst through the sleeping bag, and now were wrapped firmly around Lorie's left shin. The boy's hands were partially flayed, apparently having been ripped up by their journey through the sleeping bag's durable, insulating material.

Evan moaned as he pulled Lorie toward him, gnashing his teeth and wriggling around in the sleeping bag that still had him wrapped from the midsection down.

Lorie screamed, and she brought her knife up, but then brought it down to her side. She didn't stab at Evan, or even at his hands. Instead, she dropped the knife and began trying to squirm free.

Sven had begun to move toward the sleeping bag, intent on freeing Lorie, when the shot rang out.

Evan's body went limp, though his hands still clung to Lorie's shin. Lorie continued to struggle away from Evan, looking dazed and uncertain.

Then Jane ran to her, holstering her gun—the smaller one. She knelt in Evan's blood and removed Evan's hands from Lorie's leg.

"It seems I have been vindicated," Milt said. "Although I must apologize that I did not do him in properly. In my haste to save all of you, I must have neglected to dispatch the boy correctly, and for that I sincerely beg all of your pardons. And now, I must rest." Milt turned to go.

Jane stood up, her lower half covered in blood, glaring at Milt. "How could you do this?!"

Milt turned back to face the group. "I would advise you to avoid the boy's bodily fluids. They are certainly tainted."

Then Sven watched, disbelieving, as Jane calmly removed the huge gun—not the one she'd just used on Evan—from her second shoulder holster. She raised it, obviously setting her sights on Milt, who shrank back into the vegetables, his face a mask of outrage.

The gun dwarfed Jane's hand, and Sven guessed that she didn't have to aim very well at this distance to put a gaping hole in Milt's enormous body.

Milt seemed to collect himself, righting his body and distastefully picking a bunch of parsley off his shoulder, and tossing it onto the floor. "I am utterly bewildered. You now threaten to destroy me, after I have so selflessly removed a threat to your own well-being? Please clarify your position."

Jane cocked the huge gun. "Clarify this. Give me your sword, or you die."

"Thou dost not dare—"

A loud bang tore through the air, and the Romaine and collards to Milt's left were suddenly transformed into a cloud of green mist. Milt fell to the floor, whimpering.

Jane swung the gun over and down, fixing it on Milt. "Give me your sword. Now."

Milt raised himself onto his hands and knees, blubbering something about a fear of vegetables. He unhooked the belt on which the scabbard hung and tossed the sword and belt clattering across the floor toward Jane.

Then Milt let out a few more snivels, made his massive body vertical, trundled out of the produce section, and disappeared.

Sven let out a breath as Jane put her humongous gun away.

"What do we do now?" Brian asked, visibly shaken.

"That guy is completely out of control," Jane said. "He stabbed a boy in the heart! While he was alive! Not after he turned, but while he was alive! We have to get him out of here."

"He's crazy," Brian agreed. "But what are we gonna do?"

"Sven," Jane said, "say something."

"I agree he's a problem," Sven said. "But we can't just push him outside to the zombies." Sven paused, unsure of what to say next, and of the whole situation. "We need to keep an eye on him."

Jane looked stunned. "Keep an eye on him? We need to get rid of him! He's dangerous. He'll find some other weapon in here and then we'll be next. He'll kill us while we sleep." Jane looked at Brian, then back at Sven, as if searching for some support. "What about survival? What about what you said before, about surviving on our own, in the smallest group possible?"

"Look," Sven said, growing frustrated, "I don't know what to do, okay? I don't have the answers, but kicking him out to die would be too cruel. I don't like him either, but he wasn't exactly wrong, and—"

"What?" Jane interrupted. "How dare you say that? You're taking his side now?"

"I'm not taking his side, I just—"

"You just what?"

"I just..."

Mercifully, Brian stepped between Jane and Sven. "Alright, we're all really upset right now, but this isn't solving anything. Jane, I'm sorry but we can't just go pushing people out to be killed. We'll all keep watch and be careful around Milt."

Jane glared, but said nothing.

Maybe she's finally seeing some sense, Sven thought.

"Right now," Brian went on, "we need to see about...about the kid's body. We can't leave him here like this."

Abruptly, Lorie stood up, her face pallid and red from crying. "I can't believe he's dead...I can't believe you shot him."

Jane turned to the girl. "I..."

"I know," Lorie said. "You had to, right? You had to?"

Jane didn't say anything.

Lorie turned to Sven, and he found it difficult to look her in the eye. "Will you? Will you?"

"Yeah," Sven said. "I'll bury him. I'll do it now, that's what he deserves. Something proper."

Lorie nodded, and then Jane led her away.

After they were gone, Sven and Brian found some blankets and a pair of shovels. They wrapped Evan's body and wiped up most of the blood.

"I'll help you," Brian said.

Sven shook his head. "I want to do it alone."

"What? Why?"

"You should stay here, watch over everyone. I don't like the way we left things just now. Not with Milt, with Jane, with Lorie, with anyone. This is all going wrong. Just keep an eye on things okay?"

Brian looked uncertain, or perhaps unwilling.

"Ok?" Sven repeated.

Brian sighed. "Okay." He put his shovel down next to the blood-sopped towels with which they'd wiped the floor. "And you're right. Everything is going to hell."

Sven picked up Evan's wrapped body. "Everything's already there."

Chapter 96

The vegan was halfway through his fourth pack when he saw it. The silhouette of the Wegmans was unmistakable, representing a certain reprieve from the soulless ghouls. The vegan scratched at his handlebar moustache with his free hand, fingered the cross at his neck, and redoubled his hobbling.

Dusk was rapidly enveloping the road, and the vegan didn't want to be stuck on the open road at night, his companions the hungry ghouls that had been unleashed on the sinning planet.

After what seemed like fifteen more minutes of limping, the vegan turned right onto Monument Drive, the access road into the Wegmans parking lot.

He walked up the drive and around it to enter through the vehicle exit, cutting through to the Wegmans entrance without going all the way around through the rear of the parking lot. As he entered the lot, the vegan noted that the low, spasmodic drone he had become used to that day—the irregular scraping of the zombies trapped inside their cars—grew louder.

The sound was unsettlingly stronger in the Wegmans parking lot than it had been anywhere else on the vegan's route that day.

It had to be on account of the large number of cars parked there, he figured, and because he hadn't stopped off in any large parking lots until that moment.

Tapping at his cross with a finger, the vegan reminded himself that he would grow used to the louder scraping, and that the ghouls were trapped, immobilized.

I have to focus on the positive, he told himself, and looked up at the finish line toward which he'd been striving for so many hours now. The vegan savored the sight of the Wegmans edifice looming like a glimmer of hope over him. He had made it to safety at last.

It felt like a safe place, in part because the vegan shopped at this particular Wegmans regularly, appreciating its relatively wide selection of animal-free products.

The first thing he planned to do once inside was to find a Newman's Own Peanut Butter Cup in Dark Chocolate, and devour it. In spite of the absurd amount of cigarettes he had gone through on his journey, the vegan was famished.

As the vegan hobbled toward the familiar Wegmans entrance, he caught sight of something in the parking lot that unnerved him.

It can't be, he thought. He tried to make out the shapes in the increasing gloom, then, hesitating for a moment, he turned his back to the Wegmans and its promise of a wide range of Newman's Own products. He faced the center of the parking lot directly, and began to advance at a slow limp.

The ghoul smell—the now-familiar harbinger of the damned—grew stronger as he approached. It was a strange smell, remarkable in its complexity and impossible to pin down. The vegan tried to sniff out its components, but his mind blanked when he tried.

When he got to the very edge of the pile, the smell was so strong that the vegan had to breathe completely through his lit cigarette, instead of mostly through it, as he normally did.

Cringing with fear and wondering why he'd consciously made himself walk up to the pile, the vegan turned around. He felt some relief at having the pile out of sight, though he also felt worse in a different way, now that the soon-to-be-moonlit ghoul parts were behind him.

Looking back toward the Wegmans, the vegan noticed something that he hadn't seen on his hobble toward the center of the parking lot. There was a crusty trail from the dead ghouls that led to the Wegmans. Curious, the vegan began to follow it, tracing its path with his eyes. He followed it all the way to the curb in front of the Wegmans entrance.

There he looked down to where the trail broke in a sloppy multitude of directions, and spotted something else that he hadn't noticed before. Lying at the point where the curb met the street was a mop, the business end of which was crusty, seemingly with the same stuff that made up the trail.

It struck him that the crust had once been a thick, stinking liquid...the power source of the ghouls.

The power source of the ghouls? The vegan caught himself, wondering what the hell he was thinking about.

It's too early into the apocalypse to be losing my mind, he told himself. He stomped out his cigarette, dug out a fresh one, and lit up.

Then he looked at the mop again. The mop head's grey yarn looked stiff with the crust, a mass of sticking scabs waiting to be picked off. The vegan shuddered and stepped closer, looking down at the thing. An acrid odor hit him, weaker than that emanating from the pile of ghouls, but unsettling all the same. He took a step back, considering the mop, and took a hard pull on his cigarette. Then he followed the crusty trail back to the pile in the center of the parking lot.

So I won't be in the Wegmans by myself, he thought. And why should I be? What had I been expecting anyway? That I would come here to hide and be the only person to have that idea?

Still, it wasn't ideal. People always made things so complicated. People and their stupid ways. If only Rainee were still here, the vegan reflected. Rainee was good people, as the saying went, and of course, as often happened to good people, Rainee had fallen prey to the unknown ghoulish agenda, had become a part of it.

The vegan took another hard pull and told himself to stop it. Then he made himself peer into the ghoul pile's depths. The moon was becoming more visible now in the dimming light, and it began to play off the ghoul parts, glinting off them, as if whispering its ancient, evil orders...commanding the parts to rise and—

Looking at the pile was an exercise in fear, the vegan knew, but he thought that if he looked at it long enough, the fear would melt away. The ghouls could become ordinary if he only looked long enough...they were there for a reason, part of God's plan, part of—

He gulped and shrank back from the mangle of dead ghouls and ghoul pieces. He turned and limped hurriedly to the Wegmans entrance. His heart sank as soon as he looked up, and he fumbled a carton of cigarettes, letting it slip out from under his arm. The familiar doors of the Wegmans slid open, but beyond them, the shutter was closed.

All of a sudden, as if the sight of the shutter had enhanced his hearing, the vegan began to hear dragging noises in the semi-darkness.

Were they here? Were they surrounding him at this very moment? Panic began to gnaw at the vegan, because he knew that he didn't have much strength left, regardless of how many more cigarettes he smoked. He needed rest and animal-free nourishment.

This was supposed to be my respite, he thought with increasing anxiety, this was supposed to be the end of today's journey.

Then he remembered the mashed ghouls in the parking lot and cursed himself for being so dim-witted. He realized it was probably the same people that had battled the ghouls in the parking lot who were now inside the Wegmans. Maybe he could join them, maybe they would be welcoming.

So long as they didn't brandish tire irons at him, he didn't care what they were like, and in his current state, a tire iron didn't seem strong enough a disincentive to keep him out in the haunted night.

The vegan reluctantly released the carton of cigarettes still clutched under his arm, setting it on the ground next to the one he had fumbled. He approached the shutter and reached out, about to shake the shutter and holler in to whoever might be inside.

He froze, his hands inches from the shutter.

Through the openings in the shutter, the vegan caught a glimpse of movement. He peered in, and saw that someone was coming straight toward the shuttered entrance, holding a wrapped bundle. By the look of the man with the bundle, the vegan knew at once that he was not a vegan, or even a vegetarian. This was a carnivorous man if the vegan had ever seen one.

What the vegan saw next brought on a ripple of terror that made him into an even more rigid statue of fright. The carnivorous man had not one, but two tire irons strapped to his belt, and he was getting closer. It would only be a matter of seconds before the carnivorous man was there, looking the vegan up and down, sneering, taking a tire iron in each hand, and...

Stop it, the vegan told himself, carnivorous though this man may be, it doesn't necessarily mean that he uses his tire irons for evil.

The vegan regained the use of his muscles and crept sideways, scuttling away from the shutter. He wondered if the carnivorous man had noticed the sliding doors open, but it seemed that the carnivorous man, being preoccupied with his human-shaped bundle, had not.

Human-shaped? Then it hit the vegan like a pile of hard, unripe avocados. The bundle was human-shaped! The carnivorous man with the tire irons was a killer, and probably a close friend of the tire iron brandisher that the vegan had met earlier that day.

Aghast and disconsolate at the discovery, the vegan crept toward a far outer corner of the Wegmans, stole behind a large tree, and prepared for the worst.

His forgotten cartons of Luckies sat in front of the Wegmans entrance, as if asking to be let in.

Chapter 97

Holding Evan's wrapped body in his outstretched arms, Sven walked solemnly to the shuttered entrance. At one of the checkout aisles on the way, he gently placed the dead boy into a shopping cart. Sven pushed the shopping cart to the entrance, and began taking apart the make-shift barricade now set up before it.

It was painful work because of his injury, so the disassembly of the barricade was punctuated by bolts of searing pain that shot up from his chest and down from his neck.

Every few moments, Sven glanced at Ivan, who was sitting a safe distance away from the clattering shopping carts, watching. The cat had insisted on coming along, and Sven wasn't going to stop him. Ivan was turning out to the best of them at this morbid game, dropping useful hints and warnings based on information that it seemed only cats could glean.

Now, with the path to the shutter clear, Sven lifted it and pushed the shopping cart out.

Stepping into the twilight, he at once began to have second thoughts. Putting the body into the freezer was a better idea as far as practicality went—as far as survival went—but it didn't seem right. It seemed the kind of thing that Milt might do.

With one hand gripping the cart, Sven turned and began to lower the shutter. Ivan slunk out through the diminishing crack and stole off a little ways, until he found a spot that he seemed to like.

Then the cat looked at Sven, his green eyes glowing in the dusk. Sven pulled the rattling shutter down all the way, then he turned back to the cart, and, with a heavy, apprehensive heart, gave it a push.

The cart snagged unexpectedly, and Sven walked into the cart's handle.

Ivan meowed as Sven winced in pain.

"You saw that coming didn't you?"

Ivan meowed, probably in agreement.

Sven walked around the caught cart, resolving to pull it, figuring that one of the cumbersome wheels had turned sideways or gotten caught in a sidewalk divot. When he got to the cart's front, he was startled to discover that both of his theories had been incorrect.

The front wheels of the shopping cart had driven over an open carton of cigarettes, and had caught inside the carton's cardboard flaps. Next to the open carton lay a closed carton.

Sven whirled around at once, realizing after he did it that whoever had left the cigarette cartons probably hadn't done it from inside the Wegmans.

Was there someone on the roof? Was someone spying on all of them from outside? Had the zombies taken up smoking?

Sven freed the shopping cart's front wheels and pushed it gently down the ramp from the sidewalk to the pavement of the parking lot.

It was getting far too dark for comfort. He didn't want to leave Evan's body sitting so unceremoniously in the parking lot, but now Sven had to go back inside to warn the others. They had company, and that meant they were all in danger. Unless...unless Sven could spot the cigarette bringer now, outside, and nip the problem in the bud.

Sven scanned the parking lot before him.

It was quiet save for the intermittent scratching of the zombies trapped in their cars. The scratching had grown weaker as the day wore on. Sven hoped that was a good sign, maybe this whole disaster was winding—

He saw a faint glow at the far end of the parking lot, off in the trees behind where he had met Brian and Milt. There was someone there.

A thought dawned on Sven as he began to push the shopping cart nonchalantly in the direction of the glow. Then he stopped, screeching the cart to a halt. He was suddenly certain of what was going on.

It was a trick. The glow was a distraction to get him away from the entrance, so that whoever was trying to get in could get past Sven. It was a group of marauders, come to kill them and take over the supermarket. Sven was sure of it. His mind kept flashing on a zombie movie where a gang of raiders on motorcycles broke into a mall to dish out havoc on the humans hiding there. Their purpose was anarchy, destruction, rape, murder.

All of that was happening now, already, this early into the zombie outbreak.

People are crap, Sven thought, knowing it to be true.

He shifted his grip from the cart's handle to the shovel, but remained careful not to make any sudden moves. He turned around slowly, surveying all that he could in the moonlight. There was no sign of the rest of the marauder pack.

Sven looked down at Ivan. "What do you think?"

The cat was silent.

Now Sven wasn't sure what to do. If he approached the glow, he would put enough distance between himself and the entrance to let someone inside. Then again, Jane and Brian were in there, and they weren't exactly unarmed. Maybe the irregular glow was just a firefly, or a group of them. Sven kept the corner of his eye fixed on the glow, trying to be subtle about his vigilance.

It was time for a decision. Creeping around in the darkness in a world now ravaged by zombies was not something to belabor.

Sven decided.

He would neutralize the threat at once, return to the entrance to secure it, and proceed from there.

With one hand gripping the shovel and the other gripping the shopping cart, Sven pushed the cart slowly toward the glow, glancing back every few paces at the Wegmans entrance.

When he was close to the far end of the parking lot, within twenty feet of the glow that he now made out to be moving and flitting about—just like a firefly might—Sven let go of the cart.

He held on to the shovel, scraping it off the top of the cart. Sven walked toward the glow, no longer trying to be subtle about it. The glowing thing pitched suddenly, and Sven saw the outline of a man, then Sven was running toward him, intent on one thing only—killing the intruder.

Sven leapt over the curb into the wooded area where the glow was. The shovel was down to his side, ready to be swung. The blow was going to be lethal, he was set on that.

Then he saw the man clearly, trying to crawl backward, trying to get away. He looked like a lookout, like a diversion. The man was small, frail, and haggard, and he was exactly what the marauders would use to deflect Sven's attention from the break-in. The man was too small to do any damage on the offensive.

Sven wasn't going to let him get away.

Sven swung the shovel, aiming at the lower part of the man's head, at the jaw area.

He swung with all of his strength.

The impact of the shovel blow jarred Sven as it traveled back up the haft of the shovel, dissipating in his arms and upper back.

The glow had been extinguished.

Chapter 98

The vegan's body lay in the dirt, motionless. The cigarette he had been smoking—the cigarette that had given him away—now lay snuffed out and bitten through next to his leg.

The carnivorous man must have realized then that he had struck only the tree behind which the vegan had been hiding, because the carnivorous man raised the haft of the shovel upward, its point over the vegan's heart.

The vegan reacted, rolling sideways just as the point of the shovel ripped into the earth where he'd been lying less than a second before. He scrambled into a backward crawl toward the parking lot, scraping his hands against the rocks and twigs in the dirt.

The carnivorous man wheeled, face flushed, lifted his shovel once more, and began to pursue the vegan.

"Stop!" the vegan's hoarse voice cut through the air. "Stop. I come in peace."

I come in peace? That was a weird thing to say, the vegan knew, but he couldn't think of anything else. "I come in peace."

The carnivorous man slowed in his pursuit, seeming to consider the statement.

The vegan took this opportunity and got to his feet, still moving backward. He stepped down into the moonlit parking lot, and the carnivorous man followed.

By the light of the moon, the vegan now saw that his pursuer was not armed with tire irons, but with long, ancient-looking knives. For a reason that the vegan couldn't place, this made him feel better about the man that had just tried to decapitate him with a shovel.

The vegan shrugged. "I'm just looking for a place to hide from those things—from the ghouls."

The carnivorous man came closer, looking past the vegan toward the Wegmans. Then he lowered the shovel to his side.

The carnivorous man looked the vegan up and down. "From the what?"

"The ghouls, you know, the..."

The vegan pointed to the center of the parking lot. "From those things."

"Oh," the carnivorous man said, "right."

"Wh—what are you doing out here in the middle of the night...with a shovel? If I may ask, of course."

The carnivorous man seemed to hesitate a moment. "I was about to bury someone...a boy. There was an accident." The carnivorous man hesitated again. "And then I saw you...and I thought you were part of a pack of looters...but I don't see any looters now. Maybe I..."

"It's just me. And it's understandable. I should've just knocked, but I got spooked when I saw you coming, and then of course I forgot to put out my cigarette."

"And you forgot your cigarettes on the stoop." The carnivorous man pointed to the Wegmans entrance.

"Oh, yeah, right." The vegan extended his hand. "I'm Randy—not a ghoul."

The carnivorous man looked at the hand, then shook it. "Sven. Sorry about trying to kill you, I was sure..."

"Hey, no worries. But can we get inside? I've been walking all day, and I was attacked...earlier I mean, I'm a bit injured, and I'm starved about to death."

"You can go inside if you want, but be careful, there are some jumpy people with guns in there—big guns."

"You won't come in with me?"

"I need to do something first."

"I'll wait, if you don't mind. I'd rather be introduced than surprise anyone else this evening."

"Suit yourself." Sven paused. "Oh, here." He reached into his pocket and threw something at the vegan.

The vegan caught the plastic-wrapped bar and looked at it—a protein bar. "Thanks, but I'm a vegan...I don't eat animal products. I'll wait until we're inside and find something."

Sven gave the vegan an odd look. "You don't...even today?"

"Even today."

Sven shrugged and walked to the shopping cart. He pushed the cart the rest of the way to the edge of the parking lot, close to where the vegan had been hiding. He removed the blanketed bundle and set it down at the edge of the wooded area, in the dirt. Then Sven took a few large strides into the woods and began to dig.

The vegan stood and watched, feeling light-headed. He glanced back at the Wegmans entrance a few times as Sven dug, wondering if he should take his chances with the big guns inside. The vegan's stomach felt all dried up, and his strength was completely sapped, but he decided he didn't want to try his luck with any "big guns," whatever that meant.

He offered to help, but Sven refused, so the vegan got out of the way. He wondered if Sven felt guilty about the dead person, if Sven had somehow caused the death and was now forcing himself to do a kind of self-prescribed penance. The vegan could tell that Sven was injured from the way his body moved and the way he gritted his teeth with each shovelful, wincing as he strained to lift the dirt out of the deepening hole.

The vegan wanted to ask about the cat that was sitting and watching the scene unfold, its bright eyes shining like tiny green lanterns in the moonlight. He decided that now wasn't the time. Cat-related questions could probably wait until after the burial, until after they were all safely inside.

When Sven was done, he came over to the bundled body and picked it up, setting it down gently in the hole. Then he began to shovel dirt into the shallow grave.

As the vegan walked up into the wooded area, he thought he saw something strange in the cat's eyes, a sort of narrowing and shifting.

Chapter 99

Ivan sniffed at the evening air, still wet from the day's downpour. He knew that the big rain had come and gone. He knew that the boy was gone now too, along with the rot that had taken over the boy's body. Ivan watched Sven now, putting the dead boy into the ground and making noises at the new man. The new man smelled like grass and fire and burning. Ivan liked that. Ivan sniffed at the air again, and he picked up a scent that had grown all too familiar that day. It wasn't grass or fire or burning, and it was coming closer.

Chapter 100

"May I say a prayer?" Randy asked, walking over to stand next to Sven over the grave.

"You religious?" Sven looked at Randy, remembering how close he'd come to killing a man who now seemed completely innocent.

"Yeah, some."

"You think it'll help?"

"Can't hurt."

"Alright."

Sven looked past Randy as he said the prayer, checking that the Wegmans entrance was still clear. It was. Evan's burial was almost done, and soon they would both be inside the relative safety of the shuttered supermarket.

"Look out!"

Sven spun, certain that the exclamation wasn't part of Randy's prayer.

In the dark woods, like woken monsters stumbling groggily toward their prey, the zombies were approaching. They were coming through the patches of trees, bumping into trunks and limbs, completely non-reactive to the branches that stuck them in the face and tore at their clothes.

One was a few feet away, reaching for Sven, and Randy ran away from the zombie, toward the parking lot.

Stepping backward and getting his bearings, Sven gaped at Randy as he began to fumble with a book of matches and pack of cigarettes, frantically trying to light up as the zombies drew closer. He succeeded, jammed the cigarette into his mouth, and resumed moving backward, out of the trees.

"Come on," Randy said through his cigarette, "we have to get inside."

Sven tightened his grip on the shovel, feeling the rough haft against his callused fingers and palms. Then he lunged forward, stabbing the point of the shovel into the reaching zombie's throat. The zombie's head slumped sideways on the torn, broken neck, and it fell into the shallow grave, on top of Evan's blanketed body.

There were four more closing in now, and Sven advanced to cut them off before they could stumble into the grave on top of their dead friend. He sliced with the shovel twice, and finding it an ineffective substitute for stabbing, resumed stabbing. He stabbed two of the four zombies in the face, always aiming for the area around the eyes.

Their skulls gave way under the blows, and they fell like kitchen appliances disconnected from an outlet. Sven missed the next stab, and settled for pushing the third zombie backward by sticking the point of the shovel into its chest. The fourth zombie he hit with the butt of the shovel's haft, awkwardly missing his target and caressing its neck more than striking it a blow.

As the two zombies that Sven had failed to kill stumbled backward, he had a moment to recover. He backed away, careful not to fall into the shallow grave, and saw for the first time just how many of the things were shambling out of the darkness—too many to count. This was not a battle Sven could wage by himself. It was time to run.

Sven positioned the shovel horizontally and threw it angrily at the two zombies. Their approaching shamble slowed on the shovel's impact, but they made no move to grab for it or pick it up. It hit them and fell to the ground.

With the bit of time the flinging of the shovel bought him, Sven tossed the surprisingly light body of the zombie out of Evan's grave, getting the idea too late that he should have thrown the body at the two zombies now reaching for him. Knowing that he was out of time, Sven hastily pushed the uncovered dirt into the open grave with his cross-trainers. It was a shoddy, rushed job, and he saw blanket peeking out from the moist earth, but there was no time to give Evan a more proper burial. It would have to do.

"Let's go," Randy cried, "there's too many now. Come on Sven."

Sven turned and ran into the parking lot. Randy was halfway to the Wegmans, beckoning to Sven and leading the way, a bright, moonlit fear in his eyes.

Then Sven froze, chilled to the bone.

Where's Ivan?

Sven whirled, looking in all directions, scanning the parking lot and wooded area from which he'd just emerged with a frenzied dread.

"Ivan!"

Nothing.

"We have to get inside," Randy said, but Sven barely heard him. He didn't care about getting back inside if it meant leaving Ivan with the zombies.

"You go in," Sven said without looking at Randy. He was already running back toward the woods.

Chapter 101

The vegan watched in disbelief as the carnivorous man—Sven—ran back toward the woods, toward the throng of approaching ghouls whose arms were so gnarled that they were barely distinguishable from the branches in the darkness.

Where could the damn cat have gone? Of course the vegan loved animals, would do almost anything to save them, and he wasn't sure if he even drew the line at risking his own life generally, but he sure did draw the line at risking his own life in the face of ghouls. He was sure that was not unreasonable, and still in line with his vegan beliefs.

But what was he supposed to do now? He wasn't going to leave Sven alone...was he?

With trepidation, the vegan took a few steps toward the wooded area through which the ghouls were now starting to seep. Sven was already gone into it, no longer visible, his movements no longer audible.

The ghouls were in the parking lot now, their reaching arms and seemingly sightless glares trained invariably on the vegan. Their smell was there, strange and unnerving in its inexpressibility.

Backing away, the vegan took a trembling drag on his cigarette and cursed the carnivorous man, though he had to respect him more for going back for the cat. Then the vegan limped quickly through the tightening huddle of ghouls, and dashed painfully after Sven.

Just as the vegan got to the curb, prodding himself onward through a reluctance that he knew to be completely justifiable, he caught sight of the cat, stretched out in mid-flight. Then it crashed into his stomach, knocking him backward and clawing its way up over his chest and face.

When it was off him, but before the vegan even had a chance to pick himself up, a voice said, "What are you taking a nap or something?" and then the vegan found himself lifted up high into the air. Sven—it had to be Sven, the vegan thought—hefted the vegan up onto his shoulder and began to run toward the Wegmans.

The vegan almost dropped his cigarette during the ascent, catching it between his pinky and ring finger, then jamming it forcefully into his mouth. The journey was bouncy and uncomfortable, and from the vegan's position, draped over Sven's shoulder, he could make out a great many staggering feet—far too many—all in the parking lot now. Sven was dodging and dashing around them, doing an expert job of staying away from the outstretched arms.

Then there was an abrupt stop and the vegan felt himself being flung downward. He winced as he tried to land on his good leg. Sven caught him as he stumbled, then knelt down and heaved the shutter up with a roar that didn't work to hide the physical pain behind it. The vegan could tell that the carnivorous man was hurt and exhausted, but those were issues to be dealt with later, in safety.

The cat darted inside as soon as there was enough clearance under the rising shutter. Then the vegan did the same, helping the carnivorous man brace the shutter so that he too could enter.

From inside the Wegmans, in safety, they pushed the shutter down together.

Panting, Sven slumped against the rattling shutter, and the vegan shifted his gaze from Sven to the dim parking lot, looking at it through the shutter's openings. The advancing shapes were unmistakable. The ghouls were coming, relentless in their mysterious need to pursue and capture their prey.

The vegan felt a particularly painful stab of hunger, even as he watched the approaching hell-spawn. "Is it okay if you introduce me now...so that I'm not shot by your friends? I really need to eat something."

Sven nodded, pushed himself off the shutter, and began to lead the way into the supermarket.

As they turned down the row of checkout aisles, the vegan heard the shutter rattle—the first ghouls touching down. He and Sven both turned to look.

The shutter swayed under the pressure, screeching as the joints slid and bent. Without another word, they turned back to the interior of the supermarket.

Sven led the vegan down into the row of checkout aisles and to the right, into a small clearing next to and partially within the Wegmans section of books and magazines. There were sleeping bags and blankets arranged in the clearing. Large, open bags of potato chips, jugs of water, banana peels, and stacks of granola bars were all strewn about the sleeping bags and blankets.

A man and a girl were in the clearing, and both got to their feet when the vegan arrived, shooting alarmed, searching glances at Sven.

When the girl drew out a mean-looking knife with a jagged blade, the vegan stepped backward, knocking into a revolving DVD rack and almost upending it.

Sven put his hands up in a calming gesture. "It's alright. He's looking for a safe place, like we are...he uhh...he helped me with the burial."

The man and the knife-wielding girl blinked at the vegan, but remained otherwise motionless.

The vegan was starting to feel even more uncomfortable, and now he was coming to the end of his lit cigarette. He knew that he'd have to light a new one soon, but he didn't want to make any sudden movements in the showdown in which he now found himself. So he kept the cigarette in his mouth, now smoked down to the beginning of the filter.

Then he had an idea to defuse the situation. "I'm Randy," he said through his cigarette. He gave a wave, too. "I'm a vegan—don't eat meat...so won't be trying to eat any people, that's for sure." As soon as the words left his mouth, it dawned on him just how uncouth they were. It wasn't a day for jokes.

The girl scowled, but put her knife away. The man next to her, seeing that she had put her weapon away, nodded and said, "I'm Brian, looks like we're all stuck here together. Let's make the best of it."

The girl still stood there, scowling and silent.

"That's Lorie," Sven said. "We've all had a rough day."

The vegan nodded, took his cigarette out of his mouth, and stubbed it out on the outside of his box of matches—a questionable activity, he knew. Then he lit up a fresh cigarette, feeling relieved as he gave it its first few puffs.

Sven pointed at something on the ground next to Brian. "Anything on your iPhone? News? Anything?"

Brian shook his head. "It's the strangest thing, nothing works, like the internet is dead. Still can't place calls either. How can the internet be down unless something's interfering with the signal?"

Sven looked perplexed. "Why would something be interfering with the signal?"

Then Lorie spoke up for the first time since the vegan walked in. "Because they don't want us communicating with anyone, putting up YouTube videos of the infection, freaking out the whole world."

That didn't sit right with the vegan. "But the whole world might be like this, full of ghouls, then who would they be hiding it—"

"Ghouls?" Lorie exclaimed. "They're not ghouls, they're zombies. Sven, tell him."

Sven shrugged. "Whatever they are, we don't have enough information, about anything. And where's the government to help us?" Sven turned to the vegan. "Randy, it's not the whole world. I got a call from my mom this morning—she got through to me somehow—and she said it was just Virginia that's affected. If it's just Virginia, how else can you explain the internet being out except that they don't want us communicating with people outside Virginia? I don't know a lot about the internet, but I don't think it can go out in one day, just like that."

The vegan wasn't sure how to process this new information. "Just Virginia? That doesn't sound like the apocalypse at all. That sounds like..." He wasn't sure what it sounded like. "How can it be just Virginia?"

Everyone shrugged.

Lorie drew her knife, a ferocity suddenly in her eyes. "What's that noise?"

Sven looked at the vegan. The vegan looked back, inhaling deeply of the cigarette. Before either of them could answer, a desperate voice called out from behind the vegan. "They're outside!"

The vegan turned, and he saw a tall woman who was obviously pretty underneath her current distressed appearance. She had two guns slung over her shoulders, one of which was enormous. The vegan recognized that it was a revolver, but he had never seen one so big before.

Maybe in the movies, he thought, in Clint Eastwood's holster.

Then the woman turned to the vegan. "Who's this?"

"A friend," Sven said, "he helped me bury Evan." The vegan was grateful for that. Apparently the carnivorous man was sharp, having figured out that the fastest way to disarm his group to the newcomer's presence was to involve him as an assistant in the burial. The vegan guessed that whoever it was he had said a prayer for...had been special to all of them, a victim of the localized apocalypse, or whatever it was.

"Okay," the woman said. "What do we do about them? And where the hell did they come from?"

Lorie began to walk toward the Wegmans entrance where the shutter was rattling harder now, loud enough for all of them to hear. They all followed her, and the vegan tagged along, feeling hungrier than ever as he lit up his next cigarette. He stayed behind the group and watched each of them tiptoe toward the rattling shutter, stare through it for a moment, then retreat, face aghast.

"Where did they come from?" the woman asked again, when everyone had had their chance to take in the terror. She looked directly at the vegan with her large, piercing eyes.

The vegan put up his hands defensively. "I didn't bring them...at least I don't think I did. They came out of the woods. I came in from the road, from the other side. I was walking up 29 all day. The ones I passed along the way, they reacted to me, but I lost sight of them as I got farther. I didn't see any keep up with me."

"It's not his fault," Sven said. "They came when we were burying Evan, out of the woods, out of nowhere, like he said."

"They're all clumping up against the entrance," the woman said. "What if they're surrounding the place?"

The vegan didn't think so. He peered outside and saw that the mass of ghouls was getting larger, clinging to the outside of the shutter. He could see more coming out of the woods, staggering toward the throng now pressing to gain entry. "They're all just here in this spot, and new ones are coming, but only in this direction, like they can hear us, or sense us. It almost looks coordinated."

"They smell us," Lorie said, with a conviction that chilled the vegan. "Just how we can smell them. They track us and hunt us down and kill us. They don't need anyone to lead them. They can find their own way." She looked up at the vegan with wide, vacant eyes, then she went off down the row of checkout aisles, toward the makeshift camp.

"I think this'll keep them out," Sven said, pointing to the shutter as he stepped away from the entrance.

The woman with the big gun looked unconvinced. "Help me put these back again." She walked toward a long row of shopping carts, and Sven joined her. Together, they pushed several rows of shopping carts up against the back of the shutter. The vegan wasn't sure how much help that would be if the ghouls broke through, but he figured it couldn't hurt.

Then the vegan couldn't take the feeling in his stomach anymore. "Sven, if it's alright, I need to eat something. I'll just grab something off the shelf and come back, okay?"

"Yeah, of course, sorry I forgot all about that."

Grateful to get away from entrance and to finally look for some food, the vegan limped hurriedly toward the interior of the store. He knew exactly where the organic section was—up through the produce section in front of him, and then to the left.

The vegan noted the state of the avocados as he passed by them—of a lower quality than the ones he delivered, but passable. He made a mental note to begin working on them soon. Maybe he could even introduce the wondrous fruit to his new friends, if they weren't familiar with it already.

They were a good bunch of people, he decided, very civil, considering the circumstances. He hadn't caught the woman's name, but there would be time for that later.

Walking through the produce section, something on the floor caught the vegan's eye. There were dry, reddish smears on the tiles—they looked too much like dried blood to be anything else. The vegan stopped, but didn't come any closer to the dried blood. He took a long drag on his cigarette, bent over, and took another look, from the angle of the floor. There, kicked between two of the movable displays, was a bloody towel, apparently forgotten.

The vegan straightened, deciding to let it go—at least until after he ate.

He walked into the organic section, feeling lighter as he entered that familiar part of the store. He turned in at the correct aisle and made a straight course for the Newman's Own Peanut Butter Cups in Dark Chocolate that he'd been fantasizing about all day. He picked up one of the small treats, savoring the crinkle of the plastic in his hands.

The vegan tore it open, took his cigarette out of his mouth, and began to scarf down the small peanut butter cups. He was overeager at first, and one of the peanut butter cups made straight for his esophagus, the vegan having forgotten to apply the chewing step to that one. Once the peanut butter cup had completed its painful journey into the vegan's stomach, he made himself slow down as he ate. After several packages of the peanut butter cups, the vegan let out a satisfied sigh and put his cigarette back into his mouth. Apocalypse or no, the vegan's stomach now told him that things were going to be alright.

Relishing the feeling of a warm, full stomach, the vegan half-sauntered, half-limped in and around the organic section's small set of aisles until he found something else he wanted to eat. It was in the freezer, and though he was familiar with the frozen food's brand, he had never tried this particular product before.

It must be new, the vegan thought, as he removed the package from the freezer. He turned it over and read the nutrition facts—no animal products, therefore suitable.

Carrying his prize, the vegan went back to the makeshift camp and sat down in a corner. He positioned himself so that he was close enough to be social, but far enough so that he was at an unthreatening distance. There the vegan unwrapped his frozen food item and began to eat.

Chapter 102

Ivan liked to watch the new man from the moment the new man arrived. The new man smelled like grass and fire and burning. Ivan didn't know why, but he liked the new man. The new man was good, and Ivan wanted the new man to stay. The new man had a shiny thing that he played with sometimes, and Ivan was curious about it. Now the new man had gotten something to eat. He was unwrapping it and—Ivan froze, terror and confusion riveting his body into place. Ivan steeled himself, approached the new man without getting too close, and hissed as powerfully as he could. The new man stopped what he was doing and looked down, made some noises, and then went back to unwrapping the food. Ivan hissed again, and again, and again, until his cat body hurt from it, but it was no use. The new man didn't understand. Like the other people, the new man didn't understand. Ivan brushed up against the new man's legs, for the first and last time. Then Ivan ran away.

Chapter 103

Jane came in off her watch sometime around 2 A.M.—at least according to the big Wegmans clock. Sven remembered where he'd stuck his watch, and though he wasn't sure why he'd stashed it, he didn't want to look at it right now. Just the thought of it made his throat lock up.

Jane crouched next to Brian and whispered something to him, then Brian winked out the light on his iPhone, got up, picked up his baseball bat, and walked away.

Maybe now, Sven thought, now that Jane's back, I'll be able to sleep a little.

Jane lay down on top of her sleeping bag without addressing Sven. That was alright, he decided, just her being there made the day a little less terrible.

Sven reflected on how Randy had left to find food, then had come back with some strange frozen food item that was completely unrecognizable. Sven asked him about it, and Randy cheerfully explained what it was, but it still made no sense to Sven.

He wasn't in the habit of eating such things—he didn't believe in them—and given his current state, it didn't matter either way. Sven wasn't going to try the bite that Randy offered him. Sven wasn't going to try a bite of anything. He could barely keep down the water he was drinking. Food was not an option.

Sven's mind was still resisting the events of the day. He didn't believe what was happening, what he was seeing and feeling. It didn't make any sense. And why wasn't anyone there to help? Why were they suddenly cut off from the rest of the world?

And Ivan! How Ivan had scared Sven earlier that evening. That wasn't like him, running off into the night. What was he doing in the woods with the zombies anyway? Sven looked over at Ivan, who had settled down on his paws in the middle of his arrangement of new bowls, each filled with food. Sven had picked out four of the meanest, metal cat bowls that the Wegmans had. Ivan was a tough cat, after all, and his bowl—or, as in this case, bowls—should show it.

Into the bowls Sven put tuna, sardines, sockeye salmon, and shrimp. Ivan deserved no less than a feast for getting through the day, and why not spoil him now? How much time did they have left at this rate?

Sven looked at Ivan, who lay there with his eyes half-open, and remembered the warning they had all given Randy. Randy had gotten up after finishing his frozen food item, suddenly announced that he needed matches, and then it must have crossed Jane's mind that Randy didn't yet know about Milt. She was right. Sven and Jane told Randy the barest of details, with Lorie chiming in hatefully every now and then. Randy's expression grew more concerned as he listened, but the lecture hadn't stopped him from walking off—probably in search of more of his strange food in addition to the matches.

Randy hadn't come back, but Sven wasn't worried about him, and felt no need to go searching for him. The man was a survivor. He had easily proven that today, having hobbled miles up 29 to safety, surviving hungry zombies, and according to the story he told, also surviving an encounter with an overweight, leather-clad, tire iron aficionado.

Sven was confident that after having come all this way, Randy would be just fine.

Chapter 104

Milt was tromping up and down the candy aisle, stewing with rage. He couldn't believe how foolish the others were in their sentimentality, in their unwillingness to see that he had saved them from the zombie boy—an inside threat that could have destroyed the safety of the Wegmans sanctuary they had taken for their haven.

He had eavesdropped after he left the produce section, hiding behind a large macaroon display to listen. He was appalled by the things they had all said about him...after all of the good he had done for them.

I saved them, Milt thought, and they repay me by speaking ill of me behind my back. They want me out of here, to displace me from the very sanctuary I fought to secure. I shall not allow such a travesty to pass into being. I most certainly shall not.

And he was almost as incredulous of their having taken issue with his treatment of the cleanup duties. So he hadn't joined in the removal of the bodies, what of it? Didn't they realize that he was above such menial tasks?

It is irrelevant, Milt decided, they can be stupid all they want. I shall not be stupid. I am not going to be caught unprepared, enslaved by rudimentary human emotions, and I shall continue to take the initiative when the situation calls for it. What unintelligent saps they all are, with no appreciation for the fine art of survival...and it is a fine art.

Now that the cretins had taken Milt's sword away, creativity could become a necessity.

Milt gulped down the rest of the contents of the Coca-Cola bottle he held trembling in his hand. He set the liter bottle down and eagerly approached the shelf of candy miniatures, in the center of the aisle.

I shall feed my brain, he told himself, settle down a tad, and then plot my next move.

He tore open a package of Snickers miniature candies, and began popping the candies into his mouth with the ease of an expert candy popper. As he chomped, dribbling chocolate and nougat down his chin, he knew that he and the others were at an impasse, and that the only solution was to—

Milt found himself the sudden victim of a very odd hallucination: a very skinny man limped past the candy aisle, smoking a cigarette and carrying two cartons of cigarettes under his arm.

Milt rubbed his eyes with chocolate-smeared hands, making his eyelids sticky. Working through the sticky chocolate and nougat now on his face, he reopened his eyes and stared. The hallucination returned, backtracking to the mouth of the aisle and turning in toward Milt.

The slender apparition began to travel toward Milt. "Hi," it said in a cheerful voice as it waved its cigarette in Milt's direction. "You must be Milt."

The apparition began limping faster now, and Milt dropped all the treats he was holding.

He recoiled, taking two laborious steps backward. "Stay back! My time on this plane is not yet finished!"

Then Milt grabbed a bag of miniature 3 Musketeers candy, tore it open, and began throwing the small candies at the hobbling ghost.

The ghost stopped and put up his cigarette hand for cover, still holding tightly to the cartons under his arm. "What?"

Milt flung another handful of small candies. "Do not play coy with me. I recognize Death when I see him, or rather, it."

"I'm not Death," the ghost said, almost believably. "I just got here. I've been carrying on up 29 all day, looking for a place to hide..." the ghost's voice dropped to a whisper, "from them."

Milt wasn't buying it. "Then how did you gain entrance to this place?"

The ghost hesitated, and began to hobble nearer.

Milt flung the remainder of the 3 Musketeers candies. "Stay back I say!"

"Alright, alright. Cool your jets. Sven let me in. He was burying...well...he was burying a dead person. That's when I got here more or less."

"More or less? Likely story."

The ghost shrugged. "Likely or not, it's the truth. I'm Randy."

The ghost offered his hand to Milt. Milt looked at it with suspicion, and did not shake it.

He waited for the ghost to lower his hand, then he said, "I gather they have told you a plethora of fabrications as to my nature."

"What?"

The ghost broke into a violent spasm of coughing, and Milt backed away, noticing for the first time the incredible pallor of this supposed man.

The pallor of him, though fitting for a specter, could mean only one thing in the ongoing zombie outbreak—this man who called himself Randy was turning.

"I see that you are ill," Milt said. "Perhaps you should get some rest."

"I'm exhausted. Been walking all day, got beat up, starved half to death on the way over here. You're right. I was just on my way to find some blankets and set up. I think I'm gonna set up away from the others. I'm gonna be smoking for a while—probably all night—and I don't like to smoke on kids, and I guess on non-smokers in general. I imagine I'll find the aisle with matches and lighters and such and spread out there—I'm running low." Randy put his cigarette in his mouth, fished a box of matches out of his pocket and shook it at Milt. "Just one left," he said through his cigarette. Then Randy shrugged, said, "Good meeting you," and walked out of the aisle.

Milt grabbed a fresh bag of miniature Snickers off the shelf and tore it open. He couldn't believe that Sven and his bunch had done it again. What were they trying to do?!

He sat down, propping himself up on some bags of candy that burst under his weight. He began to pop miniature Snickers bars into his mouth, gobbling them as soon as they touched down on his tongue. He knew he would need the energy very soon.

Chapter 105

Hours later, when the supermarket had gone completely quiet save for Brian's ludicrous watchman act, Milt clambered to his feet. His training as a World of Warcraft professional had taught him incredible patience and endurance. He was practiced in staying up for inhuman lengths of time, waiting and plotting, especially if he had a steady supply of Snickers and Coca-Cola, and the supply at the Wegmans was practically inexhaustible.

Simultaneously sucking on two miniature Snickers bar, one lodged skillfully in each of his cheeks, Milt crept to the outskirts of the candy aisle, hiding as much of his body as was possible behind a display of Butterfinger candies. There he waited for Brian to walk past on his predictable, uninspired route.

Brian came at the expected moment, humming a tune that Milt didn't recognize except to know that he disliked it at once. Milt waited a few moments, then lumbered into action.

He got out of his position from behind the Butterfinger display and exited the aisle. Milt began to trace Brian's circular path, keeping the man out of sight. This afforded Milt plenty of time, as long as Brian didn't change his route through the supermarket, and Milt doubted that Brian had the mental initiative to do anything of the sort.

Milt crept until he arrived at the right aisle. He entered the aisle, quickly found the item for which he had come, and exited the aisle again. His next stop was Randy's nest—wherever that was.

Milt surmised that Randy would be easy enough to find by the man's tobacco stench and lung-shaking cough—a cough Milt suspected now had more to do with the zombie contagion than cigarettes. It would just be a matter of avoiding Brian and the other unfortunate souls with which Milt had been forced to share the Wegmans.

After only a short creep through the supermarket, Milt found Randy, a vision of death warmed over, snoring lightly next to packed bundles of firewood and kindling.

Just the spot for a perpetual arsonist, Milt thought, how pathetically predictable.

Looking at the man's pale skin, frail limbs, and haggard appearance, Milt was certain that Randy was afflicted with the same nightmare disease that was ripping its way through Virginia. But Milt felt no pity for Randy, understanding that becoming a zombie was simply Randy's lot in life. Then Milt saw the golden cross that hung from Randy's neck, and he knew that Randy would understand. The pious always did.

Milt stood over Randy and retrieved the item he had hidden in his trench coat. He raised it with both hands, and brought it down with all of his strength, simultaneously biting down on the peanuts that remained trapped in his cheeks.

The king-size jar of pickles shattered on Randy's head, dousing the tiny, reeking man in pickle juice. The breaking of the jar had made hardly any noise, and Milt guessed that the sound had been muffled by Randy's tousled hair, onto which the glass broke.

Milt paused, listening, and when he was satisfied that no one had been alerted by the small noise, he took Randy by the legs and pulled him out of his nest, upsetting blankets, boxes of matches, cigarettes, and pieces of a sub par chocolate snack.

As he dragged the unconscious chain-smoker through the supermarket, Milt paused at regular intervals to listen, to make sure that no one was sneaking up on him. He was taking this task very seriously, refraining even from snacking so that he may be able to hear better. The last thing he wanted was another confrontation with the idiots who had taken his sword away.

After dragging Randy most of the way, Milt looked back and was hit by a feeling that was half apprehension and half revulsion. Randy's thick, matted hair, which had been soaked in pickle juice, was leaving a clearly visible trail of pickle juice and pickle matter.

Unlike a trail of bread crumbs, however, Milt wasn't sure if the repellent brine coming from the man's head would disappear when it dried. Not only that, but it might also smell horrible enough to lead Sven and his demented posse straight to Milt.

Though unsettled by this development, Milt remained unwavering in his plan. He dragged the unconscious skinny man up the stairs to the roof and closed the door that led back down into the interior of the Wegmans. He was out of breath when he got to the top of the stairs, and even more out of breath when he got to the edge of the roof. His heart was beating wildly in his chest, unused to the exertions to which it was now being subjected.

Standing on the roof, Milt remarked at how much the air had cooled, at how much better it was than it had been in the day with the harsh sun beating down. Then he looked down at the man he had dragged up with disgust. Milt knew he shouldn't be feeling this emotion, but he couldn't help it.

It wasn't a thing to be disgusted with, it was just destiny. Randy was to be a zombie, and Milt was to deal with it. That was the master plan.

As he rolled Randy to the edge of the roof, Milt couldn't believe how stupid the people downstairs were—always letting zombies into the sanctuary. What was their malfunction? Resolving to figure that out at a later point, Milt was clear on one thing—he wasn't going to go down with them.

He propped Randy up against a vent close to the edge of the roof. Then he stepped backward, savoring the execution of the first step of his plan.

Though he was fully aware of the spasmodic moaning and scraping of the zombies below, he never once looked down at them. He didn't want to see them in their current state of pitiful desperation. The zombies were to have a new plaything soon, and then Milt would look at the zombies in their delight and revelry.

He smiled and began to lumber toward the door of the stairs, enjoying his walk across the moonlit roof.

As soon as he opened the door, Sven's infernal cat burst out, hissing, clawing, and displaying exceptionally bad manners. Milt shuddered at the sight of the thing, simultaneously vibrating all of his blubbery folds. He had just the thing to get rid of the wretched feline.

Milt lumbered around in a circle, staying just out of reach of the cat's claws—the cat it seemed, wasn't really trying to attack him, but just to annoy and humiliate him—then he put his hand up to his jaw and squeezed hard.

There was a satisfying pop, and a perfectly aimed globule of pus shot from a bloated pimple on Milt's jaw, on a direct path into the damned cat's eye.

But, alas, the cat was too fast for Milt's pus blast. It ducked out of the way and ran back down the stairs, no longer hissing, but not whimpering either.

Milt rumbled a sigh as he wiped the remainder of the pus on his jaw with the back of his hand, mentally acknowledging the minor defeat at the paws of the evil feline.

Then he went back down into the interior of the Wegmans, to gather the other items he needed.

Chapter 106

Confusion.

The vegan was moving backward.

The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was a gargantuan, moonlit pudding, adorned with a pony tail and clad in a trench coat.

Then he remembered that it was Milt.

Milt was moving away very rapidly.

The skin of the vegan's face and scalp felt tight, and the vegan detected the sharp, distinct odor of pickled vegetables.

The sound of scraping and moaning.

The vegan was falling.

Understanding.

Then the ghouls had him.

How?

Why?

As he reached for his cross, the vegan's mind filled with visions of cigarettes and Newman's Own Peanut Butter Cups in Dark Chocolate.

He forgave Milt. Though the vegan didn't understand why this had been done to him, he f—

Chapter 107

Sven was doing lateral raises with buckets of paint, concentrating on the burn in his deltoids. After reaching failure on the burnout set, he got down on his back and into a sit-up position. Lars positioned himself over Sven, and tossed an extra large bag of potting soil at Sven. Sven caught it as he began his descent into the negative portion of the sit-up, then he exploded up into the positive portion of the sit-up, launching the bag of potting soil back up at Lars.

The improvised medicine ball was incredibly effective—more so than the real thing on which it was based. The shifting soil within the bag made it more challenging to handle, calling additional stabilizer muscles into action to balance the unsteady weight.

After reaching failure on the potting soil sit-ups, Sven staggered up to his feet for wind sprints down the aisle. Lars was standing there with a stopwatch, screaming at Sven and motivating him to run faster.

After the wind sprints, Sven and Lars did sled runs with the forklift tied to their backs, pulling the heavy machine around the Wegmans for laps. When Sven thought he could take no more, the workout duo switched to overcoming isometrics.

They positioned themselves next to each other at the beginning of an aisle, and pushed against its side with all of their might, grunting and cursing at the thing to move. It didn't, and that was the point.

Sven had all of his body against the broad side of the aisle. As he was pushing, he felt a jolt from the aisle itself, as if it was shaking. But that wasn't right, because the idea of overcoming isometrics was to push against immovable objects. The objects don't push back.

The jolt came again, stronger this time, and suddenly the aisle roared to life and began to push Sven backward. Sven's cross-trainers tried to find purchase, to keep the aisle immobile, but it was too massive for him to control. He called out to Lars, but Lars was gone, and Sven found himself being pushed backward, unable to get his body out from in front of the aisle. He was about to get steam-rolled.

He managed to peel his head back from the side of the aisle and look over his shoulder. Behind him was a writhing mass of undead, with a rotten Lars at their helm, all of them welcoming his approach with their gnashing, grinding teeth and clutching, grasping arms.

All Sven could do was watch and feel as the zombie horde engulfed him, clawing, biting, ripping, tear—

***

Sven's eyes opened eagerly, heavy though his eyelids were. On a different day, waking from a dream training montage that ended with a zombie horde would have made him laugh at himself, but now waking from such a dream, into a world overrun by zombies, into a world where Lars really was a zombie, was no more comforting than walking into a different room of a nightmare.

Sven felt the uncomfortable lump in his throat, unsurprised that it hadn't yet gone away. He was face down, on his stomach. The sheathes of the machetes were digging painfully into his legs, unpleasantly accentuating the steady tick of pain in his chest and neck. Sven's head hurt badly, but it didn't hurt enough to prevent him from remembering the terror of the day, and where he now was.

He turned over onto his side. "What time is it?"

Brian's voice answered. "A little before five in the morning, you have to get up, something's happened."

Sven's vision cleared and he saw that Brian was now waking Lorie and Jane.

That wasn't a good sign.

He got up, nodding in acceptance as the pain shot through his body. "What? What happened?"

Brian turned to Sven, seeming to hesitate before he spoke. "I can't find Randy, or Milt. I think they're on the roof, throwing things off...but, I thought you should all be aware of it before I go up there."

"You're right, I'll go up with you." Sven picked up the shotgun.

"We'll come too," Jane said, already up and checking her guns.

Lorie got up and tore open a fresh box of granola bars. Sven admired her ability to eat in spite of the day's events.

"There's just no end to this day, huh?" Lorie said, looking up at Sven.

"Guess not."

Sven, Jane, and Lorie followed close behind Brian and Ivan, who led them to a set of stairs.

On the way to the stairs, Sven thought he saw a trail of dry slime that was unlike the trail left behind in the removal of the dead zombies.

It was slick and shiny, devoid of crust, and Sven was sure he smelled pickles and cigarettes. Not making any sense of this, he put it out of his mind.

Brian put a finger to his lips, motioning for them to be quiet, then they all tiptoed up the steps.

At the top of the stairs was a door.

Brian waited for Sven to join him in front of the door, then he put up his fingers to count. The two men nodded at each other, and moments later, burst onto the roof.

Milt stood at the edge opposite Route 29. The way the moonlight played off Milt's trench coat filled Sven with trepidation, and it looked like the huge man was lit up from the front, as if he were blocking a spotlight. Something obviously wasn't right.

Brian called out. "Milt? What are you doing up here?"

Milt didn't respond.

Sven smelled burning. Without asking Milt or waiting for him to make whatever dramatic response he was planning, Sven pumped the Benelli SuperNova and strode diagonally to the edge of the roof, so that he was away from Milt but also in a position to get a glimpse of what was lighting Milt up.

Sven was surprised enough to see what Milt was holding, but his breath caught when he looked down.

Angry and confused, Sven turned back to Milt. "What the hell are you doing? You're gonna bring all of them down on us."

Milt finally budged, turning toward Sven. "How congenial of you to join me. I do treasure your company, you must know that." Milt furrowed his brow. "And no, I do not believe I am bringing any of them down on us. You have taken up that task, fulfilling it quite well if I may say so. I—I am having a very simple barbecue. They love that kind of activity down here in the good ol' South." Milt smiled, revealing a black smudge across his front teeth. "Would you like to partake? It is exceedingly agreeable, I assure you."

"No," Sven said, in disbelief at what he saw. He crossed to Milt, snatched the lit piece of firewood away from him, threw it down, and tried to stamp it out.

It wouldn't go out.

"It is best to throw it," Milt said. "I have soaked the end in lighter fluid, so that piece of kindling is to be thrown, unless you want to catch the whole supermarket on fire, which would be consistent with your series of actions thus far. However, I must insist that you do not light us all on fire. It seems even more unpleasant than your ongoing solicitation of zombies to join our unfortunate troupe."

Reluctantly, and not wanting to catch himself on fire, Sven picked up the burning piece of wood and threw it off the roof. It landed on top of the sea of zombies gathered outside, lighting up the clothes of several.

The uneven throng stretched out from the woods where Evan was buried, through the parking lot, and to the entrance of the Wegmans. The crowd of zombies in the immediate area before the entrance was punctuated with lit up patches, where burning pieces of firewood glimmered and caught the zombies on fire. Sven looked for evidence that the zombies were succumbing to the burning, but he saw none.

"You're attracting all of them here, there weren't this many earlier! They're gonna overpower us. And what the hell are you talking about? What zombie solicitation, what are you saying?"

Milt licked at his front teeth. "What am I talking about? I am talking about the zombie boy that you so fervently insisted on introducing into our attempt at a controlled environment, and—"

Brian interrupted. "Where's Randy? He's not up here Sven, and he's not downstairs. I looked everywhere."

Feeling a chill grip him, Sven looked down into the throng, convinced that Randy was down there.

"You have the right idea, bodybuilder man. The perpetual arsonist has left the building. I may have been too quick to judge him, however, at least in the arson aspect. I have discovered that it is quite an alluring pursuit. Of course, roasting the zombies bestows a certain additional...je ne sais quoi, but then I imagine you would not know anything about such things."

Sven ignored the portion that was incoherent ramble. "What do you mean he left? To go where?"

Then Sven noticed the ground around Milt's furry-slipper-clad feet. There were wine bottles in rows, set up like dominoes, bundles of firewood, and a dripping can of lighter fluid. All the wine bottles looked closed. What was Milt doing with the wine?

"A toast," Milt said. He picked up a bottle of wine and chucked it down into the throng. The bottle hit a zombie in the head, sending the zombie staggering backward. The bottle then bounced off another zombie's arms before hitting the ground without smashing.

Milt huffed. "An unfortunate toss. I have been successful in shattering most of the bottles so far, and frankly, I must say that I am surprised you did not come up here earlier to investigate. Did you not hear the noise, or are you so used to cavorting among bottle-breakers that the sound did not raise any concerns?" Milt went on, not waiting for an answer, "They do not sell any liquor here, as you no doubt are aware, so Molotov cocktails are out of the question, but I find that the wine gives the zombies a nice coating on their feet, and perhaps may hasten the burning from the ground up. Of course, I also find the sound of shattering glass to be comforting."

Sven was becoming exasperated. "I don't see that the burning is having any effect. Where's Randy?"

"You are quite incorrect. Several have already crumpled in the flames. It is just a matter of expanding the incineration. They are quite dry and crumbly it seems, eager to be consumed by fire...on their way to the netherworld perhaps." Milt picked up a piece of firewood and began to douse its end with lighter fluid.

"Answer my question."

"You see," Milt began, gesticulating and accidentally pouring lighter fluid on his slippers, "improvised incendiary devices are not solely the province of uneducated, mustachioed guerilla fighters and rampaging mercenaries, improvised—"

Unable to listen any more, Sven struck Milt across the face with the butt of the Benelli. "For the last time, where the hell is Randy?"

Milt recoiled, putting a hand to his face. "Very well, if you must resort to such barbaric rudeness. As I have already informed you, he has left the building. He is gone—gone to the zombie horde of which he is now a member...or perhaps he was just a late night snack, I couldn't really tell in the gloom—that was before I began to light them up, you see."

Brian stepped forward. "So Randy just walked off, into the night. That's what you're telling us?"

Milt began to respond, but Sven didn't hear him, because Sven was now enthralled by another object he had spied by Milt's feet.

"He was up here," Sven said, cutting off whatever Brian and Milt were saying to each other, "Randy was up here."

Sven pointed to the pack of cigarettes that was in danger of being crushed under Milt's stretched and apparently-resilient slippers.

"Those are his cigarettes." Sven turned to Milt. "You don't smoke, do you?"

Milt turned red. "I most certainly do not, even if I considered taking up the filthy habit, my asthma would not allow it."

"So he was up here," Brian said. "Why? You said he left."

"So he did."

Brian brandished the baseball bat. "By his own free will? What is it that you're hiding?"

"Very well, if you must know, he did require some...persuasion. He was turning into a zombie, just like the boy was. I simply helped him find his place in the zombie apocalypse, and simultaneously secured our own safety. What I do not understand is this extreme ingratitude. You are all acting as if I have wronged you in some way."

Lorie spoke up. "You stabbed him, like you stabbed Evan?"

Milt shook his head. "No, nothing like that. I simply pushed him from the roof. It is what he would have wanted, anyway—to be with his kind."

Lorie looked incredulous as her eyes filled with tears. "So you pushed him...off the roof...to the zombies, just like that."

"Well, in a manner of speaking, yes."

Milt beamed, looking proud of his deed.

Chapter 108

Overcome by rage, Sven grabbed Milt by his trench coat collar. A machete appeared at Milt's neck, the tarnished blade reflecting small spots of moonlight.

The machete drew droplets of blood that trickled part of the way down toward the haft before finding comfortable resting places on the metal.

Awestruck, Sven looked at the machete, realizing that he had drawn it reflexively, without thinking.

Then the dark feeling was there, tingling up Sven's arm and into his body, running down his spine and back up it.

Then the jungle enveloped him.

***

It was nightfall in the jungle, and the sun-kissed woman's eyes flickered at him.

The corners of her mouth curved downward with a knowing peril.

Then she disappeared behind a thick tree trunk.

Sven began to follow, but a blinding bolt of lightning ripped into the ground a few paces in front of him, and he stopped dead in his tracks.

A faint, metallic odor hung in the air, and in the distance was...the beating of drums?

Sven's voice caught in his throat as he tried to call out to the woman. He had finally taken notice of his surroundings, and he didn't know if the immobility in his throat was greater part horror or revulsion.

The trees and vines around him...they were spattered with...almost painted with...as if they themselves were...

***

Sven was back on the roof, utterly disoriented.

He was holding a pig-like man, and there was a blade at the pig man's throat. Sven followed the blade down to its wooden handle, and the wooden handle down to the hand that was holding it.

My hand, Sven thought, feeling even more disoriented.

The thoughts didn't connect to anything in his mind, and then they were gone.

The darkness was in his legs and his face, then it was running around his face and up his legs at the same time. It was focusing itself in the back of his neck, then in his back, then—

It took hold of him.

Sven continued to hold Milt, who was squealing something. Sven couldn't hear what it was, because he was too far away, somewhere unreachable. He felt his face do something. It could've been a grin, or a sneer, or a grimace, but it was most likely a baring of teeth.

He took Milt by the neck and crotch, and lifted the pudgy man up over his head.

It was almost a record-breaking push press.

Almost.

Sven walked closer to the edge of the roof. He looked up and felt sheer disgust fill him when the pig man's tears fell onto his own face.

Milt was wailing now, begging probably, but Sven was still too far away to make out the words.

Then something kicked on in Sven's mind and he looked Milt dead in the eye.

"You'll not be back," Sven said.

He felt Milt's body shudder as he held the gargantuan lard-ball overhead.

He had trained for this his whole life.

There was something about this moment.

Something fated.

Something.

There was someone behind Sven, outside of him, screaming.

Sven lunged forward and threw Milt as hard as he could, with more strength than he thought he had.

Sven barely felt the crunch in his shoulder as he tossed Milt down to the zombies.

Milt hugged his knees and fell, no longer wailing or shrieking or even shuddering.

It was a short drop, and then the zombies had their very own butterball to play with.

Sven backed away from the edge of the roof and saw Milt's sword lying by his feet. He picked it up and tossed it off the roof, without a care to where it went.

He sheathed the machete, then stood there, still and unblinking, his mind working through the darkness that had taken hold.

In jerky, uneven thoughts, he understood that there was a purpose to the darkness, a structure behind it.

Then Sven rested each of his hands on the hilt of a machete, and his sense of self began to seep back into him.

Chapter 109

Milt didn't scream as he fell. It was a short drop, and then the zombies had him...were holding him...were carrying him off? Why weren't they tearing him apart?

That strange feeling of kinship hit him again, of belongingness, of some deep understanding...and that intoxicating aroma was there, playing in and around Milt's nostrils, fluttering deeper and deeper, seeping into his lungs.

He was awash with a kind of acceptance he had never felt before. It was a glorious feeling, and he had to confess that the smell was even better than the smell of his personal battle station. He was in a better place now. He had become an even truer warrior through this ordeal.

Even if the undead tore him limb from limb—and for some reason they weren't doing it yet—falling to the zombies was acceptable, because Milt had won. He was smarter than that meathead, the failed squire, and those stupid girls. He had shown them, Milt knew. He had especially shown the boy and the cigarette-clutching anorexic.

Oh yes, and he knew something else...something the idiots in the mall would die to know. He knew what was causing it—the contagion. He knew why the zombies had come. Sven and those other idiots would be dead soon, and they would never know—they would be dead because they didn't know. They wouldn't last a day on their own. They were ignorant hacks, but Milt was a genius. He was the genius—the genius of the world. He was the master of the univ—

Milt gasped as he felt the nibble, and his attention shifted from his loathing for Sven and his crew to the multitude of groping, rotten hands, and the terribly odd nibble...so dry and scratchy...then...was that a bite?

The colors of the world seemed to shift at once, as if the surroundings were reeling backward, and then forward, and then backward again. The hues around him changed places with each other and danced a carefree, iridescent waltz.

Milt was dimly aware that he was moving away from a big building. The zombies were carrying him away. Zombies?

There is no such thing as zombies, Milt thought, and chuckled.

It was a dream, of course it was. Zombies carrying him through the night as they munched on his flesh...a wonderfully strange dream. Wonderful because the smell of them was so profoundly sweet! So joyfully pleasing, so rapturous...so—

Chapter 110

Lorie was pulling at his hand, punching him in the back, tugging at his duck pants, pulling at his shin. But he wouldn't move. He just stood there a few feet back from the edge of the roof, like he was hypnotized.

"Sven! Sven!" She could feel the tears rolling down her cheeks. "Wake up! Come back in, he's gone."

She was scared—so scared—because he looked like he was about to jump off the roof, to make sure that the zombies finished their job of Milt.

Of course Milt deserved to be thrown off the roof to the zombies after what he had done to Evan and Randy...and who knew what else he'd been planning for the rest of them?

Lorie felt no sympathy for Milt, but she was still surprised at how Sven had disposed of him. She was impressed in a way, and felt pride at being on a team led by someone who could be so ruthless. And yet Sven seemed so unassuming most of the time, it was certainly out of character.

Then again, Lorie thought, which one of us isn't out of character now? The world's overrun by zombies, you have to change to survive.

"Yeah," Sven finally said. "Yeah."

"Come on, let's go back inside. You need some rest."

"I think I tore something in my shoulder," Sven said. His voice was uncharacteristically deadpan, not at all the way someone who had just torn something in his shoulder would communicate that statement.

"Well," Lorie said, feeling more concerned, "let's get you inside and we can patch you up."

She wasn't sure how they could, if Sven really had torn something in his shoulder, but she knew there would at least be painkillers downstairs to give to Sven, and maybe even a sleeping pill. The man looked like he needed rest very badly. His face was so pallid that it seemed out of place on his lightly-tanned body.

She pulled on his arm, leading him back to the stairs that led from the roof.

She stopped abruptly, realizing she might be pulling on his hurt arm. "Is that the shoulder?" Lorie asked, pointing to the shoulder connected to the arm she was pulling.

He nodded.

"Why didn't you tell me to stop pulling on your arm then?"

Sven shrugged and looked at Lorie blankly.

Lorie, now beginning to feel frightened, collected herself and set her jaw. She looked Sven directly in the eyes. "Will you follow me in already?"

He nodded again.

Lorie made for the stairs and walked down into the Wegmans, looking back every few seconds to make sure Sven was plodding in after her.

She led him back to their communal camping spot.

"Will you try to get some rest?" Lorie asked.

Sven nodded again, the blank look still on his face.

She set up a sleeping bag for him and pointed to it, but he just stood where he was, looking past her, apparently at nothing.

Now it was just her, Jane, Brian, and Sven...but was Sven still with them? Lorie hoped he just needed some sleep.

"You have to lie down," Lorie said, bending down and shaking the sleeping bag this time.

He nodded again, and stiffly bent at the knees and waist until he was lying face down, on top of the sleeping bag.

Lorie looked up to see that Jane was watching the sleeping bag debacle. Lorie shrugged, and left Sven in his obviously uncomfortable position. He was lying on top of his knives, but Lorie decided it was best not to pester him about it.

She walked over to Jane and looked up at her somber face. "You gonna try to rest up too?"

"Yeah, we all should. Brian will keep watch for the next few hours. I trust him...he won't let anything happen to us."

Lorie wondered if Jane was really going to sleep, or if she was just trying to be comforting.

Lorie didn't plan on sleeping. She might pillage some fruit and cookies, but she wasn't going to sleep. Maybe she would give the magazine aisle another visit, and maybe she would keep her own watch, simultaneously with that of Brian.

Two sets of eyes, she knew, were better than one.

Chapter 111

Ivan smelled the breach at once. The air in the new enclosure suddenly turned stale. Then the air putrefied before Ivan could load up even a short hiss in his throat. He leapt into action. He had to find the breach. He had to find any of his friends that were close to it. He had to tell them. They never saw the bad people coming soon enough. Ivan ran, skittering and sliding at sharp corners. He ran and slid and ran. Then he knew exactly where the foul people were getting in. There was another smell in the air. It was Sven's friend. Sven's friend was close. Ivan leapt into action once more. Then he was next to Sven's friend with the wood in his hands. Ivan hissed. Sven's friend looked at Ivan and made a silly noise. Ivan hissed again. Sven's friend made another silly noise. Ivan tried to make Sven's friend follow. Ivan tried to lead Sven's friend away from the rotten people. Sven's friend wouldn't follow. Sven's friend wouldn't—the rotten people were close now. They were too close. Ivan hissed once more. He had to find Sven. Ivan tried to lead Sven's friend away again. When Sven's friend wouldn't come, Ivan ran off. Ivan had to find Sven now. Ivan had to tell Sven.

Chapter 112

Sven had slept some after the encounter with Milt. Now it was late in the morning, and they were all still alive.

He was trying to force down a banana when Ivan came running at him. Ivan looked wild, and ran straight at Sven with no sign of slowing.

Sven backed up, bewildered, and dropped a bite-sized piece of the banana that Lorie was insisting he eat. He almost felt relieved at having an excuse not to eat the thing, to go on avoiding food.

Ivan attacked Sven, scratching at the mallard pants, meowing frantically.

Sven's thoughts began to turn dark. "What? What is it?"

Ivan began padding away, then turned around to Sven.

Sven got the idea.

"What's wrong?" Lorie asked, looking up from the green apple she was munching. Jane looked over too.

"I don't know."

Sven began to follow Ivan, with Lorie and Jane following behind him. He wished he could be back home, with Ivan leading the way to his bowl.

He didn't have to look at the amount of food left in Ivan's new bowls to know that wherever Ivan was now leading him, food was not the issue.

Chapter 113

Brian wondered what had Ivan so spooked.

He decided that the cat could smell the remnants of the zombies and zombie parts that he and Sven had painstakingly carted out.

Brian had met Ivan before, on his many trips over to Sven's house. Brian usually went over when Sven called and said that the protein supplies were dwindling rapidly, and that time was of the essence.

This was often right before one of Sven's shows or before a training session with a client that Sven was particularly keen on impressing. Brian shrugged, remembering the good old days, and figured all of that was over now. Nothing left now but survival...cold survival.

He was glad that Ivan was there. He knew that caring for animals was one of humanity's few redeeming characteristics, and Ivan could help to bring out the best in all of them while they struggled through the outbreak.

In addition, he realized, Ivan could also ferret out the mean ones like Milt. It seemed to confirm Brian's suspicion about people that hated animals.

If they hate animals, Brian said to himself, they're not to be trusted.

He swung the baseball bat back and forth as he walked to the end of the aisle of international foods. There were some interesting, unfamiliar delicacies there. Some of them caught Brian's eye, and though he was curious to inspect them, he had a job to do.

He was there to patrol the place and sound the alarm if anything went wrong, and he was going to discharge his duty precisely. Their collective survival depended on vigilance. It was a task to be taken seriously.

What was bothering Ivan so much? The question now burned in Brian's mind. Did Ivan hate him all of a sudden?

Brian exited the aisle of international foods and stopped in the back of the supermarket. He looked left, then right, like someone about to cross the street, then he strode toward the doors to the stockroom. It was worth a quick check.

The doors to the stockroom were metallic, and fashioned in the style of a saloon entrance, except that the doors spanned the full length of their frame. Each door had a small looking window at about Brian's eye level, but he couldn't see through either window unless he walked closer.

Brian heard a noise and spun around.

Nothing.

Brian turned back to the stockroom doors.

The noise came again, like a shuffling exhalation.

He spun around again.

Nothing.

Shaking his head and chastising himself, Brian began a forceful turn back to the stockroom doors to peer through their looking windows.

As he turned, springing toward the stockroom, the doors swung out violently and—

Brian was moving too fast to stop himself.

He ended up in their grasping arms, facing a horde of hungry, gaping, undead mouths.

He tried to scream, but the scream never made it out of him.

A white hot pain, deep in his abdomen beat him to it.

He looked down in disbelief at the gnarled forearm sticking out of his body.

Before he could begin to wonder, Brian felt an unimaginable pain in his insides, and, just before his consciousness began to fade, he noted an unmistakable loss of pressure in his chest. His lungs were no longer drawing air.

Brian's last thought as he sank into himself was that he would be dead long before he could suffocate.

The zombies made it true.

Chapter 114

The shotgun dropped from his hand.

Sven could only stare.

He was far too late.

Brian's eyes were closed, and Sven hoped that his friend was already dead.

There were zombies—dozens of them, hundreds maybe. Sven couldn't see the end of them as they piled in through the open doors of the stockroom, trying for a chance at Brian's flesh.

One of the zombies had a hand in Brian's abdomen, pulling out his entrails and feeding on them in fitful spasms. Another zombie was working its fingers into the soft part of Brian's neck.

Many more were pulling on his limbs, pulling in different directions.

If it was an attempt to quarter Brian, it was a failure...or rather, a partial failure. The zombies that had Brian's right leg tore it off at the hip, falling backward with their prize. The zombies that had been pulling at the other parts of Brian's body fell in the opposite direction, apparently pulling too hard now that the zombies on the leg were no longer a part of the gruesome tug of war.

More zombies emerged from the stockroom, swarming over Brian's fallen body, ripping, tearing, crunching, slurping, dragging away—

Sven drew both of the machetes in a single motion that the most practiced of machete-wielders would have envied.

Then the dark clouds were there, blocking out the overhead lighting.

***

The trees bled, filling the space in which Sven stood with a revolting, palpable dread. He was holding his breath, trying to keep it out, trying to hold on to what was left.

Sven's lungs began to burn, demanding. He wouldn't let it, he couldn't let it.

But the pressure outside of him was too great, and like a great dam bursting, his mouth opened and the blood-tinged air filled his lungs, replacing the burning with something far worse.

The powerful, limber woman reappeared, creeping out from behind one of the thicker trees. She ducked under a bleeding bow, putting a hand against the tree's trunk.

She locked eyes with Sven, and took her hand away from the trunk. It was smeared with blood.

She glared at Sven as she raised the hand slowly up...up...and to her lips.

***

Now, in the Wegmans, the darkness poured into Sven, filling him, and pushing everything else out.

Fury.

Reprisal—dark reprisal.

Wrath.

He was breathing hard, like a beast, his whole body shaking with every mouthful of air.

Thought was gone.

All he could do was feel, and all he could feel was rage.

Chapter 115

Sven leapt into the undead throng, landing in Brian's still-cooling blood.

Retribution.

An inhuman ferocity gripped his body. He was the wild death, the bringer of the blade, the silencer, the ender.

Sven brought the twin blades down with an unassailable malice, feeling no pain in his body, feeling nothing but raw emotion.

If this was evil he wanted it...and more of it—to never leave this place, to feel it forever.

Two zombie skulls split open simultaneously, hacked down the middle, revealing grey bone and putrid brain matter. Chunks of flesh sprayed in all directions.

Each half of the torn zombie heads sagged away from each neck, opening upward like vile, twin flowers of the damned.

Then the bodies slumped and fell, and more zombies came forward, overtaking their fallen brethren, lunging for Sven, grabbing, gnashing their teeth and lolling their dry tongues menacingly.

Sven's machetes never stopped, never slowed, as he plunged deeper into the undead that were falling all over themselves trying to get in through the stockroom doors.

The zombies snapped at Sven with their gnarled jaws, begging for decapitation, and he and his discolored machetes obliged...gladly.

Sven reveled in the frenzy, letting his anger feed and grow stronger through his eyes.

He absorbed the carnage before him as if he were a man who would never see again, who needed to imprint the vision of the world into his soul.

Gobbets of putrid flesh flew and zombies fell, limbless, headless, bodies torn asunder with a fury not of this world.

Sven's darkness feasted on one sight in particular, in addition to the dual cleaved zombie heads with which he had begun his offensive. Once, twice, three—no—numberless times he slashed down on a zombie head in profile, chopping off the front part of the head so that everything in front of a cut section of brain and remaining back piece of jaw were gone.

Staring into the thing that remained—a strange device hanging with no ascertainable purpose atop a rotten, lifeless body...was...sublime.

As Sven leapt and cleaved and left sliced-open shells containing zombie brains in his wake, fighting his way deeper now into the stockroom, to the source of the zombies, holes—large ones—sometimes appeared in the zombie heads around him and the zombies fell, and in his frenzied state, he didn't know why it was happening, just that it was, and that it was good.

Sometimes the zombies' heads just disappeared. The darkness must have been outside of him too, helping him, feeding itself without vehicle, shaping itself through the air.

Wrath.

Then a different feeling came—one that didn't really belong with the others. It was a calm, gentle feeling, and it touched Sven within the melee. It was a calm like none he had ever felt before, as if he were moving in slow motion in a certain structure, in a clear harmony within the violence.

Pure, unrestrained fury.

More holes appeared in the zombies around him, and more fell victim to his mottled blades.

The zombies began to thin, and then all of the ones inside the stockroom had fallen.

When it was over, Sven stood in the middle of a mass of hacked and slashed zombie flesh, lopsided chunks and gobbets surrounding him, as if he had been at the center of a great zombie combine.

And he had been.

Some of Sven's normal feelings began to return to him, but they were dull, like unpolished, rough pieces of crumbling rock compared to what he had just experienced.

He turned around. Lorie and Jane were watching him. There was fear in their eyes, or maybe it was just apprehension. Whatever it was, it was directed at him. Sven felt shame for a moment, but then that feeling, coarse as it now felt, darted away, as if launched by its incongruence with the receding darkness, and was gone.

Sven wiped his machete blades on some of the fallen zombies' clothing, and sheathed the blades. He wiped the sweat from his face and began to walk toward Jane and Lorie. Jane was holstering her gun—the big one.

They backed away as he drew nearer. The girl raised a hand up in front of her face, as if to protect herself. From him?

He stood there, watching them for a moment—watching them watching him.

"What is it?" Sven asked once his panting was under control. He felt a twitch in his jaw and neck, and tried to stifle it.

He heard something, whirled, and saw that another zombie had begun to stagger in through the—

It hadn't registered before. The way the zombies had gotten in, they hadn't forced their way in as Sven had assumed, they had...but how could that be?

Lorie and Jane came closer, apparently seeing what so perplexed Sven.

Lorie's voice came muffled from behind her surgical mask. "How could one of them do that? They can't even get out of cars or open doors, how could they?

"We have to get out of here," Jane said in a stern voice. "We have to go now."

Right on cue, as if they were on the set of a horror movie, a tearing, rending sound came from a distant part of the supermarket. Sven couldn't hear the moans, but he was sure the zombies would be coming.

The stockroom began to swim, and Sven suddenly felt like he was sinking.

Too late, he realized that he didn't have his mask on, and then his body went numb.

Chapter 116

Sven fell, landing on a severed arm. The bloodless stump shot upward, as if telling Jane that her demise was now as certain as the separation between the arm and its previous owner. This was it, the zombies were overrunning the supermarket, Sven was gone, no way out, death—

"Help me get him out of here," Lorie said, jolting Jane into action.

They grabbed Sven by the arms and dragged him out of the stockroom. Jane tried to ignore all the zombies and zombie parts that they brushed against and pulled Sven over to get out of that room. The jumble of parts made Jane's own death seem so inevitable...to think she would soon join them.

She looked at Sven. His face, now extremely pale, was twitching violently. The thought pattern that had struck her when Evan was ill was now revisiting her, and though she tried to put it out of her mind—she couldn't see any wounds on Sven, any sign that he had been bitten—the thought pattern didn't yield.

Jane looked down at Sven, willing him to wake up, to wake up and to be alright. Her mind flashed on a picture of him just moments earlier, overtaken by some kind of violent rage. He had been so terrifying, but he had lashed out only against the zombies, and his protective instinct remained intact throughout the carnage. She felt a pang of longing when she recalled how he had shielded her and Lorie with his body when the zombies were on the verge of grabbing them.

If only he would wake up!

Jane shook him, and his head began to move. Ivan was there too, lapping at Sven's face, prodding Sven's head with his paw.

Sven came to, looking like death. "Back there...did you see?"

Jane nodded. "Yes, but there's no time for that now. We have to go...I think they're getting in, not just there but in other places."

"They are," Lorie agreed. "They're in at the side door, I can see them."

Ivan hissed, and Jane found that it amplified her dread, the feeling of being trapped with the undead closing in around them.

"Okay," Jane said, controlling herself, "Sven you have to get up."

Sven's eyes began to roll back into his head.

"Sven! Do you hear me? Lorie, come on help me get him up, we have to go."

"Go where?!" Lorie screamed.

"To the car, we have to get out of here, drive somewhere."

Jane and Lorie continued to pull on Sven, and finally, the man regained enough of his physical composure to stand up. Jane and Lorie helped support Sven's weight, and the three of them made their way to the Wegmans entrance. They dodged two zombies on the way, apparent evidence of the slow leak through the access point that Lorie had seen, or of another yet unknown leak in the building.

Jane and Lorie helped Sven lean against a checkout counter, then they pushed aside the shopping carts that were blocking the shuttered entrance.

Jane approached the shutter and peered through it, out at the parking lot.

Her world reeled, and she recoiled from the sight, staggering backward.

Lorie caught her by the arm, helping balance the world a little. On seeing her ashen face, Jane was sure that the girl had already seen it.

"What?" asked Sven, slurring the word. "What's out there?"

Jane turned to him, gripping the .460 XVR for support. It had served her well in the stockroom, covering Sven, but it couldn't take care of what was now awaiting them outside. "They're all over the car. There's no way we can get through that."

Sven tottered to his feet. "There's a way. We're not gonna end this here." He was still slurring his words, and had to lean on a rack of paperback romance novels for support. "You stay here with Lorie and get ready. Here are the keys." Sven handed his car keys to Jane, who took them, not knowing how to react. The man seemed to be choking, making gurgling sounds in his throat and swaying as he spoke. "I'll pull them off the car."

Jane's mind resisted this at once. "What? No! You can't do that, you can't leave us like this. We can't face them alone." Lorie put her hand on Jane's forearm, but Jane pulled it away harshly. "You're in no condition to be doing that, if you go out there, if you..." She couldn't overcome the sob that strangled its way from her throat.

"No," Sven said. "This'll work, I'm sure. I'll pick the shotgun back up—I still have a lot of cartridges—" Sven patted the bulging pockets of his mallard pants, "—I'll go out through the loading docks, get their attention, start shooting 'em up real good. They'll get off the car, and then I'll run around. I'm sure this'll work."

Jane shook her head. "No! Sven, no! There's gotta be another way, we just need a little time to think it through, there's gotta be another way to do it."

"This is the way. Trust me."

Jane took off her surgical mask and thrust it at Sven. "Take this."

He must have seen the resolve in her eyes, because he took the mask and put it on without a word.

He looked at her for a moment longer, then surprised her with a hug. When it ended and he broke the embrace, Jane felt an unbearable anguish, as if her very being were ripped apart.

He turned to Lorie and tousled her hair, still saying nothing.

And then he quickly limped away, and was gone.

Ivan padded off after him, faithful to his loving master until the bitter end.

Jane knew she would never see Sven again, she had never been so certain of anything in her life. She wanted to run after him, to go there and face death with him, but she didn't. She just stood there next to Lorie, knowing that he had been there a moment before, but never would be again.

Chapter 117

Sven circled back to his sleeping bag, where he'd forgotten the shotgun in his haste to follow Ivan. He picked up the Benelli SuperNova in black synthetic, knowing that it was for the last time. This was it.

Jolts of pain pulsed through his body. Every step felt like burning, every breath, every movement. The only thing that helped was touching the handles of the machetes, and there wasn't even time for that now.

Loading the Benelli as he went, Sven limped through the stockroom and to the breached loading dock entrance.

He stopped for a moment, and stared at it in sheer disbelief. He felt betrayed, confused, completely lost. But there was no time to figure that out right now.

He had to make it possible for Jane and Lorie to get away. He had to make it happen. There was a way. There was a way. He kept telling himself there was, but—

"Oh, to hell with it all," Sven said, and he stepped out through the breach into the balmy, stinking air. His head went fuzzy for a moment, and he forgot what he was doing. Then it all came back to him like a sickening headache.

No time to freeze up now, he told himself.

He limped around the perimeter of the Wegmans, avoiding the few zombie stragglers that reached for him. They weren't worth wasting energy or ammunition on. He turned the corner, making his way up the side toward the front of the store.

Almost there.

Sven hobbled up to the corner of the building and peered around, recoiling at the sight, and feeling the fear reach into him. He put a hand on one of the machete handles and tried to make the darkness come back, the invincible feeling from before, but it wouldn't.

There was no time for standing around.

He took a deep breath, not at all making peace with the thought that it would likely be his last, and limped out from behind the corner.

He faced the sea of undead head on.

"Hey zombies! You hungry?!"

They began to turn toward him—their answer in the affirmative.

He opened fire.

Even as the zombies nearest him fell, the zombies behind them began to pile toward him, reaching for him, wanting what he had—his flesh.

Sven emptied the shotgun into them, barely making a dent in the horde.

He backed up as he reloaded, staying out of reach, mindful not to step on Ivan.

Ivan! Sven was so grateful for Ivan being there now, with him at the end.

He backed around the corner of the Wegmans, then began backing down the side, watching the corner of the building and waiting.

He didn't have to wait long.

It was working!

The zombies were turning the corner after him, reaching for him with eager, gnarled hands, moaning in anticipation.

"Yeah, that's right! Here I am, but you gotta catch me first!"

The smell—their smell—intensified as they drew nearer, and even though Sven was backing away, he caught himself reeling, his hands on the shotgun growing numb almost to the point of uselessness.

He had to fire while he still could.

Continuing to back down the side of the Wegmans, Sven fired again, dropping the front lines of the advancing undead.

As before, the volley made no visible dent. More zombies came, staggering on and over their fallen comrades, insensitive to the loss.

Ivan hissed and Sven spun around just in time to dodge a zombie's snapping jaws, much too close to his face. He jerked the Benelli awkwardly at the zombie's head, cracking the skull sideways and dropping the zombie to the pavement.

The creeping numbness was making Sven careless. Of course there were a few zombies behind him—the remnants of the loading dock incursion, he had passed them just moments before.

Then he was backing up again, trying to load the Benelli.

The first cartridge slipped through his fingers.

The second almost made it but slipped too.

Then the third slipped.

Sven couldn't feel his fingers or hands. He looked down at them, trying to will them into coordinated action, but the Benelli only slipped from his deaden grip.

His knees began to lose feeling, to buckle under his weight, but he managed to lean backward, staggering away from the zombies that were now fatally close.

He fell, not feeling the impact.

The zombies were over him now, touching him, too close.

A snide remark, Sven thought, I'm not going to hell without a snide remark.

But his lips wouldn't move, wouldn't deliver.

His head turned sideways, not of his own volition but under the influence of gravity.

There was Ivan, still poking, prodding, pawing at him.

It's okay Ivan, Sven thought, it's o—

Chapter 118

Jane clutched her .460 XVR hopelessly, wondering how many hours she had left to live.

Hours is probably presumptuous, she thought, I should be thinking on the order of minutes.

Peering out into the parking lot, Jane imagined that she would see a zombie version of Milt any minute. Horrible as it might be, she was glad Milt was gone, and she even hoped he had been torn apart pretty good, though she hadn't seen what had happened to him after Sven flung him from the roof—hadn't tried to see, hadn't wanted to see. Milt had been a horrible man, and he deserved to die, even a gruesome death at the hands of the undead.

Feeling both glad that Milt was gone and apprehensive at his possible reappearance in the ranks of the undead, Jane knew that if Milt did return, she would eagerly put one of her massive bullets through his zombie belly.

"I believe in him," Lorie said, startling Jane out of her fantasy. The thought of killing Milt a second time really was appealing. "He'll come back."

Jane looked at the girl, wishing that she could soak up some of her naïveté and believe it too. Jane didn't understand Lorie at all. She didn't understand how the girl could be so sensitive and optimistic on the one hand, and so inhumanly merciless in the way she fought the zombies, as if she were deriving pleasure from it, on the other. Jane recalled Lorie's gruesome contribution to the battle in the stockroom and shuddered.

The girl had leapt about the carnage, using her exceptional speed and dexterity to stay out of reach as she stabbed with her knife, plunging it into zombie heads and twisting it enthusiastically, as if the crunch and sprinkle of bone fragments were a reward.

So much of the outbreak now seemed unreal that Jane was having some trouble distinguishing between what she saw and what she imagined...but Lorie's lips had been curled upward as she dispatched the zombies. Jane's mind hung on to that image with immovable certainty.

Lorie seemed to function only in extremes, and now Jane was face to face with Lorie the optimist.

Jane had no clue how to respond, so she didn't, and turned back to look through the shutter.

She heard shots and a yell that she couldn't make out. The roiling of the undead in the parking lot was unaffected, Sven's efforts were comple—

She blinked. The zombies were receding from the entrance and from the car, they were flowing away, shambling to the side.

There was the sound of more shots being fired, and the zombies hastened in their shambling, clearing an imperfect but maneuverable path for Jane and Lorie.

Jane felt her pulse quicken. "This is our chance Lorie, let's go."

They crouched low to the shutter, and with considerable difficulty began to lift it. When they had raised the shutter about one foot off the ground, it ground to a halt.

Lorie was pulling, trying to get her body underneath the shutter for leverage. "The hinges must be bent out of shape from all those things pushing against it."

"Hold it like that," Jane said. "I'll crawl under, then I'll hold it for you."

"Okay," Lorie said.

Jane dropped down and lay flat on her back. She squirmed under the creaking shutter head first, looking up and backward to—

Too late.

There was one on top of her, one that must have been in a recess she hadn't been able to detect from her position inside the entrance. She put her hand up just in time to stop it from falling on her.

The zombie was clawing, chomping, putting all of its weight on her hand. Jane went for her gun but her arm got caught in the holster's strap. Her strength was letting up, and the stinking zombie was getting closer.

Then her body began to tingle, and she suddenly felt as if she were floating, far away, admiring the zombie's dry mouth, devoid of drool.

That was something, her mind mused as it floated higher, no tainted saliva was dripping out of the mouth onto her, that was—

There was a flash, and then the handle of a knife appeared on top of the zombie's head, then the zombie was gone, pulled off Jane. Then something was pulling Jane to her feet, shaking her.

Jane's mind fluttered back down to her, somewhat reluctantly. She looked down at Lorie in her surgical mask—the mask! She had given hers to Sven.

"Come on," Lorie said, "there's just a few more and then we're there. Luck's on our side now."

"What?"

Lorie pointed to the shutter. It hung in its position a foot above the ground. "No crushing for us today."

Jane turned to the right and saw the last of the main mass of zombie horde turning the corner. There were less than a dozen zombies remaining in the parking lot now, loners.

The loner zombies set out on a half-hearted stagger toward Jane and Lorie.

"These ones look weak or something," Lorie said, as she tried to dig her knife out of the dead zombie's skull. "Damn, it's stuck in there good, too deep."

"That's okay, just leave it."

Lorie gave Jane a puzzled look. Then the girl dragged the zombie's body and placed it so that the zombie's head was under the shutter. Jane reached out a hand to stop her, but Lorie was already bringing the shutter down.

Jane cried out, turning and drawing her .460 XVR. She couldn't watch that, couldn't watch Lorie do—

Single action, Jane told herself firmly, trying to block out the rattling of the shutter's hinges and the bone-breaking, stomach-churning, stop!

Single action! Jane screamed in her mind.

With tears brimming on her eyelids, she cocked, aimed, and shot. The noise and recoil were comforting in their physicality.

Four zombies fell victim to the first four rounds—a zombie for each.

Jane cocked the gun again, the final round before she had to reload. There were less than a dozen now, and the ones that had turned the corner made no sign of returning.

A glint of inspiration lit in her mind. Two zombies were almost aligned in a way that—

She circled around, putting the two zombies in her mental crosshairs. She aimed, then stopped herself just in time.

Jane's body went cold when she realized what she had almost done.

She had lined up her shot against the car. If she had shot, she would have risked damaging their means of escape. There were other cars in the lot, many with the keys still in them, but with potentially empty or near-empty gas tanks, and zombie drivers still trapped within them. It wasn't a risk worth taking.

Lorie came up at Jane's side. "You okay? I got it! It only took a few cracks to loosen it and then—"

Jane blocked the rest out and circled around closer to the car. She lined up the two zombies again and pulled the trigger.

Both zombies' heads exploded into an indiscernible spray. Headless, the zombies fell and lay still.

Lorie whistled. "Nice shooting."

Jane reloaded the big gun, noting that she had fewer than ten rounds until the gun became useless.

The rounds went quickly, and with each round, a single zombie fell. There were no more double shots.

There were four zombies remaining as Jane stood in the parking lot, clutching the now useless .460 XVR. She didn't want to let it go, to leave it for the damned undead to shamble over, but it was dead weight now, like the zombies.

Anger built in her at the loss of the gun. She looked at it in her hand, knowing it was time to let it go, to let Sven go, time to—

Summoning a long-dormant fury from the depths of her soul, she strode straight to the tall, overweight zombie shambling toward her. She kept herself just out of reach of his arms, staring up into his dead face. Dry strips of flesh hung down around his cheeks and jaw. His dark eyes were small and sunken, wobbling about in their putrid sockets as he shambled. There was so much wiggle room in the sockets, so much—

Jane would let the gun go, she decided, on her own terms.

Inadvertently in time with the zombie's hungry moan, Jane plunged the barrel of the .460 XVR into the wiggle room of the zombie's left eye socket, pushing against the butt of the gun and feeling the barrel rip through rotten flesh until it was lodged securely in the zombie's brain.

The zombie slumped and fell forward, toward Jane. She stepped out of the way as she let go of the gun's handle. The falling zombie pivoted, landing on its side and then rolling onto its back, the magnificent revolver sticking out from its head.

This was no stupid movie where when the heroine ran out of bullets she threw the gun at the villain, only for the villain to duck out of the way. The .460 XVR was not a weapon to be thrown. It was to bring death to others even in its own demise. And Jane had made it so.

She looked over to see that Lorie was staring at her, open-mouthed. Jane nodded, pulled the Beretta from its holster and made quick work of the three remaining undead. It wasn't nearly the same, but it got the job done.

Jane unlocked the car. "Get in."

She took a last look at the .460 XVR, properly buried, its butt sticking out of the zombie's skull. Then she climbed into the driver's seat, started the car, and put it in drive.

She knew what was to happen next. As soon as the zombies showed, they would drive off. They had to.

Only moments later, her hands tightened on the wheel when she saw the small group of undead, now shambling out of the woods, on a direct course for the car.

Jane's foot remained firm on the brake pedal as she held her breath.

Chapter 119

Lorie was holding the door handle, waiting for Sven. She would open it as soon as he was close enough to get in, he would get in, and they would drive off—that was the plan.

The car was already running and in drive. Jane's fingers were squeezing the steering wheel as she searched the parking lot, eyes darting anxiously back and forth. Lorie watched Jane's hands on the wheel, turning white with each squeeze.

Lorie hoped that Jane wouldn't ask why Sven was taking so long. Jane didn't. It was obvious enough, what else was there for either of them to think about at that moment? Sven had covered for them so that they could escape, and now Lorie was sure it had been too long since the last of the shotgun blasts.

Why the hell was he taking so long?

There was, of course, the obvious reason, and it flashed through Lorie's mind constantly, making her sick as she tried to resist it. It was such a clean, simple explanation—an explanation to explain any and all tardiness in the midst of a zombie outbreak—death by zombie.

Lorie flinched away from the thought, and then she saw him, lurching out from the other side of the supermarket, looking for them, spotting them, and then stumbling quickly in their direction.

Jane spun around to look. "He—what's wrong with him?"

Lorie couldn't swallow, couldn't answer.

What's wrong with him? What the hell else could it be?

No, her mind screamed, no! This wasn't true, it couldn't happen like this, after all that they had gone through, after all that—

Then he was there, swaying over Lorie, motioning weakly for her to open the door.

"Wait!" Jane yelled. She was looking at Sven as if she had never expected his return, had not been awaiting it as eagerly as Lorie had been. Jane looked at him mournfully, as someone looks at a dead body, and Lorie felt herself grow angry. Jane had no right to give up on Sven like that, after what he'd just done for them. There was no reason for it.

Lorie didn't wait. She opened the door.

Sven tried to climb into the car, but instead collapsed inward, knocking into Lorie. Ivan leapt in after his master, climbing onto the dashboard, tail puffed and turning in a circle. Lorie climbed farther into the car and over the divider between the driver's seat and passenger's seat, helped Sven get all the way in, and then reached over him and shut the door.

Jane took her foot off the brake, jolting the car into action. They sped out of the parking lot, careening around the new band of zombies emerging from the woods.

Not at all relieved, Lorie turned to Sven. His face was even paler than when he had left to create the diversion. His skin was clammy, and he was shivering, barely responsive. He turned a peculiar shade of green as Jane meandered out of the access road and swerved onto Route 29, and his eyes rolled shut, as if he were on the verge of losing consciousness.

Lorie saw that the shotgun was gone, as was the surgical mask that Jane had given Sven before he went off to distract the zombies.

"Sven," Lorie said, "we made it."

He didn't respond.

"Sven, we...Sven?"

His head nodded forward, then he slumped sideways against the window, fingers slowly unfurling against the mallard ducks on his pants.

Lorie felt her body choked by despair, by—

She flew forward, landing with her back against the dashboard. The car fishtailed violently, and then they were still.

Lorie pushed herself away from the dashboard, the pain in her side and back radiating outward.

She decided it wasn't that bad, and that she was physically alright, except that something worse was waiting for them.

She righted herself and looked out through the windshield.

Correct again, she thought.

The afternoon sun was heating up the car to the point of discomfort, and wanting some bit of relief in the last seconds of her life, Lorie reached for the air conditioner knob.

A blaring voice stopped her. "Turn around and go back the way you came, or we will open fire. This is your first of three warnings before we open fire."

Lorie scanned the road in front of them. There were numerous rows of spike strips extending beyond the road through the wooded area between the lanes of Route 29. Beyond the spike strips were metal barricades. Beyond the barricades were military vehicles, extending up 29 as far as Lorie could see.

Soldiers clad in body armor and gas masks were scattered among the vehicles. They began to scurry into action.

They must be burning up in all that gear, Lorie thought, though she had to admit the gas masks were sure to be more effective than the surgical masks, if only Sven had a mask like that, then maybe he wouldn't now be...

As if the ground portion of the roadblock weren't enough, two helicopters flew up and down on a perpendicular flight path to the road, probably ferreting out fugitives unfortunate enough to be on foot, or fugitive zombies even.

In addition to the two helicopters in the air, Lorie thought she could make out the blades of another beyond the stripped-down cargo hold of a truck.

Jane lowered the window and yelled. "Where are we supposed to go? We'll die back there."

The soldiers positioned themselves, then raised their rifles, pointing the barrels at the windshield of the car. It seemed to Lorie like way too many soldiers just to take care of the three of them.

Another voice came on, gentler than the first. "You need to keep moving. The infection is waning. It's ending. You can outrun it if you keep moving. Teams have been dispatched to secure the area, you are not alone in there."

Lorie wondered what that meant. Teams have been dispatched to do what? To kill everyone? To napalm the place? No one was helping them, that was for sure.

More soldiers were dropping from the backs of trucks, joining others of their kind hurriedly surging toward the barricades. Lorie looked at the closest soldiers before her, pointing their rifles. A few were trembling.

Jane was breathing hard as she yelled back. "Just drive? Back to the zombies?"

The first voice came back on. "You cannot pass the point of quarantine. You must turn back. This is your second warning."

Now most of the soldiers before Lorie were trembling like rickety robots, like mass-produced, impersonal killing machines stuck on vibrate. They were there to keep whatever was happening from spreading, to keep Lorie, Jane, and Sven trapped in the nightmarish stretch of road where the infected shambled, eager to bite and tear and—

"The bastards," Lorie said, letting her face turn into a snarl. "This is all their fault. Why aren't they helping us?"

"This is your third and final warning. Turn back now."

"Our tax money at work," Jane hissed. She put the car in reverse and began to back up. Then she completed a three-point turn, facing the car south in the northbound lane of Route 29.

She drove south until there was a gravel turnaround. She took it and entered the southbound lane, not that it mattered—theirs was the only moving car on the road.

As they drove back the way they had come only the previous day, Lorie noticed that it had grown much quieter.

The engines of the cars that they passed didn't run, and there was no drone of zombies scratching at the insides of their cars. The zombies in their cars were still trapped, but they no longer moved, their bodies lay still, slumped against windows and steering wheels, or slumped toward the passenger seat but kept in place by their buckled seatbelts.

There was no noise save for that made by Sven's car, Sven's ragged gasps, and the soothing chirrup of birds.

"They're coming apart," Jane said, as they drove farther away from the Wegmans. Lorie looked and saw that Jane had slowed down and was peering into some of the cars, in which the zombies seemed to be deteriorating.

Maybe it was ending!

Maybe the military people, untrustworthy and loathsome as they were, had been telling the truth about this being the end of the outbreak.

On the verge of a joyful outburst, Lorie felt her jubilation die as her eyes passed over Sven. He looked just as Evan had before...

Lorie noticed they were pulling into a strip mall. "What are you doing?"

"We need some water, maybe some food, and I personally need some caffeine if we're to keep driving like this forever. Gas wouldn't hurt either."

Lorie gave Jane her order and stayed with Sven while Jane rummaged in the convenience store. Pacing around the car, Lorie almost felt safe. It really did seem that the zombies were gone.

Jane came back and loaded the car with candy bars, and bottles of water and iced tea.

After a short leg-stretching break, they set off again, putting more distance between them and the Wegmans.

Lorie was munching on a Mounds Dark Chocolate candy bar when she saw them—a small throng of zombies coming up a side road toward 29. The throng reacted violently to the car's presence, and though Lorie suspected that Jane saw them too, Lorie didn't say a word.

Trying to work up the saliva with which to swallow her bite of coconut and chocolate goodness, Lorie tried to make peace with the truth. The outbreak wasn't over. It would never be over.

Chapter 120

Sven let himself fade in and out of consciousness as Jane drove and Lorie navigated. He couldn't believe it was down to the three of them now. It had just been seven, counting Milt.

He realized that he was neglecting to count Ivan.

Good, faithful Ivan, scratching at the bottom of the seat. Ivan would always be there, Ivan would always...

There was a shaking, a pain in his chest, blood in the trees—

He opened his eyes.

The car wasn't moving. Was he in the car? Yes, still in the car, he could feel the strap of the seatbelt holding him uncomfortably in place.

Lorie was shaking him awake. "You need to eat." Her eyes were kind, concerned.

Sven shook his head, feeling his throat seize and lock up.

"Sven," she pleaded.

Abruptly, Sven jolted awake. "Why are we stopped? Where's Jane?"

Lorie began to answer something about ABC Stores, but Sven didn't catch the rest of it. He opened his door just in time, and fell out of the car to heave.

The heaving sapped the last of his strength, his will.

"Where are the..." he managed.

"Far behind us, far—"

When Sven next came to, they were stopped again. He heard voices—whispering voices. He opened his eyes.

Ivan was looking down disconsolately at him, intermittently poking at Sven's head with a concerned paw.

Where were the voices coming from?

Whose voices?

Sven looked around, bleary-eyed, wondering if Ivan had been fed.

His field of vision lurched, and began to spin.

He rolled over and gave in to the vomiting. His body became one large spasm of expulsion. But nothing came out. What he needed most to get rid of could not be thrown off.

The darkness was there, drilling its way into his bones, and Sven knew that it would never leave.

When his vision cleared, Sven's mouth was filled with a thick liquid. He was sure that it was blood.

I'm a zombie now too, he thought, that's what's happened. Just swallow it and shamble on. Come on zombie Sven, come o—

Sven's vision cleared. Lorie and Jane were crouched over him, pouring water into his mouth.

He managed to swallow some of the vile liquid between bouts of coughing. Then his vision clouded again, and he was swimming in nausea.

After what seemed like hours, Sven regained some of his former self and propped himself up on his elbows. "Where are we?"

Lorie's voice answered. "On the UVa grounds. Memorial Gym."

"What? We're back where we started? Across the street from my..."

"Across the street from what?"

Sven sighed, keeping the nausea at bay for the moment. "My house."

His eyes finally focused properly, and he saw that he was lying on a gym mat, in what he recognized as the ground floor of Memorial Gymnasium, a building whose layout he knew well from years of working out there. Sven found the gym mat's sweaty smell oddly comforting, and reminiscent of the pure athletic endeavor that he wasn't sure he would ever experience again.

He sat up slowly. "What's happening to me? Am I..."

"I think you're fine, probably inhaled too much of the zombie fog. I think of it as their tentacles. They reach out and grab you, paralyzing you, and then...well, you know."

"Wait, how'd you get me in here?"

Lorie pointed at something.

Sven looked where she was pointing and saw a small, carpeted dolly. He laughed in spite of everything. "You carted me in on that?"

"Yeah, that's right, and you weren't much help either, flopping around all over the place like a dead jellyfish."

"Thanks for that."

"Any time."

"Where's Jane?"

Lorie pointed straight up. "On the roof, getting ready for...well, why don't you go up and see for yourself? She'll be so happy to see that you're better! We had already thought you were gone when you weren't coming back, and then when you showed up, well, you were so sick that we..."

Trying to understand Lorie's words, Sven felt a gap in his memory, in the story of that day. There was something he couldn't place, an inexplicable dead zone where a connection should have been. He tried to fill the gap, to remember, but his mind wouldn't let him.

Chapter 121

Dusk was approaching, and it would be time to start soon. Things were going as smoothly as could be expected. The outbreak did seem to be waning, but Jane wasn't going to be the one to tell that to the zombies that had gathered down below, snapping and clawing up at her, probably trying to project their stench upward so she would fall down to them, a heaven-sent dinner gift for the undead.

Jane was crunching away at a bag of hickory-smoked potato chips, reflecting on what she would soon do, when the doorknob shook.

She dropped the chips and whirled toward the door, reaching for her semi-automatic.

Then the door that led onto the roof opened, and Sven hobbled out, Lorie supporting him at his side. Ivan kept crossing in front of Sven, as if trying to trip him up.

Jane was overjoyed to see Sven limping over to her, seemingly alright, the color back in his face.

She felt cold at how wrong she had been about him dying in his successful attempt to create a diversion, and then again in her assessment that he was becoming a zombie himself.

The man she had now mourned twice looked about the roof, then at her. "I see we're drinking tonight."

Jane smiled. "Only if you're buying."

"You have chip on your chin."

"How unladylike of me—forgetting my compact what with starring in a zombie movie and all that."

Sven smiled. "I'll overlook it."

"I'm glad to see you're in high spirits."

"Good one!" Lorie said. "High spirits! Get it?"

Jane was lost. "What?"

Lorie's grin broadened. "High. Spirits. Get it?"

Jane shook her head.

Lorie sighed, still smiling. "We're high up, and we have spirits." Lorie pointed to the neat rows of liquor bottles.

"Oh," Jane said. "Okay." The girl did have a weird sense of humor.

Sven's eyes narrowed. "So what's with the rags and bottles of 151...and are those gasoline cans?"

Lorie threw up her hands. "Am I the only one that knows how to make a proper Molotov cocktail?"

Sven gave the girl an odd look. "Probably."

Then he turned to Jane. "Wait what? You're going to burn them? Shooting not your thing anymore?"

"The gun shop was burned to the ground when we passed it on the way here. I'm low on ammo, and...we picked all this stuff up on the way down here, stopped at a couple ABC Stores and a gas station. The rags are from downstairs—they're just torn up towels."

Lorie chimed in excitedly. "The fire will dry them up faster. We think that's what's happening to them, they're drying up and crumpling to nothing."

"I think she's right," Jane said. "And I can take no credit for the Molotov stuff either. Lorie's the mastermind behind all of it. She's sharp."

Sven looked unconvinced. "And you know how to make a Molotov cocktail because...why?"

"That's what she said!" Lorie said, rolling her eyes. "Didn't either of you pay attention in school? They cover this stuff in history class."

"Not in my history class," Sven said.

"Or mine," Jane agreed.

"Whatever, now you know."

"Okay," Sven said, "so we burn them and then what?"

Jane and Lorie filled Sven in on what the military people had said about the outbreak dying down and being brought under control.

"So this is the end of it?" Sven asked when they had finished.

Jane shrugged, and recovered her bag of potato chips from the ground. "If it is, it is. If not, we're locked up good in here. We'll burn them for as long as we can, and then we'll run again. There's gas in the Sven-mobile."

That seemed to satisfy Sven.

Jane popped a chip in her mouth, savoring the salty, smoky flavor.

Then, after some instruction from Lorie, they each took turns hurling Molotov cocktails from the roof, down to the gathering undead beneath them.

The cocktails were mixed about half and half 151 and gasoline. Lorie said there was usually another component, but Lorie didn't remember what it was.

The mixtures they used worked better than Jane had expected, and after attaching rags to the bottles, lighting the rags, and tossing about half of the prepared cocktails from the roof, they all stopped to watch.

The zombies came, walking into the flames, their stumbling alacrity in destroying themselves a bitter relief to behold.

Many never made it, their bodies coming apart long before they reached the pyre, falling into pieces about the tennis courts.

The flames licked the air over the burning congregation, and Jane imagined that the crackling fire was burning the deadly, numbing odor out of the air.

Cutting up through the sky from the west, the brilliant streaks of red that accompanied the sunset gave the disgusting barbecue a surreal flavor.

They stayed on the roof, watching until the last of the walking dead had crumpled.

It was over, Jane knew it—could feel it even.

The air was changed, not changed all the way back to the way it had been, but changed all the same. Jane could smell the flowers and the grass again, now that the overpowering stench of the zombies had been removed.

It made her feel hopeful, and when she closed her eyes and the thoughts emptied from her mind, it felt like the world was back to normal.

Chapter 122

Sven was running down a dark road. It resembled Route 29 except that the strip malls that he passed were filled with burnt-out, unrecognizable skeletons of buildings.

There was a sense of desolation, and of fear.

Sven ran hard, pumping his arms up and down and kicking his knees up high. It was a faster run than he was capable of in real life, and his speed and agility surprised him.

He was wearing his man-tard, so his movements were unrestricted.

In his left hand he had a grip trainer that he was pumping within inches of its squeaky death, and in his right hand was a feather quill pen.

A feather quill pen? What the hell was that for?

He looked down at his left forearm and watched his muscles bulge. His body fat was very low. That was good. He was close to competition form now.

Then Sven saw something in the darkness ahead of him and it was all he could do to stop himself in time.

Their eyes were...they were burning. The things' eyes were lit up with a black fire...and there were hundreds of them, maybe thousands, in a throng that took up the whole of the road before him.

They had appeared out of nowhere, and now he was backing up to stay out of their clutches. They were shambling, but their shamble had a bounce to it, almost like they were gamboling at him, excited to tear his untarnished muscular flesh apart, biting and tearing...and the eyes were boring into him, into his very soul—

Sven's eyes opened and he jerked awake, beginning to crawl backward, startled in his disorientation.

Then he remembered. They were in the basement of Mem Gym. Everything was going to be alright...well not alright, but they had lived through it.

It was mostly, if not completely, over. There was no reason to be having dreams like that. The zombies were dying, crumpling under the weight of their disease. It had just been a disease—no evil in those black eyes after all. It had been a terrible viral outbreak, and now it was going to be over and life would return to some semblance of ordinariness.

Sven surveyed the space they were in until he was satisfied that they were alone.

"Good cat," Sven whispered to Ivan, who was padding around the rearranged gym mats, apparently keeping watch. Sven knew that if something—one of the diseased—drew near, Ivan would alert them all at once.

"You're the best cat ever."

Ivan padded over to Sven. Sven petted Ivan a few times, and the cat purred gently. Then Sven settled back onto his smelly gym mat, closed his eyes, and told himself not to dream.

Don't dream, don't dream, don't dream, don't...

He repeated the mantra over and over again as he was falling asleep, but it didn't work.

Chapter 123

Lorie woke, not sure where she was at first. Then she saw Sven and Jane still sleeping, and it all hit her like a ton of bricks.

She peeled herself off the raunchy gym mat she had gotten stuck with and got up. Ivan brushed up against her legs as she rubbed some of the sleep from her eyes. She gave Ivan a light pat on the head.

Then she picked up her serrated hunting knife, and began to walk down the hall.

The stillness of the vast basement was unsettling.

Lorie left the side area in which she had been sleeping with the others and turned into the basement's main hallway. She began to walk in slow, measured steps, almost tiptoeing, and had the strange feeling that she was walking down the nave of a cathedral, a feeling that added to her paranoia.

As she proceeded down the hallway, Lorie held her knife high and swung it from side to side with each step. She kept glancing behind her, making sure nothing was sneaking up on her.

There wasn't anyone behind her except for Ivan, who was watching her with wide cat eyes and following from a distance.

Lorie came to the foot of the stairs. It was still quiet, and no one had come looking for her, so Sven and Jane were probably still sleeping. Lorie walked up the first set of stairs to Mem Gym's first floor. She looked behind her and saw Ivan padding up the stairs in tow. He was keeping quiet too, as if they were both in on the silent game.

She walked across the lobby and up to Mem Gym's large doors. She slowed down as she got closer, then crouched down. She wanted to have a look outside, but didn't want anyone or anything outside to spot her.

She half crawled and half duck-walked over to the doors, then sat down under one of the door's windows with her back to it. Ivan came over to her and nuzzled against her knee, prompting her to set her knife down on the floor.

Lorie took a deep breath. She wanted to see. It was like those movies her mom told her she couldn't watch—that just made her want to see them more. But it was different than a movie too, because it wasn't a movie, and there was something truly horrible outside, and she wanted to see just how horrible it was.

Even with everything she had seen in the past few days, she wanted more. She wanted to see the mangled, rotten corpses. She wanted to see the destroyed bodies. She wanted to see it all.

She surveyed the lobby for a moment to make sure that she was alone. Survival came first, no matter how enticing the gore outside was.

There was no one with her there except Ivan. He was looking at her, and Lorie was sure he was as curious as she was.

Lorie smiled. "You know what it's about, don't you?"

Lorie picked Ivan up in her arms and raised him to the window. She picked him up high enough so that he could look outside too, and she was satisfied when he stared out, apparently as engrossed in the scene as she was.

"That's what I thought. See all those bodies?"

Ivan meowed.

"Do you think we're bad people?"

Ivan turned and looked up at Lorie with his curious eyes, then he turned back to the writhing carnage—and it was writhing, unbelievably alive in death.

A sprinkle of early morning rain was falling on the charred corpses of the undead, and on the many equally charred but detached pieces of corpses.

Lorie thought the detached pieces were the most interesting to look at—the nastiest bits, moving, beckoning, struggling to be...

Chapter 124

Jane woke with a start. She didn't know where she was, and for a second she thought she had been kidnapped and locked away in a basement—a dank one that smelled of body odor and chalk. Then it began to come back to her and she remembered the previous two days. Had it all been a dream?

Of course it had all been a dream. But how had she ended up in here, with Sven lying beside her? Had she gotten drunk with him and stolen away to some basement for an after-party? She had resolved not to start things up with him again, it was too frustrating and painful and there was no future in—

Jane saw the gun lying beside her, apparently placed by a woman who kept weapons by her gym mat...and who slept on a gym mat.

It wasn't adding up.

Then she saw a mat with the unmistakable imprint of a body in it, but whose body?

Then she remembered Lorie, and the previous two days flashed back into her mind, filling themselves in and erasing any possibility, no matter how earnestly hoped for, that it had all been a dream.

Jane sighed, made her tired body stand up, and put her shoulder holster on. She popped the clip out of the Beretta, checked that the clip was full, put it back in the gun, and racked the slide.

She crept away from Sven and around the corner, holding the gun with both hands, trained downward and to her right side. Every few steps, she stopped and listened. It was all quiet.

Then she stepped into the long basement hallway and stopped. The stillness was eerie, and she expected a zombie to shamble out from one of the many doors and dark recesses lining the hallway.

None did.

Jane went upstairs and found Lorie pressed up against the building's main doors with Ivan in her arms, standing on her tiptoes and peering out the window.

Jane holstered her Beretta.

She knew in an instant what the girl was staring at, and it made her uncomfortable. She wondered if Lorie was losing her mind, if Lorie was particularly susceptible to neurosis, and if the zombie outbreak had put her over the edge. Why was she so obsessed with the carnage? With hacking up the zombies and poking at the zombie parts and staring at the chopped-up, disgusting, mangled—

Lorie turned around. "Hey."

Jane walked toward the girl. "Hey."

Ivan meowed, and Lorie set him down. He padded his way over to Jane and brushed up against her legs.

Jane began to walk to the door, careful not trip over the cat, but then she stopped herself. She didn't really want to look, didn't want to see...and Lorie had done plenty of looking for the both of them, so...

"What's it look like out there?" Jane asked. "And you don't have to go heavy on the details."

Lorie grinned, and Jane almost cried out in anguish, almost slapped Lorie, but she didn't. Jane was guilty of similar insanities, and it wouldn't be fair to take Lorie's escape away. So what if the girl fixated on the gore? It obviously helped her in some way, just like fixating on the Beretta helped Jane.

She felt a sudden pang of regret on losing the .460 XVR, sighed, set her jaw, and looked into Lorie's eyes.

"There's a good amount of squirmage," Lorie said. "It's drizzling and all...but I don't see any fresh ones. There aren't any walking around I mean. Maybe it's over."

Jane shuddered as she pictured the writhing of the undead. "Maybe it is." She hoped to hell that it was.

Lorie turned back to the window and seemed to forget that Jane was there.

Jane went up the stairs and checked out the track. She took a quick lap around, and when she was satisfied that it was empty, she went back downstairs and did a similar check of the basketball courts. Finding the courts as empty as they had been the previous night, Jane returned to the lobby, where Lorie was still peering out at the dawn.

"Come on," Jane said. "Let's get Sven up and figure out what we're doing next."

"Won't we just stay here for a while? Until help comes? You think they'll come for us here too?"

"I don't know, we should have a look from the roof, and then we might have to start moving again."

"I guess so...I like it here though, it's—"

The first shout from the basement cut Lorie short, and she and Jane broke into a run toward the basement stairs.

Chapter 125

Jane had the Beretta out again as she sprinted the length of the basement hallway. She ran straight to where Sven had been sleeping.

He was gone.

She felt a tightness in her chest. He couldn't be gone. It was so hard to breathe all of a sudden. Without Sven, without—

There was another shout, and she could make out the words this time. Sven was calling for her and Lorie, but where was he?

Lorie caught up to Jane and turned back to the long hallway. She pointed to the left, to a door. "It's coming from there."

"What, is he working out? Has he lost his mind?"

The shouts came again, and Ivan ran to the nearest door on the left side of the hallway and began to scratch at it.

Lorie ran to the door, turned the knob, and gave it a hard shove. "He's in here! He's okay!"

Jane sighed and her shoulders slumped with relief. She put her semi-automatic away and was so happy that she had to stop herself from skipping to the doorway. When she got close, she could make out voices that were neither Sven's nor Lorie's.

Confused, Jane walked into the room to find Sven and Lorie transfixed.

They were in a small cardio room that was packed with as many treadmills, recumbent bicycles, elliptical machines, and rowing machines as it could hold. The room was musty, and in desperate need of some ventilation. Dust motes sailed lazily through the thick air, as if riding waves of the stale body odor of exercisers...exercisers now undead...or dead undead...their once toned muscles dry, crumpled, and unusable.

A TV hung above one of the exercise bikes. It was on, and it had Sven's and Lorie's rapt attention. Jane walked all the way in and turned to the screen.

Then she too, found that she couldn't look away, could barely breathe.

Chapter 126

Lorie couldn't believe it. She couldn't believe that was the cause of the zombie outbreak. It was crazy.

After the news program had begun to repeat for the fourth time, Lorie snapped out of it and began to pace back and forth in the cramped exercise room.

What a ridiculous explanation, she thought, totally insane. How could that be?

Sven made a sudden menacing gesture at the TV, as if about to hit it. "What?! What the hell does that mean?"

"I...at least..." Jane began, then trailed off and sat down on one of the treadmills.

Sven turned to Lorie. "Did you get any of that?"

"I think so."

"The glyco thing and everything? What?"

Lorie shrugged. "Yeah, I think so. It's like a kind of food poisoning."

"A food-borne illness," Jane interjected.

"Right," Lorie said. "It was that new strain of genetically modified soy. They tried it, and I guess it didn't work out so well."

"But then why isn't the rest of the country affected? Were they experimenting on us or something?"

Lorie hadn't thought of that. "They didn't really explain why it only went here. They did say it was a small batch though."

"And what's with the glycosa...glypho...whatever it is?"

"Glycophysate," Lorie said. "It's a pesticide." The look that Sven gave her made her wonder if Sven knew what a pesticide was, so she decided it was a good idea to explain. "You know, pest-i-cide: kills bugs. We spray pesticides on plants so the bugs don't get them."

"Okay, I've heard of them, yeah."

"So, the problem is that when we use pesticides, some of the pesticides can harm the plant that we're trying to grow...because they're a lot like poisons. So, scientists have made genetically modified plants that are resistant to the pesticides they want to use. That way, we can spray the plants all we want and kill only the bugs, because the plants are made to withstand the pesticide. So here, they came up with a new strain of glycophysate-resistant soy—glycophysate is a type of pesticide. And...well...we all know what happened."

"So the tofu that came from these soy plants...was infected with something?"

"I don't think so. It seemed from what they were saying that it's not a virus so much as a poison, like the human body reacting to something in the genetically engineered plant. It explains what happened to Randy...or at least what Milt claimed happened to him. He ate that vegetarian, no, vegan frozen dinner." Lorie looked up, trying to remember exactly what he'd eaten. "Yeah! I remember now, it was Kung Pao Tofu. He even described it to me, telling me how great it was—peppers, peanuts, rice, celery, carrots, but then, instead of meat...tofu."

Sven nodded. "And it dries us up."

"Severe dehydration," Lorie said. "The water gets all expelled, and severe mineral loss along with it. They just go crazy and try to replace the water and minerals any way they can, by biting us I guess. I don't really get that part."

"It doesn't add up," Jane said. "It does seem more like a virus, like an intelligent virus that's trying to spread itself. At least that's how it seemed to me, based on the way they chased after us. If they were just dehydrated, why did they try to bite us? To suck our blood? Wouldn't it be easier to just drink water?"

"Yeah," Sven said, "there's something here that just doesn't make sense. The zombies were trying to get us for some reason, as if they were trying to spread, to make more of themselves. The dehydration was there, they did dry up and crumple, but I don't think that's all there was to it."

"You think they're lying to us?" Lorie asked.

"Who knows," Sven said. "I'm not about to start talking conspiracy theories. Right now, I just care about next steps—the plan."

Lorie gestured at the TV. "They said the worst of it is over, that as long as we stay inside and away from any of the remaining ones, that we'll be okay. They said that by day five we'll be all clear. It's day three, and I didn't see any outside. Maybe it's over already."

"Let's go up on the roof," Jane said. "We can have a look around just in case we need to move again."

Sven got up in a swift movement. "You're right. We need to go check."

He rushed out of the room. Jane followed.

Lorie patted Ivan's head. "You knew all along, didn't you?"

Ivan meowed.

Lorie was sure that he did.

She left the smelly exercise room to catch up with Sven and Jane, not caring to see any more replays of the President speaking from the safety of the Oval Office. Apparently, he had made two inspiring addresses during the progression of the zombie outbreak.

"Speeches didn't help us much, now did they?" she asked Ivan as he padded eagerly beside her. Lorie decided that Ivan agreed.

Lorie exited onto the roof, leaving the multiple sets of stairs behind her. The humid air jolted her out of her thoughts of the mangled zombie corpses.

Although it was still early in the morning, the air was heating up quickly, and was beginning to feel stifling. One of the first things she noticed when she walked onto the roof, despite the humid, somewhat stifling air, was the absence of that strange, terrible smell that the zombies had brought with them—their secret weapon of sorts.

Lorie watched Sven and Jane walk to the edge of the roof together, and Ivan started after them but then stopped a short distance away. Lorie could see that Sven and Jane cared about each other, and she was certain that after all of this was over, if they lived through it, Sven and Jane would end up together.

She was surprised to realize that she wanted to stay with them. Her family was now completely gone...Lorie hoped Sven and Jane would let her...otherwise where would she go, what would she—

She sighed and walked to another of the roof's edges, away from Sven and Jane. She looked out over the University of Virginia grounds and took a deep breath.

The air was getting clearer, that was for sure. The rancidity of the zombies was fading. Lorie poked at the surgical mask that hung around her neck and hoped she would never have to use it again, even while a part of her savored the violence of the past days' events. She wondered what that meant about her, if that meant that she was crazy. Lorie shrugged and walked over to Jane and Sven.

"Can you see anything?" she asked.

Sven and Jane both shook their heads. Lorie looked out from their vantage point and couldn't see any roaming zombies anywhere.

Then she walked all around the perimeter of the roof, checking as far as she could see in all directions. Sven and Jane did the same, while giving Lorie her space. Only Ivan stayed close to her, rubbing up against her legs and meowing gently each time she stopped at the edge of the roof to peer down and out over the landscape. She felt so much affection for Ivan that she couldn't imagine leaving him...he was such a good cat.

After walking around the roof for a good ten minutes, Lorie was satisfied that the outbreak had ended—at least in their immediate surroundings.

She realized then that they hadn't encountered any more people since Randy.

Were there no more human survivors?

Surely looters would have been out if there were people left.

Could it be that they were it? She, Sven, Jane, and Ivan? Were they the only survivors of the zombie outbreak?

The news report had made it sound like there were others, like the government was relaying a message to all of those people still hiding in their homes. Lorie wondered if those people existed...the news report had been so vague, so neatly packaged...too neatly packaged.

She turned back toward the center of the roof to find that Jane and Sven were standing close to each other, watching her.

"Anything?" Jane asked.

Lorie shook her head. "Maybe it really is over...maybe we can go..." Lorie didn't know what she was going to say next. Go home? Where was there to go home to now? She didn't want to go home and find her mother and Evan's father and their crumpled bodies or whatever was left of them. She couldn't go back there.

"What's wrong?" Jane asked, looking concerned and starting toward Lorie.

Lorie stepped backward instinctively. "Nothing, I...nothing." Lorie looked up at Jane. "I don't want to go back...back to my house."

Jane put an arm around Lorie, which Lorie found comforting. "You don't have to. You stay with us as long as you like."

Then Sven walked over, looking as perplexed as he'd looked in the small exercise room after watching the news program. "I don't believe it," he said, looking into the distance and shaking his head. He had a sad, resigned look in his eyes. "I told him not to eat that crap, but he just wouldn't listen, I told him..." He shook his head again. Lorie watched Jane put her other arm on Sven's shoulder, and then the three of them were linked...no, it was the four of them, because there was Ivan, pawing at a mallard on Sven's calf.

"Why don't we go home?" Jane said. "It's over."

As they walked back down into Memorial Gymnasium, Lorie began to wonder what the zombie outbreak meant.

Who had won? Was it the people who were against genetically modified food, or was it the meat eaters who denounced tofu?

It seemed exceptionally ironic to Lorie that the tofu eaters were the ones who protested the proliferation of genetically modified food, and yet they were the ones that had taken the brunt of the zombie onslaught, as if they were targeted.

Then again, Lorie realized, that wasn't quite right either, because almost everyone in and around Charlottesville seemed to have been affected. Soy was in just about everything, she recalled, and maybe she and Sven and Jane had something peculiar in their bodies that kept them from turning into zombies even though they actually had been exposed to the tainted soy.

She shrugged and tried to put all of it out of her mind for the moment. It was over, and there would be plenty of time to put the pieces of the puzzle together later. If the public was ever allowed to have all the pieces, that was.

Chapter 127

Sven had a hand on each machete when he stepped out of Mem Gym and into the late morning light. Ivan was in his backpack, perched atop Sven's shoulder. The cat's head swept from side to side as he sniffed at the air.

"How's it smell?" Sven asked.

Ivan didn't hiss, and Sven took that as a good sign. The cloying, paralyzing odor seemed to be settling out of the air, becoming fainter with each passing hour. It was almost noon on the third day of the outbreak, and if the newscasters were correct—if they knew and were telling the truth—then the last of the zombies were crumpling, the outbreak was ending.

"Self-contained deterioration," that was one of the terms they had used on the news program. Sven didn't know how anyone could refer to something like this as self-contained. It was ludicrous. The zombies were trying to kill the remaining humans. How could that ever be characterized as self-contained?

Even if the newscasters had just been referring to the course of the virus, the term was at the very least inept, and having dealt with the zombies firsthand, Sven found it offensive.

He looked up at the sky and found a reassuring, almost unmarred blue staring back down at him.

He walked carefully down the steps of Mem Gym, keeping his eyes averted from the area where the burned zombies were. He didn't want to look at any of that, and there was no time for rubbernecking anyway.

The plan now was to check his house, clear it out if necessary, and relocate there with Jane, Lorie, and of course Ivan. They all agreed it was best to move to a smaller space, one that they could watch more closely, one that at least one of them—Sven—was intimately familiar with.

Mem Gym had worked well for the previous day and that morning, but the building had so many unknown hiding places that they were all uneasy about staying there any longer. They suspected that more zombies might be lurking in Mem Gym's hidden recesses.

They could barricade themselves in Sven's house more easily, and keep a better watch over its points of entry, which numbered far fewer than the points of entry into Mem Gym, the number of which they still didn't know for certain.

They would settle in and lock up—it wasn't as if the zombies knew how to open doors anyway. It was just a matter of reconnaissance and cleanup now. Sven hoped to God there was no cleanup to be done.

He strode across Emmet Street and stepped foot on Lewis Mountain Road for the first time since he'd driven away on day one of the outbreak. He kept his eyes averted from the piles of crumpled zombies that he passed, but he couldn't help wonder how he could bring himself to clean up a crumpled pile that had once been Lars. That thought had kept him insisting to Jane and Lorie that they were better off in Mem Gym, even though he knew that they weren't. Sven had backed off, feeling a bit of shame for his insistence.

Then he was standing in front of his home.

There were bits of flesh strewn across the lawn that Sven assumed were the remains of the mailman, but they were too unrecognizable for definite identification.

They'll have to check dental records, Sven thought, and wondered if the zombies' teeth became brittle and fell apart too. If that were true, identifying all of the victims might not be possible.

Sven's body shuddered as he inhaled and put his right hand on a machete. He waited, but nothing happened. None of the strangeness that he attributed to the machetes took hold of him.

Unsure of whether to be glad or fretful at the lack of jungle imagery, Sven walked straight to his door, avoiding the scattered remains on the lawn. The way the remains were arranged, it was hard to imagine they had ever been assembled in the form of a human body.

Sven pulled the screen door open and leaned it on his right shoulder to keep it propped open. He unlocked the door, put his left hand on the doorknob, tightened the fingers of his other hand on the machete, and pushed the door open.

Less than ten minutes later, Sven emerged, shocked, confused, and not at all relieved.

Lars was gone, along with any sign of his body.

The back door had been forced open and left ajar.

Apparently Lars had made his way out of the basement and out of the house, no doubt in pursuit of moisture and blood.

There was bound to be some of his friend's flesh remaining on the splinters jutting from the ruined back door. Sven cringed at the thought.

He sat down on the stoop, closed his eyes, and took deep breath after deep breath until he felt lightheaded. Then he went back inside for another check, pushed the stove up against the broken back door, exited the house, and locked the front door behind him.

No more screams, Sven thought, recalling the sounds that had traveled into his front lawn on the first day of the outbreak.

He started back toward Mem Gym in a slow, painful jog. Sven, Jane, Lorie, and Ivan would move, and in Sven's house they would stay...at least until the government cleanup crews had finished their safety sweeps, clearing out the zombie remains and dispatching any undead stragglers that remained vertical.

He would retake his house, block the doors with furniture, and wait.

As he jogged, Sven wondered how long Virginia would be quarantined from the rest of the country, and how long he, Jane, Lorie, and Ivan could live on stale peanuts and turkey jerky.

At least until the peanuts and jerky run out, Sven thought, at least until then.

Chapter 128

Sven rummaged through the DVDs littered around the TV stand in his basement until he found the one he was searching for. He picked it up and looked at it, hoping that it might take his mind off everything. He didn't want to believe any of what had happened the previous two days, and at the very least, he didn't want to think about it.

He also didn't want to risk turning the cable on, because he was sure news of the zombie outbreak would be on every channel, and he couldn't handle any more of that at the moment. He needed to escape, to get away from what had happened.

Sven put the DVD in and went to the basement refrigerator. He made himself a chocolate and peanut butter protein drink and sat down in front of the TV with it.

This protein shake was the second he had made for himself since he reclaimed his house. He told himself that he wasn't going to dump it out like he had the first one. Sven knew that he needed to get his protein in order to heal. He needed nutrients, but his appetite still wasn't there.

His mind was in all the wrong places—it was watching Lars splutter on the basement floor, it was sledging the girl in the drugstore, it was burying Evan at the edge of the parking lot, it was watching Brian get ripped apart, it was...

Almost as disturbing was the image of the breached loading dock through which the zombies had entered the Wegmans, killing Brian, and almost killing Sven, Jane, Lorie, and Ivan. The vertical gate had been cut through, the rectangular, human-shaped access point too precise to have been made by the zombies, or even by humans without equipment and experience in improvising entries.

Sven, Jane, and Lorie had all seen it, and Sven was sure it hadn't been there on his earlier inspection of the supermarket. Though the implications of this discovery were startling, they had all put it to rest for the time being. It was inexplicable.

Ashamed to even think it, Sven knew that part of his despair...part of it was missing the darkness that had consumed him, enveloping his soul, taking over all—he cut the thought off.

It didn't help that he could hear Lorie crying one floor above him. Sven wished that she would stop. Not that he could blame her for it, of course, but it made the depression he now felt seem utterly inescapable. Jane was comforting the girl, and had been for the last few hours. It seemed that after it had ended, the events of the outbreak finally sunk in for Lorie...as they must have for Jane...and as they were beginning to for Sven.

His chest and neck still hurt from the bench press accident, and he was fairly certain now that he had torn something when he overhead-pressed and tossed Milt.

I need to drink this, Sven told himself, I need my nutrients.

He looked down into the cup of protein drink—his favorite protein drink—took a deep breath, swallowed, and took a sip.

As soon as the mixture was in his mouth, he saw Lars and Brian and the girl with the destroyed head, and felt the mixture turn into a mealy paste.

He spat the mouthful back into the cup. He couldn't do it.

After putting the cup on the floor, Sven pressed play and turned up the volume on the TV, hoping that would help ward away the gory images playing in his brain.

He watched with impatience as the copyright notice appeared and lingered on the screen for an unreasonably long time.

When the movie finally began, Sven fast forwarded one chapter to get past the introductory credits, so that he could be more quickly caught up in the story.

The movie began to help. Then Sven put his hands on the machetes, and that helped even more. The haunting images were fading, but Sven wasn't going to try to drink the protein mixture again. He couldn't face the images it recalled, not now, and maybe not ever again.

He reflected on what a blessing it had been that Lars wasn't there when he returned to the house. The poor guy had probably wandered out and crumpled somewhere in the hot sun. Sven knew he wouldn't have been able to deal with finding Lars in the house. And there he caught himself again, thinking about his lost friend. He was staring at the TV, but not seeing a thing.

With a determined effort, Sven clenched his jaw, refocused on the TV, and turned the volume up higher.

After a few more minutes of staring at the screen, and trying, without success, to ward away the depression, Sven got up and put the cup of protein drink in the basement refrigerator.

Reluctant to waste food after the events of the previous two days, he told himself he might try to have it later, even though he knew that he wouldn't. He couldn't drink it, and he couldn't bring himself to dump it out either, so he resolved on trying to forget it for a while.

Sven walked back to the basement's main room and sat down in front of the TV again.

A thought pounded its way into his head. It had a kind of reverberating clarity that Sven wasn't used to having in his mind.

"Your bodybuilding days are over," Lars's voice whispered to him.

Sven shuddered, and was overcome by the eerie feeling that it was more than a mere thought, more than a post-stress reaction.

It was the truth. He was certain of that.

It was over—the massive eating, the competitions, the man-tards...he would still weight train, but the massive body couldn't be kept up if his mind remained in its current purgatory.

Sven wondered if that was where the undead went—purgatory—or where they already were when they staggered through the streets, their gnarled bodies just shades wandering the earth, souls long-dispatched.

The TV reporters had said that the infected were already dead when they were in the zombie state, but was it true? What if they could feel everything, compelled in their actions by an undeniable force, the virus's conscious but unwilling hostages?

Sven wanted to believe that they were already dead when they got to that state. He wanted to believe that Lars...and the girl in the drugstore...God how had Sven done something like that? He wanted to believe that when Lars and the girl were—

Then Ivan skittered into the room, clawing to a halt in front of Sven, the momentum of his movement carrying him slightly past where Sven imagined Ivan had wanted to stop.

The cat looked up at Sven, his green eyes shining brightly in the basement's gloom. Then Ivan leapt into Sven's lap, turned a full 360 degrees, meowing all the way around, and settled down to watch the movie.

Sven looked down at his cat. "Turns out you were the smartest of all of us. It's not our fault, you know, they build you guys a lot differently than us. We don't see things the way you do."

Ivan looked up at Sven, blinked his glowing eyes knowingly, and meowed.

"We're just people. But at least we have TV, right Ivan?"

He pointed at the screen. Ivan sniffed at Sven's finger, then settled back down to watch the movie.

The sobs coming from upstairs had grown more quiet and more infrequent.

He sighed, and tried to lose himself in the movie, in Ivan's semi-unconditional affection.

As long as I feed you, Sven thought, and patted the cat's head. He felt his throat lock up, and nausea swept up through his body. Even the thought of food, of Ivan's treats in this instance, was enough to make him want to retch.

Then Lorie and Jane came down.

"What are you watching?" Jane asked. Her face was ashen and she was trembling.

Lorie beat Sven to it before he could answer. "Harry Potter...the fourth one, right?"

"Yeah," Sven said, "that's right...it was a gift."

"It's really loud," Lorie said. "Can we turn it down a little?"

"Sure," Sven said, and passed the remote to Lorie. He made himself look away from her red eyes and cheeks.

The girl turned the volume down and sat down on the floor in front of Sven. Ivan jumped down and sat next to her, sniffed at her arm, and, apparently reassured that Lorie was Lorie, began to stare intently at the screen. Lorie put her arm around Ivan.

Jane looked at the girl for a moment, then plopped herself down next to Sven and drew her knees up against his side. It hurt him, but he didn't say anything or push her away. She put her head on his shoulder and a hand on one of the machetes attached to his belt. He covered her hand with his, and tried hard to escape into Harry's adventure.

Maybe, Sven thought, if they were lucky, each of them could get away for a while, even if just for a few seconds at a time, could get lost in the story and forget...forget...

Afterword

Milt awoke and drew in a painful, rasping breath. He opened his eyes and squinted up at the sun, beating down on him through the moist air.

His mouth felt as dry as cracked parchment. He could feel the cracks in his lips, and there was something wrong with his mouth. It didn't feel right. He wiggled his jaw, turned his neck, and then he understood what it was.

His mouth was so dry that his tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth. It took him a few tries to get it unstuck, and the detachment hurt enough that Milt was sure some of his tongue was still on the roof of his mouth, though the rest of it was free.

Then Milt realized something else was wrong, in addition to his now possibly-forked tongue. He had fought enough video game battles set in forests and wooded areas—and had designed enough of them—to realize that the scene he was currently in was missing a key gaming element—sound.

He couldn't hear a thing. There were birds above him, fluttering, opening and closing their beaks, and engaging in the other bird-like activities that Milt found annoying, but he couldn't hear any sound coming from them. He was sure they were clucking and chirping and chattering and otherwise trying to get on his nerves, but he heard nothing.

Apparently, Milt thought, being deaf has its benefits.

Looking away from the birds, Milt put a tentative hand to his lips and then touched the inside of his mouth. He looked at his fingers. There was no blood on them, but...but they looked so wrong.

They were pale, shriveled, and cracked, and they cracked even more as he bent them, opening up lines into his flesh. It was troubling to see, but there was no blood, and it didn't hurt as much as it should have. It just felt like a tightness, like stretching.

Milt knew that he needed fizzy refreshment—he needed it badly.

He sat up with a crackle of joints and dry skin, feeling the sun's ominous rays becoming more bothersome by the second.

Where am I? How did I get here?

He felt his tongue begin to stick to the roof of his mouth again. Finding that his neck wasn't mobile, Milt moved his eyes around as far as they would go and scanned his surroundings.

He was looking for some bottles of Coca-Cola, trying to ignore the fact that such a thing might be hard to come by in a forest, where he almost certainly now found himself.

Coca-Cola would fix things, or at least begin to fix things. A few bags of miniature Snickers bars would help too. Maybe there was a convenience store not too far from here.

Milt tried to comfort himself with the thought, but he had to admit that he couldn't see anything but woods surrounding him.

I need a running brook or stream or something, he thought, at least until I can get somewhere with real refreshment.

He wondered if it was dangerous to drink raw water, but the thought dried up and turned to dust in his mind. He didn't care, he would drink anything right now, from anywhere. He would squeeze water out of elephant dung in his condition, like that skinny, self-proclaimed survivalist on the television that all the women were giddy about.

Milt thought he could feel his own brain, nerve endings or no, shriveled up like a prune. It hurt. It needed hydration. And he would hydrate it, he would find a way. It was his favorite, most-cherished organ, after all.

But, even through all the dryness in his head and throughout his body, Milt could still feel a want—another want. There was an empty spot in his mind, no, in his soul, and that spot could only be filled with Sven's suffering—with Milt's domination and final ownership of Sven.

Milt still could not believe the boldness of that atrocious man in throwing him from the roof, down to the zombies.

Wait, he remembered Sven throwing him to the zombies, but how had he gotten here? There were no zombies around, and Milt was still alive.

He tried, but couldn't remember what had happened in the interim. His mind seemed to be grasping, but when his brain tried to turn out the thought, it felt like there was coarse sand grinding over itself inside his head.

The stuff in his head—whatever it was now—needed wetness, at least enough wetness to get to a muddy state of comprehension. Right at that moment, nothing made sense.

Milt's neck creaked as he turned his head in a series of short jerks, looking for a source of hydration. He was somewhere out in nature, and wasn't the natural world supposed to be full of water and such? He was sure it had to be.

There were leaves on the ground, and shoots, and roots, and there was a tree trunk not too far away from Milt. There was no elephant dung to squeeze, but Milt decided that chewing on some fallen leaves was a better idea than squeezing dung, whether the dung was available or not.

Then Milt's ear canals suddenly cleared a little, and he heard a faint gurgling coming from somewhere nearby. He rolled over, and, focusing on the sound, began to crawl toward it. He scraped himself on rocks and through bushes as he went, but he felt nothing. His body felt like a shell that could be sloughed off and remade, and he was unconcerned about it—except that he did need to water it.

The sound was getting louder, but his body was slowing down. The more he crawled, the stiffer he became, and the harder it was to keep up the crawling.

Milt paused to rest, thinking that might help, and saw something that he didn't want to. There was fluid oozing out of the cracks in his skin. A pale yellow fluid was seeping out of him, like motor oil.

He tried to crawl some more, but his arms and legs seized up and became rigid, and he collapsed in the dirt. Though it must have been his body cramping up, it didn't feel that way. It didn't hurt, but was simply immobile.

As luck had it, it wasn't dirt that Milt had collapsed in. It was mud. Milt's slowing mind realized this, and also that the gurgling sounded like it was only a few feet away—so close.

Milt felt the seeping fluid leaving him, and he understood that he could control it—not the stuff that was already outside of his body, but the stuff still in it. There was some still in there, deep down.

He focused, and bade the fluid to gather in his neck, throat, and jaw. When it had, he opened his mouth and forced his head into the mud, as deep as he could make it go.

There he drank.

When he had drunk enough to form more fluid within his body, he withdrew his face and head from the mud, chewing on the bits left in his mouth.

Milt pondered his current state, being reduced to a kind of prehistoric beastliness, finding sustenance in mud. It was no Snickers nougat, that was for damn certain.

But wait...was it better? He couldn't believe it, but the mud seemed to be fulfilling some carnal need that even Snickers candy bars didn't.

It was as if the mud was doing something far more vital for his body than Snickers or Coca-Cola ever did, or ever could. Milt had never imagined that a base substance such as mud could be filled with such incredible powers of revitalization.

As the mud replenished Milt's system, the stuff in his head began to flow, began to stir, and he understood.

He understood everything about the evolution he had gone through—much more than he ever thought there was to understand. So much more, in fact, that even he was humbled by the knowledge he had gained through his experience with the zombies.

Not only had they taken him in and made him one of their own, they had selected him as their leader, placing him at the top of their hierarchy.

Milt had been right at the very outset of the contagion—it had brought his destiny with it. He was the one human with the constitution worthy enough to lead the zombies.

Only...he wasn't human anymore, no. He knew he had become something else—something better, superior to any human, and, superior even to his quite wondrous former self. As hard a feat as that was to accomplish, he had done it. He had become an even greater, enhanced version of himself.

He was still thirsty, and now he had the strength to crawl the rest of the way to the stream, so he did, and he drank until he was contented.

It was Milt's first drink of pure water since a mysterious bottle of Evian had snuck into one of his Coca-Cola cases, and that was years ago. The cold flowing water was even better than the mud.

Then he lay down sideways with his body half in and half out of the stream, so that he could continue to soak in the cool water. That was what his body needed—to sop up the stream, all of the stream. Of course that was impossible, but Milt felt like if anyone could do it, he could.

After some moments, Milt raised his head and looked down at his soaking body. He saw that his portliness was much reduced, and that in his prostrate position, his belly did not completely obscure his feet. The tips of his pallid, shriveled toes were visible, poking out of scraggly, torn socks. He wiggled them. Notwithstanding their appearance, they seemed to work just fine, and maybe even better than before.

Milt lowered his head back onto the damp earth and took a long, deep breath. He was startled to note that all traces of his asthma were gone. He took a few more deep breaths, and was astounded that he could breathe in and out fully, with no wheezing. His lungs felt better than they had in years.

There was water in his body and fresh air in the far reaches of his lungs: Milt could not deny that his body had changed.

As he lay there, wiggling his toes and taking the moist air into his apparently rejuvenated lungs, the rest of the previous days' adventures came back to him.

Once the zombies had taken him in and made him their leader, he had become privy to a sort of collective consciousness, a shared mind—a shared mind that he controlled.

That was the best part. It was like playing Warcraft—not World of Warcraft—and directing his underlings in battle. The zombies were his chess pieces to move about the world...only now...now he wasn't sure if there were any left. That insolent, muscle-bound ruffian, Sven, had no doubt destroyed them. That was just like Sven, a hater of zombies if there ever was one.

So, the winds of destiny had come for Milt...to make him great. But, he had originally thought that he would lead the humans against the zombies. Now, knowing that he was to lead the zombies against the humans, he had to confess that he had been short-sighted not to see this prospect earlier. Milt as the zombie commander was an elegant, even brilliant turn of events. He understood that this new station was allotted for him, prearranged somehow.

We all have a role to play, he told himself, and I will play mine to perfection.

Then, Milt's hearing abruptly returned to its full capacity, and the infernal birdsong that came from all around him made him lose his train of thought.

After a few moments of painful chirruping, Milt remembered the new task that fate had allotted to him. He was to gather and assemble the zombies, and lead a zombie army against the darkness that was humankind.

But what if the zombies were gone? Milt wasn't sure there were any zombies left now that he was out in the forest by himself.

The thought frightened him, but he knew that they couldn't be gone. They were a part of him now, waiting to be reborn. He'd been bitten, after all, and here he was.

I am a zombie, Milt thought, I am...the greatest zombie of all.

The zombies remained. Milt the zombie was proof.

Deep inside, he knew the other zombies would come back, there was a way to get them from out of his own being. He felt this, and knew it to be true. If it was a disease, he was no doubt a carrier of sorts, waiting, lurking in the shadows for the perfect moment to unleash his biological, world-ending agenda once more.

The zombie apocalypse wasn't over.

It was just about to begin.

Milt smiled, and searched for a bloated pimple to pop. Disappointed on not finding one, he began to plot his revenge against Sven, and against all of humankind.

***

In a similar wooded area not too far away, another pair of eyes opened to take in the sunlight.

Squinting uncomfortably, his body racked with a sickening thirst, the vegan raised a dry, crackling arm, and brought it up to his face. He scratched at the coarse hairs of his handlebar moustache, and began to remember.

TO BE CONTINUED...
