 
THE ZOMBIE-DRIVEN LIFE

By

David Wood
The Zombie-Driven Life by David Wood

Published June, 2011 at Smashwords by Gryphonwood Press

Copyright 2011 by David Wood. All rights reserved.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American copyright conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or any means, electronic or mechanical, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons is entirely coincidental.

License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please return to Smashwords and purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please purchase a copy.
Books by David Wood:

The Dane Maddock Adventures

Dourado

Cibola

Quest

Icefall

Buccaneer (Forthcoming)

Apocalypse Tales

The Zombie-Driven Life

Aqua Zombie (short story)

The 7 Habits of Highly Infective Zombies (forthcoming)

Stand-Alone Works

Into the Woods

Callsign: Queen

David Wood writing as David Debord

The Silver Serpent

Keeper of the Mists

The Gates of Iron (forthcoming)

Visit David Wood on the web at www.davidwoodweb.com

## 1- What on Earth Am I Here For?

I can't tell you how many times I've asked that very question. I sit, hunkered down behind the rusted-out shell of what was once a candy apple red Mustang GT, and gaze at the throng of once-humanity that shuffles past. A shot to the temple would drop any one of them in an instant, but what would be the point? The rest would turn and come right after me. I'm a good shot, but not good enough to get all of them before they get me. I could outrun them, but again, why bother? Assuming the shot didn't draw more of them (the living dead are too stupid to avoid the sound of gunfire—to them it's a dinner bell), I'd run for a while, find a new place to hide, and it would start all over again. Like I said, there's no point to any of it.

My life has no purpose.

I used to believe in God. I'm not a freak or anything. I never put on a white button-up shirt and black slacks and rode around on a bicycle trying to talk people into marrying their own cousins. I never stopped anyone on the street and asked them, "If you died tonight, do you know for sure that you'd go to Heaven?" I never joined a cult or a Young Life group. I just figured that somewhere up there, God was hanging out, occasionally taking time out of His busy day to see what was happening down here, and maybe lending us a hand every so often. Now I'm not so sure.

I don't have a problem with bad things happening in life. I mean... well, I do have a problem with it, but I never blamed it on God. Bad stuff happens, and you can't be protected all the time. I remember the emo kids at school whining about how "a loving God would never permit so much suffering." I thought about suggesting they sell their iPods and send the money to charity if suffering bothered them so much, but I'm not the kind of guy that even the emo's notice. I get plenty of notice nowadays, though. From the buggers. Of course, they look at me the way I used to look at bacon.

Where was I? Oh yeah, suffering. Anyhow, I've tried to imagine a world in which God didn't permit suffering, and I didn't like the picture that came to my mind. It would be sort of like this kid I knew, Andy McMillan. His house sat on a busy corner, and his mother couldn't bear the thought of him accidentally getting hit by a car, so she put him in one of those harnesses people use to keep from losing their kid at the mall, tied a rope to it, and staked him down in center of their front yard.

While the rest of us ran around having fun, Andy ran in circles. Sometimes we'd try to include him in our games, but mostly we just threw stuff at him. His life sucked. He never got to take a chance, or try something risky and enjoy the reward. He just...existed. That's how I imagine a world where God protects us from suffering. Like Andy, we'd be safe, but not free. So that's not why I don't believe.

The reason I stopped believing in God is simple. There is no longer a purpose to being alive. I, and anyone else left with a heartbeat and a consciousness, spend all my time in an unending quest for food, shelter, and safety. We eat. We hide, or fight, if we have to. We sleep. The next day, it starts all over again. Do our lives have any more purpose than those of the mindless freaks that meander through each day, doing nothing more or less than searching for their next meal?

Why are there people at all? Is this all God intended for us? If there's a God out there, why didn't He put a stop to the bug back when it first started? Would it have been too much trouble to give just one scientist a light bulb moment, and put a halt to this thing? Is this really all there is? If there is a God, and this is His purpose for our lives, He's being a real douche.

What's that? What happened to Andy? His life had a happy ending of sorts. One day, he finally summoned up the courage to defy his mom. It was the ice cream truck that did it. We could all hear the bell ringing from two blocks away, and we dashed to the corner, our mouths watering for Bomb Pops and Banana Fudgesicles. Andy had two dollars in his pocket, and he'd already missed out twice that week. He tugged, twisted, and wrestled the fastener until it finally snapped. Liberated from the bondage of his harness for the first time in his life, he dashed after us, ready for his first ice cream as a free man. Problem was, the ice cream man, thinking we were all safely on the curb, didn't see Andy trailing behind us.

No one wanted a Bomb Pop that day-- the red looked too much like the goo pooling around the truck's front tire-- so we all went for Banana Fudge instead. How is that a happy ending? At least he didn't live long enough to see the human race, if there's anyone left besides me, reduced to this purposeless existence.

Some life, huh?

## 2- It All Starts With Zombies

That's right. It's all about the zombies, or buggers, as they have come to be known, and has been ever since the outbreak of the bug. I hear it started somewhere to the west, or to the north, others say, and it spread like wildfire. Ever since then, it's been all about the zombies. Don't let them see, smell, or hear you- they'll try to bite you. Don't let them bite you- you might get the bug. Don't let them eat you. (Do I really need to explain that one?) And somewhere during your day of zombie-dodging, try to eat something, and maybe get a little sleep. But while you're doing those things, always be on the lookout for more buggers.

One of them sees me! Crap! I turn and dash down a nearby alley. I've already scouted it out and it's a dead-end. I slow my pace to make sure the bugger is close behind me. They aren't very fast, but they can occasionally turn on the jets for a short distance. I hear its moan just behind me, a sound of hunger and longing, and I leap.

Buggers are stupid, and a trip line fools them every time. At the sound of decaying flesh on asphalt, I stop, pivot, and train my Taurus PT92 on its skull. I hope you aren't expecting some fancy description of my gun and what it can do. I only know two things about it: its name, because the pawn shop I stole it from had it labeled; and the fact that it can plow a trench through a bugger's skull.

I'm taking careful aim when the thing looks up at me and my stomach drops to my feet. It's Ms. Krasnicki, the school chorus teacher, and she looks like she has only recently turned. Her face still has a bit of color, and her nails and teeth are intact. She pushes up on her palms and I see she's still wearing her lanyard with two flash drives, her ID tag, and the set of classroom keys she's always losing. The sickly-sweet smell of death and decay fills my nostrils as she lets out a groan of anguish, and my concentration lapses for just a moment.

It's almost my undoing.

Ms. Krasnicki, or the thing that used to be her, snatches at the cuff of my jeans. I jerk my leg back, and stumbles backward a few steps before righting myself. She's up on her knees, but now I'm focused.

One shot and she's done. Chunks of dead brain spatter the asphalt, and the pistol's report echoes through the quiet streets. My chest aches like it always does when I'm forced to kill someone I know, or rather, someone I knew, but I don't have time to waste on gloom. The shot will have caught the attention of more of them, and I probably have very little time to clear out of here before I'm trapped.

When I was little, my dad introduced me to an old video game called Pac-Man. It was fun for a short while, but it got old pretty quick. You're a round guy with a big mouth running through a maze, eating dots and trying to avoid being eaten by ghosts. Occasionally you even get to kill the ghosts. That's my life in a nutshell—weaving through streets and alleyways trying not to let the buggers get me.

I make it back to my place in ten minutes, only spotting a few of my undead neighbors along the way, and none of them close enough to trouble me. The sharp stone bites into my fingertips as I use the cracks in the wall and the spaces between the bricks to climb to my window.

My place is an old-fashioned loft apartment above the hardware store in the old part of downtown. The fire escape out back came down years ago, and the owner never fixed it. I tore out the bottom ten steps on the staircase downstairs. Now the only way up is to scale the outside wall, which buggers can't do.

I don't live in my house anymore. Mom and Dad got the bug, and I couldn't bring myself to kill them. I shut them in, knowing the undead aren't good with doorknobs and locks. I don't know if they're still there or not, and I don't want to know. My old life is over. Now, it's all about the zombies.

## 3- You Just Might Be an Accident

I open the cabinet, inspect my dwindling food supply, and sigh. A few cans of disgusting potted meat, a bag of dried beans, and several bottles of vitamins are all that remains from my last foray into the grocery store. I push them aside, hoping in vain that more food has magically appeared, but no luck. There's food in my car, mostly the freeze-dried type in case of emergency, but I don't want to touch that if I don't have to. Besides, the thought of eating potted meat has made me lose my appetite.

I wander over to the sofa and sink down into its sagging, moldy middle. Something pokes me in the back, and I roll over to find my high school yearbook. I don't know why I saved it, since I hated my high school and pretty much everybody in it. Well, that's not entirely true. I had a few friends.

I thumb through the glossy pages, my eyes passing disinterestedly across the smiling faces. I never had much to smile about at school, save a few good times with my friends. Now they're all gone. I think about all the people who got the bug: the brains, the geeks, the jocks, the artsy, the do-gooders... people who actually had something going for them, and I can't help but wonder, why am I still alive?

I can think of more people than I care to count who were more deserving of life than I, or, if not more deserving, then at least more desirable to the rest of the world. Maybe the science geeks could have done something about the bug, or the jocks could have organized better resistance. Heck, the losers in shop class at least know practical things like engine repair and electrical work. What can I do? I don't have anything special to offer the world. Look up synonyms for ordinary and you'll find my name listed seventeen times. There's no reason for me to be here. It's all just one big accident.

A gloom settles over me, and I realize I don't care much whether I live or die. Oh, I'll go on trying to live, since it's not in my nature to quit, but I don't really care how things work out.

I pick up the hunting rifle I snagged from the back of an abandoned pickup truck and move to the window. The evening air is moist and cool, carrying with it a promise of rain, and I shiver as the breeze rolls across me. I scan the street below, hoping for a target, but no luck. Time to bait the field.

I use the corkscrew from my Swiss army knife to gouge a rough track in the palm of my left hand. Doing it this way is more painful than nicking it with a blade, and somehow that feels right. I watch impassively as the blood pools there. Finally, when my palm is almost covered, I hang my arm out the window and let the blood spill to the ground below. Buggers might be stupid and clumsy, but they can smell human blood a mile away.

Drip...

I wonder how many will come. Once I start shooting, the sound will bring more.

Drip...

What if more of them show up than I have bullets for? What if they just wait there for me to come out? What will I do then? Do I even care?

Drip...

I don't want to sit up here until I starve to death, or die of thirst, and I sure don't want to get the bug, so, if the worst should happen, I suppose I'll save one bullet for myself.

Drip...

The thought doesn't bother me. I don't feel much of anything, except bored. I wish they'd hurry up and get here. This is the closest I can get to a video game now that there's no electricity.

Drip...

The sound of shuffling feet draws near, and I smile for the first time in... I don't know how long. I clench my fist to stop the bleeding, though it has almost abated on its own. The shuffling comes closer, and I hear a soft moan, almost a whimper. The sound is still recognizable as human. This bugger is fresh. I prop my elbow on the windowsill and aim my rifle in the direction from which the sound comes, and wait.

The figure shambles around the corner, stumbling like a sorority girl after a hard night. She is newly-turned, and it shows not only in her gait, but her pallid flesh, her blank stare, and the...

Holy crap! It's Katy Kane! My fingers go numb and I almost drop my rifle at the sight of my one hardcore crush gone bugger. I wonder where she's been hiding out all this time, since the infection is obviously new in her. How did she manage to get bitten? Probably barricaded herself into her house until she ran out of food, and then they got her when she was forced to go out in search of sustenance.

I can't hold my thoughts together. A thousand pictures flash through my head. Katy smiling at me as I make a donation to whatever stupid charity the cheerleaders are supporting. Katy leading cheers at a pep rally. Katy laughing while...

My face grows hot and I bite down on my tongue so hard it draws blood. I force the last memory into the deepest, darkest recess of my mind, and I don't leave a freaking trail of bread crumbs to lead me back to it.

Too bad about Katy, but even if I do still like her a little bit, she isn't herself anymore. The kindest thing I can do for her is to give her a quick, clean death. I take aim again, feeling the smooth wood of the rifle stock against my cheek as I tilt my head to sight through the scope.

Shallow breath.

Slow exhale.

Gentle pressure on the trigger.

She still looks like herself. There's so little trace of the bug about her. I can't force myself to think of her as one of them. I watch her stagger forward, one dragging step at a time, and tears blur my vision.

I squeeze the trigger too hard.

Katy shrieks in terror as my shot goes high. What the hell?

"Don't shoot! Oh God, don't shoot me!" She throws her hands up in the air and rotates on the spot. "I give up. Don't shoot me." Her voice melts into a sob, and she sinks to her knees. "Please."

I hang my head out the window, my words frozen by shock.

She spots me, and her eyes grow large. "Kenan?" Her voice is scarcely more than a whisper.

I don't know which one of us is more dumbfounded. Apparently, she isn't infected at all-- just exhausted and in shock. Suddenly, I realize the peril she is in. If my fresh blood didn't draw buggers in our direction, the gunshots certainly will.

"Katy, can you climb up? There are handholds on the wall." Even as I ask, I know there's no use. From the looks of her, getting back up on her feet is more than she can manage. She shakes her head, and I am about to tell her to hang on and wait for me, when I hear the moans. We're already out of time.

## 4- What Drives Your Life?

I sling my rifle over my shoulder, feel to make sure my Taurus is in its holster, and snatch my backpack off of the sofa. I leave the school yearbook where it is. Everything I actually care about keeping is in the pack. In four seconds I'm out the window. I make it down about six feet before I simply let myself drop the rest of the way. The impact of my feet hitting the ground sends a jolt of hot fire coursing up my spine and all the way to the base of my neck.

I stagger to my feet, ignoring my pain, and dash to Katy's side. She's still staring at me, and not moving an inch. I haul her to her feet, and she drapes an arm around my shoulders and leans against me. I'm suddenly aware that I don't remember the last time I had a nice, hot shower, but I don't think she's in any condition to notice.

The moans are closer and, when I say "moans" in the plural form, I mean beaucoups de buggers. (French is one of the many things I suck at). There's no point in trying to fight, and there's definitely no chance of getting Katy into my apartment. Only one option remains.

My backup plan is the 1978 Oldsmobile Omega I keep in the shed behind my building. The tank is full, and the trunk is stocked with extra cans of gas and a siphon hose. I sort of assist, but mostly shove, Katy into the back seat with the toolbox, camping gear, extra ammo, bottled water, freeze dried food, and a few other provisions. My rifle and back pack go in the front with me. A wall of walking dead lumber into view just as I slip the key from the ashtray. My fingers are shaking so hard that it takes me three tries to put the key into the ignition and fire her up. The Omega roars to life, and I stomp down on the accelerator.

Big mistake.

The car lurches forward, then stops as the engine chokes and sputters. I let off the gas and tap it a few times, babying the engine until it recovers and then we're moving again. I'd cranked it twice a week to keep the battery juiced, but hadn't actually driven the car. Now I wish I had.

I yank the wheel hard to the right, avoiding most of the oncoming wall of buggers, but manage to clip one across the shin with the corner of my bumper. It tumbles forward, slamming into the windshield and rolling off to the side. Behind me, Katy lets out a pitiful whimper.

I cut it to the left, the tires skidding on gravel, and shoot out onto the road. Buggers are scattered up and down Laurel Street, and I weave around them with about the same level of skill and concern I demonstrated in failing my driving test on each of the first two tries. I don't want one of them to roll up the hood and smash my windshield, so I avoid them where I can, but buggers have no sense of self-preservation. They come right at us, and every once in a while I score a direct hit. With each crash, Katy's cries grow weaker, until I no longer hear her. I steal a glance in the rear view mirror to find she's fallen asleep.

## 5- Zombies Are Made to Last Forever

It's over in a matter of minutes, and we're barreling out of town, leaving a trail of maimed buggers floundering in our wake. I don't know what will happen to the ones that are too broken to walk or crawl. I suppose they'll lie there until they starve to death. Can they starve? I have no idea.

The farther we get from town, the fewer buggers I see. Katy finally wakes up and crawls into the front seat. Her eyes are glassy, and she seems almost catatonic. I worry that she's in shock, but finally she speaks.

"Where are we going?" Her voice is scarcely more than a whisper, but it still has that smoky quality that always sends shivers down my spine. For an irrational moment, I worry that she can see right through me and read my thoughts, but I shake off my worry and answer her.

"Somewhere away from town. I've been thinking. It makes sense that there would be more buggers in places where there are more people, so I figure there won't be so many out in the countryside."

"If that's the case, why didn't you leave a long time ago?"

"I have no idea," I say, and I mean it. Why didn't I leave? Maybe, in spite of my horrible high school life, I still felt some sort of attachment to my home town. Or perhaps it was the ready supply of groceries. I'm not a farmer. Who knows? It doesn't matter now. "I would have left some time soon. I was having trouble coming up with food anyway. The few grocery stores were so packed with them, I couldn't get in. I guess they concentrate there because, sooner or later, pretty much everyone tries to go there to get food."

"That's what happened to my parents." I can tell it costs her something to talk about them. It's as if frost coats every whispered word. "At least, I guess that's what happened. They went together, said it would be safer that way. Neither of them ever came back."

"I'm sorry." It's lame, but I can't think of anything else to say, and it seems insensitive to say nothing at all.

"What about your parents?" She doesn't look at me, just stares straight ahead.

"They got the bug. Mom saw her sister after she'd turned, and she freaked out. Ran right up to her and got herself bitten. Then Dad got bitten trying to help Mom back into the house. I stayed with them until it was clear the bug had taken them, then I locked them inside and left. I just couldn't do that to them you know?" I shrug and keep my eyes on the road.

Katy is quiet for a long time. From the corner of my eye I catch her stealing glances at me, and it's like an electric shock every time her gaze falls upon me. Finally, I can no longer bear the silence.

"So what did you do after you lost your parents? How did you live?"

"I stayed locked in the house as much as I could. When the food ran out, I started breaking into neighbor's houses." She is staring down at her hands. "They had all turned, so they weren't going to need it."

"Did you have any close calls?"

"Yes." She doesn't elaborate, and it's a long time before she continues. "When the water finally stopped running, I set out buckets on our patio to catch the rain. It had a privacy fence around it, so it seemed safe." She turns her head away from me, staring out into the waning daylight. "And then last night, I guess several of them were passing close by while I was outside getting water. I was always so careful, but this time I didn't hear them. They must have caught my scent because they starting slamming into the fence until it finally gave way. The sliding glass door didn't hold them either. I spent all night and all day running and hiding."

She shivers, and I want to lay a comforting hand on her arm, or hold her hand, but I don't have the guts. I can blow zombie heads off all day long, and not bat an eye, but put me next to the prettiest girl in school, and I'm a mouse.

What if Katy's the only girl my age left in the world, and I still can't bring myself to make a move? Nice joke, God. Leave me alone with the one girl who can stop my heart with a single glance. The thought makes me chuckle.

Katy snaps her head around and glares at me. Her hazel eyes always danced with delight, but now they burn in anger. "You think that's funny?"

"No. Of course not." I can feel myself blushing, and I hope the light is dim enough that it doesn't show. "I was thinking of something else," I finish weakly.

She stares at me for way too long, as if trying to decide whether or not to believe me. At long last, she settles back into her seat, the tension draining from her posture.

"That place back there where you tried to shoot me, is that where you've been living?"

"I didn't try to shoot you. I thought you had the bug, and I didn't want you to be like them." I think she actually smiles at that, but it's gone so quickly that I can't be certain it was ever there. I tell her about my little apartment above the hardware store, and how I'd torn down the staircase to make sure the only way to access it was by climbing up the wall. I'm starting to warm up a bit. After all, while she's been locked in her house, sneaking out only to steal food, I've been out there fighting buggers and taking care of myself.

"What if a bunch of them had managed to get inside the hardware store? Couldn't they have just piled onto each other until they could get to your door?"

This is the second time in five minutes I've blushed, and I hate it even more now than I did the first time.

"I suppose so. I was always careful not to lead them back to my place, though. Guess I got off lucky. You do have to be careful. Smells and sounds can draw them like cosplayers to a comic-con."

She gives me a blank look. "I have no idea what you just said."

I don't try to explain the analogy. "I'm just saying that certain smells, like blood, or a loud sound, like a gunshot, can draw all the buggers within hearing, so you have to be careful."

"Couldn't you get a silencer for your gun?"

I can tell by her tone of voice that she means it as a sincere question rather than criticism, but I'm so embarrassed and angry that I can't speak. Here I've been thinking of myself as a clever zombie slayer, and with two questions, she makes me feel every bit the loser I was in high school. I give it a little extra gas and the Omega roars into the night. I reach for the radio to turn it up, and remember that there hasn't been a radio broadcast in forever. I let my hand fall. Will I ever stop making a fool of myself?

She realizes she's upset me, so she turns to look out the window, though there's nothing out there to see, because we're well away from town by now. Her shoulders quiver, and she lets out a small sob. Now I really feel like I ought to do something for her, but I can't. She rubs her eyes and turns back around seeming to sink lower in her seat, as if she's somehow smaller.

"I'm sorry," she says.

"It's okay. The silencer is actually a good idea. I should have thought of it myself."

"Not about that. About what Brad and Rich did."

My chest constricts and I feel like I've plunged into an icy stream. "I don't want to talk about it."

"I should have said something, done something, but I just watched. I didn't think."

"Just forget it, okay?" I don't mean to snap at her, but oh well. I didn't mean to be living in the middle of the zombie apocalypse, either, but that's the way it goes sometimes.

After that, there doesn't seem to be much else to say. The minutes and miles slip past in silence.

## 6- Created to Become Like Zombies

Katy dozes for a while, and it's a relief to know that, at least for now, she's not remembering high school and my crappy place in it. A sign announces we are entering Nickelsville. It's a small town, probably not big enough to merit a spot on most maps, but it's got a convenience store, the front glass smashed and shelves looted, a bank, also smashed up, and the smallest post office I've ever seen.

Katy wakes as I navigate my way around the abandoned cars that clog the road. The last vehicle we pass before we clear the snag is a huge, long-bed pickup truck. I don't know any more about trucks than I do about guns, but I notice it has two gas tanks, and I decide this would be a good time to replenish our fuel supply. I stop the car, but don't cut the engine just yet. When I'm satisfied there are no buggers in the immediate vicinity, I shut it down. Katy frowns at me.

"I'm going to fill our tank," I explain. "Do me a favor. Climb up on the hood and keep a lookout for buggers. If you see anything at all, yell. Leave your door open so you can get back inside fast in a pinch."

She blanches at the request, but nods and does as asked.

I retrieve the siphon hose from the trunk, knowing I'm going to look like a huge moron if this truck has locking gas caps. Then again, I'll just break the caps off if that's the case. Now, if the truck was abandoned because it was out of gas, then I'm an idiot.

The tank must be close to full, because I'm able to top off our own tank with plenty to spare. I haven't yet dipped into the gas cans in the trunk, so I roll up the siphon hose and stow it away just as Katy calls my name.

I draw my Taurus and order her back into the car, looking all around for buggers as I hurry to the driver's door.

"It's not buggers! There's somebody watching us from that house."

My eyes move in the direction in which she's pointing. She's right, a shadowy form stands in the glow of a candle, peering out through the window of a small, white house that was probably neat and attractive before the bug hit.

"Let's get out of here."

"No, Kenan. That's a real, living person. Maybe they need help, or can help us."

I'm about to ask her what help, exactly, we could provide to anyone, but she's already hopped down off the hood and is walking toward the house. It's not an act of defiance. In fact, there seems to be no decision-making whatsoever involved in her actions. It's like the candle is a beacon, drawing her toward something familiar.

"Fine! We'll go. Just get in the car and we'll drive over there. I don't want a bugger getting you while you're walking." She gives me a sullen look, but gets back in the car.

The person in the window remains there, watching us, until we pull into the driveway. In a flash, the candle glow melts away, its light reappearing as the front door opens. I see now it's an elderly woman in a housecoat and slippers. She gazes intently at us, then smiles. I suppose the fact that we're kids, at least in her eyes, reassures her. She beckons for us to come inside.

I'm feeling weird about this whole thing, but how much harm can an old lady do us? Taking one more look to make sure there are no buggers nearby, I hop out of the car and wait for Katy to join me. It occurs to me that my gun might be a cause for concern. This lady doesn't know us from Adam, and going in armed might make it seem like we're up to no good. I un-tuck my shirt and let it hang over my holster. She'll probably notice sooner or later, but maybe by then she'll realize we're not a threat. One thing I'm definitely not going to do, though, is give up my gun.

The fragrance of cinnamon-scented candles hangs heavy in the air, and there's an underlying stench of something unpleasant. Then again, old people's houses always smell a bit funky. Katy crinkles her nose at me and I grin.

We're in a narrow entryway. The walls are covered in framed pictures of smiling people: babies, children, adults, and families. From the looks of them, these are the generations of this lady's family, probably from the 1950's all the way up to the time of the bug. On our left is a sitting room, and a dining room to our right. Both are dark, revealing nothing.

"Come on back, children," a kind voice calls out. "I couldn't wait for you. I was too tired from standing."

The voice emanates from the end of the hallway that leads straight back into the darkness. I see the faint flicker of candlelight on old linoleum as we approach.

The woman is seated at a small butcher board table. There appears to be no malice in her smile, but the light of the flickering candle casts her lined face in shadow, giving her a sinister air.

"Please sit down." She motions for us to join her at the table. When we're seated, she smiles and reaches out to pat our hands. "I'm Harriet," she says by way of introduction. "I am so glad to see children again. Or to see any living people. All I get around here are the zombies. I know young people call them buggers, but I prefer the old word."

"Are there many of them about?" I'm thinking it was a bad idea to stop here if it's as bugger-infested as our home town.

"A blessed few, but they're around like clockwork. They don't pester me or try to get into the house, but they rattle around outside and make it hard to rest sometimes. You'll probably hear them from time to time, but don't let it bother you. This old place is built solid. They won't get in."

"Have you been by yourself for a long time?" Katy's voice is tremulous, and I suspect she's remembering her time spent alone in her own house.

"To tell you the truth, I've lost track. But I've got my Bible to keep my company." She pats the large book that's managed to escape my notice in the faint light. "It's just like the time of Noah. God has judged us and found us wanting. Those of us who remain must be faithful, so that we might be forgiven for our sins."

"You're saying all this is a punishment?" I'm a guest, and Harriet is old, so I try to keep the scorn out of my voice.

"Of course. This is an evil world, or at least it was. God is punishing us for all our sins."

"But doesn't that mean we're being punished for the sins of others? How's that fair?"

Harriet doesn't seem upset by my argument. "We are all sinners, dear, whether we realize it or not."

"I've seen little kids, babies even, turned by the bug. What was their sin?" I maintain a tone of sincere curiosity, but I'm boiling on the inside.

"The innocents are not held responsible for their iniquities. They are welcomed home to their heavenly reward with open arms."

I want to object, but I can tell it's a waste of time. A friend of mine used to say of people, "The door is open," meaning they are someone who will not only listen to what you have to say, but will actually weigh your points and perhaps reconsider their own position in light of your argument. Then there are people for whom "The door is closed," who are so certain that they know the truth that they listen but they don't hear. This describes just about all the religious people I've ever met, and it fits Harriet to a T.

She apparently takes my silence as acquiescence and gives my hand another pat. "Well, I'm sure you two would like something to eat, wouldn't you?"

My stomach replies on my behalf with a deep rumble, and Katy giggles.

"Food would be wonderful," Katy says.

'That's just fine then." Harriet pushes back from the table and tries to stand, but her legs wobble and she sits down hard. Katy hurries to her side, but she insists she's fine. "I'm just old, dear. Give me a minute and I'll be all right. I need to go downstairs for a few things, and then I'll make us a nice, hot supper."

"Let us get if for you," Katy says. "It's the least we can do."

"You're my guests. I won't hear of you fetching for me."

"It's all right, really," I say. I doubt Harriet can make it down the stairs and back up before I die of starvation. "It's the very least we can do."

"I thank you kindly. You two must have had good home training." She hauls herself to her feet and stands leaning on her cane. "You can take the candle." She hands it to Katy. "There's a storage shelf right at the bottom of the steps with all kinds of canned food. Just pick out what you'd like. And you," she turns to me, "can get me some coal from the box under the stairs if you don't mind."

"No problem." Katy gives her a pat on the shoulder, picks up the candle, and follows Harriet to the cellar door.

A burst of cool, musty air greets us as soon as Harriet swings the door open. "Hurry on down," she urges. "This cold air sets my bones to aching."

I should probably worry when I hear the door close behind us, but I figure she's just keeping the cold air out of the upstairs. I do, however, notice a strong smell that's not part of your typical basement or cellar aroma.

"If this was a scary movie, we'd be the stupid kids who go down into the basement." Katy holds the candle up high. "Ooh! She has sweet potatoes!"

"Katy I think something's not right down here." I don't get to say what, exactly, is amiss, because a low, strangled moan fills the darkness, and a pallid hand reaches up from beneath the stairs and grabs Katy by the ankle. I catch a glimpse of decaying flesh sloughing off of a bony arm, and then she drops the candle and everything goes black.

Katy screams and plows into me in her haste to climb back up the stairs. We both go down in a heap, I land hard against a wooden riser, making my back erupt in pain, and she makes me her personal ladder as she claws her way back toward the door. I catch a knee to the groin and another to the forehead for good measure, and then she's past me.

The bugger moans again, and I feel the vibration as its dead foot slaps down on the bottom stair. Buggers suck at stair climbing, but that doesn't mean they can't climb at all, and this one only needs to make it a few feet in order to get to us. Behind me, Katy is banging on the door and shrieking for Harriet to let us in. I know in an instant her pleas are in vain. Harriet locked us in on purpose.

I draw my Taurus and fire off a wild shot in the dark. The muzzle flash gives me a momentary glimpse of what used to be a girl, probably no older than us. Harriet shrieks, a strained, crowing sound in the din. She didn't expect us to be armed. I fire again, more for the bit of light, and see that my first shot knocked the bugger back down the stairs, and she's slumped against the canned food shelf. I dig into my left pocket, find my flashlight, and flick it on.

The bugger is on its feet, or maybe I should say her feet. Stringy black hair hangs down below her shoulders. She's wearing cheerleader shorts and a shredded t-shirt that reads "Future MILF." The whole scene is so vulgar that I want to close my eyes, but I take careful aim, and turn her head into a canoe.

Harriet is still shrieking when I kick open the door and burst into the kitchen. She's lit another candle, and she looks like a tiny, drunken wraith as she wobbles toward me.

"My granddaughter. You killed her!" She takes a swing at me with her cane, misses wildly, and tumbles to the ground.

"You tried to kill us!" Katy snarls, and it's nice to see a little bit of anger out of her. "You were going to feed us to that... thing."

"She wouldn't have eaten you," Harriet sobs. "She needs friends. She's all alone down there, and I can't stay with her. She doesn't understand. I open the door and talk to her every day, but she's so alone."

"You were going to let us be turned into zombie playmates for your granddaughter?" Katy is trembling with rage.

"Zombie, human, what does it matter? We're all sinners condemned to die." Harriet pushes herself up to a sitting position, and she stares at us with hate-filled eyes. "Murderers!" She hisses.

"Let's get out of here." I take Katy by the arm and lead her away.

"Are we just going to leave her on the floor like that?" I have to hand it to her. The old lady has just tried to enroll us in a zombie day care and Katy's still worried about her well-being.

"I'll take care of it." I open the door and shout at the top of my lungs. "Help! Harriet's fallen and she can't get up." Katy covers her face with her hand, so I can't tell if she's suppressing a laugh, or a look of outrage. "What does it matter?" I ask, closing the door behind us. "She's just a condemned sinner like the rest of us."

## 7- When Zombies Seem Distant

We get out of Nickelsville as fast as we can, and I drive, and drive, and drive. When my eyelids feel like they're weighed down with sandbags, I find a place to pull the car over to the side of the road. It feels good to breathe clean air again. Back home, there was always a faint aroma of death in the air, a byproduct of a population of living corpses and their unburied victims. The odor was seldom strong unless you came upon a house in which people were lying dead, but the hint was always there, reminding you that things were very, very wrong. It was the same smell I recognized in Harriet's basement.

Katy excuses herself and heads into a nearby thicket. I stand close enough to keep watch, but still give her a modicum of privacy. My hand gently rests on my Taurus, but I'm not nervous, at least not about buggers. We're well out into the countryside, and hopefully far from any serious concentration of our living dead friends.

I take my turn in the bushes after Katy, and by the time I get back, she's set out beef jerky, peanuts, and two bottles of water. She looks like a model from a car magazine as she reclines on the hood, smiles, and pats the space beside her. I sit gingerly, the hood giving a bit as I put my weight on it.

"Stretch out. It will spread your weight out better." Katy giggles as I unfold myself with shy self-awareness until I'm lying on my side, facing her. "That's better." She takes my hand and stares at me with an intensity that locks my gaze to hers no matter how much I want to look away. At least I'm not blushing. "We're okay, right?"

"Yeah, of course. We're good." I think she's referring to our narrow escape from the bugger under the stairs, but when I look into her eyes, a deeper question lurks there. I remember how upset I got with her earlier when she mentioned those jerks from school, and I wonder if she means our friendship, or whatever we are to each other now.

"What are we going to do next?" The question doesn't seem to be a challenge or accusation.

I don't know what thrills me more, the word "we," or the fact that she thinks enough of me to let me make decisions.

"We need food, water, and safety. Once we find a place like that, we'll figure it out from there."

She rolls over on her back, but holds on to my hand. As she gazes up at the night sky, her eyes seem to sparkle like they used to. "Harriet got me wondering. Why do you think this happened?"

"I don't know. Some kind of crazy disease, or some military experiment gone wrong."

"Or a curse." She bites her lip. "Maybe it's like Harriet said. You know, back when people first realized it was getting bad, that we weren't going to be able to stop it, my mother said it was God's will. She thought He was judging our world, and the bug was like one of the plagues in Egypt, sent to punish us for our sin." She releases a breath that might have been an attempt at a rueful laugh. "But good people were struck by the bug. Heck, it got my mother, and she was the holiest person she knew."

I'm not completely certain it's okay for me to laugh at that last comment, so I smile. "You know what always bothered me about the plague stories?" I ask. "The plagues are a punishment for Pharaoh's hard-headedness, or hard-heartedness, but the Bible also says that God hardened Pharaoh's heart, and made him unwilling to listen to Moses. So God is punishing Pharaoh for something God made Pharaoh do. Heck, he didn't even punish Pharaoh directly; he punished the ordinary people, even the children. Does that make sense to you?"

Katy purses her lips, and I worry that I've offended her, but then she turns back toward me. "Do you know that I have a scar on my forehead?"

Of course I know. When we were kids, she'd try to hide it behind her hair, and now that she's a teenager, she covers it with makeup, but I've studied her so closely over the years that I know every inch of her face, her arms, her legs... I suddenly remember she asked me a question, and I nod stupidly.

"You know how I got it?"

"Lord Voldemort?"

"Jerk!" She laughs and squeezes my hand. It's the best feeling in the world. "When I was seven, I read that story. Not from a children's story book, but from the actual Bible. Mom was having coffee with some of her friends from church, and they were arguing about abortion. I remembered the scripture I had just read, and I asked my mom if the plague on the firstborn meant that God thinks it's sometimes okay to kill babies."

"Oh man."

"Yep. She smiled and said I'd just misunderstood the story. All the others laughed and agreed, but there was a moment there where I just knew that every one of them wanted to slap me." The sparkle is gone from her eyes. "As soon as the last car had left the driveway she turned around and threw her teacup at me."

"No way." I shake my head. "Man, I'm really sorry." I know my words don't mean anything all these years later, but I'm sorry for other things too.

"She wanted to take it back as soon as she did it. She hugged me and cried and apologized over and over. She kissed my forehead and there was blood on her lips." Katy shudders and a tear trickles down her cheek. "She never laid a hand on me again. Never spanked me. Nothing. I don't think she ever forgave herself. But she never answered my question, either."

On impulse, I let go of her hand, reach out, and wipe away her tears. I kiss my wet fingers, brush aside her hair, and touch them to the scar. I can't describe what passes between us, but it is as close as I've ever felt to another human being. It's not really romantic, and certainly not sexual. It's a powerful sense of empathy, like a kind of communion. She takes my hand again and presses it to her cheek.

"Thank you." Her breath is soft and warm on my skin. "What's going to happen to the world?'

"I don't know." I hate to talk about buggers at such an intimate moment, but they've been screwing up the rest of my life ever since the bug hit, so why not now? "They're hard to kill. From what I've heard, and what little I've seen, they can't drown, they don't freeze to death in winter, they don't get sick, and they never turn on one another. Nothing wants to eat them, so they have no natural predators. You can't poison them. You can break their bodies, but if you don't get the brain, what's left of them keeps on living."

"You make it sound hopeless."

"Yeah, but what do I really know? I suppose, if a group of people were to establish a secure zone with enough of what they need in order to keep them alive, they could make a fight of it. Reclaim the world bit-by-bit." I shrug. I have no idea if a plan like that would even work.

We share our meal in silence, each lost in our own thoughts. I hadn't thought about eating since Katy appeared outside my apartment, and now I'm ravenous, but I play it cool. I savor each piece of jerky, biting into it and letting it sit, the flavor filling my mouth. It's the best meal I've had since my parents got the bug.

Katy seems to have folded in on herself. She eats mechanically, seemingly unaware of what she's doing. I watch her just like I used to do in class, and she doesn't notice.

"I've heard about a place like the one you were talking about." Her words come without warning and they startle me so much that my hand jerks and I spill water all over my crotch. Lovely. "Back when things were really getting bad I heard about a place up in the mountains where people are safe. There aren't as many buggers in the mountains, so it's easier to fight them off. We should go there."

"I've never heard of anywhere like that. Of course, you're the first person I've spoken to in months. What's the name of the town?"

"I don't think it's a town exactly. Just a place. It's called Eden."

"Eden." I'm much too cynical to think much of the name, but I don't want to hurt Katy's feelings. "Well, we're headed in that direction, and we don't have anywhere else to go." I shrug.

Katy takes my hand again and gives it a squeeze. I don't let go, and neither does she. In this moment, I feel a strong connection to her that it compels me to say what's on my mind.

"I've been wondering." I hesitate. "What's the point of it all? I mean, I want to keep going, but in the big picture, what's the purpose of all of it?" She looks at me with interest. Encouraged, I continue. "Suppose there is a place like that. What are the people there really living for? They wake up, eat, fight zombies, and the next day they do it all over again. They fight to stay alive, but only so they can go on in a giant repeat cycle. What's the purpose of it all?"

"But couldn't you say that about life in general? Aren't we all just living through our day so we can do it over again tomorrow?"

"I suppose you're right." And she is. What does any of it matter? "I guess there really isn't any purpose to life."

"Sure there is." Laughing, she leans back on the windshield and pulls me down with her. "Life is full of purpose."

"Like what?"

"Right now," she lays her head against my shoulder, "my purpose is to enjoy looking at these stars."

It's about the weakest example of a life's purpose that I've ever heard, but she seems content, and it feels so nice to be close to her, that I let it go. I look up at the unchanging sky and imagine a world without buggers, without jerks like Brad and Rich. A world with just me and Katy.

## 8- What Matters Most

The back side of my body is like ice when I wake. The cold metal of the car has leached away all the warmth. I'm shivering and rubbing my legs when two things strike me almost simultaneously: it was stupid to fall asleep out here totally exposed to whatever might wander by; and Katy is gone.

I grab my gun and slide down to the ground. I want to call out, but if there are buggers nearby, that would draw their attention. I try to think. Buggers wouldn't have slipped up on us in silence and spirited her away. Heck, if anyone or anything messed with her, she would have screamed. She probably just felt the call of nature and slipped into the bushes to take care of it.

"Katy?" I say it in little more than a normal voice, but it sounds like a thunderclap in the stillness of the night.

No answer.

I call again, a little louder this time, and I get a response, but it's not the one I'm hoping for.

The mournful groan of a bugger sounds from somewhere to the left. Another answers the call, and then another. I hear shuffling and crashing in the woods, and I can tell they're coming toward me. If I were alone I would hop in the car and take off, but not now. I can't go anywhere until I find Katy. Just then, I hear her scream.

I take off in the general direction from which I heard her voice. It isn't long before my path is blocked by a pack of buggers coming right at me. I make a hasty left into the woods. Back home, I quickly discovered that humans are better in the woods than the walking dead. We're intelligent enough to duck underneath low-hanging limbs, leap over fallen branches, and weave through narrow gaps. When zombies come through the woods, it's like corpse pinball. I had several patches of forest at home that I could use to slow my pursuers if necessary. Of course, get enough of them moving in the same direction, and the front row tramples a path for the stragglers.

They're beginning to lag behind, but I also hear more of them up ahead—the same shuffling and crashing I'd heard before. I veer to the right, trying to keep an eye out for buggers, while also watching the ground for anything that might trip me up. A broken ankle and I'm dead. I'm just wondering which way Katy went when I hear the sounds of her cries in the distance. She's somewhere up ahead, and getting farther away.

I put on all the speed I can muster, leap over a tangle of briars...

...and crash headlong into a chain link fence.

I rebound off the fence and land hard on my butt smack dab in the middle of the briars. I don't know what hurts worse, my punctured backside, or my face, which feels like it's been pressed against a waffle iron. I feel my nose to see if it's broken, and my hand comes away covered in blood.

Blood! Holy crap. The buggers are going to be all over me in a minute. I spring to my feet and hurry back to the fence. I can climb with the best of them. If I can just make it over before... My eyes follow the chain links up to the top of the fence which is covered in razor wire, and then to the blocky silhouette beyond. This is a jail, or was once upon a time.

That's when I hear Katy scream, and I see the outline of someone being carried over a much larger person's shoulders. It's her. She's yelling and pummeling the guy's back with her fists, but it does no good. He's carrying her toward the prison. I'm out here with the buggers, she's in there, and there's a twelve-foot high, razor wire-topped fence between us.

I don't have time to contemplate my next move, because they're closing in on me again. I sprint along the fence line toward the place I'd seen the guy carrying Katy. In no time, I'm at the front gate. It might have once been controlled remotely, with some sort of power locks, but now it's chained and padlocked. Behind the front gate is a smaller fenced-in area, just big enough to bring a truck into. It too is gated. I'm not getting in that way, but I have an idea.

I head back in the direction of the car, hoping all the buggers have followed me in a big circle. The distant groans of my pursuers tell me I've outdistanced them for the moment. A good thing, too, because I'm wearing out. I'm accustomed to running—I do it all the time, but not at a dead sprint for such a great distance. I slow my pace, regaining my wind, though I can feel Katy getting farther away with every second that passes.

It doesn't take long to find the car, and I spare a minute to clean all the blood off of me with an old rag. When I'm finished, I dig through the tools I've collected, taking out a hacksaw blade and a pair of bolt cutters. I'm not sure what I'll find when I get to the building itself, but these tools will get me inside the fence at least.

I come to a place where the forest has grown right up against the fence line. Wild privet and waist-high pines have sprung up on the inside of the fence, creating a mini-forest. Whoever is living here hasn't done a great job of keeping the fence line clear along this small stretch. Then again, as long as the buggers stay on the outside, I guess the people on the inside are safe enough. I spare a moment to wonder about who lives here. Prisoners, I assume. Did they kill the guards and take over the place? Or did the guards bail on them when the outbreak started, like so many others did? I wonder if they feel any freer now than they did when it was the justice system keeping them in. All they've done is trade one prison for another.

I wonder if the buggers feel trapped inside their own bodies. I have a hunch they don't think or feel much of anything, but I sometimes wonder what it would be like to have nothing but an unrelenting drive to consume human flesh. Is there a moment before turning undead that a person feels what a bugger feels, but holds on to his human thoughts and emotions? What would it be like to see life from the zombie point of view?

I mull these things over as I cut a hole in the fence large enough for me to squeeze through. Now comes the crazy part. I choose a sharp edge of the freshly-clipped fence and drag the meat of my hand across it, gouging a deep trench from which fresh blood flows freely. I smear blood along either side of the cut in the fence, and then drip a trail about forty paces out into the tall grass before wrapping my hand in a cloth and ducking back into the shelter of the small evergreens.

The buggers have already caught the scent of fresh blood, and I hear them crashing into the fence as I hurry away. I glance back to see them pouring through the breach like angry ants from a disturbed hill. The fence bends back, widening the opening, but doesn't give way.

It isn't long before cries of alarm tell me that the people inside have discovered the incursion into their safe zone. A dozen or so men, and a few women, come sprinting out of a side door and take up a defensive position behind a concrete barrier along what must have once been the employee parking lot, which is now cracked and overgrown. They put me in mind of old Civil War movies: the front line kneeling and taking careful aim, the second line standing ready behind them.

The first wave of bullets rips into the throng of buggers, and their pace slows. A few go down from shots to the head, but most of them keep moving forward. There are a good forty or fifty of them lumbering toward the small cluster of defenders. Compared to the hordes that roam the streets back home, this band doesn't seem like much, but they're too many for the small knot of fighters. They'll have to retreat to the safety of the jail soon. This is my chance. If I'm going to find my way in, it has to be now.

I break cover and sprint toward the back side of the imposing building. I've almost reached it when an engine roars to life somewhere just out of sight, and a monster truck whips around the corner, bearing down on me. I dive and roll. Thankfully, the driver sees me and cuts hard, sending his truck tilting up on two wheels. For a precarious moment it teeters on the verge of rolling over, and then rights itself, falling back onto all four tires, and roars toward the zombie horde. The buggers are too intent on the live humans in front of them to notice the new threat until the truck is right on top of them.

The truck plows through the front ranks, crushing undead flesh and bone. The driver does a donut and makes another pass. I should be searching for an open door, but I'm mesmerized by the destruction. The buggers go down, broken, but not dead. A few regain their feet and shamble forward, shattered arms hanging limply at their sides, but most belly-crawl onward, dragging their broken bodies toward their prey. A few escape the mad monster truck, and reach the concrete barrier, where the defenders take them down with cold efficiency.

When no buggers remain standing the defenders cross the wall to finish off the crawlers, while the truck heads toward the breach in the fence. I suddenly realize that, even if I can find Katy, I have no idea how I'm going to get us out of here. One thing at a time, I suppose.

I circle around the back of the building. The windows are small and set high off the ground. I'll bet they're also made of some sort of reinforced glass, since this is a jail. Or do they still put bars on windows? Make that did they. I wouldn't know. I've never been in a jail. I try the few doors I encounter, each of which is locked. The distant sounds of the fight reaching my ears on this otherwise still night, I cover the back side of the jail and round the corner, determined to use my gun on the next locked door I find, and shoot anyone who gets in my way.

I test the next door I come to, and it flies open. I'm momentarily frozen by surprise, and while I stand there gaping, a strong hand grabs the front of my shirt and yanks me inside.

## 9- A Place to Belong

I stumble across the threshold and slam down on a cold, hard tile floor. My breath leaves me with a whoosh, and my gun goes spinning away. Pain sears my chest, and the coppery scent of blood is in my nose as I try to regain my feet, but the hands are on me again, hauling me up off the floor. I kick out and nail the person in the leg. He cries out in pain and surprise, and gives me a shove. I slam into a wall, and have to struggle not to fall to the floor again. I manage to suck in a rasping breath.

"Are you Kenan?" The man is angry, but his voice lacks the undertone of evil intent my subconscious mind had attached to this shadowy figure the moment his hands grasped me from out of nowhere. I nod, forgetting he can't see me in the dark. He shakes me. "Are you?"

"Yes," I gasp. I take another breath and cough it right back out.

"Your friend's been worried sick about you. She didn't want to come with us, even though that pack of buggers was roaming around out there. We promised her we'd find you, but it didn't calm her down any. We finally had to carry her away to keep her from going after you. Come on, let's go."

What? These weren't sicko kidnappers? They were trying to keep Katy safe? This unexpected news is too much for my addled brain, so I remain silent and let him guide me through darkened hallways.

After a few twists and turns, I have my breath back, my mind is a little less befuddled, and I find my voice.

"Who are you guys, anyway?"

"Mostly locals. Some city folks, some farm families who moved to the jail for safety. When it became obvious that the bug couldn't be stopped, the county set all the inmates free and abandoned the jail. It was a safer place than any other around here."

"So you guys aren't prisoners?" I feel like the only kid in class who hasn't done the assigned reading.

"Most of us aren't prisoners in the way you mean. I was a resident here, and so was one other guy. Everyone else is just an ordinary Joe or Jane. Then again, I suppose we're all prisoners to the walking roadkill out there." He sighs. "We're not giving up, though. A couple of scientists have moved in here with us. The county forensics lab is part of this facility, and they've been doing some experiments, trying to understand the bug and see if they can't do something to fight it."

I don't ask if they've made any breakthroughs. His tone of voice says it all.

A glimmer of light appears in the distance, and I see we're in a long, straight hallway. The world gradually goes from black to gray, and I get my first look at my escort. He's a good six feet tall, and big, but otherwise ordinary-looking, with dark hair and eyes. He glances at me and I think he almost smiles.

"People call me Chap. Sorry I didn't introduce myself earlier."

"No problem." I try to force a friendly grin, but I can't. I'm wondering how the people here are going to react when they realize I'm the one who cut their fence and let the buggers in because I thought they were criminal pervert kidnappers.

"So, if you were a..." I try to remember the word he used. "... a resident here, why didn't you leave?"

"It was home. I'd been here a few years, and it was actually good for me. I'm not saying it was all good, but I got clean and sober, and I found religion." He sees the sneer that contorts my face, and now he does smile. "It's not like that. I discovered religion in general. It's important to have some sort of faith to support you. I studied up on a bunch of them, and I shared what I learned with the other guys. That's how I got my nickname; it's short for 'Chaplain.' Anyway, I tried to help the guys who wanted to turn their lives around try and find a faith that work for them."

"Sort of like trying on a new pair of shoes, huh?" I shouldn't be smarting off to a guy that outweighs me by fifty pounds, but my embarrassment has made me angry and resentful.

"Sort of, but clothes just change the way you look on the outside. Faith changes who you are on the inside. Or, in the case of some of us, finally reveals our true selves."

I shrug. I want to ask him to explain how any religion that's worth a crap could let the world become what it has, but he seems like a nice enough guy, and my anger is already giving way to weariness. I'm suddenly reminded that it's the middle of the night and I've only had a few hours sleep, if that.

"By the way," Chap says, "you can have your Taurus back if you promise not to shoot me."

I nod and accept my gun. Its weight feels good in my hand, but I holster it, thinking I'd appear paranoid, if not cowardly, if I were to keep it out.

Chap leads me into a bright, white room with round tables and cheap plastic chairs. Katy is sitting with her head in her hands. A tall woman of middle years has an arm around her, speaking softly to her. They both look up when we enter. Katy's face transforms from desolation to delight, and I can't believe that look is for me.

"Kenan! Thank God you're okay!" She upends her chair in her hast to get to me. Before I know what is happening, her arms are around my neck, squeezing me tight. Her body is pressed against me, and she is sobbing into my chest. I hold her close, hating how awkward I feel, yet praying she won't let go.

"I'm so sorry. I didn't want to leave you out there. I told them."

"It's all right." I stroke her hair and absorb her warmth. "I'm just glad you're not hurt. I thought you'd been taken."

"I was." She takes a deep breath, and her body trembles. "I mean, not in a bad way, but I didn't want to go without you. They took me inside before the buggers could get to me. I didn't want to go."

"I know. I saw you. And heard you." Her shoulders give a little heave, and I think I've actually made her laugh. "I'm here now. We're going to be all right."

She looks up at me. "So, how did you get in here?"

"He cut the fence and Kevin got bit!" The angry shout echoes through the room. A big farmer-looking dude comes stomping in. His face is red and glistening with sweat. His livid eyes bore into me as he makes a beeline to where Katy and I stand. Several other people are coming in behind him, but I don't really notice anything about them. I'm too busy trying to decide whether or not to shoot this guy before he wraps his giant hands around my neck and pops my head like a zit.

Chap saves me the trouble of deciding by stepping in front of farmer guy and putting a hand on the angry man's chest.

"Calm down, Carl. He was just trying to get to his girlfriend." Chap isn't as big as the other man, but he looks like can handle himself. "Just take a breath and settle down."

Even though I should be worrying about whether or not I'm going to be strung up for cutting a hole in their fence, I steal a glance at Katy to see if she's going to tell them I'm not her boyfriend. It's stupid, I know, but I can't help myself. She doesn't object, but watches the two men.

"Settle down! Hell, we weren't doing nothing to that girl. All we were doing was keeping her safe."

"I know that, Carl, but he didn't know that." Chap's voice is calm, like he's soothing an agitated animal. "He saw me carrying her away, and her screaming and fighting. What would you have done if you were him and that was Marion being carried off by some strange man?"

Carl stares at Chap, his jaw working like he's chewing his cud or something. Finally, he hangs his head. "You know Marion's dead."

"You get my point. What would you have done if you were him?"

Carl stares at the floor a moment longer. He finally looks up long enough to give me a hate-filled stare. "Hell!" he mutters. "I'm going to go see about Kevin."

"Good idea," Chap says. "I'll be along in a minute." The others in the group all stare at me, some with compassion, but most in disgust, then follow Carl out the door. Chap turns to me and Katy. "Everyone's upset, but they understand. Just give them time. The morning will be better."

"Is the guy who is hurt, Kevin, going to be okay?" Katy must not have caught on to the fact that the guy was bitten. Nobody recovers from that.

"We'll see," Chap says kindly. He glances at the woman who had been sitting with Katy. She's still seated at the table, and she, at least, doesn't look like she hates me. "Gale will take care of you, and set you up with a place where you can get some rest. I'll talk to you in the morning."

Gale leads us into a room lined with three tiers of jail cells. I wonder for a moment if they're going to lock us up for the night, but then she opens the door to a small side room with a large plexiglass window overlooking the cells.

"This was the guards' office," Gale explains. "It gets pretty dark in here, but there's a flashlight if you need it. There's a sofa in this room, and a cot in the back." She gives us directions to a pit toilet in the old exercise area, and assures us that, should we need anything, someone will always be on duty in the common room from which we had just come.

I give Katy the bedroom and stretch out on the sofa. It's old and musty, but I'm too tired to care. I toss and turn, but my brain won't shut off. I wonder what will happen tomorrow. How will the people here treat me now that I've pretty much caused the death of one of their own? I wonder where I'll go next. I can't stay here, obviously, but what will Katy want to do? It's crazy; less than a day together, and I'm already thinking of us as a pair.

This is stupid. I helped her get to safety, but a girl like Katy is not going to be interested in a guy like me. Everybody loves her. She'll probably fit right in with these people, and become a part of their happy little community or whatever they call it, while I go my merry way.

Does it really even matter, though? Wherever I go, my life will be the same: running, hiding, and killing zombies. Repeat. What is the point of it all? Is there any purpose at all to living? I'm lost in thought when I hear a whisper in the darkness.

"Kenan, are you awake?" I can't see her in the pitch black, which makes her voice crystal clear. There's a tremor of fear there and a hint of uncertainty.

"Yeah." My voice sounds weak, tentative, and I hate it.

"Can I sleep in here? It's creepy back there all alone." She doesn't wait for me to reply, but slips down onto the couch and snuggles up against me. I wrap my arm around her and for a little while, I forget there's anyone, or anything, in the world except the two of us.

## 10- The Reason for Everything

Things aren't much better in the morning. No one says anything outwardly hostile, or even rude, to me; in fact, they don't say anything at all. They're nice to Katy though, and she's probably the only reason they tolerate me.

After breakfast, it's time for "morning duty." Gale takes Katy under her wing, and I go outside with Chap to walk the fence.

"We look for damage," he explains, not meeting my eye for obvious reasons. "Also, keep an eye out for signs of erosion where the ground meets the fence."

"I suppose we need to fix what I did last night." I mumble.

"We'll take a look at it, but Kevin says he thinks he got it pretty well secured."

I'm surprised to hear Kevin's name spoken in the present tense, like he's still alive. If he was bitten last night, he should be a goner by now.

"How is he?" I'm going to feel stupid if the answer is 'dead,' but I can't afford to appear unconcerned.

"We're not sure. The bite is more like a scrape. There's a chance, albeit a tiny one, that he wasn't infected. Most likely, he just got a touch of it."

"I didn't know you could only get a little bit of the bug. What does that mean for him?"

"We've only seen a few cases like this. It takes a while, days usually, for the bug to set in. It comes on like a cold, then a fever, a few symptoms show, like dark circles under the eyes and pale, waxy skin, and finally the full-blown bug. Once that hits you, it's over pretty quickly."

"I didn't know it could happen that way." I'm so tired of feeling like an idiot. Yesterday, I thought I pretty well had it all together in this zombie apocalypse world- man, it feels weird to use that phrase- but I didn't know crap.

"It's good and bad." Chap keeps his eyes on the fence, searching for damage or weaknesses, as we walk along. "On the one hand, he knows it's coming and can say goodbye to friends and make his peace with God. On the other hand, he knows it's coming. It's a horrible thing to contemplate."

It is exactly that, so I refuse to contemplate it. "Do you think he still believes in God after all this has happened?"

"Why wouldn't he?"

"Come on, dude. How could any kind of God let this happen? Do you think there weren't millions, heck billions, of people who prayed to their God of choice for this thing to go away? I'd say he's batting zero on answered prayers."

Chap exhales slowly. He doesn't appear mad at me. Instead, he seems to be thinking about his answer. "I'm not going to try and talk you into believing in God, or any god for that matter. But I do wonder why you think God is a takeout menu."

"What are you talking about?"

"Too many people treat religion like they're ordering from a drive-through. Heck, parents get sick of their children asking for things all the time. How would a god feel about billions of children asking for things all day long?"

I shrug.

"They ask for what they want, or what they want for their friends, family, or country without any consideration for what the consequences might be. 'Give me this, give me that. Do this for my family. Make my country win this war. Send my son into combat and bring him out unscathed.'"

"What's wrong with that?" I find that I'm actually interested in what he has to say.

"Think about it this way. My kid goes into combat and comes up against your kid. What's the purpose of armed conflict?"

"To kill people." That feels insufficient, somehow, so I add, "To destroy a target or take control of something."

"Right. The bottom line is, killing is part and parcel of any combat situation. So, when someone prays, 'Please bring my son back from combat safely,' what they're really saying is, 'Dear God, my country wants this hill to help it achieve its worldly aims, so please make sure that, when the killing starts, our sons kill the sons of people in that other country, and not the other way around.' Does that sound like something God would do?"

"Depends on the god, I suppose."

"Fair enough." He flashes a grin, and then turns back to the fence. He spots a place where one of the ties holding the fence to the post has come loose. "Keep a watch out for buggers, will you?" I keep an eye on the encroaching forest while he produces a pair of pliers and tightens it up.

"Okay, so asking for things when you pray isn't cool. But why wouldn't God stop the bug? I can't think of any possible reason it could be considered a good thing."

Now it's Chap's turn to shrug. "Maybe problems on earth aren't important enough for a supreme being to notice. I just don't think the reason there's a god or religions is to fix problems on our planet."

"I don't get it."

"Do you remember that famous John F. Kennedy quote? 'Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.' It's the same thing. People ask what their god can do for them, or in your case, decide what god ought to do for their world, and when it doesn't happen, they conclude there's no god. That's not what it's all about for me. Faith gives me a purpose in life."

That word touches a nerve, and before I know it, I'm spilling everything I've been thinking about the futility of our existence, and how life is nothing but an endless cycle of daily survival. When I'm finished, Chap smiles.

"Did you feel this way before the bug?"

"No, I don't suppose so. Before the bug, there were a million reasons for living; school, college, a job some day. I had my whole life in front of me. And then there were the little things: movies, games..." I realize how incredibly lame I must be sounding to a guy who's done time, but he just nods.

"I hear you, but let me give you another way to think about it. School, college, whatever, those are ways to get the job you want, right?" I nod. "But isn't a job just a way of getting food and shelter in order to keep yourself alive? And once you've got that job, you go back to it day after day after day."

"I get your point." If he thinks he's making me feel better, he's wrong. He must be a sorry chaplain if this is how he counsels people.

"Now, let's consider girls." We reach the place where I cut the fence. Someone has closed the gap, binding the cut edges together with aluminum ties, but Chap obviously thinks there's more to be done. He pulls a roll of wire from his pocket and hands it to me while he inspects the fence. "Women are fun, and they add drama to your life, but isn't the purpose of a relationship to find someone to make babies with, so your kids can go through the same daily grind?"

I contemplate his words, my stomach sinking deeper as the sun rises above the trees. He hands me a pair of wire cutters and indicates that I should be the one to repair the fence. He's probably got some therapeutic reason for it. Maybe by mending the damage I've done, I'm symbolically mending my soul, or some crap like that. All I know is I've never been very good at manual labor, and I just want to get through this without cutting my hand and drawing more buggers this way.

"You're quiet," he observes as I thread the wire through the fence.

"I'm just thinking how much you suck at making people feel better." The words are out before I realize what I'm saying. I've never been very good at watching my mouth around bigger guys, especially the jerks at school. Chap doesn't seem to mind, though, and I'm not in the mood to care what anyone thinks anymore, so I keep on. "You just told me that there's no purpose in living. According to you, there's nothing more to life than feeding ourselves so we can live another day. What do you tell people who are thinking about suicide? To go ahead blow their brains out because life's just a waste of time. That's what you think, isn't it?"

"Nope. I just pointed out that, according to your way of thinking, that's all there is to life."

"What?" I gape at him. I don't understand this guy at all.

"You're thinking about life the wrong way. Everybody wants to stay alive. There's nothing we can do to change it, so there's no point even considering it."

"So what is the purpose of life, mister philosopher?"

"It's whatever you want it to be. It's whatever feeds you, man. For me, it's trying to keep this community together. I don't know if it makes any difference in the big picture, but it makes me feel good. I was such a lousy human being before I went to jail. I'm ashamed of the way I lived my life, but now, I'm doing little things to pick people up instead of beating them down. It feels good."

"So, the purpose of life is to make yourself feel good? That's messed up."

"What's wrong with it? If we all find something in life that we care about, something that makes us feel better without stepping on someone else's toes, isn't that a pretty good way to live together?"

I seem to have few answers today. This isn't at all like anything I've been told before. It seems like people have always told me to sacrifice for others. You know, get crucified like Jesus, or martyred like Joan of Arc, or Martin Luther King, or Elvis on the toilet.

"It doesn't matter anyway. There's nothing left that makes me feel good." A vision of Katy comes unbidden to my mind. I like her, always have, but I know she can't be my purpose. Heck, she'll probably ditch me as soon as she finds someone better. She's just clinging to me because I was the first person in months she encountered who wasn't one of the walking dead. She'll gradually recover from whatever damage she suffered from living in such isolation all that time, warm up to the people here, and then she won't need me anymore. Oh, she'll be nice about it, but it doesn't change the fact that I'm not in her league.

"So, what did you do to get put in jail, anyway?" I'm not actually interested; I just want to stop thinking about Katy.

Chap grimaces and goes red around the ears. "It was stupid. I was stupid." He looks up at the sky and sighs. It's a very odd feeling to watch this big, tough-looking guy struggle to answer a simple question. "You've got to understand, I was a jerk. I'm different now."

"Okay." I don't know what else to say, but he seems to want reassurance, and that's the best I can do.

"I used to think it was fun to mess with people. Weak people. I couldn't stand them. My dad raised me that way, at least for as long as he stuck around. Anyway, between that and the booze and drugs, I was pretty useless."

Icy cold creeps up my spine, because Chap is beginning to remind me of a few people I've known and loathed in my lifetime.

"When my friends and I were out, I'd give guys a hard time. You know, hit on their girls, make little cracks about the guy."

"I get the picture." My voice is as cold as my heart is right now.

"Anyway, this one guy decided to mouth off. He was this little, wormy dude. I don't know what he was thinking, but what he lacked in size he made up for in lip. Pretty soon he had everybody laughing behind their hands at me. I couldn't let that happen, so I laid him out. Then I hung him up by his belt from a doorknob. The cops got there pretty quick." He shrugs. "The guy was hurt pretty bad. I deserved what I got." He falls silent.

My stomach feels like it's going to turn inside out. Suddenly I'm a freshman again, hanging from a coat hook in the school hallway. Brad holds my hands while Rich binds my wrists with duct tape. My underwear is climbing up my crack, and I'm fervently praying that the waistband will hurry up and tear so I can put my feet back the floor. (This isn't my first wedgie.) All around me people point and laugh. Katy appears from around the corner and stops short when she sees me. She starts to say something, but then she covers her mouth. I can't say for sure, but I think she stifles a giggle. Just as quickly, it's gone, and she appears uncertain, like she's trying to make up her mind about something. That's when Coach Moore comes storming in. She shoves through the crowd, takes each of my tormentors by the collar, and drags them away.

She doesn't however, stop to help me down. Neither does anyone else, and then the bell rings, and I'm alone, dangling by an elastic band and wondering if I'll fall before my drawers render me permanently incapable of taking part in the act of human reproduction. Not that I'll ever get the chance in this school after my humiliation.

My mom obviously buys me only the best whitey-tighties, because I twist and flail, but can't get loose. Twenty minutes later, when a janitor lifts me up and off the hook, my eyes are filled with tears of rage, and I'm storming out the front door of the school, visions of Columbine in my head and no regard for the fact that there are three more periods remaining in the school day.

"Are you all right?" I'm back in the present, and Chap is staring at me. The concern in his eyes is genuine, and it sets me off.

"You're an ass!" I fling his wire cutters over the fence, turn my back on him, and storm back toward the jailhouse. I don't know where I'm going, but I don't want to look at Chap's face... or Katy's.

## 11- Made for a Mission

My footsteps echo down the dark hallways as I tread aimlessly through the corridors of the old jail building. A part of me, in spite of my anger, can't help but be impressed by the setup here. They grow food in window boxes, and in a garden they've set up on the roof. They also catch rain water in barrels up on the roof, and pipe the water into the building. It appears they've set up some kind of solar panel as well, but I don't know much about that.

I don't know what to do. I'm sure everyone here hates me for getting their friend bitten. Everyone except for Chap, and I don't want to be friends with his type. This is no place for me, but where am I going to go?

I hear voices down the hall so I slip into an empty room and close the door behind me. Slanting light casts a pale glow on the dusty tile floor. Newspapers are piled atop a single table beneath the window. Having nothing better to do, I grab a folding chair from the corner, pull it up to the table, and sit down.

The front page of the top paper screams Deadly Virus! It dates from the early days of the outbreak. I skim the article, but there's nothing I don't already know. The other papers are much the same, the headlines growing more sensational as time passes and the bug grows more serious. One features a series of color photographs documenting the stages of a person turning to a bugger. I read passages here and there, noting how disbelief gives way to desperation as people accept the horrific reality of the bug, and gradually accept that there will be no cure.

I set the last paper aside to find a single sheet of legal paper. The words on it set my heart pounding.

Rev. Walton Jameson

Fall Branch

Project Eden

The reason for everything!

Does this mean what I think it means? I flip back through the papers, searching for references to Reverend Jameson or Project Eden. I find a few articles in which his name is circled, all of them quoting him in regard to the spiritual implications of the bug. He's the pastor of one of those mega churches in Fall Branch, a mountain town a few hours away. I don't, however, find anything about a Project Eden. And then I remember something else. Katy mentioned Eden just last night, though she believed it to be a place of refuge from the bug. Could it be a coincidence? Surely not.

I check under the table for stray papers. Nothing there. I spend ten minutes scouring the room, but come up empty. Discouraged, I take another look at the sheet of paper. I don't know who wrote it, but the implication is clear. Somewhere deep inside me, a tiny spark of suspicion threatens to burst into full flame.

Stuffing it into my pocket, I stalk out of the room and head to the closest stairwell. I make a side-trip to retrieve my keys and my gun, and head to my destination. I don't want to see Chap, but he's the only person I can ask.

The chaplain's office is located on the first floor. The door is ajar, so I just walk in. What I see almost stops my heart.

Katy and Chap are locked in an embrace. I guess I cry out or something, because they both look my way in surprise. My entire body feels numb, there's a strange buzzing in my ears, and my vision goes hazy. I think Katy says something, but I can't hear her. I stumble backward, banging into the door facing, and then I'm running for the nearest exit. Footsteps clatter behind me, and Chap yells for me to come back, but I don't care.

The midday sun is blinding, or maybe it's the tears welling in my eyes. I brush my sleeve across my face and keep running. The footsteps behind me grow ever closer. I stop and turn around, saving myself the indignity of being run down by Chap. Before he can catch up with me, I pull my gun. He stops short, hands out in front of him.

"Kenan, I don't know what you think was happening back there, but it wasn't anything."

"Shut up! I hate you, and everybody like you!"

"That's fine with me." He doesn't seem as bothered by the gun as I thought he would be. He probably thinks I don't have the guts to use it. If he had any idea how many people I've killed, he'd need to change his shorts. Of course, I've only ever killed buggers. Could I kill someone who hasn't been turned by the bug? "Think whatever you want about me. I probably deserve it, but Katy doesn't."

"You don't know her. She's just like you."

"She cares about you, Kenan. When I told her about our conversation this morning, she looked all over for you, and when she couldn't find you, she figured you'd left. She was upset. I gave her a hug. That's it."

"Sure, whatever." A part of me wants to believe him. Heck, all of me wants to believe him, but then I remember that one, tiny laugh so long ago, and my insides go cold. "I've seen her true colors."

"You've got her all wrong."

"No!" I level the gun right at his face, and I'm pleased at how steady I'm holding it. "We're not going to talk about her. You're going to tell me about Project Eden."

I've taken him by surprise with this. He gapes for a moment, and then shrugs. "How do you know about that?"

"It doesn't matter. Tell me what you know."

"Why?"

"Just tell me." I form each word slowly, like a sculptor shaping clay. I figure he's going to ask me to put down the gun before he talks, but he still seems unfazed by it.

"Back when the bug was getting bad, when we first turned this place into a refuge, a guy came to us. He was half-dead, didn't last very long. He told us that a Reverend Jameson had started the bug through something called Project Eden. He died shortly afterward. About a week later, a guy made it to the fence. He'd been bitten, and was on the verge of turning, but he managed to say one thing— "Reverend Jameson is the reason for everything." I tried to find out more. I didn't have many resources, but I went through newspapers trying to learn more about him and his project, but there wasn't much to be found. Every so often someone will come by who has heard a rumor about him. Jameson has a retreat center outside of Fall Branch that is also named Eden. It's a walled compound up on a hill, and he's apparently holed up there with some of his followers."

"It sounds like a lot of people have passed through here. What happened to them all?"

Chap's face falls into a sad smile. "Nobody stays. At least, no one in a very, very long time has decided to stay. The few who pass through here just keep going. Everyone believes there's somewhere safe, untouched by the bug. I don't know what they're thinking."

"Don't you ever listen to yourself?" I put every ounce of scorn I feel into the words. "Everybody needs a purpose. That's their purpose—searching for a place with no buggers. If they don't believe it exists, they'll just give up."

"You're probably right." Chap gives me an appraising look. "So, are you ready to come back inside and talk to Katy? She's all in a twist over you, you know."

"Not a chance. I've got something I need to do, so I'd appreciate it if you'd open the gate for me."

"I'm not going to open the gate."

"Open the gate." He's picked the wrong day to get arrogant with me. "If you don't open it for me, I'll just shoot the lock off. That is, if I don't shoot you first. You know I don't have any qualms about damaging your precious fence."

"I can't let you out. It's suicide. There might not be as many buggers out here in the country as there were where you come from, but there still are plenty of them out there. And I guarantee you, there's nowhere you can go to get away from them."

"I'm not trying to get away from them. I only need to stay alive for a little while."

"Kenan, you can't mean that." I'd be touched by the concern in his eyes and his voice if I didn't know what a jerk he is. "The world sucks, I can't deny that, but there are still things to live for."

"I have something to live for. I've found my purpose." He frowns in confusion, and that makes me smile. "I can't kill all the buggers in the world, and I can't bring back all the people I've lost, but I can do one thing to make it right. I'm going to eliminate the reason for everything. I'm going to kill Walton Jameson."

## 12- Life is a Temporary Assignment

I figure it will be an easy drive to Fall Branch. After all, it's only a couple of hours, and it's not like anyone else is going to be out on the road. Short, sweet road trip. Right?

Wrong.

Apparently, once pretty much everyone has turned into a bugger, there's no one left to do things like clear fallen trees off the road, or move abandoned vehicles. I soon lose count of the number of times I weave around obstacles, each time fearing the Omega will get stuck in the dirt on the shoulder of the road, or will get jammed up as I squeeze between two rusting cars or trucks.

It's not until I've reached a faded, wooden sign reading "Welcome to Fall Branch" that I have to leave the Omega and hoof it. It's now that I realize I don't know where in the town Jameson's compound is located. I can't very well ask a bugger for directions. It's a small problem, though. It's not like I have any appointments to keep. I have one goal in life, and all the time I need to complete my task, provided I stay alive.

I down a can of tuna and a bottle of water, and throw another bottle in a backpack along with some jerky and spare ammo for both my pistol and my rifle. I stuff two clips into my front pocket along with some more jerky in case I lose the backpack. I don't imagine I'll be gone long enough to starve to death, but I don't want my stomach rumbling at the wrong time. Buggers aren't deaf.

Buggers. My mind has been so preoccupied with Katy, and with my plan to kill Reverend Jameson that I haven't even been listening or looking for them. Fall Branch is, or was, a decent-size town, so there are sure to be plenty of them here.

I am struck by the realization that I'm not in Kansas anymore, as my mom used to say. Back home I knew the lay of the land. I had my escape routes planned, my trip lines set, and a safe place to hide. Out here I'm all alone, with nowhere to run and no idea where I'm headed. For all my griping about life having no purpose beyond living another day, being alive suddenly seems like a big deal.

What difference will it make in the big picture if I kill Jameson? It won't change a thing. I should go back and talk to Katy.

And then I remember walking in on her and Chap locked in a tight embrace. Then I think of that one little laugh back at school. I'm not going back for Katy. I'm going to do what I set out to do, or die trying.

"Are you real?"

The voice comes out of the darkness so suddenly that I cry out in a high-pitched shout like Michael Jackson suddenly confronted by Chris Hansen. I suppose I shouldn't make fun of the dead, but then again, just about everyone is dead, so what's the big deal?

"Jesus Harold Christ, keep your voice down! You'll bring the buggers down on us." The speaker is a little girl. She slips out from behind the jackknifed tractor-trailer that's blocking my way, and I realize she's not all that young, just little. She looks to be about sixteen, five foot nothing, with a long blonde braid that adds to the little girl vibe, as does her doe-eyed stare. She reaches out and touches my arm. "I couldn't believe it when I saw you. I ain't seen a live person in forever."

"I'm alive. At least for now."

She frowns, but doesn't press me about that comment. "Come on with me." I like her soft, girlish voice. It suits her. She takes me by the hand and I allow her to guide me along the darkened street. I listen for the sound of approaching buggers, but all I hear is the rustling of the wind in the pines.

"What's your name?" I ask.

She shakes her head. "Later." I like her voice even better when she whispers. It's soft like velvet and comforting as a gentle rainfall. There's something about this girl that's distinctly pixie-ish, as if she sprang straight out of a fantasy story, clad in jeans and a t-shirt two sizes too big, to guide me to my destination.

We clamber up onto a brick wall, and walk along it. She moves gracefully while I, still road-weary, stagger a little, but manage to maintain my balance. She doesn't look back at me, but hurries ahead, taking it for granted I'll keep up.

The brick wall abuts what looks like an old dormitory. She springs up onto an overhanging tree limb, and hops through an open window. Quick as a flash, she's looking down at me, elbows propped on the sill.

"You next. Come on!"

I hand her my rifle and then make the climb much more awkwardly than she did, but I make it—that's what counts.

Inside, the walls are plastered with posters of teen music and television stars from before the bug. I absently wonder if the girl from iCarly is wandering around somewhere searching for living flesh. I think, iZombie and chuckle.

"You don't like my room?" Her countenance falls, and my heart sinks with it. I hadn't intended to hurt her feelings.

"No. I mean yes, I like it. I was just remembering something."

"You have a nice smile."

This girl has definitely been on her own for way too long, because no one has ever complimented my smile before. Of course, that might be because I never smiled.

"Thanks. I like your eyes." It's the truth. They're big, beautiful, and innocent. I'll bet she's never stood by and laughed while someone made a fool of her friend. "I'm Kenan."

I hold out my hand and she looks at it as if it's a foreign object. She lets out a bubbly giggle and leaps into my arms, clamping herself firmly to me and laughing. "Silly! We don't have to shake hands. We're friends now."

"Are we?" I gasp. Her arms are crushing my neck. Her weight is not insubstantial either. She's a little thing, but she's got some muscle on her.

"Of course. We ain't got anyone else to be friends with, do we?" She releases me and drops nimbly onto the balls of her feet. "Sit down." She pulls me over to a bunk bed and we sit on the bottom bunk. She takes one of my hands in both of hers and smiles up at me, those big brown eyes sparkling. "My name's Callie."

"Is that short for California?" It's a bad joke, but she giggles.

"It's not short for anything. It's just what my folks named me." A cloud of sadness passes across her eyes, dimming their glow, but it's gone as quickly as it came.

"Are you from around here?" Crap. Is this the best I can do? I'm an assassin on a mission in the middle of the zombie apocalypse, and here I am stymied by the challenge of making small talk with a girl.

"Not far from here. We had a little farm outside of town. I stayed there until, you know, my family got the bug. Then I had to leave, so I came here. I'd planned on going to school here when I graduated, so it was the first place I thought of."

"What is this place?" I look around at the cream-colored block walls covered with posters. "It looks like a dorm room."

"Morgan College. It's a girls' school. Bridlefront Church owns it." She leans against me, staring out the window. "This was going to be my school. I was going to play on the softball team and study animal husbandry. I guess this is as close as I'll ever get to going to college."

"If this place was a college, weren't you worried there would be a lot of buggers here? I mean, if a lot of people were living in one place and they started turning..."

"They shut it down before the bug hit. God gave a message to Reverend Jameson, or at least that's what he said."

It's like I've been tazed. I spring to my feet, or I try to, but I forget about the top bunk and bang my head so hard that my eyes tear up and I slump back down onto the bed, holding my head.

"You poor thing." Callie puts an arm around me and draws me close. I let her move my hands so she can get a close look at my head. "It's not cut," she finally pronounces. "Good thing, too. Buggers can smell blood a mile away."

"I know." I feel like my skull has been split in two.

"What made you jump like that, anyway? It was like somebody pinched you."

I grin in spite of myself. "You said this college belongs to Reverend Jameson. You mean Walton Jameson, right?"

"Yes." For the first time, there's a darkness to her voice, a subtle hint of underlying anger.

"You don't like him?"

"He's no good." Her hands are in her lap, and she alternates between making fists and strangling motions. It's so at odds with the carefree attitude she's displayed up to this point that I almost feel like a different person has taken her place. "He had lots to say when the bug first came. He told people to keep faith, hold on to hope, trust God. When it got really bad, most of the folks who were left in the town went to his compound to try and get away from the buggers, but he wouldn't let them in. He didn't even come out to turn them away himself. He had his security guards do it." She lapses into a prolonged silence, but I sense there's more to the story, so I keep my mouth shut. For once, my instincts are good.

"First the people begged and pleaded. Then they argued, you know, told the men what the Bible says about caring for your neighbor and all that. When that didn't help, they got mad. They attacked the gates, threw rocks at the guards, even tried to climb the walls. Finally, the guards started shooting. Nobody knows how many they killed, because all the noise and the blood brought the buggers down on them." A tear rolls down her cheek, but her voice does not so much as tremble.

"It was stupid. Some of the people were supposed to keep an eye out, but once things got crazy, they just forgot, I suppose. I don't think they really believed the Reverend would turn them away." Now her voice breaks a little, and she clears her throat. "The ones the guards killed were the lucky ones. They just got torn apart and eaten. The ones the buggers didn't tear to bits got bitten, and then they turned. The guards killed as many buggers as they could, but you know how hard that is. You have to hit them in the head. Anyhow, the buggers slaughtered them all. My brother was one of them."

I reach to wipe the tears from her cheeks and the memory of doing the same thing for Katy just yesterday rends my heart. Callie smiles and pushes my hand away. I start to scoot away, fearing I've overstepped some invisible boundary, when she pulls me to her and plants her lips on mine.

At first I'm too shocked to know what to do, and, the truth is, I haven't been kissed too many times before. But then all the weirdness of kissing a girl I've known for half an hour while plotting an assassination is forgotten in the sensation of her soft lips. I wrap my arms around her and kiss her back the best I can. I guess I don't do too bad a job because it's a while before she breaks the kiss. When she does, she pulls away just far enough to look into my eyes. Hers are glistening again, though tears are part of the reason. She smiles and then pulls close again, resting her head on my shoulder.

"Thank you," she whispers. "It's been a long time since someone has been nice to me."

The words are profound in their simplicity, and I realize how lonely I've been, and why it hurt so badly when I saw Katy hugging Chap. It wasn't just that I'd had a crush on Katy for years. She was the first human contact I'd had in forever. She filled some deep-seated need I didn't know I had, and that part of me was the same part that flew into a jealous rage when I saw her hugging Chap. I feel Callie's arms around me, and realize that Katy probably had the same need for someone to simply show her some kindness, and if all she did was hug Chap, that reaction was mild compared to Callie's response to a little comfort and human contact.

Now I'm confused, and confusion just makes me mad. I put a finger under Callie's chin and tilt her head up to look me in the eye.

And I kiss her.

It feels good to take charge, to not wonder how someone will react, or whether or not something is going to be okay. It's nice to take a chance, make a decision, and go for it.

## 13- How Real Slayers Act

Time loses all meaning, and I'm not sure who breaks the kiss first. If it's me, I don't know why I do it. We stare at one another for the longest time.

"Don't think bad of me. I ain't kissed many guys before today. I just wanted to kiss you."

I realize how much her simple honesty appeals to me. The girls I knew almost all played too many head games for my liking. Callie doesn't seem that way. I wonder if she's always been this open and straightforward, or if it's life in the midst of the bug that's done it to her. In any case, I like her.

"And I wanted to kiss you back. I like you."

"I like you too," she whispers.

"Can I ask you a question?"

"You just did." She giggles and pokes me in the ribs. "What is it?"

"What do you like about me?" I've never considered myself to be someone a girl would like, and before Callie, I've had no evidence to prove otherwise, and I sense that she'll tell me the truth. She doesn't disappoint.

"You're nice. You're cute, not in a tough jock way, but I like your eyes, they're dark and mysterious, and your lips are just right."

"My lips?"

"Yeah. Some guys have little, narrow lips that make the rest of their face look too big. Others have big, fat lips or girly lips. Yours are just right for your face."

"Okay, so I'm nice, have good eyes, and good lips. Anything else?" It's not the best report card I've ever gotten, but it's good enough that I want to hear more.

"You're brave. Being with a brave guy makes a girl feel confident, and we like that."

"Whoa! I appreciate it, but I don't want you to get the wrong idea about me. I'm not brave. I'm about as ordinary as you can get. I was the picked-on band guy back in school." I don't know why I'm telling her this. It's not something I'm proud of. "It's nice of you to say, but I'm not that guy." I stop talking when I realize she's smiling.

"You don't get, do you?" I have no idea what she means, so I suppose I don't get whatever 'it' is. "Being brave ain't about being bigger than anyone else. It doesn't take any courage at all to mess with somebody smaller than you, or to go with the group."

"But..."

She puts two fingers to my lips to silence me. "You drove right smack into a town filled with buggers. That takes courage." She takes her fingers from my lips, and I feel their conspicuous absence, though they were only there for a moment. She holds up one finger. "You came with me without making me tell you where we were going and why. That's brave." She holds up a second finger.

"Or just stupid," I mumble.

"Hush. Third thing— I'll bet you've killed your share of buggers, or you wouldn't be alive." I wonder if she knows she's inadvertently making the Boy Scout salute right now. Then I remember how much I hated that stupid uniform, with the dorky shorts, neckerchief, and hat. I hope I run across a bugger in a scout uniform so I can blow its head off.

"I guess that stuff is true, but it's not like I'm some super hero marching around smacking down the undead. I get nervous, scared even. My heart pounds and I get all sweaty and clammy. I'm a coward."

"My daddy taught me that being brave don't mean you're not afraid. It means that you do what you have to do even if you are afraid. I think that's you."

I'm out of arguments. In fact, her words almost make me feel good about myself. I could have holed up in a house somewhere and waited to die, like so many others, but I didn't. And if I'm honest with myself, I'm hardly ever scared. I know I might die, but I'm usually so busy thinking about what I have to that fear doesn't really creep up on me, and when it does, it's gone once I face whatever it is I'm up against.

"You know I'm right. Think about it. Superman doesn't need to be brave because he doesn't have anything to be afraid of."

"Unless the other guy has kryptonite." Man, I am such a geek. Why do I say things like that?

"True." Her smile evaporates to be replaced by a look of grave sincerity. "I might seem clueless, but I'm not. I was watching you when you got here, and I can tell you aren't just some traveler who got stuck. You came here for a reason. What is it?"

"I'm going to kill Walton Jameson." I'm surprised at how little I care that I've made this admission so freely. Callie looks surprised, but not shocked, so I keep talking.

"I have reason to believe he's behind," I sweep my hand in a circle as if to take in the entire world, "all this. The bug, everything."

"Are you sure?" There's no wonder or suspicion in her voice. Her eyes narrow and she looks like she's about to spring.

"Not completely, but I'm pretty sure. Even if I'm wrong, what you told me about how he treated the people who came to him for help is good enough for me. The guy deserves to die, and I'm going to do it."

"Yes!" She springs to her feet and bounds across the room to a closet, throws it open, rummages around, and pulls out a pump action shotgun.

"Are you kidding me? What are you doing with that?"

"Who's kidding who here? I've been shooting all my life. Have you?" I shake my head. "I told you I'm not an idiot. I don't go anywhere unarmed." She raises the front of her t-shirt to reveal a holstered pistol tucked into the waistband of her tight jeans. I wonder how I would have reacted if I'd let my hands wander while we were kissing and had come across that.

"Callie, you can't do this. It's too dangerous." I imagine this flower of a girl in the midst of a zombie horde, and it doesn't fit. I'm suddenly afraid for her, and feel a strong need to protect her.

"My life is already dangerous. Every time I go out to find food or clean water I know I might die. And I'll bet I've killed as many buggers as you have. This ain't a safe world." She straps a fanny pack around her waist. "Shells," she explains, when she notices my quizzical look. "Ready to go?"

"Just like that?" I'm taken aback by how quickly Callie has gone into slayer mode.

"Yes, just like that. All I do is eat and sleep. My life is one big old waste of time. This is the first time I've cared about something since my folks died."

She echoes my own feelings so completely that I'm overcome by affection for her. I don't bash my head this time as I stand, cross the room, and sweep her up in my arms. I actually lift her up off her feet as we kiss, and I can tell by the pressure of her lips, the tightness of her arms around my neck, and the soft sound of pleasure she makes that right now, she is every bit as into me as I am into her.

The muscles in my arms and lower back start to burn, so I put her down gently before I give out and drop her like a clumsy oaf. I don't know what to say, so I just smile. She smiles back, then rises up on her toes and plants one more, gentle kiss on my lips.

"Let's get out of here. Follow me." She turns and rushes out the door.

This taking off without waiting for me is already getting old. I hurry to catch up with her, following her faint outline and the soft sound of her sneaker-soled footfalls in the gloomy hallway. Slivers of dull evening light filter in around the heavy curtains hanging over the hallway windows. It's enough for me to see her hurrying ahead, her braid swishing to and fro as she jogs along. I catch up with her as she hits the stairwell, and we descend side-by-side, our footsteps echoing in the dark recesses of the empty dormitory.

"Do you know where we're going?" My voice is little more than a whisper, I suppose because I already feel like a ninja slipping up on his victim.

"Yes." I think she's going to explain, but her silence reminds me that Callie is unlike the few girls I've known well.

"Care to elaborate on that? I'd like to be in on the plan too."

"The college sits at the base of the hill below Jameson's compound. There's a tunnel connecting the dining hall storage room to another storage area underneath the kitchen up in the compound. I found it when I was hunting for food. Sometimes, when I'm really desperate and there are too many buggers outside for me to take a chance on going out, I sneak up to the compound and steal food. I don't do it too often, though. There are buggers aplenty in town, but at least they can't shoot at you like one of his guards can."

"His guards are still alive?" I had imagined sneaking or fighting my way through buggers, but I had not counted on facing real, live, armed human beings.

"Somebody's alive up there. There's always less food in the storage room every time I go up there. It ain't eating itself."

We reach the bottom the stairs and Callie puts a hand on my chest. "Wait. Let me look first." She pulls back the blanket that someone, I assume she, tacked up to cover the glass pane in the upper half of the door. Over her shoulder I see a typical, though unkempt, college quad. Knee-high grass lines a cracked sidewalk bisects the quadrangle, circling an old oak tree in the center. Side paths lead to the entrances of the buildings on either side.

"Go past the oak tree and turn down the next pathway on your right. That's Bryce Hall, the dining hall. The door on the right is the one that's open. I busted the lock on it a long time ago. I don't see any buggers out there, but if any show, we should be able to outrun them. If something happens and you can't get into the dining hall, get back to the room and I'll meet you there."

I don't have time to respond because, once again, she's taken off without waiting for me. Cursing, I burst through the doorway hot on her heels. My longer strides bring me even with her in just a few steps, and I slow my pace to keep abreast of her. She smiles, but I only see it out of the corner of my eye. My head is on a swivel, looking for buggers. I feel it's my responsibility to keep Callie safe, though she probably doesn't need my help, since this was my idea. The sound of our feet on the concrete path thunders through the still evening air, reverberating off the brick walls that line the quad. My first instinct was to make a beeline for the dining hall, but Callie has the right of it. The long grass would only slow us down, and who knows what might be lying in the grass that might trip us up.

We're almost to the oak tree when the buggers make their appearance. Man, there are a ton of them. They pour through an arch on the far end of the quad like an unholy parade. Now we do veer directly toward the dining hall. Every blade of grass that tangles around my feet feels like an undead hand trying to drag me down. I stumble, and Callie steadies me.

More buggers appear from a gap between the buildings to our right, and these I don't think we can outpace. I unholster my Taurus, which I should have done already, and level it at the one in the lead, but Callie is faster.

Shooting from the hip, she blows the legs out from under the first bugger, and it goes down. The next two stumble over it and they, too hit the ground. I fire two wild shots, one of which tears a chunk of putrefied flesh out of the chest of what used to be a teenage girl, and another blast from Callie's shotgun sends it reeling. Their stench is strong as they approach, and I gag.

They keep coming, stumbling over their fallen brethren, but we've managed to slow them down enough to gain the steps to the dining hall. I take the stairs two steps at a time and swing the door open so Callie can dash inside just seconds ahead of the horde.

As soon as I'm through the door, she shoves me aside, grabs a rope that is tied to the bar that runs across the door, apparently just for situations like these, pulls the door closed and lashes the other end of the rope to an old furnace. Buggers are no good with doors, but you never know. Now we just need to hope they don't pile against it with enough force to bring it down.

"It's sturdy," she whispers, reading my expression correctly. "It ought to hold until they lose our scent and go away."

This time I'm ready for her to dash away without warning, so I don't let myself get left behind. Taking out her flashlight, she leads me through the dining hall, past the kitchen, and into a storage area lined with stainless steel shelves laid bare. A steel door lies at the far end. Callie swings the door open and shines the light into the darkness beyond I remember the small flashlight in my backpack, and I add its light to hers. A concrete tunnel runs straight back for a good fifty yards. At the end lie a stairwell and an industrial elevator. Considering the lack of electricity, I'm guessing we'll take the stairs.

Callie whispers something that sounds like, "the shadow of death," and steps inside.

## 14- Formed for Zombie Food

We climb so many flights of stairs that, when Callie finally opens the door, I expect to be surrounded by cloud cover. Instead, we step into a storage area similar to the one down in the college dining hall. I've holstered my Taurus and am now carrying my lever-action rifle. I know even less about it than I do about my Taurus, but I'm a pretty fair shot with it, and the lever action makes me feel like I'm starring in an old western.

I feel like I should take the lead, but Callie knows the way and I don't, so she pushes ahead. The storage room opens into a small commercial kitchen. She holds her flashlight between her teeth so she can have both hands on her shotgun. I do the same, and together we step through the door.

Buggers are everywhere!

I take out the first one I see with a shot right through the skull. Callie fires off two blasts from her shotgun, shredding a pair undead faces.

"Callie, get out of here!" I shout. Of course, I forget that my flashlight is in my mouth, or was. It clatters to the ground, but doesn't die. I miss the next bugger that comes at me, but get it with the next shot. "I'm serious! Go!" Pumping and firing, Callie empties her shotgun as she moves across the room. When it's empty, she draws her pistol, and fires it point-blank in the face of the closest bugger. She even remembers to take the flashlight out of her mouth before dashing across the kitchen. For once I'm glad she doesn't tend to wait around for me.

I have two shots left in my cartridge, and I pick off two more buggers. Callie is somewhere on the other side of the room yelling for me to come with her. I drop the rifle, scoop up my flashlight and draw my Taurus in one swift motion, and run. I see Callie waiting in the open doorway, and I've almost reached her when she aims her gun at my head and fires.

The sound is deafening and I stumble forward, careening into her and knocking her to the ground. Through the ringing in my ears, I hear a sickening groan and the splat of undead flesh on tile. Now I understand. A bugger must have been about to get me, so she shot it. I clamber to my feet and give her a hand up.

"Thanks." I give her a quick hug and we move down the hallway. My nerves are at piano wire tension. I think I see buggers around every corner, in every shadow. I have enough presence of mind to put a new clip in my Taurus, thought I pocket the old clip since it has a few round left in it.

"A Taurus. Nice." Callie smiles and looks with admiration at the gleaming silver barrel.

"What are you carrying?" Her answer won't mean anything to me, but I feel like I should pretend I know something about guns.

"Colt 45. It was my daddy's." She reloads as we continue down the hall. "I don't know the way from here. We'll just have to figure it out."

We pass through a hall lined with tiny bedrooms that put me in mind of a nursing home. Each contains a bed, a table and chair, and a dresser. Every pair of rooms is joined by a bathroom. There is an atmosphere of abandonment about the place, as if its residents just up and fled. That's a relief, because a spot in which many people lived might also be a place in which many people died, and that means many buggers.

We make it through without encountering any more undead, and end up in a common area. Sofas are arranged haphazardly about the room, and the few tables are cluttered with stray newspapers. It appears the last residents of this place were following news of the bug with as much interest as everyone in the outside world. I wonder how and why they failed to keep the buggers out. This place must not be the secure fortress I imagine when I think "compound."

A terrible sight greets us on the opposite side of the room. A decaying corpse slumps in a recliner. The back of its head is gone, a sure sign that the person ate the business end of the revolver lying nearby. Callie doesn't even wince. She just opens the door and peers outside. She nods, signaling it's safe, and we move on.

The next room is a chapel, or once was. Folding chairs are piled like a funeral pyre in the center of the room. At the far end is a raised platform guarded by an altar rail. Behind it is a communion table and behind that a pulpit. Set in the back wall, with curtains on either side, is a recessed area with one of those baptismal hot tubs that some churches use. A life-size crucifix hangs above it. Someone has gone to a lot of trouble to climb up there and desecrate it, carving a single word into its chest.

WHY?

Callie gazes at it, her face twisted in anger. I don't know if she's upset by the vandalism, or the possibility that these worshipers were asking God for answers when the cause of this disaster was right under their noses the entire time.

"Looks like a dead end." I don't see any other doors, save the one through which we've just come.

"So, we try another way." Callie turns toward the door and gasps. Buggers are swarming into the common room by way of the far hallway where the living quarters are situated. Before I can react to what I'm seeing, she's in motion, slamming the door and leaning against it. "There's no lock! Find something to block it with."

I reach for a folding chair, but immediately realize even a whole stack of them won't be sturdy enough to hold. I look around, frantically scanning every inch of the chapel, hoping to find something that will keep them back. My eyes fall on the communion table. I vault the altar rail and heft the heavy table, and wrestle it over the rail.

"You do know there are buggers in the other room?" Callie's voice is flush with quiet urgency. "Get your butt in gear."

I drag the table across the room and shove it against the door. It won't hold for long. What else can I use? I spot an American flag hanging limply from a wooden flagpole in the corner. In less than a minute I've used it to bust out three of the vertical posts in the communion rail. I toss them to Callie.

"Wedge these under the door! It'll help." I try to break off another post, but the flagpole snaps, leaving a sharp, two-foot stake. I pick it up, thinking it might come in handy if I run out of weapons. The rest of the pole, flag still attached, goes under the door as an extra wedge.

Callie has piled folding chairs atop the communion table and is now shoving more underneath. If the buggers want us badly enough, they'll pile against the door until sheer weight breaks it down. At that point, all that will stand in their way is whatever barricade we can put in place.

"That won't hold but for a little while." Callie looks around. "A fine time for a church not to have stained glass windows."

"Or any windows, for that matter," I add. "I'll check the walls. Maybe there's a big vent we can crawl through." It's not a likely possibility, but it's all I can think of.

"I'll check behind the curtains. Maybe there's a window back there." She vaults the altar rail and vanishes behind the thick, dusty fabric. She calls out almost immediately. "Kenan!"

"I know. You're the great and powerful Oz." I don't know why I'm making moronic comments when death is hurling itself at the door. Their guttural moans punctuated by the thumps and rattles of walking corpses slamming into the door. When you realize you're about to die, everything seems... unreal. It's like this is all a macabre nightmare that will only end when the buggers get us. Then I'll wake up at home in my own bed, the same old high school nobody I've always been.

She peeks out from behind the curtain, her face angry but her eyes twinkling. "There's a door back here, dummy! Let's go."

In a flash, I'm over the rail and by her side. I spare a glance at the sign that reads "Authorized Personnel Only," and then we step inside.

## 15- Transformed by Truth

We're in a small reception area. To either side of the door is a leather sofa bookended by a fake plant at one end and an end table at the other, each with a Bible and a few religious tracts lying atop it. Directly in front of us, a desk and chair bar the way to set of double-doors. All the furniture is covered in dust, but everything is neatly arranged, down to the pen and appointment book lying on the desk. It's as if this whole place is frozen in time. I imagine Reverend Jameson waiting somewhere behind those doors, forgotten by followers who have surrendered hope in him, and in God. The thought warms my heart. I only hope he hasn't given up the ghost and taken his own life. That's my job.

I don't know what I expect to find behind the doors, but I'm surprised as I step into a hospital-like hallway of pure white. White walls and ceiling, gleaming white tile. And light! After the dimness of the compound, the fluorescent lighting stings. Callie has the same reaction, because she covers her eyes at the same time I cover mine.

Big mistake.

There's no moaning, only a soft shuffle to warn us. Callie screams, and the sound of gunfire shatters the silence as the two of us shred the bugger that has crept up on us from around the corner. The gunshots are like thunderclaps. And then silence.

Callie turns to me, her eyes awash with fear. She holds up her bloody, trembling hand.

"It got me." She doesn't sound frightened, exactly. More like she's in shock. "I'm bit."

"Maybe it's not a bite." I take her hand and wipe it on my shirt. It is a bite, but a tiny one. Our eyes meet, and I can see she knows she's a goner.

"I'm sorry Kenan. I really am." She pulls my head down and kisses me with intense passion. "I had to have one last kiss. I've never liked anyone this much. I know it's only been a few hours, but you're special. I'm glad I had you in my life for a little while." Her voice breaks and she looks away.

"You have nothing to be sorry for. Besides, it's such a tiny bite. Maybe you aren't infected. I take hold of her arm and begin milking it, trying to squeeze the infection back out."

"It's no good." She gently extracts her hand and reaches up to touch my cheek. "I know plenty of people who tried it. They also tried tourniquets, and some even cut off their arm or leg as soon as they got bit. It doesn't work."

"But Callie, you can't just give up." Everything inside of me wants to cry, but if Callie, the only girl in the world who thinks I'm brave, is about to die, I don't want this to be her last memory of me. "I need you."

"You'll have me a little bit longer, I think. Little tiny bites like this, sometimes it takes days for the person to turn." I remember Chap telling me the same thing just this morning, and I wonder if I'm the only person in the world who didn't know that. "Now I really have a reason to kill Jameson. Just promise me that if I start to turn, you won't let me... You know what I'm saying?"

I nod. I can't answer her because if I try to speak, I know I'll cry, and that's not happening. I take a deep breath and focus on my rage. I have yet another reason to want Jameson dead, and Callie's fate has only added fuel to the fire that burns inside me.

A glance around the corner to our right, the way from which the bugger came, reveals a short hall dead-ending at a door marked "LABORATORY." We try the hallway to our left, which also ends at a door. The sign on this one reads "PRIVATE."

"Sounds like a winner." Callie's voice is dull, and I steal a glance at her for signs of the bug, but she looks the same, only paler. Can't blame her for that.

I know we're in the right place before we open the door. I hear music playing, some kind of praise chorus like they sing at those meetings where old guys with circle beards give you free pizza and try to pretend they're not like church because they have guitars and drums. Then you listen to what they're saying and you realize they might look contemporary on the outside, but their beliefs are more rigid than those of my grandmother.

I catch a whiff of coffee, which also reminds me of grandma. She'd brew a nighttime pot of decaf and have it with a slice of pie while she watched wrestling. I almost smile at the memory, but there's too much weighing on my heart right now.

I glance at Callie, who nods, and I turn the knob and push the door open.

Even though he is seated with his back toward us, I immediately recognize Walton Jameson from the newspaper photos. He's tall with graying hair, though it's much closer to pure silver than it was in the last photograph I saw. Guns trained on him, we circle around to face him.

If he's at all surprised to see us, it doesn't show. He sips his coffee and regards us over the top of his porcelain cup, looking from me to Callie, and then to our guns. He takes another sip, closes his eyes and smiles, savoring the flavor, then finally opens his eyes, and heaves a tired sigh.

"I knew someone was coming." His voice is strong, but it's a bit on the nasal side, and not deep and rich like I expected. "You made enough noise outside. Did one of the patients escape the holding pen?" He is outwardly calm, but his eyes are flitting around rapidly.

"Patients? What are you talking about?" Callie's tremulous voice seems to embolden him.

"Nothing you need to concern yourself with. Is there something I can do for the two of you?" He starts to take another sip of his coffee, but I take a step forward and slap it out of his hand. It spatters on the shag carpet, leaving dark blotches on the field of crimson.

"We'll decide what we need to know. You are going to tell us everything: what you did; how you did it; and, why you did it."

He stares back at me, eyes burning with defiance. "No." A wicked smile creeps across his face, and he folds his arms across his chest. "You've wasted your time, children. You've came all this way, from the Good Lord knows where, but you aren't going to get the answers you seek. This isn't one of those silly movies where the bad man, in his overconfidence, tells his story to the heroes, who then manage to escape." He frowns in mock sympathy. "I am the only person left who can tell the story, and I don't want to. I guess you'll just have to kill me."

A shot rings out and Jameson screams in agony. Blood pours from a wound in his outer thigh. Callie steps forward and clubs him across the forehead with the butt of her Colt. It's a glancing blow, not nearly enough to render him unconscious, but it splits the skin and sends blood pouring down his face.

"Listen to us, you sick freak! We ain't going to kill you. I was raised on a farm, and I know how to kill something, but that means that I also know what won't kill you. I can shoot you all kinds of places that'll hurt like the dickens, but will leave you all kinds of alive. And we won't let you bleed to death any time soon either. We can keep you alive and in pain for a long, long time."

"You'll both burn in hell for this," he gasps, his moment of confidence evaporated.

"We're already in hell." I like the way my voice sounds. It's like I'm snarling the words. "Now start talking." For emphasis, I draw the wooden stake from my belt and place it just underneath his eye. "Do you think it's true," I say to Callie in a conversational tone, "that and eyeball will just pop out if you get it in the right place?"

She shrugs. "Try it. He's got another one, and he ain't going to be needing either one of them for long."

I put a little bit of pressure on the stake and Jameson's will breaks.

"All right! All right! I'll tell you. Just get that thing away from my eye." I take two steps back, wary that he might try something, but the Right Reverend has buried his face in his hands and is weeping.

"It wasn't supposed to be like this. We wanted to make the world better." He sniffs and wipes his nose with his sleeve. The tears continue to flow as he speaks. It takes a while for him to get the explanation out.

Project Eden, he tells us, was an attempt to genetically eradicate any propensity toward violence from the human mind. Jameson and a select few of his followers, scientists who believed in the load of crap he preached, had sought to, in his words, "return us to the garden," where everyone lived in peace. Jameson doesn't understand the science, but they used a virus to transmit modified genetic data into human cells.

It didn't work.

Or rather, maybe it worked too well.

The experiment changed people, but it didn't simply modify the center of the brain that controls aggression. It fundamentally changed them—reduced them to the buggers that have taken over or world. The fact that they used a virus was what allowed the bug to spread.

"Who did you experiment on?" My voice is as icy as cold as the South Pole as I listen to him explain how he and his cronies tried to fundamentally change human kind, and succeeded in a way they never expected.

"They were church members. All volunteers," he quickly adds. He groans and clutches his wounded thigh. I'm glad it hurts him. "We kept it under control at first," Jameson explains. "And we were making progress. I know we would have succeeded, but then a couple of them got out. We didn't know that a single bite would transmit the virus, and how quickly someone could turn. Before we knew it, the place was swarming with the infected. We lost a quarter of our security force before they figured out that the only ways to kill them were to destroy the brain or pretty much take them apart." He grimaces and shudders as a wave of pain rattles his body. "We didn't get them all, not nearly all of them. We were too busy trying to save ourselves. Many, many escaped, and that was the beginning."

"And you've just been hiding out up here while the world dies all around you!" Callie's voice is dark whisper of hatred. Her hand twitches, and I think she's about to shoot him in the other leg, but she doesn't.

Jameson seems to think the same thing, because he hurries on. "No! The day it all went wrong we changed our entire focus. We started working on a cure right then." His voice cracks as he says the word 'cure.' Little by little, though, the bug whittled away at us. Some got infected; others gave up and took their own lives."

"My brother was killed because your guards refused to let people in, on your orders!" Callie is trembling with rage. "You are a man of God. You're supposed to help people, not turn them away."

"I know, but we couldn't be sure that we wouldn't let in someone who was already infected. We were trying to survive long enough to find a cure for this."

"Why didn't your god protect us?" I don't try to keep the scorn from my voice. "You know, come down and work miracles? Save everybody. That's what He does, right?"

"Don't blame God for this, son. We... I tried to play God, and failed. It's fitting I named this project 'Eden' because I tried to taste the forbidden fruit, to be like God and I unleashed a whole new kind of evil on the world."

"How can you even believe in God after all this? If he cared a whit, he'd do something about it. It's all a big joke."

"God's real, and he lets people make their mistakes and live with the consequences." His eyes are closed and he sucks in his breath.

"What consequences are you living with, besides a hole in your leg, I mean?"

He opens his eyes and the desolation I see inside them takes me aback. "I lost my entire family to the bug. My children and grandchildren never even made it here before the bug got them. My wife, bless her soul, she used to visit the patients. One of them, a little girl, bit her. It was a tiny bite. My wife could have lived for days, perhaps a week, but she wife didn't want to live like that, didn't want me to see her like that, so she took her own life before she could turn. She condemned herself to eternal torment for me."

"You'll be joining her there, I'm sure." I want the words to bite, to sting, but he doesn't seem to hear me.

"She missed it by one day. If she had only held on for a day, I'd have her with me still."

"What are you talking about?" His words are like an icy breeze chilling me to the bone. Can he possibly mean what I think he means?

"We found the cure. Rather, my colleague, Doctor Daniel Black found it. He successfully unturned one of our patients."

"What happened to him? Where is the cure?"

Jameson opens his eyes and smiles a smile of grim satisfaction. "The strain of it all was too much. He died of a heart attack before he could generate much of the serum."

"You said 'much' of the serum. That means there's some, right?"

"A little bit, and you have a decision to make, son." The despair is gone from his eyes, and he's smiling, but there are no warm feelings for me behind it. "I have in my possession one vial of serum, and a thumb drive containing all of Doctor Black's research. If you can find a qualified scientist and the necessary facilities, that person can make more serum, and humankind can fight back against the bug. Or," he glances at Callie, "There's hypodermic needle in the box with the serum. You can use it to save this girl. She's beginning to turn."

I look at Callie, and can immediately see he's right. Dark circles are forming under her eyes, and her flesh has taken on a pallid, waxy appearance.

"No, Kenan." She holds up her hands and backs away from me. "I can't let you do it. There's the whole world to think of, not just me."

"We'll save you first, and then use the research to make more of the cure. I know someone who can help us." I'm thinking of the scientists whom Chap said were living with him and the others back at the jail. "It'll be all right."

"Won't work." Jameson shakes his head. "Doctor Black used fluids from the original test subjects to formulate that serum. You need it if you want to have any hope of reproducing it." Slowly, so as not to alarm me, I suppose, he reaches down and presses a hidden button on the side table. A drawer slides open, and Jameson removes a gleaming silver box the size of a paperback novel. "So what will it be? The world, or the girl?"

The world can go to hell as far as I'm concerned, and I'm about to say so when a gunshot renders me mute. Callie's lifeless body slumps to the floor, blood soaking the carpet around her head. I don't want to look at her, but I can't help it. She looks so weak and tiny in death.

"Callie," I whisper. I want to take her in my arms and hold her close, but I can't stand the sight of her ruined face. I take her hand and press it against my lips, tears streaming down my face. "You shouldn't have done it. You were too good."

"I win." Jameson looks down at me in triumph. How he can be so smug, I have no idea. "You thought you had all the power, but you were wrong. You lose." He flings the box across the room. It bounces off the wall and hits the floor with a clang.

Red rage consumes me. I spring to my feet, grabbing my stake, and raise it above my head. The throw must have taken the last of Jameson's strength, because he can scarcely raise his hands to try to ward off my attack. His attempt is useless. With strength borne of rage and despair I drive the stake into his chest. Jameson gapes at it, sticking out from his body, gasps for breath, and then coughs up gouts of blood. I consider blowing his brains out for good measure, but maybe this way he'll live and suffer a little bit longer.

I retrieve the metal case, praying to no one in particular that the contents are intact. Slowly I undo the latch and open the box.

The good news is, there's no damage. The thumb drive is there, as is the hypodermic needle. The bad news is, there's not one bottle of serum. There are at least a dozen. My entire body goes numb and I feel like I'm moving in jello as I turn to look at Jameson. Our eyes meet, and the ghost of a grin plays across his bloody lips.

I empty my clip into Jameson but it doesn't make me feel any better.

In an adjacent bedroom I find a blanket, wrap Callie in it, and lay her gently on the bed. She deserves better, but I can't bury her, not with buggers roaming about. She would understand.

Through the makeshift shroud I kiss her one last time and leave the room. I grab her Colt 45 and check the clip. I didn't think to get the reloads out of her pockets before I wrapped her up, and I don't want to disturb her now, but the clip that's in it still has a few bullets remaining, so I hold on to the Colt. It might come in handy.

For the sake of sentimentality I pull the stake out of Jameson's chest. It's a messy job, and takes a bit of twisting and tugging, which is cool with me. I listen to his ribs crack and I imagine he's alive and suffering as I do it. What kind of evil person takes his last revenge by letting a girl die for no reason? The stake finally comes free, and I tuck it into my belt. I raise my foot and stomp down on Jameson's groin just because I can. That doesn't make me feel any better either.

Part of me wants to give up. Why should anyone benefit from the serum? And what good can it do, anyway? The world has turned, and turning a few people back won't make a difference. I should just end it all right here. If there's an afterlife, maybe I'll get to be with Callie.

But it's the thought of seeing Callie on the other side that stays my hand. She gave her life so I could try to save the world. What would she think of me if I didn't at least try? I owe it to her.

So, Colt in one hand, Taurus in the other, I begin the next stage of my life.

## 16- Experiencing Life Together

I find an alternate route out of the compound and make it back to my car with only a few problems. I use Callie's Colt instead of my Taurus. It feels good in my hand and I think she'd like the idea that it's still taking out a buggers.

By the time the first rays of sunlight are peeking up over the horizon, I'm driving up the main entrance to the jail. I'm sure they won't be happy to see me, but they'll change their minds once I show them what I have in the box.

When I reach the gate, I pull off to the side, though I don't know what traffic I might be blocking, and I wait. I keep the engine running in case the buggers make an appearance before someone comes to let me in.

It's five minutes or more before someone comes trotting toward the gate to let me in. I recognize Chap, and he actually smiles when he sees me. We shake hands as he lets me inside the fence.

"You all right?" I have to hand it to him. I can tell it isn't just a polite greeting. He actually wants to know if I'm okay. "All safe and sound?"

"Yes and no." I shrug. "It's a long story. If you've got a cup of coffee, I'd like to tell you about it later."

"I'd like that." He glances down at the box and frowns.

"Is your friend Kevin still alive?" I almost sag in relief at his affirmative nod. I open the box and take out the hypodermic and one of the bottles of serum. "Give him this. If what I've been told is true, he'll be okay."

Chap's eyes go round and he gapes at me as I hand him what might be his friend's salvation. "What is this? Where did you get it?"

"That's one of the things I'll tell you about. Now go get this to Kevin before it's too late." I give him a gentle shove to set him in motion and he turns and dashes away. I swear his mouth is still hanging open in shock and I hope he doesn't catch any flies on his way.

I take my time walking back to the jail. Part of the reason is the dislike I know these people have for me. Maybe if the serum works fast they'll have cause to think a little better of me. The big reason, though, is Katy. I don't know what to expect when I see her, and I'm not really sure how I'm hoping it will go.

I don't have time to contemplate the subject any longer because I hear her call my name and I look up to see her rushing toward me. She's smiling the most genuine smile I've ever seen on her face—it's not the fake smile she wore at pep rallies, or when she had her picture taken. She dashes into my arms, and presses her lips on mine. I kiss her back, loving the feeling of being alive and being so close to another living being. She pulls me tighter and I lose myself in the kiss.

Maybe it's the shock of what I've been through, or perhaps it's fatigue and sleep deprivation, but I find my mind drifting back and forth from this moment to last night in Callie's dorm. One moment, I'm here with Katy, and the next, I'm holding Callie, kissing her, feeling her so vibrant and so alive.

Katy.

Callie.

Katy.

Callie.

I'm growing dizzy and disoriented, and I pull back, stumbling and almost falling. Katy grabs my arm and steadies me.

"Are you okay? You haven't been hurt, have you? You didn't get bitten?" She looks me up and down like she's about to inspect me from head to toe, and not in a good way.

"I'll be fine," I say. I don't know if that's true, but it's what she needs to hear. "I had a crazy night, and I haven't slept or eaten in a while."

"Well, let's just get you to bed." She drapes my arm across her shoulders in case I need to lean on her, slips her arm around my waist, and walks with me all the way back to the room where we slept two nights ago. Has it really only been two nights?

I want to sleep, but I can't remember the last time I bathed, so I leave my backpack with my guns, ammo, and provisions under the bed, and Katy leads me to the shower room. It's the same room the inmates used in the past, but there's no actual shower. You get one bucket of water, and residents are limited to one "bath" a week unless circumstances dictate otherwise. I listen politely to Katy's explanation, give her the box for safe keeping, and set to scrubbing myself clean. I feel like I'm cleansing myself of more than just dirt. It's like I'm scouring away the dark memories of my trip to Fall Branch.

Katy brings me a towel and fresh clothing: a t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants that are too large, but it feels good to wear new clothes. They make me feel as if I don't have to be me for a little while.

Chap is waiting for me when I get back to the room. I tell him all about Jameson's plan, how it went wrong, and about the serum. I don't go into detail regarding anything else. I'm not ready to talk about killing Jameson, and I'm certainly not prepared to talk about Callie. When I'm finished, I hand the box over to him.

"The fate of the world depends on your scientists," I say, fully aware that I sound like an actor in a really bad sci-fi movie. "Tell them not to screw it up."

Chap opens the box with trembling hands and looks at the contents, childlike wonder filling his eyes. He closes and latches it almost reverentially.

"Thank you. Now get some sleep before you fall over." Clutching the box like it's a treasure, which it is, he leaves us standing in the hall

Katy takes me by the elbow and steers me into the back room where I tumble onto the cot and she stretches out by my side, props up on one elbow and strokes my head. I'm not sure how comfortable I am with this, what with Callie's death being fresh in my mind, but I'm too tired to figure out just how I feel, so I close my eyes and simply enjoy the feeling of someone taking care of me.

I sleep the sleep of the dead. Every time I wake, Katy is there, smiling down at me. I don't know if she actually gets any sleep herself, but I'm too out of it to care.

Callie fills my dreams. In my mind, she's the one stroking my head, the one smiling down at me, calming me when I awake gasping for breath. And then, a funny thing happens.

Callie says goodbye.

It's so vivid that I can't be sure it didn't happen in reality. Except, of course, it's a dream, but I swear it's as if Callie enters my mind and tells me goodbye.

Don't give up on life, and don't waste it thinking about me. That ain't what I died for. Be happy.

She kisses me one last time, and then she's gone.

My pillow is damp with tears when I awake, and I realize I'm still crying. Katy holds me close and tells me it's all right. Before I know it, my shoulders are heaving, my body racked with deep, anguished sobs. I don't just cry for Callie, but for everyone and everything I've lost.

When I've finally cried myself out, I work my way up to a sitting position. I feel like a bobblehead, but otherwise I'm okay. It's as if I've been cleansed. I think about Callie, and it hurts, but it's like a little pinch in the back of my throat. I remember her words, or the words she spoke in my dream, and I know she wants me to keep living. It's crazy that I knew her for only a few hours, yet I'm convinced I understood her more fully than anyone I've ever known. Hopefully I can have that again someday with someone else.

Katy smiles, but there's a touch of uncertainty in her eyes. "How are you?"

"I think I'm good. How long did I sleep?"

"Two days. Well, you woke up a lot, but you always went right back to sleep. I worried you might not ever get up again."

"Thanks for staying with me. Did you get any rest?"

"Some, but I'm all right." She touches my cheek. "If you ever want to talk about her, that would be okay with me."

I frown, my brain muzzy from that hung-over feeling that results from too much sleep, and then I understand she's talking about Callie. "How did you know?"

"You talk in your sleep. A lot! So don't bother trying to keep any secrets from me." She winks.

I wonder if she's just being playful, or if she imagines a future in which we're sleeping next to one another on a regular basis.

"You should know," she continues, still stroking my cheek, "that you're a hero. Chap came by to check on you, and it looks like that stuff you brought back is working. Kevin's no longer showing any symptoms of turning. His color is back, his skin texture is good, his eyes are clear, everything's good. They're keeping him quarantined a little longer, but hopefully..."

"...we've found a cure."

"You found a cure. When you're up to it, I want to hear about your adventure. You must have packed an awful lot of living into twenty-four hours."

"And a lot of dying too." I don't mean to say it aloud, but Katy just frowns and doesn't press the issue. I'm touched by how much she cares. She stayed by my side for two days straight, watching me sleep, just to make sure I was okay. She knows about Callie and she isn't jealous or upset. And she still seems to like me. Maybe there's more to Katy than I imagined.

I prop up on my pillow and lay staring at the ceiling. Katy is still looking uncertain, so I put my arm around her and pull her close. She lays her head on my chest and sighs in contentment.

I wonder what I'll do next. I'd like to give it a go with Katy, but I don't know if I can stand being cooped up inside this place for the rest of my life.

Our future depends on whether or not the scientists are able to duplicate the serum. If they can't do it, life goes on pretty much as it has since the bug hit. If they succeed, I suppose somebody will come up with a plan to start healing this messed-up world. An image comes unbidden to my mind of guys lassoing buggers cowboy-style, and I smile. I wonder, though, what my place will be in all of this.

"I need to talk to Chap." I sit up and plant a kiss on Katy's forehead. My new boldness where she's concerned surprises me, but there's nothing like realizing you can live with or without someone to make you a little reckless in your decision-making.

## 17- Living With a Purpose

It takes a while to find Chap because, all of a sudden, everybody loves me. They've all heard about the serum and Kevin's recovery, but they don't know any details, which warms my heart because it demonstrates that Chap and Katy can be trusted not to talk about my business.

I tell them it's a long story, and promise to give them all the gory details –pun intended- as soon as I'm up to it. I don't, however, escape the dining hall before Gale has not-so-gently persuaded me to down a granola bar and cup of coffee, warning me that I'm so skinny I look like I'm about to evaporate.

I find Chap, appropriately, in the chapel. The moment his eyes fall on, me he leaps from his chair, forgoes a handshake, and crushes me in a bear hug.

"You saved us."

I can't think of anything to say that won't make me seem like a douche, so I just shrug. I pull up a chair and we sit staring at each other for way too long. I wonder if he's playing some kind of "I'm not going to talk first" game, but then it occurs to me that I'm the one who came to him, and he's waiting to hear why.

The words seem to escape of their own accord. "I want to tell you the rest of what happened." He nods and, without intending to, I'm spilling the entire story. Not just about Callie, either. I mean the whole story: high school, the bug, Katy, and then Fall Branch. It's hard to talk about Callie, but I the story needs to be told, and not just so I can unburden my soul. Without her, I might not have even found my way to Jameson, much less survived. She deserves as much credit as I.

The worst part is telling Chap about Jameson's final act of vengeance. I think how close Callie came to still being alive. If she had only waited until we opened the box, she'd still be here. What a waste.

"You understand why he did it, don't you?" Chap's question takes me by surprise.

"Because he was a scumbag." I have the sudden urge to drive back to Fall Branch and shoot him a few more times.

"That's true, but I think there's a more specific reason he did it. I'm thinking of what he told you about his wife."

"He said she didn't have to die. If she'd held on for one more day..." My gasp of realization suffocates the unspoken words.

"Exactly. He could clearly see you and Callie cared for each other, and he couldn't stand knowing that, unlike his wife, Callie was going to be saved from the bug, and the two of you were going to be together, just as he and his wife should have been. He wanted someone to hurt as much as he did."

"He succeeded." My insides are twisted like the rope in a Boy Scout knot tying contest. I ache for Callie, but I still want Katy. What kind of jerk am I? "So where do I go from here?"

"Anywhere you want. Everyone has something inside himself that will guide him if he can only hear it. It has plenty of names: intuition; the Holy Spirit; conscience; the still, small voice; gut instinct, universal truth. Depends on your perspective, but it's there. Try to push aside all the external factors and hear what it's saying to you.

A year ago, a week ago, even a day ago I would have dismissed his words as religious crap, new age hoodoo, or psychobabble. Today, however, they ring true.

"People need hope." That might be the cheesiest sentence I've ever spoken, but I believe it. "Callie died knowing she was leaving some hope for the world, but if she'd known there was hope for herself too, she would have held on a little bit longer. Same for Jameson's wife."

Chap nods. "Go on."

I stand up and begin pacing the small room. "Inside the compound, we saw the body of someone who had blown their brains out. I suppose they watched what was happening in the world, and finally gave up." I pound my fist into my palm. "There must be other people out there like Callie, in hiding, trying to stay alive. Heck, I didn't know Katy was still alive until she came walking down my street. If the survivors give up hope, if they eat a bullet, the serum won't do them any good."

"That's true." Chap's frown and troubled eyes tell me he hasn't considered this.

"The serum will be good for saving people who've been freshly bitten, or maybe if we find someone who's newly-turned, but the buggers that turned a long time ago and are falling apart, or have lost body parts, I don't know about turning them back."

"Even if the serum worked on them, they'd likely be returning to an agonized state and would probably die." Chap exhales a long, tired breath. "We'll have to see, of course, but you're on to something."

"I want to find survivors and bring them back here. If they're already living in places like this, safe and sound and doing all right, I'll let them know we've found a cure. No one should die because they've given up hope." My thoughts race faster than my words and I hurry to keep up. "I can make signs and leave them in every town I pass through. That way, if I miss people, and I know I will, there's still a chance they'll see the sign and know not to give up."

"It will be dangerous. What if the people who've turned get you?" I wonder if he realizes he's already started seeing them as infected people instead of buggers. "Your life matters too, you know."

"My life only matters to me if I'm doing something useful." I pause, not wanting to say my next thought. "I think this is what I'm supposed to do." I hate admitting this because it implies there's something more out there, some external force that's setting my path. Then again, maybe it's just me being true to myself. I don't know for sure, but I know one thing to be true. "It's my purpose."

"Good luck with it, then." Chap rises from his chair and shakes my hand. "I hope you'll let us be your base of operations. We can keep you supplied. You should probably keep one dose of serum with you at all times. I know at least one person who will be very put out if anything happens to you."

I'm going to have to tell Katy what I've decided. I don't know how she'll take it, but I think she'll understand. I'm halfway out the door when I think of one more question.

"Chap," I swallow hard, "do you think I was meant to meet Callie?"

"Possibly. It depends on the way you see the world." He grins. "And that is for you to discover for yourself. I could break out the religious text of my choice and try to persuade you one way or the other, but it won't be nearly as powerful as something you discover on your own. At least, that's how it happened for me."

Katy surprises me. She's not thrilled with my dangerous new plan for my life, but she says she understands. She finds a Sharpie and a stack of paper in one of the abandoned offices and we spend the rest of the day making signs for me to leave in every town I pass through. She asks me to promise that I won't stay gone for more than a day at a time. I hold out for three, and we compromise at two.

The next day, I load up the car and get ready to go. I take only enough provisions for three days, just in case. According to the map Chap has given me, there are enough towns within a day's drive that it will be a long time before I'm forced to renegotiate my deal with Katy. Kevin, now out of quarantine, comes out to thank me personally, and surprises me with two clips that will fit Callie's Colt 45. Katy gives me a funny look, but doesn't ask. I'll tell her one day, but not just yet.

Our goodbye is tearful, at least on her end, and ends with a vow of eternal vengeance if I let anything happen to me. One very long kiss later, I climb into the car, buckle my seatbelt because Katy tells me to, crank it up, and wave goodbye.

I don't watch her in the rear-view mirror. It's not for any sentimental reason. I'm just afraid that if I don't keep my eyes on the road, I'll hit a tree, and my newfound hero status will be gone as quickly as it arrived.

I turn onto the main road and head north. I don't know how things will turn out. Maybe I won't find anyone else alive, and this will all be one giant waste of time. There's one thing I do know for certain, though.

I have a purpose.

~The End~

## About the Author

David Wood is the author of the popular action-adventure series, The Dane Maddock Adventures, as well as several stand-alone works and two series for young adults. Under his David Debord pen name he is the author of the Absent Gods fantasy series. When not writing, he co-hosts the ThrillerCast podcast. David and his family live in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Visit him online at www.davidwoodweb.com.
