TABLE OF CONTENTS   

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

  

    

    

                                                                                                 

    

    

    Perception determines reality.

    

    Growing up, she may not have believed this proverb or even understood it, but as she peered down the dark corridor yet again, no other adage rang more true. Thisis what she was seeing and so that made it very real. In actuality she was pulling her bedsheets closer in clinched fists and mimicking every sensation and emotion of the fake life.

    

    But what was fake and what was real?

    

    It didn’t matter. She was in the long, dark hallway again and she had to deal with it. Concrete walls were erected on both sides, keeping her in, the cold and callous bricks rough on her fingertips. Miles-it seemed-of nothingness stretched out in front of her and behind her and she was lost somewhere in the middle, the blackness overwhelming and the sensation of hopelessness already seeping in.

    

    And then began the pounding, thumping, thunderous sound that originated somewhere far ahead of her, reverberating through the hallway and in her eardrums, disrupting any thoughts she could be having and shaking the very floor she stood on.

    

    This much was always the same: the concrete corridor, the dark, the noise. And up to a certain point, the events that followed were also the same.

    

    Probing with outstretched arms she made her way forward, one foot after the other. Though she had learned through the years to be silent in every movement she made, somehow she wasn’t able to suppress the sound of her loud and exaggerated footfalls no matter how softly she stepped.

    

    Frustration.

    

    Her steps always remained out of sync with the pounding noise ahead of her and the result sounded a lot like some kind of music fit only for neanderthals, like the beating of tribal war drums urging her forward.

    

    Fear.

    

    A light began to appear at the end of the corridor, rectangular in shape with a hollow belly. When she got close enough to realize the light was the outline of a door and that beyond that door the sun was shining through the cracks, she stopped. Someone-or several someones-were on the other side, banging on the door, wanting to get in.

    

    Uncertainty.

    

    She called out, “Who’s there?”

    

    Her voice carried through the corridor without reverberation or echo.

    

    And then there was silence. The thundering ceased and all she could hear was her own stuttering breaths-cold intakes of oxygen drawn softly from her concrete sarcophagus.

    

    Then it came-a reply to her question-an even more ferocious beating against the door, so hard and violent that the light started to distort and wobble, likely pushing the durability of the frame to its absolute limits.

    

    Then began the part of her dream that made even less sense than the rest of it. With no more thought or hesitation, she walked to the door. Her eyes, open wide, saw nothing but the light. Her ears, listening intently, heard nothing but the pounding, beckoning sound that pulled her near. Even her footfalls-which had been so noisy before-were now lost amidst the din.

    

    The door itself was a heavy-duty metal bastard. Three locks adorned the space above the handle and each one begged to be unlatched.

    

    She turned the one on top first. With a modest click it let her know it was undone and useless. The banging slowed and the silent intervals became steady and somewhat rhythmic. She turned the next lock. It too made a modest click. The banging intensified once more, remaining rhythmic, cheering her efforts. So with a satisfied exhale she turned the final lock.

    

    The banging was constant now; no silent intervals.

    

    boomboomboomboomboom

    

    She reached down and placed her hand on the doorknob, feeling it to be much warmer and inviting than the coldness of the corridor and its concrete walls. The sun was out there, she knew. There was light out there to extinguish this dismal darkness. There was warmth-and, perhaps-hope.

    

    She turned the handle and let the door swing open.

    

    Sunlight shot into her eyes like daggers, brightening her face and blinding her momentarily. It was a good sensation, even if only temporary.

    

    But then came the hands-thousands of cold dead hands attached to cold dead arms attached to cold decaying bodies, clothing ripped and shredded and polished with a layer of blood, dirt, and muck. Eyelids rotted off, fully exposed eyeballs looked at her with a glassy, soulless stare. Thousands of faces with blue skin and formaldehyde-filled veins, tendons and muscles pulling away to show cold, white bones. A thousand dead bodies wanting to partake of hers.

    

    And this is where the dream sometimes varied.

    

    In some instances-most instances-the dead hands would latch onto her and pull her out of the dark corridor and into the sunny area occupied by this mob of hungry corpses-and there they would rip at her shirt and claw at her jeans and, while she screamed in terror, they would open their mouths and feast on her flesh, taking off chunks of her skin with each grisly bite, some of the greedier ones pulling her arms off at the sockets with a violent tug and taking them elsewhere to chew on separately. Her intestines came next, pulled from her open belly like sausages and dragged into the crowd like a bloody rope. And after several seconds of intense agony, with her eyes open wide she finally transpired, staring up at the very mob that had taken the sun from her, casting their shadows down across what remained of her body.

    

    Yes, that is how the dream ended in most instances, and-despite its gruesomeness

    -it was actually the ending she preferred.

    

    But what she got this time was the finale she dreaded most, the one where all the dead arms lowered to their dead sides and instead of pulling her out they invited her in.

    -To join their ranks.

    

    She brought her own arm up to her face to study it under the sunlight. It was blue and cold. Frantically, she pressed her palms to her cheeks and felt that they, too, were cold. She looked down at herself to see her clothes ripped to shreds, maggoty decaying skin showing through. Finally she stopped everything and stood completely still, hoping and praying to feel something in her chest. Her heart should have been beating at a frantic, adrenaline-pumping pace, but instead it was utterly dormant. She felt nothing.

    She was one of them.

    And so she stepped out of the corridor to join her new comrades, basking in the glory of just another day, all cognizant thought swept from her mind. Only one motive was driving her now:

    

    Hunger.

    

    

    

    

 

    

    

    

    

    

    

    RICK: Good morning. They’re telling the FCC to warn us to avoid using the Z-word. But what else do we have to talk about? It’s everywhere now. They may have been able to contain it at one time. Quarantine it somewhere. And maybe they tried.

    

    EARL: Well I’ll tell you this and it isn’t a threat, its...

    

    RICK: Thank God. We got a call. Good morning caller. Thanks for sparing us another Easy-Going tirade.

    

    EARL: [expletive] you Face-For-Radio Rick.

    

    RICK: Where are you calling from?

    

    CALLER: Hello?

    

    RICK: Yes caller we hear you. Where are you calling from?

    

    CALLER: Hey. Good morning Rick. Good morning Earl. Long time listener first time caller.

    

    EARL: We always welcome our virgin callers. Don’t worry. We’ll be gentle.

    

    RICK: Yes Easy-Going Earl we never get tired of hearing your catch phrase.

    

    CALLER: Thanks guys. You’re downtown right?

    

    RICK: Smack dab thereabouts.

    

    CALLER: Hate to be where you are. Hear its chaos.

    

    EARL: Getting there.

    

    RICK: How are things in your area?

    

    CALLER: Well I’m looking out the window right now and I see dead people. Pardon the cliché.

    

    EARL: From east coast to west coast. They’re all over the place. Like a [expletive] Michael Jackson video. Except we’re not dancing and neither are they.

    

    RICK: Seriously, who remembers the eighties?

    

    CALLER: They say it takes massive head trauma to bring one down.

    

    RICK: Whoa. Stop right there. We cannot condone killing anyone.

    

    EARL: We’re not condoning anything.

    

    RICK: Nor can we give instructions on how to do it.

    

    CALLER: But those freaks are killing people. Have you seen what they do?

    

    RICK: Don’t say it. You’ll just gross us out.

    

    EARL: This is such [expletive].

    

    CALLER: [expletive] right, its [expletive].

    

    RICK: I just wish someone would tell us what exactly is causing this problem.

    

    CALLER: They’re eating people. That’s the problem.

    

    EARL: What a way to go.

    

    RICK: We’re not supposed to talk about that remember?

    

    EARL: We’re not even supposed to say the Z-word.

    

    CALLER: Can I?

    

    RICK: Yes. Technically you’re allowed. But we’re not.

    

    CALLER: Zombie. Ghoul. Flesh-eating dead person. And here’s one for you: Somnambulist. Did I say that right?

    

    EARL: I believe you did sir.

    

    RICK: Well done.

    

    CALLER: So what are we supposed to do? Just step around them on our way to work? Say don’t eat my family while I’m out trying to earn a living?

    

    EARL: We supposed to just drive by and wave?

    

    RICK: I guess so. Until they stop treating them like they’re still alive. This isn’t a problem that’s just going to go away.

    

    

    

    It was the doorbell-and not the nightmare-that woke her.

    

    She had slept long past it, though not without considerable effort. Her comforter was in a ball against the wall and her sheet was wrapped around her in such a way that seemed nigh impossible at first glance.

    

    Raising her head, she inspected the clock on the nightstand.

    

    Nine forty-five.

    

    Time to wake up anyway.

    

    The doorbell rang again, the noisy ding-dong sound of it one of the few remnants of the world before.

    

    She rose up and began unraveling her bedsheet, unwinding it from around her body and pushing it aside. She swung her legs over and put her feet down. She extended her arms and arched her back, feeling it crack in several places, then reached down to the floor to retrieve her jeans. She found them in the same rumpled state she had left them the night before. She straightened them, slithered both her legs inside, then stood to pull them up to her waist. After a zip and a fasten she was stumbling tiredly from the bedroom and into the living room.

    

    Sunlight was bursting through the gaps in the curtains, its golden rays capturing millions of undesirable dust molecules floating in the air. They stirred and undulated from her path as she broke through them, disrupting the calm that had settled over the house since the night before and welcoming in the new day in their own grandiose, miniscule style.

    

    All the artificial lights in the house were switched off-save for the nightlight in the hallway-just as she had left them.

    

    The carpet was soft on her feet and maybe even a little damp. (She wanted a dehumidifier, but the town committees considered them an unnecessary use of electricity.) There was a well-worn path from the bedroom to the couch and a very noticeable lesser-worn path from the bedroom to the front door. She followed this path and by the time she reached her destination her stumbling feet had found their coordination and her morning grogginess had dissipated enough that her brain would be useful.

    

    She could catch glimpses of movement through the modernistic diagonal windows in the door, but not enough to determine whom exactly was out there. So she gathered her best morning voice and asked, “Who is it?”

    

    And the muffled, masculine reply answered, “Leon.”

    

    She yawned ferociously, swiped her hair and tucked it behind an ear, then went about the process of opening the door. First she pulled away the metal bar and set it aside, then she released deadbolts one, two, and three, and finally she turned the handle and pulled open the heavy wooden monster.

    

    Sunlight hit her straight on in its typical unforgiving manner, mercilessly wounding her morning eyes. She had not grown accustomed to this despite the many times it had already happened, nor had she even considered this annoyance when she decided on a house facing east.

    

    Yet sure enough, when her pupils shrank enough to filter away all this new light, standing there on her porch, she saw, was Leon Wolfe. Wearing jeans, a plain blue shirt, and sporting his styled hair, he appeared to have been awake for at least two hours already and had something to show for it. In his hands he held a styrofoam container, which he was extending to her in offerance, all the while grinning his obnoxious grin.

    

    She glanced at the container through the screen door, then back at him. “And this is...?”

    

    “Breakfast.”

    

    “Breakfast?”

    

    “I took a chance,” he explained in his typical, arrogant, know-it-all demeanor, his head cocked slightly to one side. “I didn’t see you in the cafeteria. Haven’t seen you anywhere, actually. Not for a week.”

    

    She thought about it for a moment, then opened the screen door and snatched the styrofoam container from his hands. After opening it for a quick inspection she saw that he wasn’t lying-that it wasn’t another trick-and that there was actually breakfast inside. Grilled bread (better than toast,) scrambled eggs, a slice of ham, a sealed cup of what looked to be orange juice, and one of those pesky little plastic forks. She closed the container and looked at him oddly.

    

    “Why are you bringing me this?” she asked.

    

    “Because I know how you are,” he replied. “You don’t stock your refrigerator and you don’t leave your house until you’re two minutes away from starving to death.”

    

    She groaned.

    

    She knew that accepting this would give him a small amount of satisfaction-and that was something she’d rather avoid-but then again, having breakfast delivered would spare her a trip out of the house. This way she could just stay inside most of the day, at least until dinnertime.

    

    She stepped away without a word, leaving him standing there holding open the screen door. She then found a spot on the couch between two piles of unfolded laundry and placed the styrofoam container on the coffee table in front of her. A bit hesitant, she peeled open the orange juice and took a sip. It tasted like orange juice and not something else, which was a good start. She licked her lips. For concentrate, it wasn’t bad at all.

    

    “Is this an invitation to come in?”

    

    She glanced back over to the door, took a deep breath and shrugged her shoulders, and mumbled, “You’re still here? Whatever then.”

    

    He stepped inside and let the screen door swing closed. Though he didn’t know it, he was the first person she had allowed to enter.

    

    “Juice taste all right?” he asked.

    

    She shrugged.

    

    “A Florida chick like you has probably tasted better, but, oh well.”

    

    She nodded sourly.

    

    “Well, good morning, Leon,” he said with sarcastic dryness. “Nice of you to think of me and bring me breakfast. I thought the world had forgotten I lived here.”

    

    She didn’t bother looking at him. She was almost tempted to roll her eyes, but even that would require too much effort. “Good morning, Leon,” she repeated. “Nice of you to think of me and bring me breakfast. I thought the world had forgotten I lived here.” She paused for a moment, then added, “And I like it that way.”

    

    He smiled. She would have preferred him to have gotten angry and stormed out, thereby leaving her the hell alone.

    

    “Can I sit?” he asked, motioning to the cushion next to her.

    

    She put down her orange juice and shrugged her shoulders.

    

    There was a pile of unfolded laundry where he wanted to sit, but true to Leonfashion, instead of pushing it aside he made an event out of it.

    

    “Ah, what do we have here?” he teased, his hand probing closer. “Female underthings?” At this point he appeared ready to take something and-more than likely-tease her. “Hey, I recognize this one...”

    

    She turned quickly and snapped “Stay out of my stuff” as she knocked his hand away. She then used her forearm to swoop all the clothes off the cushion and create an even messier heap on the floor. After mumbling, “Show some respect and stop being a goddamn brat,” she turned forward again, hoping maybe he would leave her alone to eat. Her stomach was growling, after all.

    

    Leon remained standing, scratching his head.

    

    Books, some open and some closed, some disregarded without care, were scattered across the floor. Videotapes minus their dustjackets were stacked in three piles next to the television against the far wall and compact discs without their jewel cases were stacked haphazardly in a cylindrical pile on the stereo. A layer of dust had begun to settle over most everything. Now added to all this was the clothing she had just strewn about to help stir some of it up.

    

    “Your housekeeping’s worse than mine,” he commented.

    

    “My maid’s on vacation,” she countered. “Is there some reason for you being here?”

    

    “I brought you breakfast.”

    

    “Yes, I told you thank you.”

    

    He slowly eased himself down on the cushion next to her where the clothes used to be. He didn’t get close to her, but he didn’t sit far away either.

    

    She tried her best to ignore him as she cut up the breakfast ham, being careful not to cut into the styrofoam in the process. She took a bite. The ham wasn’t too bad, but it was kind of salty, which was to be expected.

    

    After a moment Leon clicked his tongue, attempting to garner her full attention, and said, “We need to talk, Courtney.”

    

    It was inevitable. She exhaled deeply and dropped the plastic fork into the scrambled eggs. She turned her head then, not enough to look at him completely, but just enough to see him in the corner of her eyes. She asked, “Are you just going to keep babbling on? What’s the use of bringing me breakfast if you’re not going to let me eat it while its warm?”

    

    “I just want to talk,” he replied. “The way you are, it won’t take long.”

    

    She let her gaze fall to the carpet.

    

    He began, “I’ve been doing some thinking.”

    

    She couldn’t resist: “Congratulations. I know that must’ve been hard.”

    

    “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” he exclaimed, putting his hands in the air. “This is going completely wrong. I didn’t come here to argue with you.”

    

    “You’re being irritating.”

    

    “I’m not trying to be irritating. I’m trying to be... I don’t know. I thought I could be playful with you now. Maybe I’m trying to make you smile.”

    

    “It’s not working.”

    

    “I can tell.”

    

    Then there came a noise from outside-someone shouting, “Toss me the shuttlecock!” Then someone answering, “Shuttlecock?” and another person replying, “The shuttlecock!”

    

    Peering across the room and through the screen door, she eyed some of her neighbors starting a game of badminton across the street. Cindy was over there and it looked like Mike and Delmas were there too. They’d need a fourth player and she knew that that was where Leon would rather be, instead of in her messy house having the one-week-after chat. The people across the street were his friends-not hers-and they never got tired of shouting ‘shuttlecock!’

    

    Idiots-like him.

    

    However, Leon didn’t seem distracted by the new noise. He hadn’t even turned his head. He restated, “We need to talk.”

    

    “Why?” she asked.

    

    “Because.”

    

    “Then just say what you’re going to say.”

    

    “I don’t know what to say. I was hoping you could do half the talking. You know-like two people do when they’re having a conversation.”

    

    With a deep, frustrated sigh, she tilted her head back and looked at the ceiling. She saw a couple of dusty cobwebs up there and quickly put her head down again. The house really was a mess.

    

    “Fine,” she snapped. “Then I’ll just say it and we can get this over with: It was amistake.”

    

    “That’s what I thought you’d say.”

    

    “Then why’d you bother?”

    

    He grinned his annoying grin. “Because that’s the typical scapegoat answer.”

    

    She gritted her teeth and groaned, simply not in the mood for a morning-after talk-a week-after talk-with Leon Wolfe. She said, “You slept with a girl. That’s not a new experience for you, is it? Not you, the local gigolo, the local slut. Do you go back and talk with all your conquests? Try to string them along in case you want to go back for seconds someday?”

    

    He chuckled softly, then stood and walked to the door. Instead of leaving like she would have wanted, however, he leaned against the nearby wall and put his hands in his jeans pockets. “I thought your attitude toward me might’ve changed,” he said. “I couldn’t figure out why you showed up at my door because I knew you hated me-And you still hate me.”

    

    “Yes,” she replied.

    

    “But I don’t hate you.” He paused a moment, and mumbled, “Gigolo... I wish.” He chuckled again.

    

    She leaned back on the couch and threw her feet onto the coffee table, being careful not to spill the styrofoam container. Even though it was a gift from Leon Wolfe-of all people-it meant she wouldn’t have to go over to the cafeteria at least until later today.

    

    He said, “Tell me why you don’t like me and then I’ll get out of your hair.”

    

    “Well, gee,” she began, turning to glare at him. “I can’t seem to forget that one time when you served me a glass of vinegar and told me it was ice water-”

    

    “Wait,” he interjected. “That was almost five years ago. I was a kid. Jesus, we were only like, what-seventeen?”

    

    “You were an asshole then and you’re an asshole now.”

    

    “I did get in trouble for that, you know. Made to stay on food service duty formonth. You know how much it sucks to be a lunch lady for an entire month?”

    

    “Well, I was sick for almost that long.”

    

    “Because of a little vinegar? I kind of doubt that.”

    

    She turned away to stare at the opposite wall. There might be emotions growing behind her eyes and that was the absolute last thing she wanted him to see.

    

    “It was a joke,” he explained. “A prank. Granted, yes, a bad one. But I didn’t single you out. I was hoping to get one of those cranky Odd Fellows running this place. It was just plain random that it was you who got that glass of vinegar.” He paused for a moment, staring off at nothing, then softly added, “So why else do you hate me? Is there any other reason?”

    

    She didn’t say anything.

    

    After waiting for an answer and not receiving one, he looked around the room again, gathering his thoughts, and said, “You came to me, remember? Completely out of the blue. So did you get what you wanted? Did you get it out of your system?”

    

    “What do you care?” she mumbled.

    

    “Because I see the way you live,” he replied, motioning with his outstretched arms to the wholeness of the room’s interior. “Jesus Christ, Courtney, this isdepressing.”

    

    She turned to look at him then, despite the pressure building in her eyes, and said as fiercely as she could, “Leave.”

    

    “Tell me why you hate me first.”

    

    She looked away again, a sensation running through her veins causing the muscles in her arms to tighten and her fingers to begin closing into fists.

    

    A moment passed.

    

    “Are you going to tell me?” he asked again.

    

    She mumbled, “I could have fit in here if you hadn’t ruined it.”

    

    “What?”

    

    A spark lit in her gut. She stood and stomped over to him and when she got close enough she pressed her forefinger hard into his chest. She gritted, “You jerk. You don’t get it. What you did did single me out. You and all your other jerk friends-the way you laughed at me and teased me from then on. Things were hard enoughwithout all that.”

    

    Looking shocked-and a bit scared by her sudden aggression-he stuttered, “Nobody made fun of you.”

    

    “The hell you say,” she retorted. “Do you realize how hard it was to make friends? Impossible. That’s how hard.”

    

    “But you didn’t even try. You just went around with your sassy attitude pretending you didn’t need anybody. You can act as high and mighty as you want, doll, but I see through you.”

    

    And with that, she hit him. Not a girly, feminine slap on the cheek, but a full-fledged, closed-fisted slug on the chin; the perfect spot-she knew-if you wanted to knock someone the hell out. Besides, it just felt right. It seemed that his chin and her knuckles were just destined to be together.

    

    Reeling, clutching his jaw with one hand and holding the wall with the other, struggling not to see the inevitable stars, he mumbled, “Ouch. Jesus, you hit hard for a skinny girl.”

    

    She knew that now was the opportune time. This was when she could tell him that the morning after their little encounter she had immediately sent the clothes she had worn to his house to the laundromat, then took a two-hour shower simply to get rid of the last scent of him. She could tell him how it irked her to no end that hisMaine accent occasionally caused him to pronounce R’s as ah’s. She could tell him how his narcissistic, nothing’s-wrong-in-the-world attitude had no business being around her. Furthermore, she wanted to mention just how thoroughly the very sight-the very thought of him-disgusted her.

    

    Instead of saying these things, however, she pulled back her fist. Talking simply required too much energy.

    

    Seeing another punch in his future, he grabbed her wrist and forced it down to her side. “Wait. Just wait.” He used his free hand to adjust his jaw once more. “Okay, maybe I deserved that.”

    

    She cocked her head to the side as if to say, ‘Well... DUH.’

    

    “I don’t know anything about you,” he said. “I just know everyone has some kind of story about how they got to Eastpointe, and stories about people they know thatdidn’t get to Eastpointe. I just-”

    

    “Leave,” she again gritted.

    

    “Wait, I’m going to try to explain this to you,” he said. He slowly let go of her wrist, certainly wondering if he would regret it, then softly continued, “I’ll be the first to admit that I wasn’t blessed with an overabundance of brains, so I’m a little slow catching on to things. But I’m starting to figure you out.”

    

    “Oh really?”

    

    “Yeah-You were in love with him.”

    

    She took a step back. “What? Who?”

    

    “Gordon Levi.”

    

    She didn’t reply just yet, but instead stared at him angrily.

    

    “Tell me I’m wrong.”

    

    “That’s entirely none of your business.”

    

    “Aha!” he said, his eyes widening with enthusiasm. “You just inadvertently answered my question.”

    

    She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, letting her eyes drift away. After a moment she asked, “So, what kind of name are you going to call me first?”

    

    “I’m not going to call you a name,” he replied. “Why would I do that?”

    

    “Then what are you going to point out that I don’t already know? That he was twice my age? Or just something as simple as him being black? Or that I was just seventeen and I didn’t know what I was doing?”

    

    “I’m not saying anything.”

    

    “Then why are you bothering me with this?”

    

    “I’m just trying to figure you out, that’s all.” He lifted his hand close to her face and seemed ready to make some kind of tender motion she knew she wouldn’t be comfortable with-especially from him.

    

    She shied away.

    

    He lowered his arm. “If you loved him, then I’m sorry he didn’t make it.”

    

    “Just go, Leon.”

    

    Instead of obliging her, he stayed right where he was and explained, “Before everything went nuts, I was in high school, like you. I played baseball and I guess, well, that pretty much sums up and defines my life til that point. I didn’t really get over that whole locker room mentality, all right? So, what I did to you, thatvinegar thing, it was to impress other people, the new people I met here. It was wrong of me and it was immature and it was stupid. I admit it and I’m sorry. But I’ve grown up since then. We all have.”

    

    “Will you leave now?”

    

    “Just one more thing.” He smiled then, that cocky smile, but whether he was forcing it or not she couldn’t tell. “This might just be a psychological issue, but I have a thing for bad girls.”

    

    “Well,” she groaned, “I don’t have a thing for pretty guys.”

    

    He laughed. “You think I’m pretty?”

    

    She quickly caught her slip of the tongue and compensated for it by pointing to the door and stating, “Out.”

    

    Then came a mistake, when she caught his gaze and allowed herself to hold it. Their blue eyes meeting and staying met made her very uncomfortable.

    

    “You’re a gorgeous chick,” he said. “Always have been. And when you’re not yelling at me or hitting me, I think I actually like you.”

    

    This statement caught her much by surprise and it might even have flattered her had his New England voice not ruined it.

    

    She stated, “Did I mention I hate your accent?”

    

    Another smile. “Oh, come on. I’ve had five years to blend my style with everyone else’s. The accent’s going away, so it’s not all that bad.”

    

    She sneered. “Yes it is. Leave.”

    

    His smile faded. He pushed open the screen door and held it there while he paused in thought. With his back still turned, and in a tone that sounded both sarcastic and apologetic, he softly stated, “I didn’t realize I was the sole cause of you being unhappy. I’m sorry.”

    

    Then he left, heading down the concrete walkway and across the street, probably to join in the game of badminton.

    

    Courtney closed the main door, putting the outside out of sight again.

    

    And that was that.

    

    She returned to the couch, but instead of digging back into her breakfast she put her hands through her hair and rested her palms against her temple.

    

    She got even angrier. She didn’t get to tell him about her repetitious nightmares and how she still had them even with someone in bed beside her, so her one night of weakness hadn’t helped matters at all.

    

    He probably wouldn’t have understood anyway.

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    

    There was mayhem ensuing outside, instigated mostly by the National Guardsmen and not by the walking corpses. At seventeen, Courtney understood this much. Her father was watching the chaos through the living room window and ranting about it in a hushed tone. Sitting on the couch across the room, maybe she was supposed to hear him and maybe she wasn’t, but she did, so this was one of her last memories of him.

    

    His words were: “Look at them. Idiots on power trips. Just out of high school, three months of boot camp, and now they’re walking around with a gun strapped to their back.” Then, in singsong, he added, “This is my rifle, this is my gun, this is for fighting, this is for fun.”

    

    Finally she spoke up. “What are you talking about, dad?”

    

    He glanced at her long enough to show her a fake, everything’s-all-right smile, then gazed out the window again. “Those guys,” he said. “They’re supposed to be protecting us. But did you see what they did to Mister McGreevy down the street? Took him out of his house; bullied him around. They’re just kids, barely out of high school, no more than a year older than you, Court. They’re too stupid to go to college, to get a scholarship or whatever, so they join the Service. Get bullied around in bootcamp. They learn responsibility, but not intelligence.” Another gunshot spliced through the air. Her father winced, but otherwise didn’t pause. “They talk about how wearing the uniform gets them girls. So the fact remains that they’re still stupid, but now they’re on a power trip because they’ve got a gun. They’re still kids, though, so they’re scared. Just as scared as the rest of us. Add all that up and you’ve got a bunch of scared little kids who have guns, who are given positions of authority, but no intelligence to use it properly, and are therefore on one gigantic power trip. Promotions occur from within, so there’s always going to be an idiot in charge. Disaster, I say. Disaster.”

    

    He had scared her now quite thoroughly, but she didn’t tell him. The National Guard-the frickin’ Army-was outside in the streets shooting off their guns and that was scary enough. Now she was hearing that they might not be the heroes her father was expecting. Even worse, his pessimistic attitude was beginning to make perfect sense and it frightened her to the very core.

    

    “Did you get your mom a glass of water?” he asked.

    

    “Yeah,” she replied.

    

    “Take her some aspirin?”

    

    “Yeah.”

    

    “Check the bandage?”

    

    “Yeah.”

    

    “How’s it look?”

    

    She hesitated a moment before replying, “Gross.”

    

    A look of worry showed on his face for the briefest of moments, then subsided. He mumbled, “Goddamn medics. It’s just a bite. Why the hell can’t they make it better?”

    

    Courtney cried then, putting her palms over her eyes and resting her elbows on her knees. She made sure she wept softly. She didn’t want to be the center of attention.

    

    Her father was a strong man-a smart man. He lifted weights regularly in the basement. He had a government-funded job in an office designing respirators. Like everyone else on earth, he had had a life and a history and so he was unique-and just as could be said about most people, he was so unique no amount of words could describe him. Like many daughters, Courtney saw her father as one of the strongest men in the world. But he was scared and he had made it evident. He let it slip. Maybe it was by mistake or maybe he just didn’t care anymore. She was used to seeing him handle problems one way or another, either by muscle or by brains, but here he was helpless. She knew he understood that as well as she did.

    

    When the dead guy had broken through the back door, her dad took it to the ground and pummeled it with alternating left and right fists. He had been watching the news enough over the past week to know what was happening across the country, but he never figured it would spill onto the north Florida coast. Nobody broke into the Colvin home-nobody, dead or otherwise-and security systems bedamned, her father was pissed.

    

    But then the dead guy got back up and bit into her mom’s shoulder. It wasn’t much-it wasn’t much at all. Just a scratch. Nobody was supposed to get sick from ascratch.

    

    Her dad went after the intruder again, attacking it this time with the entire kitchen table, lifting the table up and slamming it back down again and again on the dead man’s spine. The dead man still moved after that though, albeit pathetically, as it seemed paralyzed from the neck down. They stood there and watched it, the three of them-Courtney, her father, her mother, until Courtney realized:

    

    “Dad, that’s Mister Coolidge!”

    

    Her father’s eyes opened wide at that point, when he too realized he had just fought with Mike Coolidge, the guy who had the house that neighbored theirs in the back. He was a mess now and had several small bite wounds of his own across his arms. Her father put on a pair of dishwashing gloves and dragged the wriggling body onto the back porch and tied it to the grill with a roll of duct tape. He was then going to go to Mister Coolidge’s house to check on his children and make sure they were safe.

    

    He didn’t get the chance.

    

    That was when the National Guard rolled in and royally fucked up everything.

    

    They were somewhat helpful at first-making sure everyone was okay, treating the bite on her mom’s shoulder, sealing off the streets with tanks, patrols, and barbed wire. It should have made for an impenetrable barricade. They were even treating the situation rather lightly, in her opinion, by posing with the walking dead and taking photographs with full-on smiles.

    

    But then bad things started happening. They started losing contact with other battalions stationed throughout the north Florida coast. Then a couple of their captains got eaten near the barricade. However, it wasn’t until CNN aired the graphic attack on the White House, complete with images of a line of marines getting overrun and secret service agents getting picked off and chewed on, did things go utterly downhill.

    

    The National Guardsmen outside Courtney’s home started fighting amongst themselves as they argued over who was in charge or who was going to be in charge. Any of the soldiers who were pacifistic and willing to take orders just wanted someone-anyone-to be given an impromptu promotion so the confrontations would end, but the more aggressive ones continued shouting back and forth until it escalated into violence. A couple of them shot each other, which-among other factors-caused a couple of the pacifistic soldiers to shootthemselves. Even elderly Mr. McGreevy was assaulted when he tried to bring order to one of the gun-toting youths. Apparently no civilian was going to be permitted a voice in this debacle.

    

    This all led to Courtney’s mom resting in bed, sicker than she’d ever seen her, pale and vomiting, and her father staring out the living room window cursing the soldiers who were supposed to be their saviors.

    

    It went on this way for a couple of hours. It was then that her father started seeing the Guardsmen going door to door and taking people from their homes-forcefully at times-and loading them into deuce-and-a-halfs. Courtney always believed her father knew what was going on before she did, which was probably why he told her to go upstairs and put some clothes into a backpack. When she came back down with backpack in tow, he was already unzipping it to stuff in a couple of oranges, bottles of water, and some hastily-made sandwiches. He hugged her, told her he and her mother loved her, and kissed her on the forehead. He seemed uneasily calm.

    

    She really didn’t have enough time to have a good cry or even time to think up any words to tell her father. The Guardsmen were already at the door.

    

    The first soldier aimed his gun at her father while the second stated, “Uninfected women and children only.”

    

    With that, the soldier took Courtney by the arm and ushered her out the front door. She heard the second soldier ask if there was anyone else matching the criteria and heard her father tell him no, followed by, “Take care of my girl.” She didn’t hear anything after that. The soldiers didn’t answer her father or even acknowledge he had said anything.

    

    Tightly gripping the straps of her backpack with the fear it would be confiscated, she was put in the back of the deuce-and-a-half, which had only been partly modified to resemble an armored personnel carrier. There were other women and children in there with her-all people she knew, all equally frightened, and most of them she would see die before the day ended.

    

    The big diesel monster took off down the street with a thunderous roar and would later join with a convoy of humvees, tanks, halftracks, and more deuce-and-a-halfs.

    

    It all seemed to happen so quickly.

    

    And that was how it began, five years ago.

    

    

    

    

 

    

    

    Courtney believed that no one, including the soldiers, knew exactly where they were going to begin with. Maybe they thought they were safe as long as they kept moving, but all she knew was that it was deafening in the back of the deuce-and-a-half. Kids were crying, moms were crying. Most everyone was screaming for answers and receiving none at all.

    

    Courtney stayed mostly quiet. It was at this point she began to wonder when and if she would see her parents again. The “if” part-actually realizing this “zombie” problem could really be really, really bad-end of the world type of bad, and actually realizing there may never be a “when”-was most of the reason for her silence. And then there was another lingering thought; a thought that had her hating herself and questioning her own situation: In the rush, her father had used wheat bread to make the sandwiches. She hated wheat bread. She knew he knew she hated wheat bread. So, she postulated, he wasn’t in any real danger, not if she was mad at him for using wheat bread-she still needed to explain to him one more time how wheat bread made her gag.

    

    She kept the bottles of water her father had stuffed into her backpack, but gave away the rest. The oranges and sandwiches shut up some of the kids at least for a little while and gave their moms-and Courtney-a bit of a break. It made her feel like there was at least a little something she could accomplish while being held hostage by the military. It made the situation seem less bad.

    

    Two women sitting across from her-whom she recognized as her lesbian neighbors four houses down-were spreading a rumor that they were all being taken to the LaCosta Community Building. Apparently the National Guard had seized it for use as a rescue station. Sheriff’s stations and hospitals were getting too crowded and dangerous, so citizens in the area were being urged to make their way to the community building. It was under armed guard, the women said, and there were doctors there that could administer aid to anyone who had been bitten by a zombie. They saw it on CNN, they further stated, shortly before the White House attack. Rescue stations were popping up all over the country.

    

    What got Courtney, however, was the casual way people were throwing the word “zombie” around. It was real. It was happening.

    

    Zombies.

    -What the hell?

    

    Someone else, a girl Courtney recognized from her fifth period Botany class, made a point that if the Marines-and the entire United States for that matter-couldn’t protect the White House, the most blatant, symbolic icon of their country, then how could they possibly protect a few people tucked away in some community building along the north Florida coast?

    

    This statement quickly shut up the two women who had been talking about the rescue station, completely obliterating their upbeat attitude. This also turned out to be a mistake, because her gay neighbors’ positive outlook had been the only thing preventing everyone in the deuce-and-a-half from resorting to tearful panic.

    

    Had Courtney been able to relive this time of her life, she would like to have been the one to restore order-the one to explain how everyone was going to be all right-explain to them that if the enemy is already dead, then how tough could they possibly be? Looking back, Courtney wanted to be the one to help, because when this all really happened she was no different than the rest: Trembling and feeling completely pathetic and helpless.

    

    The convoy wasn’t stopping. If they were really going to take them to one of the self-described “rescue stations,” then they would have already arrived there.

    

    After ripping the velcro and lifting up the camouflaged canvas on the side of the deuce-and-a-half, she could catch a glimpse of the outside. She was able to recognize, just barely, that they had crossed over to Georgia. Furthermore, as twilight fell across the coast, they were crossing more and more areas that had been stripped of electrical power. She knew that most streetlights were equipped with a sensor that told them when it was dark enough to turn on, but none of them were lighting up. Houses and apartment buildings were also darkened. Apparently the friendly folks running the power stations decided it was time to up and leave-or, more likely-they were forced to leave.

    

    Courtney knew that if the National Guard could just come to her door and drag her away from her father, then it was highly likely they were dragging everyone else out of their homes as well.

    

    It was her first taste of martial law.

    

    She figured that the Army thought it wiser to remove people from their homes so they could be safer, but in reality, well-boarded windows and doors were ten times safer than the “rescue” the uniformed men claimed they could provide. It didn’t matter where a mob of zombies decided to ambush someone, but being stuck with a company of soldiers meant being forced to sit back and watch while scared little kids in uniform waved their guns around.

    

    Courtney had hoped that her father was wrong; that his pessimistic view of soldiers had been just that-pessimism. Unfortunately, in the days following her father’s speech she witnessed more testosterone-driven power trips than acts of heroism from her would-be saviors. She wanted to be back home. She was willing to bet that her father was turning their house into a virtual fortress at that very moment-taking apart the tables and removing all the interior doors from their hinges and nailing them over the windows. It seemed like something he would do-somethingstrong, something smart.

    

    Then, causing more panic, one of the women with Courtney thought it was wise to mention that anyone bitten by a zombie was bound to die and become one of them. It was the bite, she said, and not death by any other cause. If you were bitten, you became one of them. There was no cure, she said. You would die, you would come back, you would bite others, and the cycle would repeat unto infinity.

    

    For weeks and even months later Courtney would try to convince herself this wasn’t true. If it was, then it meant her parents were really dead. Her mom had been bitten and Courtney knew her father wouldn’t leave her all alone. They still seemed to love each other, at least as far as Courtney could tell, and they would be together until the end. Her mother would have died and came back and attacked her father.

    

    And the cycle would repeat unto infinity.

    

    This all really didn’t sink in for Courtney just yet. She had no sooner begun to remember how sick her mother was when the deuce-and-a-half she was riding in started to slow down. All that could be heard was the sound of the vehicles in the convoy burning their diesel.

    

    She lifted the canvas and peeked outside once more. The sun was barely looming over the horizon. She could see the interstate directly below but didn’t recognize which one; She had never been this far into Georgia. Then, a few seconds after the truck came to a complete stop, she stuck her head out even further to try to find out what exactly was happening. Others in the deuce-and-a-half were doing the same, and up ahead in the next truck in the convoy she could see other heads popping out through the canvas. It seemed no one-whether at the front of the convoy or at the back-knew anything and they weren’t given any information by their uniformed chaperones.

    

    Looking beyond, all the way to the front, Courtney was able to see what had stopped the massive line of trucks, halftracks, and humvees: a gaping chasm where a bridge should have been. It was enough to stop any army-provided, of course, that that army was alive.

    

    The convoy remained halted there for what seemed to be at least several minutes, but nobody was doing anything. She kept hoping she would see a bridgelayer drive by.

    

    But then, off to the right, something else got her attention. There were several people-six or seven, at first-coming over the hill, stumbling over the guardrail and crossing the interstate, headed for the convoy. A few moments passed and by the time Courtney realized what was happening, that these were not survivors seeking refuge, the soldier driving the truck shouted, “DEAD ONES!”

    

    First came the sound of screaming from within the deuce-and-a-half, then came the sound of automatic machine gun fire. She saw hundreds more-just like the others-come stumbling over the guardrail. Bullets were hitting them, she saw, but they kept coming. Even though they were only silhouettes to her, she could see some of them being ripped to shreds by the mounted gun on the halftrack up ahead. At least thirty seconds of nonstop shooting passed, but the line kept advancing and soon they were only several yards from the convoy. Whenever one of the shadowed figures finally fell another was there to take its place, and there were still hundreds more of them coming over the guardrail-literally thousands in all. Before Courtney brought her head back inside the truck, one of the figures in the vanguard stepped into the headlights of the truck behind her and she saw its face.

    

    It was a man, but the nose was missing and an eyeball was out of its socket and dangling against its cheek like a paddleball. It was limping from a bullet that had destroyed its left kneecap. But it kept coming, it’s mouth open, teeth shining and saliva drooling all over its chin.

    

    It looked hungry.

    

    Then the hysteria truly began.

    

    The women and children with her were all screaming, some already splitting thevelcro and pouring out of the truck through the ripped canvas. Courtney, all alone with no friends or relatives, found herself knocked down and nearly trampled underfoot. Then, when she was able to look up again, she saw that those with her were not jumping from the truck-they were being pulled.

    

    There was screaming and the sound of gnashing teeth.

    

    Surges of automatic gunfire were few and far between now, being replaced with the quieter pop-pop-pop sound of handguns. Though she knew very little about the military and even less about war, she did know that handguns were calledsidearms and they were used as a last resort when all the bigger weapons had failed.

    

    She brought herself to her feet, instinctively gripping the straps of her backpack as she cowered shoulder-to-shoulder with the six or so women and girls that were still in the truck. They stayed towards the center, away from the sides. Dead arms were ripping through the canvas and grasping at the air inside.

    

    Something she remembers more than anything else was that there were no children left inside the truck with her. There had been at least twenty of them earlier, but now they were all outside, and young, pre-pubescent screams were the last reminder that they had even existed.

    

    Looking back on it, Courtney wasn’t sure how she herself survived this part. She and all the others had allowed the children to be taken. They hadn’t even tried to protect them. They were too busy protecting themselves. By rights they should have met their own end alongside them. But there was no justice. She knew that anyone who was alive five years later was alive because others had died, more than likely distracting the undead just long enough for the rest to escape. In the months that would pass, however, things would change and she would learn enough to help others while she helped herself.

    

    But back then, during the slaughter of the convoy, she knew her actions were utterly shameful.

    

    There were hundreds of dead arms probing through the canvas of the deuce-and-a-half and one of the cold hands finally caught a prize-the woman next to Courtney. It grasped at her skirt and pulled her just enough for other hands to latch on. They yanked her through the canvas, kicking and screaming, and then she was seen no more.

    

    No one had tried to help her.

    

    Courtney wasn’t sure if she could have been helped, but she wished she had at least tried. She had seen the woman’s face, gripped in terror, begging with incoherent screams for the others not to be cowards-to help her.

    

    But no one so much as extended a hand.

    

    Then there was a jolt-a sudden impact that reeled Courtney and the others, sending them off balance. The entire truck-two and a half tons of it plus passenger weight-had been sent careening down the interstate. They felt several bumps, probably caused by hundreds of bodies being rolled over and crushed beneath the tires. When she and the others brought themselves to their feet again, this belief was further reinforced by the fact that there were no more dead arms reaching through the canvas. A single blindingly-bright light was now shining at them through the back.

    

    Together but alone they opened the tail flap. The truck behind them, another deuce-and-a-half, had rammed theirs and now the two deuce-and-a-halfs had become one big hunk of metal junk. As Courtney peered over the headlight that illuminated the entire transport area, she saw the driver of the other truck, a military man, be pulled out through his open door and into the arms of several hungry walking corpses.

    

    She doesn’t remember now what happened to the others that were with her, but she knows they didn’t make it. She only remembers climbing onto the steaming engine of the truck behind her and then up and over the windshield and then onto the flimsy canvas on the roof.

    

    Maintaining her balance on her hands and knees, she saw the scene in its entirety: Thousands upon thousands of dead people, some split into smaller groups as they feasted on someone who had been alive, the others still in mobs as they tried to get a meal of their own-all brightened by the headlights and searchlights of the scattered trucks in the convoy.

    

    It was luck-and nothing more-that the truck carrying her had been sent out of the encircled area with a push from the truck behind it and into the guardrail on the side of the interstate.

    

    It was dark on the other side of the shoulder, but she didn’t see anything moving. She could see what might be a small creek down the hill, followed by a lot of trees, but nothing was moving-nothing that would get her.

    

    She jumped. This leap of faith was far from graceful. Somehow she had turned sideways but-again, out of luck and nothing more-her backpack full of clothes had softened the fall. However, there was an immediate pain in her ankle as it came down on a sharp rock jutting out of the ground.

    

    She lay there for a second and in that time wondered if this was where a mob of hungry hands would circle around her and tear her apart like she deserved-if this was going to be the end of her.

    

    She heard moaning to her right. Investigating with a simple turn of her head, she saw a soldier lying about ten feet away clutching his knee. His camouflage uniform was covered in blood and the pain in his face was evident.

    

    She heard moaning to her left. Turning her head the other way she saw another girl there, roughly her own age, crying into her palms. She didn’t seem physically hurt in any way, but she didn’t get up and move. She just cried.

    

    And then there was a set of camouflaged arms that hooked Courtney beneath her armpits and lifted her to her feet. The attached voice said, “Let’s get out of here.”

    

    Though she knew her ankle might be broken, she still couldn’t summon sound from her voicebox. She just stood there, looking into the soldier’s face, trembling.

    

    The soldier picked her up into his arms. He carried her down the hill at a full running stride, crossed the creek, and then went up and over the opposite hill, away from the slaughter.

    

    He ran for what seemed like the longest time.

    

    

    

    

    

    They ended up at Camp Rigero, a National Guard Reserve Center just off the coast near Carson City. The parking lot in front of the base was littered with corpses-the kind that didn’t seem to get up again, all with extremely apparent head wounds-and the fence beyond was patrolled by dozens of uniformed soldiers carrying very big guns.

    

    The soldier who had rescued her, remembered simply as “Ryan,” was dragging her by the arm at a very brisk pace, forcing her to find her own footing, pain in her ankle notwithstanding. There were several stray zombies here and there in the parking lot, but snipers behind the fence quickly picked them off. She and Ryan ran to the base and screamed to be let in as if it were the last American embassy in a hostile nation.

    

    The soldiers opened the gates.

    

    It was here she lived for eight weeks. The base had its own power generators, so they were never without light, and sometimes the pasty stuff that oozed out of the packages in her daily allotment of rations was actually pretty good. On top of that, fresh water was plentiful; several rows of water tanks occupied the area between the barracks and the northern rifle range. However, as secure as she should have felt, most of the time spent at Camp Rigero was uneasy, and not for the most obvious reasons. Of the eighty-seven others surviving there with her, eighty-one of them were male.

    

    No one asked for her input. Most never even asked for her name. She figured it was for the same reason she survived the slaughter of the convoy.

    

    When she had leapt off the deuce-and-a-half and hit the ground, there were two others close by that needed just as much help as she did: a soldier and another girl. Yet Ryan chose to help her. She knew why and-looking back-the reason sickened her.

    

    The other soldier, the one bleeding and in a terrible amount of pain, was for all intents and purposes a brother to Ryan. Courtney always thought that soldiers were told to never leave anyone behind, but that nameless soldier was left as fodder for the zombies.

    

    Ryan could have chosen to rescue the other girl instead of Courtney. She didn’t even appear to be injured. But that girl was also a lot more ample than Courtney. Courtney-with purple highlights through her hair and tight jeans around her legs, showing her slim physique-was the one and only person Ryan decided to help. He hadn’t even seemed to look twice at the others.

    

    Courtney realized that if she were blonde instead of brunette, she would have made for the absolute perfect damsel in distress. She could remember howmanly Ryan acted the night before they arrived at Camp Rigero, that he had rescued his prize, believing himself to be a heroic savior and Courtney to be an utter weakling in need of a heroic savior.

    

    And maybe that’s how it really was then.

    -Then. But not now. Not five years later.

    

    She saw less and less of him in the following weeks until he became just another face in the hallway. However, each time she saw him, he glared at her in an unflattering way much like the other soldiers did-like she was there under their protection and she should be doing something to return the favor-and by that they didn’t mean menial chores. Furthermore, as days passed, they began to look at her as if they wanted to exact their payment sometime soon. They were just waiting for the right time, it seemed, when man’s law could be made more flexible for the times they were living in-maybe just as soon as it was confirmed that all the higher-ups were truly gone.

    -Idiots on power trips, just as her father warned.

    

    Over the course of the first week, fewer and fewer uninfected civilians were arriving at Camp Rigero. Even worse, the infected ones were being turned away at the gate. All of the soldiers knew by then that to get bitten meant twenty-four hours of painful sickness, followed by death and reanimation.

    

    She was beginning to wonder if she wanted to continue living like this or if she even wanted to continue living at all.

    

    But then everything changed.

    

    She heard the sound of the helicopter-the noisy, deafening sound-and, like everyone else, she ran to see what was happening. Excluding the soldiers ordered to remain at their posts, they all hurried to the heliport where a mammoth Army Chinook was hovering patiently overhead with its bay door wide open. She could see a dozen or so figures sitting inside.

    

    A rope was flung out, dangling from high in the air, and not long afterward someone was rappelling down fast and graceful. Several large padded packages were then dropped and landed hard on the heliport. The figure-by now obviously a male someone-unhooked the line and the helicopter spun away, leaving him there without so much as an explanation.

    

    Soldiers were looking to their captains for some kind of explanation, but the captains could only shrug their shoulders in response.

    

    The man was wearing a pseudo-military uniform that up until that point had not been seen by the general military. Most noticeable was the black beret on his head. Below that was a full polarized visor that reflected the sunlight with a copper glow and completely obstructed his face. It seemed to be secured comfortably snug by a spandex hood below the beret. His actual uniform, however, was a tight black and turquoise bodysuit with a high collar. He wore black gloves that fit close against his forearms and extended nearly to his elbows. Lastly were his boots, which appeared to have thick metal embedded in the heels. In this full garb, none of his skin was at all visible.

    

    There was a rifle strapped to his back and a handgun in a holster on his right hip. On his left hip was a sheathed sword.

    

    He was tall and imposing and quite the spectacle.

    

    Then came the unveiling-the removal of his copper-colored visor.

    

    He was black and a great deal older than most of the soldiers-probably in his late thirties or early forties. However, as they would all soon discover, he was highly articulate and had a strong, domineering voice to go along with it. Also, it seemed he was prepared for the inevitable skepticism.

    

    “My name is M. Gordon Levi,” he stated. “No ‘sir’. No ‘M’ . Just Gordon. I’m a Black Beret. I’m here to help.”

    

    Then followed a barrage of questions by the soldiers.

    

    The Black Beret began answering these questions, piquing the curiosity of everyone, but when he made it known that he was without rank-a total civilian yet under military authorization-the soldiers started to lose interest.

    

    “I’m a member of the Black Berets,” he explained again in a very practiced way. “A unit trained and specialized in surviving the new world crisis. Yes, Iam a civilian, as are most Black Berets. As you might’ve guessed, actual military-in any branch-is an endangered species. What few of us there are have been sent to places like this to train you and increase the number of Black Berets. Like I said: I’m here to help.”

    

    In the minutes to follow he would repeat his mission statement over and over exactly the same. Courtney wondered how anyone with such a bold voice would have any problem at all getting others to fall in line, but the soldiers didn’t make it easy for him.

    

    Gordon Levi, unfazed, was ready to provide a demonstration.

    

    Later that day, entirely at his request, he ventured alone through the gates of the base and into the uncontrolled outer parking lot. Courtney watched on, her fingers trembling as she wrapped them around the links of the chain fence. There were three zombies on the other side, one male and two female, and she knew anyone with a gun and three bullets should have had no problem putting them down. However, Gordon left his guns behind. He wore only the outfit from before and carried only the sword.

    

    The zombies were fast. No area of their skin appeared decayed and they were able to walk at full strides. They were approaching in a huddle, weaving through a line of cars that had been parked there and forgotten.

    

    Gordon met the zombies halfway.

    

    He unsheathed his sword and in one motion decapitated the first. Its head rolled off its shoulders immediately and hit the pavement with a very satisfying thunk. Gordon stepped gracefully away and spun twice, taking off another zombie’s arm on the first spin and its scalp on the second. The third and final zombie, equally unfazed, extended its arms and lunged at its meal. Gordon extended the blade and-using a simple jab and the zombie’s own forward momentum-put the metal at least five inches through its eye socket, most certainly splitting the brain in half inside its protective shell.

    

    Finished, Gordon knelt down and used the zombie’s shirt to wipe the blood and gore from the blade of the sword. He then calmly sheathed it.

    

    Courtney didn’t remember everything that happened, nor did she care to, but she did remember everything Gordon said-and the soldiers’ rebuttals-with utmost clarity.

    

    Upon returning through the gate, Gordon addressed the crowd: “Are we finished playing playground here? Have you seen enough, or do you want to keep playing reindeer games? Because I refuse to continue butting heads with you.”

    

    One of the captains spoke up and his sarcasm was already evident. “You want to teach us to be ninjas or something?”

    

    Murmurs and chuckles rumbled through the crowd.

    

    “Yay, a smartass,” Gordon countered, passive-aggressively maintaining his composure. “That’s exactly what we need.” He took a few moments to eye the soldiers one at a time, effectively silencing them, and continued, “A sword is the least of it. A Black Beret is almost as effective without a weapon at all, but give him the right rifle and the right handgun and a Black Beret with only a week of training can deal more damage than any of you trigger-happy bozos. Your shoot-’em-enough-and-they’ll-eventually-go-down tactic ain’t going to work in the long run.”

    

    The soldiers got understandably angry at this point and several of them appeared ready to verbalize their displeasure. One of the captains held up his arm to keep them silent at least for a little while longer.

    

    Gordon continued, “Ammunition’s running out, boys and girls. There’s too many of you who have heavy trigger fingers. There’s even more of you who expend entire magazines because you like to see blood and guts flying everywhere. Well, bravo. All you’ve accomplished is proven that you get your rocks off by shooting up something formerly human. But guess what? There’s going to be millions more.” He paused a moment to let this sobering fact sink in. “So what happens when you’re out of ammo? I’ll tell you: You’ll have to fight. And I mean really fight-there’ll be no more of this hanky-panky gunplay. You’ll be fighting with your hands and with a sword.” He jabbed his knuckles together and motioned to the sheathe on his hip. “These weapons never need reloading and you’ll never run out of ammunition.”

    

    “We won’t be ninjas, Captain,” one of the soldiers in the front chimed. “We’ll be Shaolin monks!”

    

    Gordon quickly approached that soldier, put his palm on his chest, and pushed him to the ground. He could obviously lay a whipping to living people just as well as he could to dead people. However, instead of doing more, like holding the soldier down and bloodying his face, Gordon simply stepped back. He removed his cover, revealing a shiny bald head, and held the black beret high in the air for all to see.

    

    “This means something!” he shouted. “Wearing this beret means never having to doubt yourself! It means not being afraid anymore! Anyone who trains under me will receive one. I’ve got plenty of berets and uniforms in those fancy little boxes over there and plenty more en-route. I’ve even got manuals for the reader types.” He motioned to the packages that had been dropped out of the Chinook, and continued, even more seriously: “You’ll be aweapon. You won’t need endless amounts of ammunition-you won’t need any more fully automatic hogs. You’ll have a rifle, a sidearm, and a sword. That’s all you’ll need.” Then he capped it all off with, “We’ll win this war.”

    

    It was quiet for a while after that. The midday sun was getting hot and the soldiers were getting even hotter.

    

    “That’s the plan?” one of the captains asked. “This is the best that all the strategic minds could come up with?”

    

    Without hesitation Gordon replied, “This will at least keep you alive until a long-term strategy can be developed.”

    

    The captain stepped forward, looking doubtingly at his men, then turned to face Gordon once more. “There’s nothing else?” he asked. “They’re not going to round everyone up and get us the hell out of here? They’re just going to drop off a...,” (Here he paused to make quotation marks in the air with his fingers), “...Black Beret?”

    

    “Black Berets are being dispatched throughout the country,” Gordon said. “You needed help, so you got it.”

    

    The captain approached him and stood very close, but in a very soothing tone told him, “I’m sorry, Mister Levi. But you’re not a soldier. You’re a civilian. You haven’t earned your stripes. I don’t care how cool you are, the men here aren’t ready to listen to you. Besides, sir, in case you can’t tell, our enemy is already dead. They’re going to rot away and everything will be back to normal. So why fight them? We’re safe here and we’re handling things just fine. And since all the best strategic minds in our great country have left us stuck here, we plan to enjoy the calm.”

    

    Gordon walked away from him and didn’t bother arguing. He focused on the crowd once more and addressed them instead: “Anyone interested should raise their hands now and make yourselves known. I’m not going to waste any more time trying to convince you.”

    

    There was silence-maybe even crickets chirping.

    

    However, from her position in the far back, this was the point when Courtney timidly raised her hand. Every head turned to her and she loweredhers, not wanting to feel their eyes watching her.

    

    Gordon didn’t hesitate to point to her and say, “There’s one. Any more?”

    

    There wasn’t. Even after waiting-perhaps even hoping-no one else raised their hand.

    

    Then Gordon motioned like he was parting the oceans and the crowd of soldiers shuffled out of his way. He walked through them and straight to Courtney.

    

    “What’s your name, honey?”

    

    She stuttered a moment before she finally got out: “Courtney Colvin.”

    

    He eyed her in a very confident way and said, “Well, Courtney Colvin, you made the right choice.”

    

    They walked away together.

    

    She could hear several racist remarks being spoken, which she thought was funny since no one had said anything until they discovered it was a whitegirl that decided to follow Gordon. But to her it didn’t matter what those soldiers thought. None of them had much of a personality to speak of anyway, so a racist remark was probably the best they could come up with. Whether her decision was right or wrong, one way or another she would never have to rely on them again.

    

    

    

    

 

    

 

    

    

    She learned to fight.

    

    She was taught maneuvers from various martial arts: Karate to attack, Judo for throws, and Jiu-Jitsu for defense. She learned throws and variations of throws, kicks and variations of kicks. The first rule of throwing a zombie, she learned, was that it was necessary to grab the creature in an area of its body that wouldn’t easily snap and ruin her leverage. Also, it was best to keep in mind a domino effect: if possible, throw a zombie into another zombie.

    

    When kicking, she learned, it was best to push rather than attempt to injure. They needed to be kicked squarely on the ribcage, otherwise it was possible her foot would penetrate the zombie’s chest and get stuck inside. Rarely was it possible to kick high enough and hard enough to even damage a skull, let alone cause enough penetrable brain damage to put down a zombie for good. After all, it wasn’t like zombies could be knocked unconscious like normal people. The theory, she was told, was that all a zombie required in order to function was the very core of its brain.

    

    Next she learned the wakizashi. As Gordon explained it, long swords-katanas-were too heavy to swing with a single arm alone despite how action movies portrayed using them, and knives were simply too short to keep enough distance between herself and the target. The wakizashi, on the other hand-a shortened version of the katana-could be swung with one arm alone if necessary while the other was used to defend, especially when confronted with two or more targets.

    

    He told her how he and the other specialists forming the Black Berets were given real zombies to practice and perfect all these techniques on at a place called Rock Forge. He told her how the zombies had been completely wrapped in airtight black plastic that still allowed them to remain mobile, yet prevented them from infecting anything or anyone. He then told her how the zombies all too often resembled “gimps out of bad porno movies.”

    

    It gave Courtney a laugh, which felt good. It was something she hadn’t done for weeks.

    

    He explained that here, however, cotton training dummies would have to suffice. He didn’t want her in real danger unless it was absolutely necessary. Besides, he doubted any of the soldiers would be willing to help him capture a zombie and wrap it up. They would have to make do with their makeshift dojo-hollowed out from a large storage room that used to be an indoor shooting range. But after pushing some boxes aside and moving some heavy metal cabinets and laying down some carpet, the place served its purpose well.

    

    This training was all she had to set her mind to-and, while training, it allowed her to block out more painful thoughts. It was also the perfect distraction from the lustful eyes of the soldiers.

    

    Next she learned precision shooting with a .22 Hornet rifle, modified with an add-on for the Black Beret-a night vision-capable telescopic scope. This rifle was for longer distances. For shorter distances she was given a Socom .45 caliber handgun with an attached silencer, laser sight, and built-in flashlight. Gordon called it “The complete sidearm.” It was lightweight and highly accurate. The silencer was so no more zombies than necessary heard any shot fired. A Black Beret never wanted to attract attention. The purpose of the laser sight was self-evident-just highlight a target with the red dot and boom. Even young girls like her, who had never evenheld a gun before, could feel confident that they would hit their target. It seemed that Gordon and the rest of the founders had thought of everything. The key to shooting, she learned, was patience and easy, steady breaths. If a zombie didn’t fall after the first headshot, then a second one would surely put it down. She would just need to stay calm and do it.

    

    When she learned the basics of the weapons of the Black Beret, Gordon began showing her more and more advanced techniques, including how to move and how to listen and how to function in a team. They were exhausting every lesson provided in the hastily-printed Black Beret manuals Gordon and his team had put together. Since she had been the only one willing to learn and therefore his only student, she progressed quickly. He explained that he was one of the founders of the Black Berets-one of the originals-which meant she was learning straight from the source. However, she just liked to think she was talented.

    

    Every other day he would take her to the landing strip on the eastern side of the base and teach her how to drive. Her father had taught her a little, but now she was learning the ins and outs of the humvee and their very loose, standard transmissions. Unlike her father, however, Gordon would let her go as fast as she wanted-until, of course, he had to warn her to slow down since they were almost out of runway.

    

    However, three weeks after the training began she started to notice Gordon’s deteriorating morale. She didn’t think it was because he had lost contact with another Black Beret-a friend-stationed at the LaCosta Community Building, but rather because he only had one student to concentrate his efforts. He probably imagined getting a somewhat warmer reception upon his arrival at Camp Rigeroand that the soldiers would eventually see things his way. She could tell he felt he had a lot to offer everyone and was feeling rather depleted at not being able to do a damn thing about it.

    

    It was a week later that he came into the dojo and made it official. Whether she really deserved it or whether he was just bored of it all, she couldn’t tell.

    

    “You’re a Black Beret,” he said. “Congrats.”

    

    He gave her the uniform, gloves, boots, visor, and-most importantly-the beret. He then showed her how they should be worn and helped her zip up the back of the suit.

    

    After she was fully geared up, sans visor and beret, she asked what the deal was. The uniform clung to her skin and the black and turquoise color didn’t seem at all like something any branch of the military would willingly create. It was too flashy.

    

    He laughed and explained, “It’s actually a wetsuit. The material’s called trylar. Nothing short of a really sharp knife can cut it. If you ever get bit wearing that, it’ll feel like a vice clamping down on your skin and it’ll most definitely hurt, but the teeth won’t penetrate the suit. As for the tightness, well, as you might have noticed, those baggy uniforms everyone else is wearing only gives those dead guys something to grab hold of. And no, the military didn’t make them, they seizedthem from the manufacturer. Hence the lame design.”

    

    She looked in the mirror when he said this, turning fully around, and replied, “I think its kind of cool.”

    

    And he mumbled, “Figures.”

    

    Things changed a lot then, when she no longer wore sweatpants and a tank top to training with Gordon, and instead wore the uniform.

    

    He started looking at her differently.

    

    She looked older. More experienced. Stronger.

    

    What happened then was something she somehow expected to happen a lot sooner at Camp Rigero. It was never rape, though he was easily a foot taller and twenty years her senior and could easily have taken what he wanted. After all, the rest of the world didn’t really seem to care about her opinion or her age, nor did they even trifle with petty things like chivalry. At least Gordon had been different from them. While she was nervous and didn’t want it to happen, it didn’t mean she was not willing-there was too much to lose by not letting it happen.

    

    So she let it happen.

    

    He seemed to have been getting bored with teaching her and she felt it would only be a matter of time before he gave up, leaving her with no one. So, as long as he taught her how to fight the way he did-how to survive-then she would let him have his moments after each session. At first it was like a kick in the gut to her self-esteem, (especially in the somber moments afterwards when he’d be too ashamed of himself to speak to her,) but she knew that at least she wouldn’t have to rely on those testosterone-driven soldiers anymore and at the same time she wouldn’t bealone.

    

    It was around then that she realized just how in truly bad shape the world was-and not by the same logic everyone else had used to arrive at the same conclusion. No, she realized this when even the kindest and most honorable man became just that-a man-who had put aside his noble behavior and his reservations about sleeping with a much younger girl despite knowing the girl needed him and therefore would not refuse him.

    

    But, after receiving the uniform, she wasn’t just a girl anymore. She had become everything he originally promised in his motivating speech in front of all the soldiers.

    

    After a couple of weeks being with him didn’t feel wrong anymore. She was starting to grow comfortable with it. He was strong, but gentle, and reminded her of her father-and not in some sick, twisted, perverted way. It was the only relationship of any kind she had ever had. No matter what he did-no matter what she let him do (because she could have told him no even when it hurt)-she couldn’t bring herself to be angry with him.

    

    She didn’t know exactly how she felt about him and she never got the time to explore it fully.

    

    Gordon Levi-and everyone else at Camp Rigero-would soon be dead, and her last mental picture of the place would be of an army of the undead conquering an army of the living.

    

    The base was overrun one cloudy September day only eight weeks after she had arrived. It looked like it might rain, which would have been the first rain in over three weeks. None of the soldiers or their captains had bothered considering what such a dry spell would do to the river nearby-the very same river that served as a natural barrier on the unfenced side of the compound.

    

    She had been in her barracks when the ruckus started, getting ready for that day’s training session that was to begin within an hour. Sirens started blaring and a few seconds later machine guns were firing incessantly.

    

    M16’s. She recognized their sound easily enough by then.

    

    The noise outside was reminiscent of the chaos when her convoy had been attacked. This time, however, her body was tight and her mind was focused and she knew how to use them. She knew she would never again feel satisfied by simply running away in a fearful panic. This time she was ready.

    

    She left her barracks in full Black Beret gear and had every intention of joining the fight, but outside waiting for her was Gordon, who stopped her immediately. He wasn’t wearing a uniform, just pants and a button-up shirt. Blood was running down his forearm from a large hole near his elbow. Before her brain could decipher what this meant, he was using his healthy arm to guide her away.

    

    “Get out of here,” he said. “They’re in. They came across the river. Hundreds. All over the heliport.”

    

    Soldiers were everywhere now, she saw, all in the process of loading their machine guns as they ran in the direction of the battle. None of them seemed to notice her or Gordon.

    

    She didn’t move. She just stood there, looking up at him, then at his bleeding forearm. He knew what she was going to ask, so he went ahead and told her.

    

    “They took a chunk right out of me,” he said, chuckling sourly. “And I was justgetting ready to put my uniform on for our training. Of all the luck.” He tried to force a smile, but didn’t quite pull it off. “Pack whatever stuff you can and get your ass over to the garage. Take a humvee. You won’t need a key to start it.”

    

    “And leave you here?” she asked.

    

    “That’s the one thing I never got to teach you,” he replied. “Sometimes it’s okay to run. This isn’t a fight you can win. This place is done for.”

    

    So she left.

    

    There was more to it than that, of course, but these were some of the memories she felt were best left unremembered. The pleading with him to come with her, his apologies for being stupid and getting bitten, his reminder that he wasn’t going to live anyway, the snub-nosed pistol he pulled from his pocket, followed by his last words, “I’m sorry for using you the way I did. But don’t worry, you won’t ever catch me walking around,”

    -these were all things she didn’t care to be reminded of ever again.

    

    

    

    

 

    

    

    Florida coast crossed her mind on more than one occasion, but she knew what would be waiting for her there. She didn’t even consider finding another rescue station like Camp Rigero since she was certain soldiers were the same pretty much everywhere. So, since all bad things that had happened so far had happened to the south, and-knowing no other way to go-she headed north.

    

    She killed her first zombie that very day.

    

    Just like all the vehicles in the garage at Camp Rigero, the gas-powered humvee she took had several cans of fuel mounted along the sides. She waited until she was on a long, flat, open stretch of road before she stopped and got out. She fed gasoline into the tank one can after another until it started spitting back at her. When she opened the door to climb back inside, she heard something rustling in the weeds on the side of the road.

    

    She stood and watched it for a while, the pitiful thing, as it struggled towards her on the bloody stumps where its knees and elbows used to be. It was covered in dirt and left a trail of coagulated blood in its wake. Whether it had been male or female, she couldn’t tell.

    

    She watched it a little longer.

    

    It took nearly an entire minute just to cross the first lane.

    

    Though she would never admit why, she allowed it to crawl all the way up to her. It could open and close its mouth well enough, but it couldn’t angle its head in a way to bite her leg that didn’t send its deformed body off balance. Even if it could have bitten her, the wetsuit she was wearing wouldn’t have given it anything to sink its teeth into. Its teeth could only slide up and down on the slick trylar.

    

    She quietly pulled the silenced Socom from the holster, whispered, “I guess it won’t be you,” and put a bullet in the creature’s brain. There was a zip sound when the gun fired and a thud sound when the creature’s body all at once fell to the pavement.

    

    It was the first of many zombies that she would put down for good-but for hours after her first one, she wondered if she would start to feel guilt over killing something that was already dead.

    

    But she felt nothing. Nothing at all.

    

    Maybe she wasn’t even capable of feeling anything just then.

    

    She kept driving. She stuck to interstates that stayed well away from big cities. Also, since the ocean was the only thing that ever seemed to stay the same, she stuck close to the coastline. In some places fire was raging uncontrollably. In other places the roads were so jammed with abandoned vehicles that she had to drive into the median to get around them. Everywhere she went, however, all was dark and all was dead.

    

    Stopping for personal needs wasn’t too difficult; she simply found an isolated spot and got out of the humvee long enough to do whatever she had to do. But finding a place to wash up was something of a challenge, as clean, out-of-the-way creeks were hard to come by. The powdered soap and small packets of men’s shampoo provided in each ration didn’t help much either. She eventually sacrificed cleanliness for a safer state of mind, since constantly looking over her shoulder while she bathed wasn’t doing her nerves any favors.

    

    She always stopped to sleep in places she thought were safer than others. These included more desolate stretches of road where houses were few and far between, which meant the former residents of those houses wouldn’t be wandering anywhere close by. Still, she would make certain every door in the humvee was locked up tight before she curled up in the back and nodded off. Sometimes an occasional dead person would find its way to her and come pounding on the side of the vehicle, and at first she would always roll down a window and shoot the creature in the head. Later though, when she realized the windows in the humvee were truly shatterproof, she would just cover her ears and sleep through the siege. When she woke she would simply start the engine and drive away, sometimes running over the creature that had been trying to get her.

    

    Making a straight line up the coast, into South Carolina she went, then North Carolina, through Virginia and Maryland into Delaware, barely missingPennsylvania, through New Jersey and New York, into Connecticut, and finally entering Rhode Island. She didn’t know how far she would end up going-maybe even into Canada provided she could find a working gasoline pump somewhere-or maybe even so far that she could wave at Santa, Frosty, and Rudolph.

    

    Eventually she lost track of how many days had passed since leaving Camp Rigero.

    

    Halfway through Rhode Island, however, signs of real life were becoming apparent. It started with very colorful graffiti scribbled on a bright white billboard: LOOK HERE›More survivors ahead. Keep going.

    

    She slammed the brake and stopped the humvee and there she sat for the longest time, staring up at the message.

    

    She knew her will was deteriorating and eventually she would stop caring-maybe even intentionally neglect to lock up the humvee some day before nodding off. Besides that, she was starving. There had only been one box of sixteen rations stored in the back of the humvee and those were gone. She hadn’t eaten in at least three days. On top of all that, the fuel strapped to the sides was almost gone as well. She didn’t know anything about pumps and the like. She didn’t know if she could even find a working gas pump, let alone be able to operate it and fight off any undead opposition at the same time.

    

    She knew that if she wanted to stay alive, she couldn’t stay alone.

    

    Then again, how old was the graffiti? Was the person who wrote the message still alive? If so, exactly how many other survivors were there? Was it just another rescue station like Camp Rigero, full of the same obnoxious soldiers who would eventually turn to barbarism and rape? Could she just stay long enough to eat, sleep, and refuel? Would they even allow her to leave if she didn’t like it there?

    

    There were just too many questions and no easy answers. It was too much for a girl of seventeen to try to think about.

    

    The worst that could happen, she reasoned, was that she would die. Furthermore, she knew she was definitely done for if she stayed alone. If there were any other survivors up ahead, she could check them out from afar and if she met them and if they tried to do anything bad to her, she would shoot as many as she could before shooting herself.

    

    So, either way, the worst that could happen was that she would die. That was the best answer she could come up with.

    

    So she put the humvee back in gear and kept going.

    

    Roughly every five miles or so someone had written another message in one bright color or another and each one seemed to answer an unspoken question. Whoever it was that wrote them somehow had in mind the kind of person who would be reading them.

    

    The first one read: We have high walls here.

    

    The second: STILL ALIVE and looking good.

    

    The third message was so long that some of the letters at the end were scrunched together and running off the side of the billboard: IF YOU ARE NOT NICE, GO AWAY YOU WON’T BE TOLERATED

    

    (Below that someone added: THAT MEANS NO DIRTBAGS ALLOWED.)

    

    And finally, the last one read: Turn at Matunuck Exit. Follow Road.

    

    

    

    She was different when the apocalypse happened, not so much in appearance, but in demeanor. Change was bound to happen one way or another as she got older, but the end of the world tended to bring changes in the extremes.

    

    Appearance-wise she remained pretty much the same. After arriving at Eastpointe she had the stylist at the plaza cut her hair just above her shoulders so, when tucked behind the spandex hood on the visor, it would fit easier. She also declined more purple highlights, but her hair was still beautiful on its own; soft brown which rested flat and flowed straight from her scalp in a single wave.

    

    Having relocated from the north Florida coast to Rhode Island, her tan was long gone and replaced with a pale porcelain hue, though admittedly this could also have been caused by seldom venturing outside her home and experiencing even the slightest warmth of direct sunlight. Or, perhaps, her body-so accustomed to constant summertime-had not adjusted to the long, harsh Rhode Island winters. She had never even seen real snow before then.

    

    Other than that, her appearance had not changed much in five years. She remained short and petite and very cute.

    

    She had always been a child of pop culture-MTV, showy clothes, and dreams of marrying James Spader. She had been popular throughout school and usually always had a say on what her friends could like and dislike. Even she would admit she was nothing more than a teen brat. She could remember a guy named Bobby Ware who stole the teacher’s edition of their Geometry book and gave it to her. She promptly used the book to cheat her way through Geometry throughout the semester, never even bothering to thank the guy because she knew he just wanted attention from her.

    

    And that’s pretty much how her life worked. She could get anything she wanted, she was never teased or ridiculed, and she never had to thank anyone for anything. Underneath it all, however, she knew she wasn’t a very interesting person.

    

    Therein lay the problem: What were the chances any interesting people had survived? Before acquiring the necessary skills, it was by luck and looks alone thatshe had managed to make it to Eastpointe. It certainly wasn’t because of her personality.

    

    She had been the two hundred and seventh survivor to drive through the gate. Once she settled down she would have tried meeting other people there in the hopes they were a cool sort, but her enthusiasm had been dashed by that prick Leon Wolfe. With light brown hair past his ears and obnoxiously good-looking, he was the same type of jerk she probably would have dated-and have her heart broken by-had the world not changed and her youth not been wasted.

    

    She was just starting to accept that by living within the walls of Eastpointe she would have to do just that-live-despite all the horrors she had already been through. It seemed everyone else there was living, moving on, that sort of thing. So why couldn’t she?

    

    It started in the cafeteria.

    

    Eastpointe didn’t have much going on then. A couple hundred more survivors would roll through in the weeks after her, but until they found people with the necessary talents they had to forsake things like running water and electricity. However, they still had a cafeteria in the hotel and they were still able to serve what food hadn’t gone rotten.

    

    Working the lunch line that day was Leon Wolfe, a kid from Maine who was also one of a handful of people trained as a Black Beret along the way. Like Gordon Levi,Leon’s trainer also met his demise before finding the solace of Eastpointe’s high walls. Courtney always felt there should have been some sort of unspokencomradery between the seven Black Berets who made it to Eastpointe and maybe an even larger understanding between kids who were popular, but Leon Wolfe-the arrogant jerk that he was-mixed a glass of vinegar in with all the glasses of water and it was Courtney who got it.

    

    She had been very, very thirsty and didn’t question or suspect anything. She didn’t even have time to smell the noxious aroma; she just tilted back the glass and took two full chugs.

    

    It hit her hard.

    

    She went to her knees, spitting and vomiting while Leon and several others were laughing their heads off. She had been strong on her own when she drove thehumvee all the way from Georgia and at the same time managed to avoid getting eaten. She knew how to fight. She felt strong now. However, after a week at Eastpointe she was growing accustomed to the relative safety of the place and its relaxed atmosphere. There had only been a couple of actual soldiers there, but they weren’t in charge and they weren’t like the other soldiers she had met. No one there was on a power trip. There were no lustful eyes constantly watching her. For all intents and purposes, everyone there was normal. Unfortunately, she didn’t know that some of them were also going to be dickheads.

    

    Seeing them laughing at her was too unexpected-too much to deal with. In her anger, she just sat there in the middle of the cafeteria and bawled her eyes out, creating quite a scene. She wondered if there were new rules here that she didn’t understand. She wondered why these people had done this to her. She wondered what she did to deserve this.

    

    Then she remembered the kids-the little boys and girls with her in the back of the deuce-and-a-half-and how they met their ends. Even at Eastpointe, the very young or very old were very much a minority, as were out-of-shape types. She remembered why she survived initially-not because she was strong, but because she was pretty. She remembered all the others who deserved to be alive but weren’t.

    

    She remembered Bobby Ware and the stolen teacher’s edition Geometry book. She remembered her mom and dad. She remembered Gordon.

    

    And she missed them all.

    

    With more people arriving at Eastpointe and with the various skills they brought with them, they were able to get the power plant working and the water running. They were strengthening the walls and renovating the houses.

    

    But she had nothing to offer. She had no talents.

    

    She chose a small newly constructed home to live in by herself. When it came time to celebrate her eighteenth birthday, she was allowed to go to the abandonedEastpointe Plaza and take anything she wanted. It had all the amenities of the malls in Florida and she found this shopping spree surprisingly comforting.

    

    She was able to find most of the things she owned before the apocalypse. She got a television-though she accepted there would never be any new shows to watch, a VCR and videotapes of her favorite movies-mostly Disney flicks, (she loved the gargoyles in Hunchback of Notre Dame), a stereo and her favorite CDs, her favorite sappy romance novels, and all the clothes she liked right down to the rainbow-colored socks with individual toes. She even got posters of her favorite bands-whose members were all probably wandering around as dead people with guitars still strapped to their backs-to decorate the walls in her new home.

    

    And so she existed.

    

    Tucked away in her house with all the conveniences she wanted, she lived in her newly created world. With no interesting people left, she felt it was best to read her books and watch her movies and listen to her music.

    

    From within her own walls, the only reminder that all was not truly well in the world was the iron bars welded into the window frames. Every window in her house had them. Bigger windows like the two in the living room were given a vertical, prison-style treatment. Smaller windows like the ones in the bedroom were given a quick yet reliable crisscrossing metal grating. All were welded in place to suit a very simple purpose, which certainly wasn’t for aesthetic viewing pleasure. They would be her last defense if the undead ever breached Eastpointe’s walls.

    

    In a world ruled by the dead, the living were again forced to live.

    

    Courtney, however, simply existed.

    

    Nestled in the triangle of Potter Cove, Snug Harbor, and the same great Atlantic Ocean Courtney saw in Florida, Eastpointe was a private community of small vacation homes for rich folks and fishermen. Just like one of the graffiti messages on the interstate proclaimed, there was a wall around all of it and it stretched as far as her eyes could see. A pre-apocalypse sign posted in front of the guard shack at the main gate read: Welcome to Eastpointe - Golf - Swimming - Recreation for the family.

    

    There had been a rear entrance at one time, but was now bricked up and barricaded. The wall was high and solid concrete. It probably served the purpose of keeping the eyes of poor people-or, to be politically correct, ‘non-members’-from peering inside.

    

    Eastpointe, even from the beginning, had everything a small town needed to be self-sufficient. As more and more people came, more and more of those luxuries became available. Getting the community’s small hydroelectric power plant up and running came first. Then came the pumps at the water treatment facility and getting clean, running water constantly flowing. The only thing they had to do without was telephones-which, as they all discovered-none of them actually needed.

    

    Taking from a stockpile of chemicals large enough to last for a decade, they were able to get the indoor swimming pool at the hotel up and running. Swimming had always been something Courtney enjoyed, so it was about this time that she wanted to leave her house to go there.

    

    She had been avoiding everyone for so long that she knew they would be questioning her sanity, so she created a facade of maintaining that she was still a child of pop culture. Any time she left her house she made sure to look her best. She showered and waxed and shaved, plucked her eyebrows, and applied makeup and mascara. She wore cool clothes and a sexy two-piece bathing suit to go swimming in. She kept to herself.

    

    The facade worked.

    

    She was certain everyone saw her as she wanted to be seen: a snobby chick who-despite the circumstances-still looked down on everyone around her and enjoyed being left alone.

    

    However, the community’s in-house supplies, which were taken mostly from theEastpointe Shopping Plaza, would not last forever. Pre-packaged food, light bulbs, toiletries, and other items of significant importance were dwindling.

    

    Though still maintaining her right-as-rain attitude, she at last found a way to contribute. In doing so, everyone at Eastpointe-including that self-righteous bastard Leon Wolfe-soon found it evident that she was indeed trained by Gordon Levi.

    

    Courtney, along with the six other Black Berets-including Leon, much to her chagrin-a couple of soldiers and some other gutsy people, ventured outside the walls of Eastpointe and began an operation to loot and pillage the neighboring towns. It wasn’t like anyone in those towns were going to complain. After all, they were all dead, and for all Courtney knew, anyone who was alive in the world was alive inside the walls of Eastpointe.

    

    Courtney found it surprising that the group never really had trouble locating what they needed. While a lot of the places they went to had already been ransacked and things like appliances and guns removed, the looters left behind everything that was significant for long-term survival.

    

    The Black Berets brought back supplies by the truckload, including the most important ones, the items a town would need to stay entirely self-sufficient forever: farm animals.

    

    Left untouched due to the strict human-only diet of the undead, cows and pigs and sheep and chickens and even horses were herded all the way back to Eastpointe. Over the span of several months, the acres upon acres of golf course was turned into a thriving farm community and irrigation ditches were dug from the river by the power plant. Large gardens were planted and harvested, always being certain enough vegetables were gathered to last everyone through the entire winter season. The livestock gave birth to new livestock and there was always an endless supply of meat as long as the Eastpointe citizens didn’t get too greedy.

    

    With over five hundred people in Eastpointe and the resulting melting pot of backgrounds, the inevitable power vacuum started to develop. Soldiers preferred a military style of authority, politicians wanted the common electoral system, and a Scientologist just wanted to ‘clear’ everybody. From what Courtney understood with her limited knowledge of the happenings outside her home, the matter was settled by an older man named Ervin Wright, who had been a member of the International Order of Odd Fellows. He introduced the Odd Fellow system of government and everyone eventually agreed it to be best suited to the purposes of Eastpointe.

    

    With this system, every individual issue concerning the welfare of Eastpointe was assigned to an elected committee. Respectively, a committee was elected to address concerns of the power plant, water treatment and irrigation, land management, security, and so on. Every issue, regardless of its importance in hierarchy, was given a committee. Members of committees were elected to varying lengths of terms so some would expire before others, yet the rest of the members in rotation would still be knowledgeable of current affairs. To assure all of the committees were functioning properly, a Superintendent was elected for a six-month term. This Super-intendent would also see to creating more committees as other concerns arose and when his term expired he would not be eligible to run for Superintendent again until he served terms in three different committees. This guaranteed no one person would ever amass too much political power within Eastpointe.

    

    Voting was held once a month in the conference hall at the hotel and all votes were taken with a simple showing of hands. Courtney only attended the ones she was requested to, and usually when she was it meant one of the committees needed something that was outside the safe walls of Eastpointe. They knew what she was capable of. With her training and her attitude they never saw nor treated her asjust a girl.

    

    She liked the respect.

    

    And, when requested, Courtney and the rest would oblige them.

    

    The undead were everywhere outside the walls of Eastpointe and it seemed more and more were migrating to Rhode Island to be where the food was. It was always tough-and it was always scary-every time her group had to venture into some dead town to retrieve something.

    

    There were losses sometimes.

    

    Sometimes a member of their group would get bitten by a zombie and-more often than not-that person would request sleeping pills to end their pain. After they had passed, someone else had to put a bullet in their head to prevent them from rising again.

    

    Courtney never did it. She always left the room when talk of euthanasia began.

    

    Everyone figured the zombies would rot away within a year, but as more time passed, everyone noticed that they appeared pretty much the same. During winter, the snow would cover them up and bury them, and then in the summer they would be seen wandering outside the walls again. Very rarely did they see one who had decayed enough to render itself immobile.

    

    The years passed and the committees stopped finding reasons to send her outside. By then the town had become fully self-sufficient and the Plaza restocked with enough supplies to last almost indefinitely. There had not been another survivor to enter the gates of Eastpointe in quite some time, even though they had spray-painted directions to the community on nearly every billboard in a fifty-mile radius.

    

    And all the while, Courtney existed. She maintained her facade. Sometimes she cried, sometimes she slept, but she always did so alone. She had dreams about Gordon at first-that he showed up at her front door, decaying and hungry. After his memory faded however, she began having the dreams about the corridor and what waited for her at the end of it.

    

    She thought that maybe the nightmares would go away if she weren’t alone, which was when she sought out Leon Wolfe.

    

    She heard rumors from listening to other girls at the swimming pool that he had slept with nearly every available female at Eastpointe. While she didn’t know if it was true or not, she did know he was easy enough on the eyes and her hatred for him would make it easy to forget him afterwards. And-if it was true he was the town slut-she would have no trouble seducing him.

    

    She would regret her actions later, of course, but at the time she was so starved for some kind of release that she looked beyond her anger at him and focused instead on what he could do for her.

    

    Yet she didn’t get the release she was hoping for. Even in someone else’s bed, with someone else sleeping beside her, the corridor still haunted her. Now she was embarrassed again, knowing he thought she simply couldn’t resist him and simplyhad to come over for a joy ride.

    

    She thought the worst would be behind her, especially more than five years after the first corpse decided to rise again. Furthermore, she thought that her story would have ended upon arriving at Eastpointe, and-like in her sappy romance novels and favorite Disney flicks, ‘lived happily ever after’ would be displayed in fancy letters.

    

    But at Eastpointe, her story had not ended.

    

    It had only begun.

    

    

    

    

 

    

    

    Her ‘week-after’ chat with Leon left her feeling awkward most of the day. She eventually finished the breakfast he had brought, but still felt hungry. She tried re-reading one of her Harlequin romance novels, even skimming ahead to the parts that she liked, but it was all just too fake. She wasn’t sure if the world ever worked like it did in one of those books, let alone now that all the survivors of the apocalypse were living in the same town together. She knew some people were pairing up simply because they didn’t have too much of a choice. Romance had nothing to do with it.

    

    Ergo, her decision to consummate with Leon Wolfe.

    

    She popped Beauty and the Beast into the VCR and tried sitting through it, but the cheery songs just weren’t sinking in. She then sifted through her collection of James Spader movies, but most of them were the risqué type and she really didn’t want to be put in that kind of mood. After all, her favorite man in Hollywood probably wasn’t even alive anymore. She didn’t want to be reminded of that.

    

    She decided to make do playing some music on the stereo while picking up the pigsty she was living in. She had never had anyone over before Leon and she didn’t much like the thought of him knowing she lived in a messy house. He would probably go around telling people she wasn’t as content as she claimed to be-that she just liked putting on a show. Well, now she would have a clean house to prove that she was just fine and dandy. It was like fitting the last piece of a puzzle into place.

    

    It took her most of the day and she still didn’t get entirely finished.

    

    But by five o’clock her stomach was growling again, which meant it was time to make her daily trip to the hotel cafeteria. She took a shower, then put on her bathing suit and slipped her clothes on over it in case she felt like taking a dive in the pool afterwards. After all, nothing at home seemed to hold her interest that day.

    

    She then ventured outside. Her neighbors had finished their game of badminton, much to her relief, and she hadn’t heard ‘shuttlecock’ being shouted since that morning.

    -They were so immature.

    

    Her golf cart was sitting there, shiny and new-looking just as she left it. She plopped down on the seat, pushed the ignition button, and put her foot on the accelerator. The quiet vroom sound of the engine was nice and steady as she headed down the road.

    

    The air in Rhode Island was never as warm as it was in Florida, even in the middle of the summer. She still had not gotten entirely used to it. She still half expected to feel a skin-scorching breeze every time she opened her front door, but it never came. She had thoughts that maybe someday, in another five years or so, she could return to the coast.

    

    But for now, Eastpointe would have to do.

    

    She exited the streets of the main housing area off Sunrise Avenue and passed by the farms, trying to stay far enough away that the smell of manure would not burn into her nostrils. The road furthest from the farms was the main stretch near the high concrete walls, so this was the one she was forced to take.

    

    The wall itself-probably ten feet high-cast a long shadow across most ofSouth Street. However, it was still not able to mute the sound of the occasional breathless moan originating on the other side. Sometimes she could even hear something trying to claw away at the concrete stones in an attempt to get through.

    

    She was used to it. So was everyone else.

    

    She passed the armory on her right, (which at one time had been a roller rink,) and proceeded past the big garage where all of the larger gas-powered vehicles were stored.

    

    The road ended at the main gate. There were a couple men with rifles positioned here, along with a little rottweiler resting lazily between them and serving no purpose whatsoever. The men were sitting back in lawn chairs and exchanging half-assed ideas for starting a football league of some sort. Courtney didn’t know their names.

    

    There were two sets of gates that had to open in order for someone to get in or out. The middle area where the abandoned guard shack rested acted as sort of a decontamination zone.

    

    Beyond that at the outermost gate, a lone zombie was standing with its icky fingers wrapped around the wire links, gazing longingly at the two men and the dog that were ignoring it. It wore a dark business suit with the sleeves ripped off at the elbows. Its skin was almost a pale blue color, all blood having long coagulated and pooled in its lower extremities. It remained silent, though it was most definitely still hungry.

    

    On the wall next to the gate someone had posted a sign that read:

    

    

    To which she mused, Beware the Jubjub bird and shun the frumiousBandersnatch. Yeah, I get it.

    

    Next to that sign was another:

    

    

    That sign was there every time she passed through. She figured someone should have taken it down a long time ago. Nobody went out the gate anymore-not since the Committees had sent her and the rest of the Strike Team on the last retrieval mission over two years ago.

    

    Courtney turned away from the gate and took the road heading toward the hotel parking lot. The men sitting in the lawn chairs stopped talking long enough to wave at her, so she smiled and waved back.

    

    It wasn’t too hard.

    

    She crossed the parking lot and maneuvered her cart between the yellow lines next to six or seven other carts, where she stopped and cut the engine. She hopped out and stepped into the large shadow of the Eastpointe Hotel.

    

    It was a big building, but not humongously big. It had a shiny stonewashed color about it. There were five floors not including the basement and sub-basement, (which she had never had a reason to visit), with the lavish rooms reserved for committee members to live in during their terms and the penthouse given to the acting Superintendent.

    

    She wasn’t even sure who exactly the acting Superintendent was. She missed out on the last four elections.

    

    She opened one of the glass doors and stepped inside.

    

    There was a lot of noise coming from the cafeteria to her left, which was to be expected at that time of day, and after smelling roast beef in the air she knew there would be long line at the buffet.

    

    Her eyes drifted away, passing the doors leading to the swimming pool and the conference room and eventually focusing on the door opposite the cafeteria. She’d never been through that door before.

    

    Despite her growling stomach, food didn’t seem all that appealing just then. There was too much on her mind to be solved with a simple helping of roast beef. Somehow she knew that before she even left her house.

    

    That day she had a hankering to venture through the other door.

    

    So she did.

    

    

    

    The bartender was someone Courtney had seen on a few occasions at the swimming pool. She was a pretty girl that was roughly Courtney’s age and also shared the same height, figure, and happy-go-lucky attitude-but whether hers was faked or not, Courtney didn’t know. She had long, shiny blonde hair with the last few inches dyed red and black. Though longer, it was styled straight and flat like Courtney’s. She dressed similarly as well.

    

    Another child of pop culture.

    

    She was probably someone Courtney could have been a friend with had events happened differently-and she didn’t mean just at Eastpointe. The bartender reminded Courtney of the kind of person she used to have as part of her social circle-the pretty yet not overly interesting type. If the world as a whole had not changed, maybe this was someone she would be finishing college with. That sounded about right to her. At her current age, she would have just been finishing up college, provided she had only signed on for four years. She would never know now.

    

    It was weird for her to think about things like that.

    

    The bartender was busy washing glasses in the sink, but looked up as Courtney entered the room.

    

    “Hi there,” she said in a laid-back Pennsylvanian voice. “Courtney, right?”

    

    A bit surprised, Courtney asked, “You know my name?”

    

    “I’m a bartender,” she replied with a smile. “I know everybody, and-whether I want to or not-everybody’s business.”

    

    Courtney looked around. The place was dark, with booths only dimly lit with soft, candle-like lights overhead. The stools around the bar itself were polished and shiny and the large mirror in the back was smudge and fingerprint free. Cocktail glasses hung from wire racks and long, perfectly situated rows of bottles stretched out along the wall. Despite its upper-class atmosphere, there was country music playing quietly on the jukebox. Courtney and the bartender were the only ones there.

    

    She pulled out a stool and climbed on.

    

    So this is a bar, she thought. Whoop-tee-do.

    

    From behind the counter, the other girl strolled over and stood in front of her. She leaned close and very politely whispered, “You know you need work credits in order to drink here, right?”

    

    Courtney sighed, then reached into her front pocket and pulled out a handful of silver tokens. She placed them neatly in a stack on the bar and asked, “Is this enough?”

    

    The bartender’s eyes grew wide. The tokens still had their glossy finish, which meant they probably hadn’t been circulated throughout Eastpointe. She replied, “That’s plenty. Don’t you ever spend any?”

    

    “Mostly just in the cafeteria and swimming pool,” Courtney replied. Then, wondering if the girl might think her a prostitute or something for having all those credits, she quickly added, “I earned them legitimately.”

    

    “Yeah, I know,” the girl said. “You were one of those going out the gate a couple years ago.”

    

    Courtney nodded. The bartender hadn’t been lying about knowing everybody’s business. Then again, she knew everyone at Eastpointe had a tendency of keeping an ear to the ground.

    

    “You don’t have to work, do you? You’ve got like a free pass now.”

    

    Courtney nodded once more.

    

    The girl cutely rolled her eyes and said, “Must be nice.” She extended her hand and introduced herself. “Alexis Turner.”

    

    Courtney shook it and replied, “Courtney Colvin.”

    

    “I know. So, what can I give you?”

    

    Courtney looked away to investigate the rows of bottles behind the bar. She had to squint to read their labels. She saw Amaretto, Schnapps, Chambord, and a bunch of other names she didn’t recognize. She looked back to the bartender and asked, “What about-like... beer?”

    

    Alexis raised her upper lip and replied, “All the beer went bad a long time ago.Unless you want to try the home-brewed kind. But it’s kind of nasty.”

    

    Courtney shrugged. “I don’t know what I want.”

    

    Alexis turned her head to examine the bottles for herself, then turned back and said, “You’d probably like a Manhattan.”

    

    Courtney didn’t know what it was, but assumed it involved mixing alcohol from different bottles. It sounded fine with her.

    

    Alexis grabbed several bottles off the shelf and set about making the drink. She started with sweet vermouth and whiskey, then added a dash of bitters and topped it off with a cherry. When it was finished it was kind of pretty.

    

    Courtney spun around on the stool, checking out the room’s layout again. After a moment she turned to face the bar once more. She asked, “Doesn’t anyone else come in here?”

    

    “Of course,” Alexis replied. “But not for another hour or so. Most of them have jobs.”

    

    “Oh.”

    

    Alexis slid a wide-rimmed glass of red liquid to her. Courtney checked it out, thenstirred it a bit with a straw before taking a sip. It wasn’t bad.

    

    So this is alcohol.

    

    Alexis pulled up a stool on the other side of the bar and sat down.

    

    Courtney wondered if she had been one those laughing at her in the cafeteria during the vinegar incident. She couldn’t remember. She further wondered if Alexis was still laughing and just trying her hardest not to show it.

    -But it didn’t matter. She was just a bartender and as long as Courtney had credits to spend, nobody would be teasing her.

    

    The Manhattans kept coming. After a while Courtney started to notice how the drink was losing its flavor and it took bigger and bigger gulps just to taste it. By then she was slouching forward, resting her elbow on the bar and her head on her palm and using her free hand to lazily lift the glass to her mouth and back down again.

    

    It was sort of relaxing.

    

    Time passed-slowly at first-but every once in a while she would glance at the clock on the wall and notice the second hand had moved quite a bit. Other people were filtering in from wherever they had came from and sitting down on the stools or in the booths. A couple of them eyed her curiously, probably wondering what force of nature had brought her out of hiding, but none of them sat close to her.

    

    She liked it that way.

    

    Alexis continued to chat with her between drinks, but Courtney didn’t really mind. It seemed like she might actually be able to get along with her newfound peer, though she wasn’t ready to socialize with more than one person a day.

    

    However, no sooner had she considered this when someone sat down on the stool right beside her.

    

    “Hi Courtney.”

    

    She turned her head to match the voice to the face, then turned forward again. She mumbled, “And so my day is now complete.”

    

    “Hi Leon,” Alexis said.

    

    “Hi Lexy,” he replied.

    

    They exchanged a mutual smile. Courtney immediately realized that they had been intimate at some point or maybe still were. It made her sick to remember that she had willingly made herself just another notch on his bedpost.

    

    “What can I give you?” Alexis asked.

    

    Leon leaned forward and very slyly replied, “How about A Goodnight Kiss?”

    

    Alexis laughed. “I keep telling you we don’t have champagne.”

    

    “You do keep telling me that, don’t you?” he replied. “Fine. How about just Sex on the Beach?”

    

    At this point Courtney mumbled, “Gee you’re so suave.”

    They didn’t hear her.

    

    “I don’t have another bottle of Grenadine yet,” Alexis told him. “They’re looking through the boxes in the basement again. They’ll find one eventually.”

    Leon leaned back, eyed all the bottles one more time, and stated, “You leave me no choice. Jim Beam. Water. Rocks.” He then fished a token out of his shirt pocket and slid it across the bar.

    

    Alexis took it and started mixing his drink.

    

    Leon-as far as Courtney knew-was also one of the few who were given a free pass in Eastpointe. He had risked his life with her and at one point was even mobbed by a group of zombies. Only the trylar suit he was wearing had stopped all the teeth from actually penetrating his skin. Otherwise he wouldn’t be here now, annoying her simply by his presence.

    

    He turned to her and said, “I come here in the evenings sometimes.”

    

    She shrugged her shoulders and replied, “So?”

    

    “So, I didn’t want you to think I came in here just to see your pretty face.”

    

    She sighed and turned to face him, showing a sneer. “Why can’t you just talknormally? Your voice is so annoying.”

    

    “Oh, the witty barbs continue. We have a long night of drinking ahead. If you keep being this insightful we’ll have nothing left to talk about.”

    

    She rolled her eyes and took another drink of her Manhattan.

    

    Alexis slid a glass of black stuff to Leon. He took a sip.

    

    “You two get along so well,” Alexis teased. “I’m beginning to think there’s something going on.”

    

    “It’s supposed to be one of those love-hate relationships,” Leon said, playfully watching Courtney out of the corners of his eyes. “But right now the needle’s stuck in the hate area.”

    

    “Just shut up,” Courtney snapped. She finished her drink and slid another token to Alexis. “More red stuff please.”

    

    Alexis took the token, but didn’t drop it in the bucket on the other side of the bar. Instead she rolled it across her knuckles in a practiced way as she watched Courtney.

    

    Courtney watched her too, wondering why she was getting stared at.

    

    After a moment Alexis returned the token to her and leaned over the bar to whisper, “I know the Manhattans are good, but you should just drink water for a while.”

    

    “What?” Courtney snapped. “Why?”

    

    “Your eyes are getting cloudy. Your face is pale. You’ve been slurring your speech for the last half hour. Shall I go on?”

    

    Courtney, in no mood for this, slid the remainder of her stack of tokens over to Alexis and said, “You can have all of them. Just treat me nice. Another Manhattanplease.”

    

    Alexis turned her gaze to Leon for a moment, then back to Courtney.

    

    “Are you drunk, Courtney?” Leon softly questioned.

    

    “No,” she replied, her voice becoming louder. She glared at Alexis. “A few minutes ago you were being really nice to me and now you won’t even give me another drink? What the fuck is your problem?”

    

    Other heads in the bar-ten or eleven of them-started turning toward the ruckus.

    

    “Courtney, I’m not being mean to you,” Alexis told her, keeping a soft tone. “But if I give you another drink you’re going to be sick.”

    

    Courtney swiped all the tokens off the bar and sent them flying. They clattered to the carpet below. She climbed off the stool. “I don’t need this,” she declared. “Why’d I bother? Hell with you guys. I’m going swimming.”

    

    She promptly fell to her butt.

    

    She then sat there, looking at the floor, wondering what had caused her to be so close to it and why her hair was hanging so messily across her face. After a moment she mumbled, “This sucks.”

    

    She could hear someone laughing across the room. She quickly turned her head and saw a woman in one of the booths watching her and giggling.

    

    “Keep it up,” Courtney growled. “And I’ll come over there and smack the grin right off your face.”

    

    “Okay, that’s enough,” Leon said. He got off his stool and knelt down beside her. “I’ll take you home.”

    

    She looked up at him and whispered, “You know I could kick her ass, right?”

    

    “I believe you could, doll,” he replied. “So there’s nothing to prove.”

    

    He put his hands in her armpits and pulled her to her feet. She wobbled there for a moment, trying to find her coordination. It was worse than morning dizziness.

    

    When the hell did this happen?

    

    Alexis pointed to the glass of Jim Beam and asked, “Are you coming back, Leon?”

    

    “Yeah,” he told her. “Can you put it in the fridge for me?”

    

    She nodded.

    

    With that, Leon put his hand under Courtney’s arm and guided her across the room. She glared back at the people watching her. She kind of wanted to slug them all on the chin.

    

    They exited the bar and crossed the parking lot. The sun was completely behind the hotel now. She wasn’t sure exactly how long she had been in the bar, but she knew twilight was at about nine o’clock. That would make for about three and a half hours.

    

    She further concluded that three and a half hours and twice as many Manhattans was not a good mix. She should have learned how to drink before just jumping right into it. Being led outside like a mental patient was kind of embarrassing.

    

    Then she noticed Leon was leading her in the wrong direction.

    

    Courtney pulled her arm away and said, “That’s my cart over there.”

    

    Leon grabbed her arm again just before she looked ready to topple over once more. He said, “Okay. We’ll take your cart.” He paused for a second, and muttered, “They’re all the same. What does it matter?”

    

    She found she couldn’t do much on her own. Leon situated her in the passenger seat and dug the long forgotten seat belt from underneath. He strapped her in, probably thinking she could fall out or something. She wondered why. It wasn’t like golf carts were particularly fast or anything and there weren’t exactly any wild turns.

    

    He hopped in the driver’s seat, started the ignition, then went forward out of the yellow lines. He exited the parking lot and took the road headed for the main gate.

    

    He was a slow driver.

    

    Courtney didn’t like it.

    

    As they passed the gate, she could see that the business-suited zombie was still on the other side of the fence in the same position he was before. He still had his icky fingers around the links in the fence, still keeping quiet, still being ignored by the two guards and the rottweiler. However, this time Courtney went by the zombie opened his mouth and snarled at her, spilling chunky saliva all over its shoes.

    

    She, in turn, flipped him off.

    

    Leon laughed. “I bet he’s really pissed now. He’s probably gonna sneak up on you and bite off your ass.”

    

    She turned her head and angrily told him, “Don’t even joke about that.”

    

    “Sorry.”

    

    They took the road Courtney usually traveled-the one furthest from the farms, much to her relief. She didn’t think she could handle the smell of cow manure just then. She’d rather smell the aroma of dead people emanating from the other side of the wall. She wasn’t feeling good at all, especially riding in the passenger seat without any control of how the cart would move.

    

    They entered the main housing area.

    

    As they passed, Leon took the time to wave at friends who were out in their yards.A couple were playing badminton again. Some were just idly wasting the evening away on their well-manicured lawns under large, multi-colored umbrellas, casually indifferent to the neighborhood kittens wrestling at their feet. However, all of them smiled and waved at Leon.

    

    Finally he stopped the golf cart in the small patch of gravel in Courtney’s front lawn and shut off the ignition. Courtney didn’t do anything just yet. She just sat there, staring at the iron bars in the windows of her home. They seemed new to her somehow.

    

    Leon reached over and went to unfasten her seat belt, with the buckle just so happening to be in the area below Courtney’s belly. When his hands got too close, she pushed them away.

    

    “Nuh-uh,” she slurred. “You don’t get to go there again.”

    

    He shied away and climbed off the cart. He muttered, “Please. Get over yourself.”

    

    She fumbled with the buckle until it unfastened, then slid her butt off the seat and put her feet on the ground. Her front door seemed a long way away. She studied the ground between her and the porch, noticing a lot more hills than what used to be there before.

    

    Being drunk sucked. Courtney wondered how anyone could enjoy this.

    

    “I’ve gotta walk back to the hotel,” Leon told her. “So if you need help getting inside, you’d best tell me before I get halfway down the road.”

    

    She looked at him, then studied the miles of yard between her and the front door again, then returned her focus. She said, “Yeah, a little help might be nice.”

    

    He nodded, then walked around the cart and put his hand under her arm. He guided her across the lawn, helped her negotiate the two porch steps, then opened the screen door.

    

    He couldn’t get the front door open.

    

    “Push in and turn left,” Courtney whispered.

    

    He did and the heavy wooden door swung open. He guided Courtney inside.

    

    “Which direction do you want to go?” he asked. “Couch or bed?”

    

    “I think...,” Courtney began, concentrating, “Bed.”

    

    He escorted her down the hallway.

    

    “You cleaned the place up,” he commented. “Looks nice.”

    

    “Thanks.”

    

    “Was it on my account?”

    

    “Get real.”

    

    He took her into the bedroom and let her plop down on the edge of the bed. She looked up at him for a moment. He had an odd expression on his face-maybe a look of guilt, maybe a look of pity. She couldn’t tell. All she knew was that the skin on Maine guys glowed ever whiter in darkness. For Leon, this meant his blue eyes were given a halo.

    

    It sucked that he was cute.

    

    She was tempted to do something then, like kiss him or something, but she didn’t know why. She didn’t even like him. If only he were more mature-like Gordon-maybe things wouldn’t be so complicated.

    

    “I’m gonna go now,” he said. “Take care of yourself.”

    

    She nodded, then put her head down and started unlacing her shoestrings. Before he left the room, she whispered, “You’re not even that much taller than me and you’re certainly no James Spader.”

    

    She hadn’t meant for him to hear, but he did.

    

    He countered, “And you’re no Michelle Pfeiffer. So what’s your point?”

    

    She shrugged.

    

    She heard the front door being pulled closed and the screen door swing shut. She kicked off her shoes and fell back on the mattress. She watched the ceiling twist for a while before closing her eyes.

    

    

    

    The corridor nightmare came again for the fourth night in a row, complete with the ending she hated most. And-for the second day in a row-it was the doorbell that woke her.

    

    Wow. I must be getting popular.

    

    She rose up, feeling a numb throbbing in her skull. Her stomach was queasy and there was a weird tangy aftertaste in her throat. She recalled the bar, the Manhattans, the stumbling, and Leon Wolfe bringing her home. She was immediately embarrassed.

    

    The digital clock on the nightstand told her it was ten thirty.

    

    She just knew that this day would be worse than normal. She was tempted to not even answer the door, but figured it could be something important-Not too important though or the air raid sirens would be blaring. At least she knew it wasn’t an emergency.

    

    So, after looking down to realize she had fallen asleep fully dressed and therefore didn’t need to put jeans on, she got off the bed and went to the front door.

    

    It wasn’t even shut properly. Sure, it was closed, but none of the deadbolts were latched and the metal bar that was usually propped underneath the knob was still leaning against the wall where she had left it yesterday morning. To think, if something had somehow gotten past the main walls in town, they could have just walked right in her house.

    

    But then she remembered that even Leon Wolfe had trouble turning the handle. It was kind of funny.

    

    She opened the door-again, forgetting she would be blasted with a morning dose of sunshine-and saw, standing on her porch, the bartender from last night. Her straight blonde hair was shining even brighter under the sunlight. The very ends, still dyed red and black, contrasted so heavily they almost seemed like they would fall off.

    

    Courtney was forced to think for a moment before saying, “Alexis.”

    

    A smile showed on her face as she replied, “You remembered.”

    

    “I wasn’t drunk,” Courtney told her, trying her best to sound convincing. “So of course I remember.”

    

    “You were totally tipsy and you were getting mean. That’s why I cut you off.”

    

    Courtney rolled her eyes and looked away. She mumbled, “What do you want?”

    

    Alexis motioned to the porch and asked, “Come outside for a minute?”

    

    Courtney sighed. The bartender didn’t seem mad at her or anything, so the purpose of this visit must be for something else entirely. She was kind of curious-and besides, she was feeling kind of bad about yesterday. She knew she needed to salvage the last of her pride.

    

    She opened the screen door and stepped onto the porch. Alexis motioned for her to sit down, so they both took a rest on the edge and propped their feet on the first step. Alexis reached off the side of the porch and retrieved a can of Sprite and a baggie with two little white pills rolling around inside. She handed the items to Courtney.

    

    “What’s this?” she asked.

    

    “Sprite and aspirin,” Alexis replied. “For your hangover. You know, that thing you’re having now.”

    

    Courtney held the can of Sprite in her hand and inspected it. It was very cold. She asked, “Didn’t this stuff expire like a long time ago?”

    

    Alexis smiled. “Those are like Twinkies. They last forever.”

    

    Courtney considered this for a moment, then popped the top of the can and put the pills on her tongue and swallowed them down with a couple hesitant slurps. It turned out that the stuff was still good after all. She hadn’t had Sprite in over five years.

    

    She asked, “You probably hoard this stuff, don’t you?”

    

    “And sell it to customers for an extra token,” Alexis admitted, grinning mischievously. “Completely off the books. Gotta look out for numero-uno.”

    

    Courtney felt herself smile too. She sat the can down beside her and whispered, “Sorry for the trouble last night.”

    

    “Don’t worry about it.”

    

    “That’s not why you’re here?”

    

    “Well, sort of.” Alexis turned a little bit so she could face her more directly and went on, “Last night in the bar you just looked like you were tired of being alone.”

    

    Courtney shot her a glance and whispered, “Are you hitting on me?”

    

    Alexis’ face turned red for a second, but she quickly smiled it away. “No. God, girl, you need to get out more.”

    

    Courtney grew even more skeptical. “Then did Leon put you up to this?”

    

    “No,” she replied. “Look, there’s only a couple girls here I get along with and neither of them are that interesting. I just wanted to get to know you. That’s all.”

    

    Courtney sighed. She knew if Alexis was looking for someone interesting, then she was looking in the wrong place. She wasn’t sure if any interesting people were even alive anymore. She sure hadn’t met any.

    

    Alexis looked away to wave at the memo-lady walking down the road, who was probably delivering flyers about the upcoming Fourth of July celebration. Courtney didn’t know the memo-lady’s name, but she did know the Fourth of July Committee thought up new rules and restrictions every year. They took that stuff into way too much detail. The lady dropped a bright orange sheet of paper in Courtney’s never-checked mailbox, thencontinued on down the road giving letters to people who actually cared.

    

    Alexis said, “See? You don’t even try.”

    

    “What do you mean?”

    

    “You didn’t even wave.”

    

    “I wave sometimes,” Courtney stammered. “Like at the people guarding the gate.”

    

    “Well, yeah, but do you know their names?”

    

    Courtney shook her head side to side.

    

    Alexis very matter-of-factly stated, “That’s my point.”

    

    “I know the names of most of the people that live on this street though.”

    

    “Well, that’s because you’ve had almost five years to overhear what other people were calling them.”

    

    Courtney sighed and took another drink of Sprite. Her stomach was beginning to settle and her headache was less throbby. The stuff was working fast. God bless bartenders.

    

    “Before you got to Eastpointe something bad happened to you, didn’t it?” Alexis asked.

    

    Courtney, taken aback by the abruptness of the question, replied with a question of her own: “Why? Did something bad happen to you?”

    

    “Something bad happened to everybody,” Alexis said with a frown. “I’m just wondering what makes you the way you are.”

    

    “I don’t want to talk about it.”

    

    “Why not?” Alexis pressed. “You seem interesting. You were one of those zombie fighters. You must have some cool stories to tell.”

    

    “Cool?!” Courtney snapped. “The guy who trained me got bitten and for all I know he might not have had time to shoot himself like he planned. I loved him and maybe right now he’s walking around out there somewhere. Aside from that, I have no idea what happened to my mom and dad and I’m a thousand miles from home. I risked my life for you people by going out those gates even after you treated me like dirt.” She paused for a moment, sort of surprised she had blurted what she did. So she capped it off with, “And I don’t think it’s any of your business.”

    

    Alexis looked away and softly stated, “I had to kill my own brother you know. Elliot. He died and got back up. I had to hit him with a bat a bunch of times.” She then grunted and made a motion like she was going to stand up. “You’re not the only one who’s a long way from home. Something bad has happened to all of us. I just wanted to get to know you because it’s hard to make friends. If you want me gone, just say so.”

    

    Put on the spot, Courtney realized that left alone she would just have to go back in her house on the other side of those prison bars and maybe sleep, maybe read a book, or maybe watch a movie. But none of it sounded like fun. With the end of the world came the end of all things new, so it was only a matter of time before she grew depressingly tired of doing the same things over and over again. She just wished it wouldn’t have happened all at once. A few days ago she was perfectly content-or, at least-had convinced herself she was perfectly content.

    

    She swallowed her pride and said, “No, I don’t want you to go. You can stay if you want.”

    

    Alexis relaxed once more.

    

    Courtney told her, “I like that you came by. I’m just not good at talking.”

    

    “Then just start whenever you feel comfortable,” Alexis replied. “I don’t mind hanging out.”

    

    Courtney squinted up at the sky. It was blue and beautiful. Little clouds were rolling by in their typical, indifferent puffy style. Then she looked down and studied her arm. Her skin was so much whiter than it had been in Florida. The sun was so much hotter there. She missed jumping off the cliffs and swimming in the ocean. Rhode Island kind of sucked in comparison. True, the same Atlantic Ocean was only a couple miles away from Eastpointe and it probably had its share of cliffs to jump off of and salty, foamy waves to swim through, but to actually go and do it was basically a death sentence.

    

    “Okay,” Courtney began. “I know what to say.”

    

    “Go for it,” Alexis replied.

    

    Courtney took a deep breath and stated, “I don’t understand the rules here.”

    

    “Rules?”

    

    “Rules. I mean, everyone else has had almost five years to adjust and learn how things work. But I’ve stayed by myself since I first got here. I didn’t get to pick up on things one at a time like everyone else did. I didn’t get to move on. Do you know what I mean?”

    

    Alexis shuffled her feet. “Sort of like once you’re out of circulation for too long, it’s hard to get picked up and read again?”

    

    “If you want to compare me to a magazine, then... yeah.”

    

    Alexis nodded. “I think I understand.”

    

    Courtney continued, “What do we have to hope for now? Nobody else seems to get that. The world’s over.” She motioned to the can of Sprite. “This stuff’s gone. It’ll never get made again. Same goes for Oreos. Cheerios.Spaghettios.”

    

    Alexis giggled.

    

    “And nobody seems to care,” Courtney added. “It’s like I’m waking up and realizing everyone knows something I don’t-like they know the secret to being happy but they’re not telling me.”

    Alexis tried to show her a comforting smile, but it wasn’t very convincing.

    

    “What’s going to happen now?” Courtney asked, putting her palms in the air. “We survived the end. But somehow there’s still going to be a future. I mean,are guys like Leon Wolfe the best we have to hope for? Are these little houses all we’re going to get? We don’t even have a chance to improve because we have to stay in these walls. And everybody knows the rules to being happy with that except for me.”

    

    “Let’s put it this way,” Alexis began. She motioned with her fingers in the air as if she were scribbling cursive letters and told her, “Welcome to Yesterday. Population: You.”

    

    “That is what I’ve been trying to explain.”

    

    “Okay, so let me tell you what you want to hear.” She turned fully this time to face Courtney directly. “You can’t go on thinking along the lines that you’re going to grow up and get a job and maybe get married someday. I mean, for you and me, these were supposed to be our college years-Ourtime to get all the fun out of our systems while making that wondrous transition into adulthood. Am I right?”

    

    “I guess,” Courtney replied.

    

    “Well, now there’s nothing to transition into. There’s no grownup world anymore. We’re not going to be doctors or lawyers or veterinarians or whatever, getting into our cars every morning and going to work. The old world is gone.”

    

    “I kind of noticed that.”

    

    “Well, the world’s not going to go back to normal-at least not in our lifetime. And you’re worried that guys like Leon Wolfe are the best we can hope for?”

    

    “Something like that.”

    

    “Right now there’s no such thing as boyfriends, fiancés, or husbands. Nobody worries about titles anymore.” Alexis paused and sheepishly lowered her head. She continued, her tone even softer, “My family didn’t exactly have it easy when the world was normal. We didn’t have much money. You think I could afford the kind of clothes I’m wearing now? You think a guy like Leon Wolfe would have even given me the time of day back then? But I don’t worry about it. I try to be happy. If I don’t, it gets me thinking about bad things. I mean, we survived the end of the world-”

    

    Suddenly, with almost impeccable timing, a wail pierced through the air and echoed through the street. It seemed that somewhere beyond the high walls of Eastpointe a zombie was getting cranky. It wasn’t anything unusual-there were at least three loud roars every day. Most of them came from zombies who had been trying to scale the wall outside for weeks on end and not getting any favorable results.

    

    Alexis continued, with a point already made, “This place can be depressing if all you’re hearing is that.” She motioned with her thumb in the direction of the wailing. “If you don’t do something to make yourself happy, you’regonna go nuts. For people our age, it can be like spring break if you let loose those inhibitions. You just need to try.”

    

    “That is supposed to be what I wanted to hear?” Courtney asked. “Take my shirt off and run down the street like it’s Mardi Gras?”

    

    “That’s not what I meant,” Alexis said, rolling her eyes. “What I mean to say is that this town is the world as we know it. You’re not going to meet anyone that isn’t already stuck inside these walls. But people accept that because at least there’s people. We have electric power and running water. We have atown. And some of us-if you would just take the time to socialize-aren’t all that bad, really. You know all this already, but that is what you wanted to hear. Or needed to hear.”

    

    Courtney put her head down. She waited to see if Alexis’ speech would sink in and give her comfort, but it didn’t. Not really. Maybe there just was no simple answer. Maybe that was the point. Maybe at least now she knew that everyone else didn’t know the answer either. They were just pretending they did.

    

    “I see you at the pool sometimes,” Alexis said. “You always go alone. Like I told you, there’s not many people here and these are the only people to choose from. You have to find friends where you can. I like you. If you want a friend, then you know where to find me.”

    

    “I’m not sure I want to go back in the bar,” Courtney told her, smiling uneasily. “I don’t know if I even want to look at another drink for the rest of my life.”

    

    Alexis laughed. “You’d be in even worse shape if I hadn’t cut you off. You never even had to hug the porcelain. Consider yourself lucky.”

    

    “Then... thank you, I guess.”

    

    “I live by the power station,” Alexis said. “The only blue house on the street.Most nights I just watch movies.”

    

    “I watch a lot of movies too,” Courtney replied.

    

    “Well, then you’re welcome to-”

    

    Then came another interruption. Not the random wailing of a zombie this time, but the wailing of a siren originating somewhere near the hotel.

    

    It startled Courtney and Alexis and brought them both to their feet.

    

    Since they hadn’t heard any kind of siren for so long, they immediately assumed the worst: that the walls had been breached. However, after taking a moment to realize that the siren they were hearing wasn’t the really badone-the one everybody feared-and that the one they were hearing was a high-pitched repeating whistle, it shocked them even more.

    

    “That’s the siren that goes off while the main gate is open,” Courtney said. “But nobody’s gone outside for almost two years. Not even scouts.”

    

    They looked at each other, shocked at what they were both thinking.

    

    Alexis uttered, “That means they’re letting somebody in. A new arrival.”

    

    “Somebody was still alive out there?” Courtney added, speaking for both of them, “-After all this time?”

    

    Like most everyone else in Eastpointe, they had to drive to the gate to see the new arrival with their own eyes.

    

    

    

    Even though the gate guards were out of practice from nearly two years of doing nothing but sitting on their asses, the procedure to admit the new arrival went quite smoothly. Courtney didn’t notice any difference between the way she was brought in and the way this other survivor was brought in. Actually, when she thought about it, every arrival she had seen while living in Eastpointe was exactly the same.

    

    Meticulous.

    

    First came the siren. It reminded people that, “Hey, the gate’s open at the moment, but don’t worry.” The siren was then followed by however many gunshots were necessary to remove any undead opposition nearby. In this case there was only one.

    

    The business-suited zombie finally got the headshot it was asking for, which appeased Courtney. After all, she had given it the middle finger yesterday and was kind of worried it might hold a grudge. At least she didn’t have to worry about that one anymore.

    

    Then came the part where the outer gate would screech along its rails as it opened up. Whoever was outside would then drive their vehicle into the ‘decontamination area’ between the inner and outer gates. The outer gate would close, the sirens would cease their noise, and instructions would be shouted down to the new arrivals.

    

    There was just one this time-some man driving a jeep with bloody bits of hair and scalp dangling from the bull bars in front. Courtney knew how those bits of body parts got there. When she had been out on her own before arriving at Eastpointe, the bull bars on her humvee looked exactly the same. It was caused by plowing over zombies at high speeds.

    

    Then came the part when the man in the jeep was ordered to step out of the vehicle. The inner gate screeched open and the guards came inside the decontamination zone. They searched the vehicle and the man, asking him to raise his shirt and lift his sleeves so they could check for any evidence of infection.

    

    Courtney could remember her own fear and uncertainty when this scrutiny was being performed on her. Despite the .45 Socom holstered on one hip and the wakizashi sheathed on the other, she was scared while the guards searched her and her humvee. She knew she was taking quite a risk by putting her faith in people she didn’t even know and quite possibly insane for purposely letting her guard down. The new arrival, however, didn’t appear too startled and wasn’t noticeably trembling. He stood back and didn’t say a word as they searched his jeep.

    

    Normally, after this part, the new arrival was welcomed in, briefed on the situation by the New Arrival Committee, introduced to the Superintendent, given a house-as there were plenty that were still unoccupied-and allowed once-only free shopping at the Eastpointe Plaza in order to gain back some of the possessions they were most certainly forced to leave behind and to help ease the tension of arriving in a town full of strangers. Then, after they were settled in, they were interviewed and given a job they were most suited for. While the Committees kept hoping another doctor would waltz through the gate-as there were only three in all of Eastpointe -most new arrivals ended up being a mechanic, farm hand, or electrician.

    

    However, before he could even be let out of the decontamination zone, one of the guards saw something on the man’s inner forearm that gave him quite a start. Courtney and Alexis and the others watching then saw it too.

    

    A bite wound.

    

    The guard asked the man, “When did that happen?”

    

    And by this question, Courtney knew what the guard really meant was: How long before I have to shoot you?

    

    Instead of panicking, the new arrival calmly stated in a very elegant and persuasive French-Canadian accent: “I can explain this. I just need to speak with whoever’s in charge.”

    

    A little more conversation followed, but the voices became so hushed that neither Courtney nor the others were able to hear. It ended with the new arrival being seated on the back of a golf cart and escorted to the hotel.

    

    But he had been bitten.

    

    What the hell was going on?

    

    

    

    The Procurement Committee-long defunct but now apparently reinstated for some emergency reason-came and got her later that evening. At the time, Alexis was sifting through her collection of movies trying to find any she wanted to watch again or any she wanted to borrow. Courtney was lying on the couch, listening to music through headphones and trying to get used to having someone else hanging around. It wasn’t too bad though. It was reminiscent of before, when she would have friends over at her house inFlorida. The Procurement Committee, however, interrupted just before she could get entirely comfortable with it again.

    

    They came knocking and very politely said, “Miss Colvin, we’d like you to come to the conference room if you don’t mind.”

    

    She asked, “Why? What’s going on?”

    

    “It will all be explained once you get there,” they told her. “Come along now.”

    

    So she did.

    

    Alexis followed her to the hotel in her own cart since her bartending shift was almost ready to begin, but Courtney ventured alone into the conference room and sat down in one of the chairs around the circular table.

    

    Leon was there too. So were Vaughn Winters and Delmas Ridenour. Soon Mike Newcome showed up, followed by Christopher Gooden.

    

    The remnants of the Strike Team.

    

    They all appeared to be just as uninformed as Courtney.

    

    Though it had been two years since a meeting of this type was held, everything appeared the same as it used to. The brown executive-style walls of the conference room remained outdated and ugly. The marker-stained whiteboard was still nearby in all its imposing glory and the Flag of theUnited States of America and the state flag of Rhode Island were still hanging from their respective poles on either side. The big oval table and the comfy leather swivel chairs that surrounded it were also just as Courtneyremembered them.

    

    The four members of the Procurement Committee were sitting in less-comfy chairs lined along the wall and a typist was sitting in the far corner of the room, ready to transcribe the events of the meeting for posterity’s sake. Ervin Wright, the man who originally introduced the Odd Fellow system of government to Eastpointe, was sitting in the chair reserved for the Superintendent. Courtney figured he must have gotten re-elected at the last showing of hands.

    

    At least now she knew for certain who was in charge.

    

    Though the Superintendent and Procurement Committee members had changed since these meetings were taking place with greater frequency, all appeared as it should.

    

    However, this time around, someone new was with them in the room.

    

    The man who had arrived that morning was sitting in the chair next to the Superintendent. He was wearing clean clothes now, so he must have been allowed to visit the plaza sometime that day. He was short and kind of stocky, as if his muscles were simply out of shape, and his hair was already thinning even though he only looked to be in his early thirties. Like most others in the post-apocalypse world, he was very pale. Since everyone had heard him speaking in a French-Canadian accent at the gate they assumed he came from somewhere near Montreal.

    

    They were half right.

    

    After the doors to the conference room were closed to give them privacy, the Superintendent stood and introduced the stranger.

    

    “This man is Dr. Aaron Dane,” he said, motioning with a relaxed gesture. “When the zombie problem first began to get out of control, he was put aboard The Atlantic Princess, a cruiseliner that usually ports up north. In that time, the ship was commandeered and modified to be a floating research lab.” He turned to the new arrival. “Am I telling this correctly?”

    

    The man nodded and said, “That’s the short version.”

    

    “He’s been on that ship for over four years,” Ervin continued, “But he’s found his way to us and he’s got some information you all might be keen on hearing.” He motioned back to the man. “Dr. Dane, the floor is yours.”

    

    The man stood and glanced at everyone around the room, pausing noticeably longer when his eyes reached Courtney. She lowered her gaze to the very boring surface of the table and stared at it to let him know she wasn’t interested. His eyes eventually left her and once he felt he had everyone’s attention he began rolling up the left sleeve of his shirt.

    

    Just as most of them had already seen when he first arrived at Eastpointe’s gate, there was a gaping bite wound on the thick, meaty area near his elbow. Teeth marks were evident, but up close, under the fluorescent lights, somehow the wound looked old.

    

    He displayed his exposed forearm for a moment, then stated, “I was bitten over a year ago.”

    

    Vaughn Winters, a member of the Strike Team who Courtney always thought was kind of creepy with that long black hair of his, posed the question everyone in the room wanted an answer to: “Then why aren’t youdead?”

    

    “I’m a scientist,” Dr. Dane began, rolling his sleeve back down and buttoning the cuff. “That’s the short explanation of what I do-or what I did, anyway. Like your Superintendent was explaining to you, I was put aboard The Atlantic Princess to do research. The Army had sought me out and took me forcefully out of my home and tossed me in with some other researchers. We were ordered to figure out why the dead were rising, but we were never able to determine the cause. We still don’t have a clue.” He paused a moment before solemnly adding, “No one does.”

    

    At this point Dr. Dane smoothed the back of his trousers with his palms and sat down again. He clasped his hands together and put them on the table, leaning forward very casually. He continued, “We were forced to work in very close quarters with the reanimated dead, drawing samples from them, gauging bite strength, things of that nature. Sooner or later something bad was bound to happen. And it did. I’m the last one left.” He lowered his eyes. “I kept on working though-even with malfunctioning equipment and limited tools and nobody answering my distress signals and all my dead colleagues locked away in the forecastle and in staterooms and making all kinds of racket. I was just floating aimlessly. I had no idea how to pilot acruiseliner.”

    

    “So how did you get here?” Vaughn asked.

    

    “Luck,” Dane replied. “The ship beached itself on Point Judith a few days back. I climbed off, found a jeep with the keys still in the ignition, and here I am. And forgive me if I seem disturbingly calm about all this, but I’ve had over two years all to myself to consider what I would say if I ever found other survivors.”

    

    “Like I told you,” Ervin soothingly told him, “Nobody will judge you.”

    

    “Everyone here has been great,” Dane said, agreeing with the Superintendent.

    

    “Whoa,” Vaughn interjected. “The only reason I’m still sitting here is because you still haven’t told us how you survived a zombie bite.”

    

    “Because I found the Cure,” Dane replied. “Being all alone aboard a ship in the Atlantic with nothing but the sound of zombies to keep you company kind of makes you want to find a distraction. So I kept researching.”

    

    “So how did you get bitten?”

    

    Dane lowered his head and looked away slightly. He softly stated, “Because Ilet one bite me. I was alone. I thought I found the Cure but the only way to test it was to test it for real. I figured if it didn’t work, then at least I wouldn’t be alone anymore.”

    

    This statement brought back memories for Courtney. She remembered the day she escaped Camp Rigero when nobody else had. She remembered getting out of the humvee to refuel it. She remembered the zombie crawling towards her and how she let it get so very close and even gave it a sporting chance before she put a bullet in its head.

    

    “Wait a second,” Vaughn said, continuing to carry the brunt of everyone’s skepticism, “So you were bitten and you swallowed the antidote-”

    

    “Injected the antidote,” Dane corrected.

    

    “Whatever,” Vaughn continued. “Then in theory you should be immune to zombie bites.” He paused to show a smirk to everyone in the room. “So you won’t mind if we stick your hand out the gate and see what happens, right?”

    

    One of the members of the Procurement Committee, who had been sitting quietly for some time, decided to tell Vaughn, “Show Dr. Dane some respect please.”

    

    Vaughn shrugged his shoulders and leaned back in his chair indifferently. He mumbled, “I was just saying what everyone was thinking.”

    

    “I wouldn’t exactly be thrilled with the idea of getting nibbled on,” Dane told him, remaining civil. “I’d be infected again. I’m not vaccinated. The Cure is a creation in and of itself. It’s not an antitoxin or an antidote. I should stop referring to it as such. I can’t call it a vaccine either because it doesn’t last indefinitely. Simply put, it destroys the infection then leaves the system. I wish I could explain more thoroughly, but you must understand this wasn’t my expertise when I joined the crew of the Princess. I’m no epidemiologist. I learned all this as I went along.”

    

    Then Courtney’s good pal Leon decided to speak up. “I’m not understandingany of this,” he said. “Antitoxins, antidotes-what are you getting at?”

    

    “There’s still no name for the disease those monsters carry,” Dane answered. “It’s not exactly poison, but it’s not exactly plague either. It’s somewhere along the lines of infection, but no one has isolated the difference between the saliva in a zombie and the saliva in living humans. We could never even determine why reanimated dead only sought out humans and not lower life forms.”

    

    “Like politicians,” someone blurted.

    

    “No, more like cats and dogs,” Dane replied, ignoring the joke entirely. “It’s all so complicated. Everything we know about them is only what we’ve been able to discover in the last five years and I’m not even talking collectively. If the science community as a whole could have gotten together on this, perhaps an answer to all these questions could have been found. Problem is,we started losing contact with sister stations all over the globe shortly after this crisis began. If everything worked like it should have, researchers in one area could be studying one aspect of the problem while researchers in a different area studied another. But instead, after all contact was lost, what we had was every researcher starting from scratch.”

    

    “So how exactly did you come by a cure then?” Leon asked.

    

    “Like I said: by going from scratch,” Dane replied. “I first accepted that death is a process, not an event. Except in the case of a nuclear bomb or something of that sort, different tissues and organs die at different speeds. We theorize that when a zombie bites someone, the germs spread through the body like a plague until they finally conquer the brain. Brain deathseems to be what matters. After the brain is dead, the germs move in and reactivate it to a certain extent.”

    

    “But you said no one has isolated the difference between zombie saliva and human saliva,” Vaughn pointed out. “So how do you know its germs causing it? How are you even positive it’s an infection?”

    

    “I can only theorize,” Dane replied. “It works like an infection and dead people will only reanimate if they were bitten by a zombie-not if they died a natural death. So it must be an infection. I accepted this early on and that’s why I didn’t take the time to isolate the bacteria in zombie saliva. I had better things to focus my efforts on.” He paused for a moment, then added, “Do you really want to sit here and argue common knowledge?”

    

    “I’m not arguing anything,” Vaughn replied. “I couldn’t care less. I don’t plan on ever becoming infected and I don’t see the point of this meeting. What are we getting at here?”

    

    “You should let Dr. Dane finish speaking,” Ervin said.

    

    Vaughn sighed and leaned back once more. He started twiddling his thumbs.

    

    All was quiet for a while. Even the typist stopped his keystrokes, as he had nothing to transcribe at the moment. It almost seemed that Vaughn had been everyone’s source of enthusiasm and once he gave up so did the rest.

    

    Finally Ervin said, “Dr. Dane is talking about a cure here, people.”

    

    “We get that,” Leon answered. “It’s just that he’s awfully long-winded. Why can’t he just get to the point?”

    

    “Fine then. I will,” Dane said. He crossed his arms and for the briefest of moments looked grumpy instead of pacified. He stated, very slowly, “I have the Cure to the zombie plague.”

    

    “Yeah, that’s what we’re hearing,” Leon told him. “We just don’t believeyou.”

    

    Vaughn started chuckling under his breath. Even quiet Mike Newcomemuttered, “I’ve only been here five minutes and I’m already bored.”

    

    “Tell them the specifics,” Ervin said, trying to stay upbeat. “Tell them what you told me.”

    

    “That’s what I’ve been trying to do,” Dane replied. “I’ve been trying to explain that up until the point the infection reaches the brain, a person can still be saved. We can’t help the ones who are already dead. There’s no coming back from that. But we can stop the poison from reaching the brain and an infected person will recover.”

    

    “It doesn’t make sense,” Leon argued. “If you don’t know the exact bacteria that zombies carry, how can you have a cure for it?”

    

    “I didn’t need to know the exact bacteria,” answered Dane. “It’s irrelevant. There wouldn’t be a name for it anyway, so I would have to name it. Do you want me throwing an invented name around? What purpose would that serve?”

    

    Leon grunted and shrugged his shoulders. No one else said anything.

    

    “Like I told you,” Dane continued, despite the calm, “Death is a process. Even though mitosis ceases after brain death, some tissues and organs will still live for up to twenty-four hours. Once the virus conquers the brain, it reactivates it. Any tissues and organs that are still alive upon brain death will continue to decay, but when they reach a certain point, they stabilize. Andno, we don’t know why they stabilize. They just do. That’s why some zombies have been around since the beginning. Parts of them that were deadbefore brain death will continue to decay until they rot off. Parts thatweren’t dead, on the other hand, will continue to function. It’s how they can still walk around.”

    

    “Why are you telling us this?” Leon asked.

    

    “Because I want you to understand that until the infection takes over the core of the brain, a person can be injected with the Cure. It will eliminate the infection and the sickness will go away and the body will begin to heal itself-provided that there hasn’t been a significant amount of blood loss or irreversible damage, of course. Say, for instance, a large neck wound.”

    

    Courtney almost didn’t want to hear any more. Talk of a cure was just stupid. Even if it was real, why couldn’t it have been around when Gordon got bitten? Or when her mother got bitten? Why now, especially after so many people were already dead? What was the point?

    

    She figured most everyone else in the room felt the same way she did.

    

    “Look, I’ve had enough of this,” Ervin stated, standing up and rolling his eyes. “Listen to me, people. With the promise of a cure we could start taking more risks. We can send people through the gate and take back what was ours. We can expand beyond these walls without running too great a risk of casualties.”

    

    “There’s always going to be a risk,” Courtney stated.

    

    Ervin glared at her. She didn’t intend to anger him, but she didn’t care that she had either.

    

    “Am I wrong to hope for better things?” Ervin asked. “Am I wrong to want the people in Eastpointe to stop living in fear?”

    

    “I agree with Courtney,” Vaughn said. “Dr. Doom here-”

    

    “Dane.”

    

    “Dane, whatever, hasn’t really explained anything. We know corpses started getting up and eating people. Even if they didn’t have the means to digest them or even chew them, all they can think about is: us equals food. We know they carry a disease of some sort and to become infected is to become one of them. We’ve lived with this knowledge for five years. So what the hell do you want from us?”

    

    “I’ll tell you what he wants,” Leon interjected, “He wants us to go get it because he doesn’t actually have it. Why else would we be here?”

    

    “That’s what I’ve been assuming all along,” Vaughn said.

    

    “And your assumption would be correct,” Ervin stated. “Dr. Dane tried bringing several samples of the Cure with him, but they were lost in an attack as he was salvaging that jeep he used to get here. But there’s more of the Cure aboard The Atlantic Princess. Isn’t that right, Doctor?”

    

    Dane nodded.

    

    “Wow, he’s a man among men,” Vaughn mumbled.

    

    “The six of you have been given a free pass!” Ervin shouted, startling the group of Black Berets. None of them expected such a loud voice from such an old man. “For two years you haven’t had to lift a finger around here and I’m sick of it!”

    

    “But there used to be more of us than what you see in this room now,” Vaughn retorted. “The rest are dead so you could have your cows and chickens.”

    

    “And no more have to die,” Ervin countered. “That’s the point. An antidote exists. You saw the bite on Dr. Dane’s arm. What further proof do you need?”

    

    Vaughn smirked and chuckled some more. He stated, “Listen, Grand Pooh-Bah-Dr. Doom here is about five years too late. We would gladly oblige you and go fetch this Cure if it had existed a few years ago, but now it doesn’t matter. The zombies are rotting away. We just have to wait them out.”

    

    “But the zombies are not rotting away,” Dr. Dane chimed. “There will be enough to last until the next doomsday. Did you not hear me when I told you that whatever parts of them were not dead to begin with would go on functioning?”

    

    Courtney, growing annoyed with the arguing, decided to speak up in a constructive manner. She asked, “Wait a second. Why can’t you just recreate the antidote here?”

    

    Dane turned to her and smiled, seemingly happy that she had spoken directly to him. He softly explained, “Because the process took me the better part of two years.”

    

    “Two years?”

    

    “Yes. I worked under the postulate that an infection will continue to spread through the blood of a human until it reached the core of the brain. But ask yourself this: What if there was no brain to reach? No ultimate goal? What would happen then?”

    

    Courtney shrugged her shoulders and replied, “What is this, a science lesson?”

    

    “No,” he said. “I don’t want to go into the gory details, but needless to say I was forced to use a replicated environment of a human body. I kept addingendless supplies of clean blood to blood that was already infected, surmising that the infection would continue to spread into the clean blood, but since there was no actual body, there was no actual brain. For months and months I kept adding new blood for the infection to consume, wondering just how determined and persistent it truly was. How long would it take before the infection would give up and render itself into a dormant state? Finally, I performed a test.”

    

    “And?”

    

    “And, I theorized that if new infection encountered any dormant infection, it would assume there was no brain to contaminate and it would therefore become dormant also. So, by injecting dormant infection-the Cure-into an infected human being, the infection process stops when it collides with any dormant area. The infection is then naturally flushed out of the system as a whole and the body recovers in a matter of hours.”

    

    “Which means it doesn’t die and become another zombie,” Ervin added. “It won’t die at all.”

    

    “Correct,” Dane said.

    

    All was uneasily quiet in the conference room for the next several minutes. No one was sure exactly how this calm came about, but they figured everything that needed to be said had been said. Now they were all just waiting for something to happen.

    

    The typist over in the far corner was sitting motionless with his fingers hovering above the keyboard, eagerly waiting for another syllable to be spoken so it could be documented. The Procurement Committee was sitting patiently with their legs crossed and their arms folded, perhaps waiting for a signal from the Superintendent. Ervin himself was silently drumming his fingers on the table and Dr. Dane was just watching the Strike Team meditate over what he had told them.

    

    What was there to say?

    

    Courtney exchanged glances with the rest of the people she had ventured out of the gate with years before. It was because of them that Eastpointe had become fully self-sufficient, with plenty of supplies and an endless chain of sustenance. Because of them, it was safe here and there was never again a reason to go outside into a world where they would be hunted for the very flesh on their bones.

    

    But there used to be more.

    

    There were seven Black Berets to start with. Now there were six. The seventh had had his visor snatched away by a particularly sneaky zombie and then a chunk of flesh eaten off his exposed scalp. A couple of well-prepared citizens of Eastpointe had been in the original Strike Team as well, but they didn’t last long. Even a couple of honest-to-god soldiers had aided them in their endeavors, but they weren’t here anymore either.

    

    Now the remaining six were living fairly comfortably, given a free pass to live off the fruit of their labors without any more actual work, but that wasn’t what was important. Two years had passed since any of them had been in any real danger-any real threat of losing another member of their group. Before, when the Committees were sending them through the gate at least once a month, there had been no desire to establish any kind of bond between them aside from the trust factor. After all, they knew there might come a time when one would have to shoot another to prevent them from joining the enemy ranks and there couldn’t be any hesitation to do what had to be done.

    

    But now there was supposedly a Cure.

    

    Now they were hearing that when a member of their group had been bitten, there might not have been a reason to administer a lethal dose of drugs and put a bullet in their head. Why bother fetching a cure now, after all the things they had been forced to do to preserve the humanity of those who had fallen? Humanity as a whole prayed for a cure since the beginning-but just as Vaughn had pointed out, it may have come a little too late.

    

    That wasn’t even the half of it.

    

    While Courtney had remained alone since arriving at Eastpointe, she knew what the rest were pondering over in their silence. Now, since the danger was gone and they could go back to being regular people again, an inner circle had formed in the group. Courtney knew Mike and Delmas were people Leon played badminton with and she was fairly certain the others had developed some kind of relationship as well in the time following their last trip through the gate. And now-especially now-when it seemed possible she herself might find friends here even after her years in hiding, she wasn’t sure she would want to risk losing it.

    

    Actually, she knew she didn’t want to risk it.

    

    Then again, what had been bothering her for so long was that she knew the world had ended. Even in her conversation with Alexis she had pointed out that hope just wasn’t a possibility anymore. Human beings were no longer the dominant species on Earth. Now there was just the last bastion of survivors tucked away in a tiny spot on the globe with walls blocking out the true reality of the situation and giving the illusion that the world outside didn’t exist. For all she knew, the last survivors-with their last operational power plant and their last operational water treatment facility-were going on pretending things could go back to normal.

    

    But she knew the reality of it. She had not been so far removed from it like the others had-not with the nightmare of the corridor haunting her almost nightly and the memories of the life she once had still fresh in her consciousness. It was all part of the consequences of being so long removed from the illusion everyone else was sharing. The world on the other side of the wall was very real and it wasn’t going away.

    

    Maybe the Cure was just what everyone needed. Just like the Superintendent stated, with the promise of a cure, humanity could make an effort to fight back. It meant that one day maybe there would be Oreos and Cheerios andSpaghettios again, not to mention fresh Sprite. She knew it wouldn’t happen right away, but if there was a Cure, then at least there was hope that someday things would be normal again.

    

    So, after the long, penetrating silence had overwhelmed everyone else in the conference room at the Eastpointe Hotel, Courtney slowly raised her hand and stated, “I’ll do it.”

    

    Every head turned to her.

    

    She didn’t lower hers. She stared right back at them.

    

    After a moment, Leon raised his hand alongside hers and stated, “Same here.”

    

    Courtney showed him a silent, thankful nod, which he returned.

    

    The Superintendent looked expectantly upon the other four Black Berets. Mike Newcome’s hand was next to shoot up, followed in a few seconds by the hands of Delmas Ridenour and Christopher Gooden.

    

    They all looked at Vaughn Winters.

    

    After a moment he told them, “Okay. I’ll put my hand up on one condition: If I get bitten on this little escapade, you’ll bring me back here so I can bite off Ervin’s nose. That’ll be the only ‘Cure’ I need.”

    

    He put his hand up.

    

    A smile then began to become apparent on Dr. Dane’s otherwise emotionless visage.

    

    

    

    The alarm feature on the digital clock on her nightstand hadn’t been used in ages, but the next day it was used to wake her promptly at six o’clock in the morning. After rolling over and shutting it off, she stepped into the shower. She then spent most of her time under the sprays of water not doing anything but staring at the little porcelain squares on the wall and tracing over them with her fingers. When she was finally finished she dried off and went back into the bedroom.

    

    She opened the closet door and dug through all the items inside until she found a large black luggage case near the back. She yanked it out and closed the closet door, then placed the case on the bed and unzipped and opened it. She then stared at its contents for the longest time before removing them and laying them out neatly on the mattress.

    

    She started with the uniform.

    

    She fit her legs inside and pulled the suit up to her waist, then fit her arms into the long sleeves and shrugged her shoulders to squeeze her way into the rest. Though she hadn’t gone through the routine to zip it in almost two years, she didn’t miss a beat. The first step was to reach straight behind her and pull the zipper from her lower back up to the middle of her spine. The second step was to reach over her shoulder and pull it from the middle of her spine all the way up to the very top of the collar. The tight, clinging feeling of the suit on her skin was something that she was still familiar with. After sticking a finger down the front of the collar to loosen it from her neck, she moved on to the next step.

    

    She sat down on the edge of the bed and put on a pair of everyday socks, then worked her feet into the black boots that accompanied the uniform. They reached halfway up her calf. Except for the shiny metal heel portion, they were completely dark and solid.

    

    Next came the thin, nearly weightless belt. It fit almost as tightly as the uniform. She wore it low on her hips, which made it more comfortable since it wasn’t constricting her belly. A V-shaped strap fell across her hip on the left side and another square-shaped strap with an empty holster fell across her hip on the right side. This one had a belt that buckled around her leg to help keep it tight and secure.

    

    She took the wakizashi from off the mattress and unsheathed it for a quick inspection. The blade was still sharp and shiny. She fit it back into the scabbard and fastened it comfortably on the tip of the V-shaped strap on her left hip.

    

    Next she opened a small metal box and took the .45 from the recess within. She screwed the silencer onto the barrel, loaded a fifteen-round clip into the butt, then switched on the laser sight. She pointed the gun at the wall. Upon seeing a red dot on the wallpaper, she flicked off the laser sight and tested the flashlight pod. After seeing it shine a light on the floor, she shoved the gun into the holster on her right hip. She took three extra loaded magazines for the .45 and tucked them into pouches sewn onto the belt behind her left hip.

    

    She then went to her knees and dug a long case out from under the bed. She placed it on the mattress, then unsnapped the hinges and opened it. She took the rifle from inside and pointed it at the glass in the window, viewing through the scope at a tree some fifty yards away. She flicked a switch on the side and the morning daylight outside turned from bright and shiny to a rather bland shade of green. A slight humming sound could be heard emanating from within the scope. She then flicked the switch off and the colors outside returned to normal and the humming noise ceased. She took five bullets from the case on the bed and loaded them into the rifle, then slung the rifle over her shoulder and her head, letting it hang comfortably across her back. She took five more bullets and fit them into slots on her belt just above the area where the wakizashi was dangling.

    

    She took one last thing-a small white container less than an inch square-and tucked it into her boot.

    

    Finally, after slipping her hands into black gloves and fastening the velcrotightly around her forearms, she picked up the copper visor and the black beret and made her way to the front door.

    

    

    

    

 

    

    

    

    

    The Procurement Committee hadn’t really told them much they couldn’t have figured out on their own: The Atlantic Princess was beached on Point Judith, which meant Courtney and the others would have to travel pastSnug Harbor and around the inlet. This road would take them through the town of Wakefield, which was an area they had had to go through during an earlier outing. It had been densely populated with the undead and probably still was. They would then have to venture to the very end of Point Judith Neck where the cruiseliner was said to be stuck on the shore.

    

    Dr. Aaron Dane agreed to accompany them. He said he didn’t spend the last five years of his life on a ship in the Atlantic creating a cure without being able to see it arrive safely to those who needed it. Besides, he knew the layout of the ship and could give them first-hand input on what directions they should take. He seemed very brave despite the isolation and hardship he had already suffered. It only made sense to bring him along.

    

    Courtney was the first Black Beret to arrive at the garage that morning, but Dane was already there, sitting casually in a lawn chair and drinking coffee from a styrofoam cup. He was wearing only canvas tennis shoes, jeans, and a plain blue sweater. Courtney reminded him that he should have better protection and to go to the armory next door and ask for a shirt of chainmail to wear beneath the sweater.

    

    He just looked at her and smiled. His reply to her concern, in his semi-elegant French-Canadian accent, was, “I’ll be fine. I’ll just stay behind the rest of you. Besides, you will be giving me something to look at, won’t you?” His eyes then drifted lower.

    

    She scoffed and told him, “Don’t be a pig.”

    

    He chuckled.

    

    Apparently the poor guy lost much of his tact while he was adrift at sea, so she didn’t worry about it too much. She just tried to avoid him as best she could as she inspected the humvees they would be taking that day.

    

    One of them was the very same humvee she had used to drive to Eastpointe, which someone had taken and stored in the garage shortly after she arrived. When she realized this place was the best she could hope for she never gave the humvee another thought. She certainly didn’t miss it either. Even now it made her uneasy to look at the seat she used to curl up and go to sleep on. She was never comfortable when it was one of the humvees chosen to be used on any particular outing.

    

    Leon showed up within a few minutes suited up in his own Black Beret attire. He had received one of the later versions of the uniform, the only difference in his being the little waving American Flag sewn on just below his left shoulder.

    

    She wished one of the other members had arrived before he did so she wouldn’t have to deal with any awkward glances, but there were none exchanged anyway. She expected some kind of comment about the incident at Suds & Salutations, but he didn’t say a word about it. Even after they nonverbally agreed to go to the armory and begin hauling supplies to the humvees together, any comments he would make were directed entirely to the business at hand.

    

    She didn’t like the quiet. Just to have something to say, she considered thanking him for backing her up at the meeting yesterday and raising his hand after she did, but for some reason it didn’t seem like something she should thank him for.

    

    They hauled some extra rifles and handguns and put them in the back of both humvees, along with spare wakizashis and ammunition. She even thought to get a shirt of chainmail to give to Dane despite his comment earlier. She thought about mentioning it to Leon to see what kind of reaction he would make, but she figured he might only say something along the lines of, ‘Well, the guy’s been on a ship with no one but zombies to keep him company, so his judgment might be a little off now. You know, like beer goggles.’ And she would tell him she hoped a thousand maggots infested his earlobes and that would be the end of it.

    

    Both of them ended up hardly saying a word to each other.

    

    The Superintendent arrived next, but didn’t do much more than just stand back and watch while Courtney and Leon did the heavy lifting. Occasionally he would exchange casual remarks with Dane. Members of the Procurement Committee showed up to deliver road maps plotting the best course in red marker. They saw to it that both humvees had two copies, one in the middle compartment up front and one in the glove box. They also placed a short-range walkie-talkie in each vehicle. There was no way for a team outside the wall to communicate with Eastpointe, but at least the team could communicate with each other.

    

    The Superintendent and the Committee left shortly thereafter, headed toward the front gate to finish preparations there.

    

    Finally the rest of the Strike Team straggled in one at a time.

    

    Mike Newcome, looking tired, went about giving the humvees a final once-over mechanical inspection. Delmas Ridenour proceeded directly to the fuel reserves and filled both tanks to the brim. Christopher Gooden brought two coolers of foodstuffs and Vaughn Winters, as was typical, did as little as he had to while pretending to look busy.

    

    No one who was actually going on the trip talked a whole lot. Courtney was beginning to remember exactly what it was like on the mornings before the Strike Team ventured out the gate:

    

    Solemn.

    

    Aside from a few carts going here and there with the occupants on their way to whatever job they had to do, Eastpointe itself was very quiet. She wondered if anybody had been told exactly what the Strike Team was being sent out to recover this time. Certainly they had to suspect it was somethingimportant, but she was somehow sure they knew absolutely nothing. After all, knowledge of what was being brought back would have caused uproar throughout the entire community.

    

    Finally, after all preparations had been completed and double-checked, the Strike Team divided themselves up into two groups and boarded thehumvees. Though the vehicles were very similar, Courtney was pleased to not be in the humvee that was originally hers. However, this decision placed her in the same vehicle with Leon, Vaughn, and Dr. Dane. Vaughn decided he would drive the first shift through untroubled territory since he was not as practiced in handling a standard transmission. Someone else could then take over before they reached a known trouble spot. Delmas Ridenour steered the other humvee-the one that used to be Courtney’s-and MikeNewcome and Christopher Gooden rode with him.

    

    The humvees started up, sounding much louder and more menacing due to the exaggerated echoes caused by the confines of the Eastpointe parking garage. They immediately proceeded to the front gate, where Superintendent Ervin Wright and the Procurement Committee waved at them and told them to be safe.

    

    A guard stationed on a scaffold near the wall fired off two shots from his rifle, putting down two zombies wandering near the gate. Then the siren went off as the gate guards hit the switch to open the inner gate, likely awakening everyone in Eastpointe who worked night shifts. The humveesventured into the decontamination zone, then the inner gate was closed and the outer gate was opened.

    

    Courtney counted eleven zombie carcasses here, including the one of the business-suited zombie she had no particular fondness of. Usually the bodies were given a dose of kerosene and lit on fire weekly. It seemed nobody had bothered to do it for some time. The wheels of the humvees simply rolled over them without a second thought.

    

    Vaughn pulled their humvee in front and led them down the winding road away from Eastpointe. The outer gate closed behind them and the sirens ceased their deafening roar. The Strike Team then plunged forward into the world ruled by the living dead.

    

    

    

    

 

    

    

    

    “However did you come by chainmail?” Dane asked.

    

    “Knights of Yesterday,” Leon told him through a mouthful of sandwich. “Even the strongest zombie bite can barely dent it, so they took them out of Eastpointe Plazaand stored them in the armory.”

    

    “Oh, I see.”

    

    Dane fit himself into the ringed shirt and pulled his sweater down over top of it. He then wriggled his torso a bit, trying to get comfortable with the armor. Courtney saw that while he had his shirt off, it wasn’t just his face that was pale-it was his whole body. The poor guy probably saw less sunshine on that boat than she did while hiding out in her house.

    

    The humvees pressed forward.

    

    Occasionally a blue-skinned person would appear and stagger after the vehicles, but Vaughn would ignore them. However, at one point Courtney looked back at the second humvee and saw that Delmas Ridenour swerved an extra couple of feet so he could ram one with the bull bars. It sent the zombie careening into the overgrown vegetation off to the side of the road.

    

    She stayed mostly quiet as lunchtime rolled around and sandwiches were passed out. She wasn’t hungry, so she chose to eat just one. Thankfully it was white bread and not wheat, as plain white bread was easiest to make and she still couldn’t stand the taste of wheat. But she knew that if her father were here to hand her another of his sandwiches made out of wheat bread, she would gladly gobble it down. She sort of wished she wouldn’t have given away those sandwiches he made before she was dragged aboard the deuce-and-a-half all those years ago.

    

    Leon ate two and even Vaughn juggled one between his steering wheel hand and his gear-shifting hand, but Dr. Dane declined to have anything but another cup of coffee from the thermos.

    

    He would glance out the windows once in a while to see the many houses that once had carefully manicured lawns, but were now reduced to nothing more than dilapidated shacks surrounded by lush jungles. There was foliage growing in the rain gutters and up through cracks in the pavement. Abandoned vehicles and corpses-both lying down and walking around-lined the hillsides. It was deadly quiet outside the humvees.

    

    “It’s everywhere, isn’t it?” Dane commented. “In every nation on every continent.”

    

    Leon finished the last bite of his sandwich and rolled down the window long enough to toss out the empty ziplock bag and discarded crusts. He then answered, “As far we know, we’re the last ones left.”

    

    “Has there been any contact with Canada though?” Dane asked.

    

    “There hasn’t been any contact with anybody until you showed up,” Courtney replied. “We sure didn’t think anyone else was alive out there.”

    

    He showed her an uneasy smile and took another sip of coffee. He swallowed hard. “It’s just that I was on a ship while everything was happening on land,” he explained. “How did things get so out of control?”

    

    “Governments, armies, militias, religions, human rights activists-they all had a hand in it,” Leon replied. “It’s hard to pinpoint a single cause.”

    

    Dane nodded understandingly. He asked, “But couldn’t there be more places like Eastpointe? Walled-up towns with people like you?”

    

    The eager expression on his face as he posed this question gave Courtney pause, but otherwise she didn’t give it a second thought. Later, however, she would wish she would have confronted him about his choice of words.

    

    “There could be,” she told him. “But there’s no way of knowing.”

    

    “Hmm.”

    

    Courtney unscrewed the lid on a canteen of water and took several gulps. She handed it to Leon and he did the same, then he in turn handed it up to Vaughn.

    

    “I heard some things about rescue stations,” Dane said. “Government and police-funded areas citizens could go to be safe.”

    

    Courtney was almost tempted to laugh. Her experience at the Camp Rigero rescue station had been anything but safe.

    

    Leon was the one to answer him. He said, “Most of the rescue stations got overrun from the inside out. Infected people were dying and then rising back up again.”

    

    “It was like being stuck in a barrel with a bunch of piranhas,” Vaughn interjected, his tone implying first-hand knowledge. He peered in the rear-view mirror to eye Dr. Dane. “If we had been allowed to shoot the infected ones, all the uninfected ones might have gotten out of there alive. But no, our own humanity destroyed us.”

    

    “Vaughn’s only quasi-human, Dr. Dane,” Leon hastily added. “If it were up to him, he would shoot anyone who even caught a scent of zombie.”

    

    Vaughn laughed.

    

    Courtney squinted her eyes and viewed the road up ahead. Houses were spaced closer and closer together now and the bouncing inside the humvee was softening as the tires found smoother asphalt. She opened the map and started comparing the landmarks to what she saw on the paper. After a moment she announced, “We should be coming up on Wakefield. Could be rough.”

    

    “Time to change drivers?” Vaughn asked.

    

    Leon nodded, then squawked his walkie-talkie and said, “We’re going to bring it to a stop and change drivers.”

    

    After a moment the walkie-talkie squawked back, “Chinese fire drill style?”

    

    “Nope. Just over the seat.”

    

    The walkie-talkie replied, “Darn. I like Chinese fire drills.”

    

    Vaughn slowly brought the humvee to a stop and pulled the emergency brake. He sat up and started maneuvering his tall body over the seat, his black hair spilling messily across the cushions.

    

    Leon sat up and prepared to exchange places with him.

    

    Courtney put a hand on his shoulder to stop him. She said, “I’ll drive.”

    

    “You sure?”

    

    She nodded.

    

    He sat back down and Courtney climbed over the seat and sat down in front of the steering wheel. She dropped the emergency brake, shifted into first gear, let out the clutch, and the humvee pulled forward.

    

    Wakefield was approaching.

  

    

    

    It had once been a mediocre town aspiring to receive its first skyscraper. It had a Main Street, a High Street, and even a catchy-sounding Silver Lake Road. It had the Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry Memorial Highwayrunning to the south and the Cemetery of St. Francis of Azzizi to the north. The main stretch through town was typical of most mediocre towns-storefronts and apartment buildings crammed tightly together, all about five or six stories high.

    

    Now, however, most of Wakefield was underwater. At some point in the last five years, the dam at the Indian Run Reservoir had been destroyed and the basin reclaimed the territory it lost when man decided to contain it long ago. The new lake engulfed the first floor of almost every building on every side street. Main Street and some of the area to the south was all that remained above water.

    

    The fate of the town was similar to most places Courtney had seen while driving from Georgia to Rhode Island. Whole cities were flooded, fires were raging everywhere, buildings were crumbling, and she figured at least one or two nuclear bombs had been detonated somewhere in the world. (Surely at least one nation out there had tried using them.) She imagined that at one point Rhode Island was probably a very beautiful place. If circumstances were different, she would have loved to visit one of the many lighthouses she saw from the road. The blinding walls of Eastpointe didn’t do South Countyany justice whatsoever. She felt kind of sorry for the rich folks who originally made their homes inside them.

    

    She led the humvees cautiously through Wakefield.

    

    Most of the zombies in the area were just lying around on the pavement and the sidewalks and it was hard to tell them apart from corpses that were actually dead. As the humvees went down Main Street, the functioning ones would sit up and listen intently to the approaching noises. Since they only drew oxygen when making one of their longer I’m-gonna-get-you moans and therefore didn’t draw air to speak or otherwise communicate, it was impossible to tell what exactly was going through their heads. Therefore it was hard to tell why they chose to just lay around on their backs instead of stand and stagger like a bunch of drunken idiots. There weren’t any more living people to chase after, so it made Courtney wonder if zombies felt fatigue and boredom after all.

    

    This was where it was unavoidable and she had to start ramming them with the bull bars. The ghouls were spaced few and far apart and she knew it was best to get out of this man-made valley as quickly as possible. If she gave them time to cluster together it could mean trouble. Hopefully they would settle down again after the humvees left the area and by the time the Strike Team returned from retrieving the Cure, the zombies of Wakefield would start in prone positions once more.

    

    Dane watched out his window and even made eye contact with one of the creatures. They stared each other down.

    

    “Don’t panic or anything,” Leon told him. “We’re safe.”

    

    “Oh, I’m not worried,” Dane said. “It’s not like they know how to drive a car and chase after us, right?”

    

    And hopefully they never learn how, Courtney thought.

    

    She was forced to swerve around a semi truck that had crashed into the front of a boutique and left its big silver trailer blocking half of Main Street. Several zombies were venturing around the other side, so she had to apply a little more pressure on the accelerator in order to ram them all at once. The hood of the humvee was high enough that she never had to worry about a zombie going up and over the windshield and leaving blood or formaldehyde all over the place. Instead they would fly backwards and off to the side as soon as they made contact with the bull bars.

    

    The town was simply in shambles. Shopping carts and miscellaneous debris were scattered all over. Broken glass littered the sidewalks. A fire had destroyed the Sunoco and three nearby buildings. Abandoned cars were smashed into parking meters. Streetlights dangled precariously from neglected poles and traffic lights were busted. Skeletal human bodies lay discarded in the gutters.

    

    Out of the window of an apartment building up ahead, she saw, a corpse dangled from a noose tied around its neck. It was mostly just bones and bits of sinew now. A suicide letter was still pinned on its shirt, but it was too far away to be read. She knew that if the person had been infected before committing suicide then the body would have reanimated and been stuck in the noose for the duration of its existence. It didn’t seem like it was moving now though-and if it reanimated then the decomposition would have stopped. It appeared the poor soul’s neck would snap in two at any moment and send the body tumbling to the sidewalk forty feet below.

    

    A perfectly healthy human who had been forced to abandon all hope.

    

    She put her eyes back down and focused on the road ahead.

    

    She occasionally glanced in the rear-view mirror to make sure the secondhumvee was keeping up. Delmas seemed to be having no problems, but the zombies were flocking together behind him and staggering after the vehicles in a big mob, all with hungry outstretched arms. She again hoped that they would settle down before her team had to return through this area.

    

    Finally, when the buildings began to thin out and become spaced further and further apart, eventually being replaced with trees and houses, she knewWakefield was behind them.

    

    The two humvees pressed on.

    

    It wouldn’t be much longer before they would arrive at Point Judith.

    

    

    

    

 

    

    

    Leon squawked the walkie-talkie and said, “That looks like the last one.” He turned to Vaughn and asked, “Any more through your eyes?”

    

    Vaughn lowered his binoculars and told him, “No.”

    

    Leon squawked his walkie-talkie once more and said, “Take it out and we’ll get this show on the road.”

    

    The stoic reply came, “Affirmative.”

    

    A rifle was pointed out the window of the second humvee and at the end of it was Christopher Gooden. He took careful aim through the high-powered scope and a moment later he pulled the trigger. There was a bang as a zombie shuffling along the beach about seventy yards away suddenly collapsed in the sand, a hole in its forehead spewing all kinds of coagulated gunk.

    

    The disembarkation area was now free of undead opposition and there were no more walking corpses visible anywhere on the horizon.

    

    Leon gave a nod to Courtney and she took the humvee out of idle and pulled out of the forest and onto the golden sands of Point Judith beach. The two-vehicle convoy crossed the shore in side-by-side formation, sending up clouds of dirt and exhaust in their wake.

    

    They stopped when they reached the area by the fallen zombies.

    

    It was in the shadow of the most behemoth ship she had ever seen-a millennium-class vessel with the words The Atlantic Princess scrawled along the starboard side. The majestic cruiseliner stretched almost four hundred yards into the distance and had a beam nearly sixty yards wide. Looking up, Courtney guessed that the very peak was some seventy yards in the air-and she wasn’t taking into consideration how much of the ship was still buried beneath the sands. It appeared to have come to land very fast-she didn’t understand knots or anything about ships-but now more than half of its mass rested lazily upon the shore and a mountain of sand crested along its bow. It was tilted slightly portside.

    

    Seeing it there, disturbing the light of the midday summer sun, with waves gently lapping away at its sides and sea gulls swarming around and cawing noisily, the cruiseliner seemed as out of place as a city on the moon. Here at Point Judith was nature at its most basic level-and now there rested one of the largest manufactured monstrosities ever seen. It simply didn’t belong. It wasn’t even like seeing the military in her backyard and the White House being overrun all those years ago-it was more like Mount Everest had erupted out of the peaceful plains of Kansas. No one was ever meant to see the wholeness of a ship. After all, less than half of it was supposed to actually be above water. Yet here it was, unnatural and imposing and disrupting the natural order of things.

    

    Looking beyond the ship-and it was really hard not to be distracted by it-she could see the very familiar Atlantic Ocean. She knew the waters would be much colder here than they were on the north Florida coast, but it was still nice to see those waters once again.

    

    One by one the Black Berets disembarked from their respective humvees and met on the beach in between. They slung their rifles over their shoulders and readjusted their belts carrying their sidearms and wakizashis. One by one they slipped the copper-toned visors over their faces and tucked their hair under the spandex hood in the back. Though seeing out of the copper visors was just as clear as not having any obstruction at all, it was very hard-if not impossible-to see into them and peer at the faces within. Finally they fit their berets on their heads and situated them slightly off kilter as they were meant to be. Aside from Dr. Aaron Dane and his casual everyday attire, they were all identical now, one and the same.

    

    Courtney looked back at the ship. The rows of circular portholes along the lower portion were dark and empty, which prompted the question, “What kind of light are we going to have in there?”

    

    “Emergency power is still on,” Dane answered, tossing away the styrofoamcup his coffee was in. “It’s not much. Mostly red lights.”

    

    “Then we’ll be using our minilights,” Delmas said.

    

    “What else do we need to take into consideration?” Chris Gooden asked.

    

    “Planning out some kind of route beforehand would be nice,” Vaughn replied. “Just to get a general idea of where we’ll be going. It’s probably going to be cramped in there.”

    

    “It is,” Dane said. “The sheer velocity of the ship as it came ashore and the sudden impact caused most everything-including me-to go tumbling towards the bow. There’s going to be some obstacles in the way and some of the doors might be blocked from the other side.”

    

    “You’re still going with us, right?” Courtney asked.

    

    “Of course,” Dane answered proudly. “I’m not chickening out. I’m going to see this through to the end.”

    

    “So where is the Cure?” Leon asked.

    

    “In my lab.” Then, almost as an afterthought, he added, “It’s packed in a box with some excelsior. Don’t worry, it’s safe.”

    

    “Where’s your lab?”

    

    “Fortunes Casino. The military told us to set up our equipment on the tables there until they could find us something more suitable. But they never did find anything better. Maybe they didn’t even bother trying.”

    

    “What’s the fastest way to the Casino?”

    

    “Probably to retrace the route I took getting off the boat,” Dane replied. “I was in the lab when the collision happened. Sleeping. I had to dig my way into the elevator foyer and from there to the Conservatory hallway. Most of the doors wouldn’t budge. Hell, it took me a long time to find a way out.” He paused for a moment. “I can’t remember the exact path I took.”

    

    “What about skin-eaters?” Vaughn asked. “Any roaming the halls?”

    

    “No. They’re still locked up. Most are in the crew cabins in the forecastle, some in the staterooms. I don’t think any managed to get out.”

    

    “You’d better be sure.”

    

    “Yes, on that much I am sure.”

    

    Courtney looked away from the group to study the vessel. The main deck was pretty high up and there wasn’t any visible means of getting to it. She asked, “How did you get down from there?”

    

    “Emergency ladder,” Dane replied, pointing. “Of the annoying rope variety.”

    

    Everyone followed his outstretched finger until their eyes focused on a rope ladder dangling off the starboard side of the ship near the bow. It was flapping against the ‘tic’ in the words The Atlantic Princess. It stretched from the railing of the main deck down roughly twenty yards to the mountain of sand pushed up against the bow.

    

    “That’s the way we go then,” Leon said. “Once we get on deck we’ll see if Dr. Dane can remember what path he took.”

    

    Everyone nodded in agreement.

    

    They made their way across the beach and climbed the hill of sand in the shadow of the cruiseliner. It was pretty high, but not nearly as high as the main deck. Once at the top of the hill, Courtney grabbed the ladder and inspected it starting from the bottom and working her eyes slowly up each rung. It didn’t look much thicker than clothesline rope and she didn’t much like the thought of scaling it.

    

    Leon told her, “You should probably go first.”

    

    She turned to him, trying to see his face through his visor, yet knowing he couldn’t see through hers either. She whispered, “Why? Because ladies first?”

    

    “No,” he answered. “Because you’re the lightest.”

    

    She shrugged, then looked up the ladder one more time. She didn’t like this at all.

    

    Leon softly told her, “If you hear anything up there or see anything that might be trouble, get-”

    

    “-I know,” she snapped, cutting him off.

    

    She put one foot on the bottom rung and slowly put more weight on it. The ladder grew more taut with each pound of pressure. She grabbed hold of one of the rungs further up and pulled herself on so all her weight was on the ladder. She bounced a little.

    

    It seemed like it might be okay.

    

    She put her other foot on the next highest rung and slowly began scaling the ladder. It was swaying side-to-side and if she didn’t distribute her weight evenly it would twist and start to send her off balance. After scaling a few more rungs she looked down at the others and told them, “Hold the bottom.”

    

    One of them-she couldn’t tell whom under their visor-put a foot on the bottom rung and added enough weight to hold the ladder perfectly vertical.

    

    She then continued climbing.

    

    About halfway up, after moving past the first row of portholes and just before reaching the words The Atlantic Princess, she heard a noise coming from inside the ship. It was a clanging sound, like metal on metal. She looked off to the side of the ladder and tried peering into the darkness behind the glass in one of the portholes. At first only her visor-covered reflection stared back at her.

    

    Then, in an instant, a dead face was pressed against the opposite side of the window, snarling, biting against the glass. Its eyelids were gone and its grimy hands were massaging the edges of the porthole, wanting desperately to get at her.

    

    She yelped and lost her footing. Only her hands tightly gripping one of the rungs above kept her from falling on the other members of her group. She dangled there for a moment before getting her feet back in place.

    

    Leon called out, “What’s going on?”

    

    “A frickin’ zombie,” Courtney called back. “Its on the other side of the window staring at me.”

    

    Down below, Leon turned to Dr. Dane and asked, “What’s the deal?”

    

    “That’s the forecastle,” he replied. “I told you most of them were locked up in there.”

    

    Leon looked back up at Courtney and told her, “It’s all right, doll. Keep going.”

    

    She grunted and continued climbing. She wanted to tell him to never call her ‘doll’ again, especially in his annoying New England voice, but she didn’t want to make a scene in front of everyone else. Hopefully they hadn’t paid too much attention to it.

    

    Hello there? Concentrate.

    

    She pulled herself higher, passing the last of the portholes and the words The Atlantic Princess, nearing the top. When she finally reached her goal, she slid over the railing and quickly hopped to her feet. The tilt of the ship was even more noticeable now that she was on it.

    

    She pulled the silenced Socom from its holster. She flicked on the laser sight and flicked off the safety, then scanned the area from where she stood.

    

    From down below, Leon called out, “What do you see?!”

    

    She called back, “Give me a minute!”

    

    There were two tennis courts in the vicinity with a rock-climbing wall erected between them. She could smell stagnant water somewhere nearby even over the smell of salty ocean water. She figured there was probably a pool on the other side of the big white divider. This theory was reinforced when she saw a sign that read, ‘NOTICE - Clothing Optional Sunbathing Area.’

    

    She stepped away from the railing, keeping the gun pointed in front of her and highlighting everything she saw with the red targeting dot. Forward she went, sidestepping around the rock-climbing wall and checking to see what was on the other side. There was nothing-just discarded boxes and miscellaneous junk. She listened carefully for any stumbling footsteps orgaspless moans, but the only sounds she heard was the soft hum of the breeze as it sifted across the deck and the cacophony of seagulls cawing their displeasure at having a human disrupt their new territory.

    

    There was a ramp leading up to the next deck with a wheelchair-accessible sign posted nearby. Above that was another sign. It had an arrow pointing upwards and the words ‘To Promenade’ written next to it. Toward the middle of the deck stack was a sign reading ‘Information Desk.’

    

    Further down on the starboard and port sides, lifeboats dangled from crane mechanisms. However, she noticed that most of the cranes weren’t holding anything-there were simply empty ropes.

    

    There were no dead bodies around, walking or otherwise.

    

    She returned to the railing and peered over. She called down, “All clear!”

    

    Leon nodded, then put a foot on the bottom rung and began his ascent, paying no regard to the zombie still looming in the porthole. When he finally reached the top he threw a leg over, straddling the railing, then brought his other leg over and put both feet down on the deck.

    

    He immediately drew his gun.

    

    Down below, someone else started coming up the ladder. From the groaning, it sounded like Delmas.

    

    Leon viewed the area for a moment, likely taking in everything Courtney did, then turned to her and said, “This doesn’t look too bad. Has to be easier than herding cows into trucks.”

    

    She snickered, knowing he was probably right.

    

    Leon leaned over the railing again and called down, “Hey Delmas! What would you rather be doing? Climbing a shoddy rope ladder to get on an infested ship-or on a smelly farm somewhere herding cattle?”

    

    The visor-outfitted person below looked up and replied, “Herding cows. You know me, I’m the ultimate cowboy.”

    

    Leon laughed.

    

    Courtney could feel the sun hitting heavily on the main deck now and it was causing beads of sweat to form beneath her trylar wetsuit. It could be unbearably miserable if it got much hotter.

    

    Leon seemed to notice the heat as well. He tilted his head side to side a few times, trying to catch a glimpse of the sign over by the big white divider. After a moment he commented, “Clothing-optional pool, eh?”

    

    Beneath her visor she rolled her eyes and mumbled, “Don’t even think about it.”

    

    He chuckled.

    

    By now Delmas was hauling himself over the railing. Courtney and Leon helped get his brawny body onto the main deck, as it seemed he was having problems accomplishing this on his own. Once he got situated he gave them a thankful nod.

    

    Courtney turned to Leon and said, “Dr. Dane should probably come up next and see if he can remember which way we need to go.”

    

    He replied, “Sounds good,” then leaned over the rail and called down, “Let Dane come up next!”

    

    A few understanding nods were returned, then Dr. Dane started negotiating the rope ladder. Courtney and Leon watched over the railing to make sure he was making it okay while Delmas watched the rest of the ship.

    

    And, while she couldn’t be certain, it seemed the zombie in the porthole paid no attention to Dr. Dane as he ascended the rope ladder. If it was still snarling, then the doctor certainly wasn’t bothered by it. Maybe he was simply accustomed to the rotten creatures from having to live on a ship with them for so long. He made it up the rope ladder with no problems, but Courtney and Leon helped him over the railing anyway.

    

    She told him, “Take a look around and tell us where we need to go.”

    

    Dane scratched his chin as he studied the deck. After a moment he pointed to the ramp going up to the next deck and said, “I remember coming across the Promenade.”

    

    “You sure?” she asked. “We can’t just go opening doors at random, you know.”

    

    He nodded and replied, “I’m sure.”

    

    She turned around and watched Vaughn come up the rope ladder. When he neared the portal with the looming zombie, he took a moment to very calmly tell it, “Oh shut up you dead bastard.” He then continued climbing.

    

    Dr. Dane commented, “I never expected to be crawling up that ladder again. I figured you people would be using grappling hooks or something of the like.”

    

    “We’re not commandos,” Vaughn replied as he crossed over the railing. “Jesus, you think this is Mission Impossible or some shit?”

    

    Dane shrugged his shoulders. “You’re just zombie killers?”

    

    “Well, yeah,” Vaughn replied. “Who in their right mind isn’t?”

    

    Mike Newcome came up the ladder next, followed by Christopher Gooden. With everyone finally assembled on the deck, Courtney informed them, “Looks like we’re going across the Promenade.”

    

    With their Socoms drawn and ready, they crossed the tennis courts and went up the ramp to the Promenade, which was something the likes of which none of the Black Berets had ever seen before.

    

    Stretching proudly from one end of the cruiseliner to the other, the Promenade was a make-believe medieval town square and main street. The storefronts were composed of a multitude of different businesses, at least half of them themed to the times. There was Soccorsi’s Pizzeria, DragonslayerTheater, Gym of Olympus, King’s Court Lounge, Fountain of Youth Spa,ShipShape Calisthenics, Chestnut Emporium, Captain Cook’s Seafood, Ye Fine Art Gallery, Lord of the Joust Tavern and Sports Bar, and-to top it all off-an ice skating rink called Princess On Ice.

    

    Some of the storefront windows were busted and a quick glance through the broken glass revealed that most everything inside had been looted, more than likely by the scientists and military that were onboard the ship. This included every liquor bottle behind the bar in Lord of the Joust Tavern. Also, surprisingly enough, X’s were scribbled over the eyes of every painting in Ye Fine Art Gallery.

    

    Courtney and the others didn’t bother going inside any of the stores since there were no moans heard anywhere nearby, but the panicked destruction of the Promenade was easily evident. The street was covered with decorative stone tiles, but most of them were chipping away or missing completely. There was even a water fountain at the center of town that was probably quite remarkable when it functioned ‘once upon a time.’

    

    The more Courtney saw of The Atlantic Princess, the more she began to believe that-given the proper circumstances-it could be much like a floating Eastpointe. The oceans could be its walls and there would never be a threat of them being breached. Provided there were enough rations stored onboard, a group of living people could survive on a ship at sea for almost a decade. It was a shame that the people on this cruiseliner had to go and ruin their good fortune.

    

    They crossed the Promenade in two-by-two formation, keeping the seventh person, Dr. Dane, in the center where the highly efficient Black Berets could protect him.

    

    With the crossing of the Promenade proving thankfully uneventful, Dr. Dane led them down to the main deck again, this time at the stern. He paused here for a moment before finally deciding to take them through a door on the portside of the vessel.

    

    There was a French balcony here, along with a grand staircase spiraling down to a once-magnificent atrium. The walls crisscrossed between velureand beechwood veneer. Knights and dragons and damsels in distress were paid homage on the painted ceilings. There used to be a crystal chandelier hanging in the center, but now it was in pieces on the floor far below.

    

    Just as Dr. Dane had warned them, there was only emergency power running throughout the vessel, and here the only illumination provided were the red backup lights mounted on the walls in a nonsensical sporadic fashion. The copper-toned visors everyone was wearing now reflected a menacing crimson hue.

    

    The team was forced to switch on the minilights on their Socoms.

    

    Being careful not to inadvertently aim their weapons at another member of the group as they shone the lights in front of them, they descended the spiraling staircase to the dark and damp atrium floor. Only now were Courtney’s feet finally getting accustomed to the crookedness of the beachedcruiseliner.

    

    There were two tall caryatids at the bottom. Both of the columns had been defaced; the eyes of the sculptured women were X’d over in red and there were circles drawn around the breasts. A constant, echoing drip-drip sound could be heard splashing from the statues.

    

    Courtney wondered what kind of emotions the people stuck aboard the ship might have felt as they began to lose contact with land while everyone around them was becoming infected. She figured some of them probably went downright insane.

    

    There were many exits from the atrium, all appropriately labeled by the signs dangling overhead. One, leading to another staircase going upwards, read, To Conservatory. Another, leading down, read, Jacuzzi. Yet another, leading up, read, To Princess Suite.

    

    Dr. Dane opened a door with a sign reading ‘Staterooms 001-142’.

    

    Being at the front of the group, Courtney and Leon shone their lights down the passageway. It was long and dark and narrow and lined with closed doors spaced in tight intervals. Red lights flickered on and off throughout the length of it.

    

    With a deep breath, Courtney led the rest of the group down the hallway, keeping Dr. Dane secure in the middle.

    

    Then the riotous thrashing began.

    

    All at once all one hundred and forty-two stateroom doors began being bombarded with brutal, angry fists. Soulless moans and groans could be heard emanating from within. The ruckus was deafening, causing most of the members of the group to lower their weapons and cover their ears. The floor itself was vibrating from the physical abuse the ship was being subjected to. On top of that, Courtney didn’t have any particular fondness for noisy corridors to begin with.

    

    Someone in the rear shouted, “Sounds like the natives are restless!”

    

    “See what I had to put up with?!” Dr. Dane shouted back, his face cringing under the red lights.

    

    Leon nudged Courtney on the shoulder and motioned her to hurry along.

    

    The group moved quickly down the hallway, still halfway covering their ears, and came out a door on the other side. Once every member was through, they closed the door behind them to muffle the noisy onslaught coming from the passageway.

    

    Here was another sign: To Elevator Foyer.

    

    “That’ll take us to Fortunes Casino,” Dane said. “My lab.”

    

    Mike Newcome, usually reserved and not very forthcoming, was this time the one to give voice to what everyone was thinking: “Fucking finally.”

    

    With the minilights from the Socoms shining off at his sides, Dr. Dane confidently took the lead.

    

    He guided them across the elevator foyer and through two sets of heavy wooden doors marked with the inscription Fortunes Casino.

    

    It was humongous-nearly as big as the Promenade outside-and since there were no red emergency lights emphasizing the room’s boundaries, there was no end in sight. Even with their minilights glowing, the Strike Team could not see their final destination from where they stood.

    

    Dr. Dane informed them, “My lab’s on the other side in the VIP room.”

    

    “Let’s get moving then,” Leon said.

    

    Most of the gambling tables were knocked over and resting in the direction of the bow. Courtney knew they must be awfully heavy, so the impact of the crash must have been tremendous indeed in order to send them all sliding in one big lump. The impact and the sliding effect also caused most of the carpet to be ripped away, revealing bare hardwood below. The noise of the team’s footfalls resounded through the hollow darkness, upsetting the calm, then echoed back to them from somewhere far away.

    

    The team passed several more clusters of overturned gambling tables-mostly craps, blackjack, and roulette. Scattered in with casino chips and dice and loose playing cards were broken vials and electrodes and miscellaneous papers with a bunch of science jargon scribbled all over them. Discarded lab coats and military camouflage were buried underneath, some discolored with unrecognizable gunk.

    

    And there was money-a whole lot of money-piles of bloodstained fifties and hundreds simply abandoned on the floor. Valued so highly in the world before, they were now nothing more than worthless slips of paper subtly reminding everyone just how drastically the rules had changed.

    

    They walked for nearly a hundred yards before Dane put his hand up and said, “Over there. The VIP room.”

    

    The team then followed him to another set of heavy-looking wooden doors.

    

    Opposite the doors was a long banister and another staircase leading down into more darkness. After shining her minilight down there Courtney saw rows upon rows of slot machines, most of which were leaning forward, yanked from their secure bases by the impact of the ship hitting the beach.

    

    “Wait a second,” Leon whispered, motioning everyone to stay put. “I hear something.”

    

    The team stopped and listened.

    

    Courtney then heard the sound Leon was referring to: a guttural moaning of the undead type. It seemed muffled somehow-it wasn’t just emanating from somewhere in the expansive darkness of the Casino.

    

    “Well, it’s definitely a skin-eater,” Delmas said. “But where is it?”

    

    Courtney peered over the balcony once more and shone her light into the darkness. She didn’t see anything moving down there, nor did the moaning seem to be getting louder.

    

    “There’s nothing to worry about,” Dane told them. “Like I told you, all the zombies are locked in the forecastle and in the staterooms in the hallway we already went through. Sounds carry much differently in a ship. That’s all you’re hearing.”

    

    Vaughn Winters and Mike Newcome directed their lights the way the group had just traveled to see if perhaps a zombie had broken out of a stateroom and followed them into the Casino.

    

    But there was nothing-just the empty darkness.

    

    Leon came to Courtney’s side and with their combined lights shining over the balcony they were able to illuminate most of the area directly below. After looking for a moment he told her what she already knew: “Nothing down there.”

    

    They turned around and faced the rest of the group.

    

    This was when they noticed Dr. Dane had strayed from them and was walking eagerly to the doors of the VIP room.

    

    “Don’t open those doors yet,” Vaughn calmly told him. “We’re dealing with a situation here.”

    

    Dane continued walking.

    

    Vaughn told him again, louder and more firmly this time, “Don’t open those doors.”

    

    Dane replied, “Don’t worry,” and kept walking.

    

    “Stop him,” Leon said.

    

    Mike Newcome stepped towards Dr. Dane and prepared to put a hand on his shoulder, but he was too late. Dane had already reached the doors of the VIP room and with a simple triumphant tug he pulled them open.

    

    No one was prepared for what came out the other side.

    

    

    

    

    

 

    

    

    There wasn’t just one. It was a mob of at least ten or twelve and something wasn’t right about them. However, nobody was given enough time just yet to figure out what made them so different from all the others.

    

    Events were simply happening too fast.

    

    Dr. Dane was engulfed by the mob and was now gone from sight. The Black Berets heard nothing out of him-no screams for help, no cries of pain,nothing. Even though there hadn’t been enough time to save him, they should have seen him struggling on his own and at least trying to put up a fight.

    

    But there was nothing.

    

    He was simply gone.

    

    The Black Berets lifted their Socoms and aimed high, the spotlights below the barrels highlighting the ghastly faces of the enemy. Muffled gunshots then zipped through the air, but instead of hearing the satisfying sound of the bullets hitting skulls, they heard the clanking sound of bullets hitting metal.

    

    The zombies continued advancing, spilling out of the VIP room and stepping in unnaturally fast strides and rapidly closing the distance between them and their prey. Bullets from the .45’s were not even slowing them down.

    

    In that instant Courtney began to realize that no zombie should be able to move as fast as these were, nor should any zombie be so invulnerable. She fired four more rounds at the head of one of the approaching ghouls and each shot was equally ineffective.

    

    Then she noticed that the zombies’ outstretched arms seemed to reach about a foot longer than they should. Something fastened at the end of their hands was reflecting the glare of the minilights, shimmering to a sharpened point.

    

    Before her mind could interpret what exactly it was that gave them such an extensive reach, her eyes were discerning something else out of the ordinary. Instead of seeing rotting teeth in the snarling mouths of these creatures, she saw a silver glimmer running across the surface of the enamel. There was obviously something laced over their choppers-something sharp.

    

    Her magazine spent, Courtney dropped it out of her gun and quickly locked and loaded a new one in its place. All around her the rest of the Black Berets were doing the same. One of them-Delmas by the sound of the voice-shouted, “What the hell?!”

    

    Courtney aimed high once more.

    

    The zombies, getting closer now, compelled her to continue stepping back until the railing on the balcony behind her stopped her from moving any further away. The other members of the team were fanning out as the advancing creatures forced them to break formation. More shots were fired, but each bullet was still met with metal instead of skull.

    

    It was then-with a zombie less than ten feet away-that she finally realized why her shots were ineffective. What at first glimpse she thought was hair or a hat or something else normal that a person on a cruiseliner might have been wearing when they died and reanimated, turned out to be some kind of helmet shaped over their scalp and forehead, around their eyes and past their jaw. The metal was thick enough to stop bullets.

    

    Without understanding why these zombies were so equipped or even who equipped them, she shouted, “Go for the eyes!”

    

    A bullet fired from Leon’s gun finally felled one of the creatures with a shot through the eye socket and into the brain. It dropped backwards and hit the thinly carpeted floor of the casino with a resounding clunk. Courtney therefore knew that somehow the metal armor wasn’t just limited to their heads-it was all over their bodies.

    

    But only one zombie was felled. There were at least a dozen more.

    

    Bad things started happening then. Shouts and screams echoed through the darkness. She lost sight of the other members of the team as she tried to focus on directing her shots into the eyes of the zombie approaching her. With most of her magazine already wasted simply trying to find their weakness to begin with, she ran out of ammunition before she could train the decisive bullet. She dropped the clip and reached into her belt for another one.

    

    It was too late.

    

    The zombie was already on her.

    

    Up close, she could see that the extensions on its hands were actually bayonets welded into place on steel wristbands. Though the creature had no cognizance to efficiently wield them, this still meant that its fumbling arms were weapons of their own. It wasn’t just the teeth she had to worry about now.

    

    She ducked under the blades as the zombie lunged forward and forced her backwards against the railing. She then fell to the floor, landing hard and awkwardly on the rifle strapped across her back. The zombie fell on top of her, showing its metal-laced teeth as it snarled and drooled all over her visor. From her back, she quickly maneuvered out of the strap so she was free of the hindrance of the rifle, then she rolled onto her shoulders and elevated her lower body in order to plant her knees on the insides of the creature’s elbows.

    

    It was a Jiu-Jitsu technique Gordon had thought relevant to teach her. It was meant to prevent flailing claws, but in this case it worked to prevent the bayonets from reaching her. She knew the zombie didn’t realize it was equipped with blades, so she was able to prevent the uncoordinated creature from slicing into her. There was some kind of thick plating on its chest, legs, and arms and as a whole it was the heaviest zombie she had ever wrestled.

    

    Keeping her knees planted against its arms to hold them still, she reached into the back of her belt and took another magazine. She loaded it into the .45 Socom, then put the point of the silencer against the zombie’s exposed right eye.

    

    She pulled the trigger.

    

    The gun discharged with hardly a sound and the bullet ricocheted several times inside the zombie’s skull armor, most definitely destroying enough of its brain to terminate it.

    

    The zombie then collapsed, its dead helmeted face pressed against the other side of her visor and its motionless mass pinning her against the balcony railing. She tried sweeping the zombie off, but it was too heavy and since there was no space between them to gain leverage, it wouldn’t even budge. With her legs spread beneath the creature in a Jiu-Jitsu guard, this compromising position would have been embarrassing if it wasn’t so grotesque.

    

    Another armored zombie was quickly approaching.

    

    Still pinned and feeling suffocated, she lifted her Socom and fired off five shots at the approaching zombie. The first four shots bounced off the zombie’s helmet, but the fifth bullet went into the creature’s eye and through its brain. The zombie fell, motionless in its exoskeleton.

    

    The glow of the minilights from the handguns was sporadic now and not many of them were still elevated. Even with silencers, Courtney knew she should still be able to hear muffled gunshots, but instead all she could hear was the grinding sound of metallic teeth chomping together. She realized that the trylar suits probably couldn’t withstand a bite from the metal teeth in this mob of modified zombies and somewhere in the darkness other members of her team were learning for sure if this was true.

    

    A voice, sounding like Vaughn, yelled, “Who’s still with me?!”

    

    “I’m here!” she shouted. “Get this frankenstein off of me!”

    

    She heard Leon answer, “Hold on!”

    

    Courtney forced her head away from the monster on top of her and peered into the darkness of the casino. Fallen Socoms with their attached minilightswere casting beams across the floor. Everywhere she looked black and turquoise uniforms were covered in liquid crimson. Most of the people in those uniforms had already fallen and were now being assaulted by at least three pairs of greedy undead hands.

    

    There were only two still standing.

    

    She saw Leon, bleeding from the shoulder, attempt to decapitate a zombie. However, the blade of the wakizashi simply met with more metal at the base of the creature’s skull. The zombie, still moving forward, forced Leonbackwards so quickly that the railing on the balcony snapped under their combined weight and sent them both tumbling onto the slot machines below.

    

    There was a loud thud and then there was only silence.

    

    She saw Vaughn-the last one standing-with his wakizashi reeled back and ready to strike as he waited for an approaching zombie. His beret and visor were gone, probably discarded sometime during the melee. His rifle wasn’t on his back and his handgun was also missing, all ammunition probably already expended. Courtney lifted her own Socom and fired the remaining rounds at the zombie’s head in an attempt to take it out before it could reach Vaughn.

    

    Her aim was too unsteady in her prone position. None of the shots hit where she wanted them to. She reached for her rifle, but it had been pushed too far away during the scuffle with her own assailant.

    Vaughn waited for the zombie and then thrust the wakizashi straight ahead in a technique she first saw performed by Gordon Levi. The point of the blade penetrated the creature’s eye socket and entered its brain. However, as Vaughn wasn’t accustomed to fighting a zombie with an extended reach, the zombie’s outstretched arms allowed one of the bayonets affixed at the end to reach his neck.

    

    Vaughn let go of the sword, which stayed put in the ghoul’s eye, then covered his throat with both hands. Blood spewed from between his fingers as he collapsed to his knees. He sat like this for a few seconds, staring into the darkness, until two more modified zombies fell on him.

    

    Courtney knew that if even cold and calculated Vaughn Winters had been bested, then it was highly likely all the others were gone as well.

    

    Delmas, Mike, Chris, and Leon-gone.

    

    All around her more armored zombies were lurching forward, the splints along their knees giving them greater support and mobility. She struggled to reach the last clip remaining in her belt, but since she was on her back with almost two hundred pounds of weight on her, this attempt proved futile.

    

    She didn’t want to get eaten.

    

    So with no hesitation she lifted her right leg and reached for the little white container in her boot. However, the bulky body of the zombie on top of her prevented her from obtaining it.

    

    The other zombies continued advancing.

    

    But then they stopped.

    

    The terminated zombie resting on her was slowly rolled off. With her view now unobstructed, she looked up to see Dr. Aaron Dane standing over her. He had a satchel bag over his shoulder. In his left hand he held a smallhandbox with an antenna jutting from the top. In his right hand was a revolver, magnum style.

    

    He pointed the revolver at her and stated, “Do what I say and you’ll keep your skin.”

    

    

    

    Dane told her: “Lose the visor. I want to see your face.”

    

    Ignoring him for now, Courtney put her palms on the floor and pushedherself up into a sitting position.

    

    The minilights on the fallen Socoms illuminated the grisly scene in Fortunes Casino. The bodies of her teammates were scattered around her, bloody and broken and partially devoured. However, the armored zombies that assaulted them were all standing in place now, wavering and looking drunk. Dr. Dane stood with them, holding a button on the handbox as he aimed the revolver at her.

    

    Finally she uttered, “What’s going on here?”

    

    “Don’t ask questions and don’t get up,” he replied. “Just lose the visor. I won’t tell you again.”

    

    Trembling and taking in stuttering breaths of air, Courtney removed her beret and slid the visor off her head. Her hair spilled out to her shoulders.

    

    “Now the sword,” Dane instructed. “Unsheathe it and toss it.”

    

    Courtney complied, pulling her last weapon from its scabbard and sliding it away. She stared back up at Dane.

    

    “Don’t give me trouble,” he said. He motioned to the zombies at his sides and added, “Or I let my friends have at you.”

    

    He pushed down the antenna on the handbox and hooked it over the waistline of his jeans. He stepped forward, keeping the gun trained on her, and put a foot on both sides of her legs. He loomed there for a moment before kneeling down on top of her and placing the barrel of the revolver on her forehead. It was righteously cold against her sweating skin.

    

    He leaned in close and put his nose in her hair.

    

    She remained still, staring at his finger as it hugged the trigger on the revolver.

    

    After a moment he leaned to her ear and whispered, “Your hair smells like apple blossoms.” He pulled away and smiled a very creepy smile. “You’re just a small thing, aren’t you? What are you, about five-five?” He paused to study her, and added, “Nice body though.”

    

    All at once he used his free hand to grab her left breast, then squeezed and twisted on top of her wetsuit until he forced her to cry out. He held on for quite a while, clenching more than fondling, seemingly enjoying watching her face scrunch up in pain, then slowly started to release his grip. When he finally finished he mumbled, “Hmph-Not even a handful. But I like the way you scream.”

    

    She wanted to tell the loony psycho to get the hell off of her, but the gun being shoved in her face reminded her to stay quiet.

    

    “I’ve decided,” he said. “I’m keeping you.”

    

    He took off the satchel bag and placed it at his side, then opened it and rummaged through the contents, eventually pulling out a syringe. He eyed it over his nose and tested it by depressing the plunger a smidgen and squirting out some of the liquid inside. He whispered, “These suits you murderers wear can’t stop a needle, can they?”

    

    Despite the threat of the gun, she quickly squirmed to her side and tried to slither out from beneath him, but she suddenly felt the needle jab into her posterior.

    

    Dane wrestled her to her back once more. He cupped his hand over her mouth and whispered, “It’s just a sedative. You relax now.”

    

    She glared back at him, frightened yet angry. However, as the moments passed she began to feel lazier and lazier and almost wanted to close her eyes.

    

    His hand slid down her stomach and began fumbling with the buckle on her belt.

    

    Through her drowsiness she mumbled, “Please don’t.”

    

    Dane returned his gaze to hers and smiled. He said, “Don’t worry. I’m not interested in the living.”

    

    He finished unfastening her belt and let it fall off. He then gathered her limp body in his arms and put her over his shoulder, then stood and carried her out of the casino.

    

    Her eyelids fell shut shortly thereafter.

    

    

    

    Her eyes opened in a brightly lit room. She was in one of the corners, curled up with her knees against her chest. There were control panels everywhere, but none of the buttons were lit up. Big windows all around the room let in endless amounts of sunlight. Though she could see only the sky from where she was sitting, a sea gull perched on a post outside reminded her where she was.

    

    The cruiseliner. The bridge maybe?

    

    The setting outside didn’t look too different than when she was actually out there, so she guessed three hours had passed at most since she first got on deck of The Atlantic Princess.

    

    She tried to stand, but still felt too dizzy and drowsy and her muscles weren’t cooperating.

    

    There were a dozen or so girly posters hastily taped to the far wall near the door. Every girl on every poster had their eyes X’d over in red paint and-where applicable-their breasts were circled. She remembered the paintings in the art gallery on the Promenade and the caryatids in the atrium and realized that that is what Dane must have done with all his free time while alone on the ship.

    

    She hurriedly inspected herself. She was somewhat relieved to see she was still in the trylar wetsuit, so if Dane had decided to accost her again while she was sleeping, then he had only done so outside her uniform.

    

    But he said he wasn’t interested in the living.

    

    Freak.

    

    She tried to stand once more, even pressing her back against the wall and pushing with her legs, but still wasn’t able to muster the energy. She sunk back down in the corner.

    

    Then she heard the French-Canadian prick say, “Don’t bother. The tranquilizer is going to be in your system at least another hour. So sit tight.”

    

    She heard footsteps and saw Dane emerge from behind one of the control panels. He casually pulled up a nearby chair and sat down in front of her. He was smiling.

    

    She tried to muster her energy again; maybe just enough to jump on him and get in a few punches to his face. However, all her body wanted to do was relax. She could roll her eyes and she could breathe and she knew she could talk if she needed to, but everything from the neck down was rebelling.

    

    It left too many possibilities-unlimited tortures he could inflict on her while she was utterly defenseless. In her fear and uncertainty, she was sort of wishing he had gone ahead and shot her when he had the revolver pressed to her head outside the VIP room. She should have died with everyone else, yet here she was on the bridge, doped up on the floor while Dr. Aaron Dane loomed at her from his chair.

    

    Gathering her anger, she snarled, “You killed them all. You slapped armor on a bunch of zombies and you led us here to get slaughtered.”

    

    He nodded and replied, “You noticed that, did you?”

    

    Tears started to form on her lower eyelids. She wanted to wipe them away, but even her arms were refusing to move. She stuttered, “Why? Why would you do that?”

    

    Dane didn’t answer right away. He took a moment to watch her weep, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a lighter. He flicked it a couple times, letting a flame ignite, then letting it go, then flicking it again-all the while staring her in the eyes and smiling.

    

    He casually commented, “I had to quit smoking. All the cigarettes went stale a long time ago, but there are still plenty of working lighters. It’s kind of sad they don’t really serve a purpose anymore.”

    

    “You’re a psycho,” she countered.

    

    And he replied, “You’re so observant.”

    

    She gritted her teeth and tried moving again. She envisioned knocking him off the chair and choking him, watching his face turn blue and his eyeballs bulge from their sockets.

    

    He had killed Leon.

    

    He had killed everybody.

    

    “I know you think I’m crazy,” Dane said. “I know you think I lost my marbles from being stuck on a ship with only dead people to keep me company.”

    

    “Something like that,” she snapped.

    

    “Well, I’m sane,” he said. “Before the apocalypse, I was just starting to get my life in order. I was on speaking terms with my wife again and we were talking about me moving back to Canada. Our boy was going to be taken out of foster care and live with us. Things were looking up.”

    

    Courtney took a deep breath and let it out slowly, then let her groggy head fall to the side so she wouldn’t have to look at him.

    

    Regardless, he continued, “Then the bodies of the recently dead started rising from autopsy tables and funeral viewings and scaring the bejesus out of everyone. Eating them too. They increased their numbers with a simple transference of blood and saliva. One becomes two, two becomes four, four becomes eight, yada-yada-yada. Worse than that though-not even like the goddamn Fibonacci sequence or anything else that makes sense. Plagues can never be solved with math.” He paused his rambling a moment as he toyed with his lighter, shaking it to listen to the fuel swishing around inside. Once he was satisfied, he went on, “I never got to say goodbye to Lilly or Bobby. No, the last thing I remember before the American Army came and ripped me out of my apartment wasn’t a picture of Lilly or Bobby, but rather the garbage cans overflowing outside. The sanitation crews went on strike because of unsafe working conditions. Who’d have thought that the first thing to go after an apocalypse would be cleanliness? That’s what’s insane.But me? I’m still all there in the head.” He put a forefinger on his temple and added, “No insanity here.”

    

    Courtney scoffed.

    

    Without another word, Dane got off the chair and kneeled down in front of her. He gently resituated her head so she was facing him.

    

    She raised her upper lip in a sneer. She’d have spit on him too if she were able, but manipulating her facial muscles was the most she was capable of at the moment.

    

    He looked down and took her limp left arm in his hands. Before she could wonder what this was about, he unfastened the velcro on her glove and pulled it off her hand. When he was finished he nonchalantly tossed the glove over his shoulder.

    

    She asked, “What the hell are you doing?”

    

    “I’m going to show you something,” he replied.

    

    Softly, as though he were caressing a newborn, he took one of her limp hands and curled up all her fingers one by one, leaving only her pinky outstretched. He held the digit firmly in this position while he brought the lighter up next to it.

    

    Her eyes grew wide. She knew his intention and tried to pull her hand away, but under the effects of the sedative she wasn’t even able to defend herself.

    

    Dane then ignited the lighter and let the flame lick her finger, seemingly relishing the torment as her head fell back and she let out a silent scream.

    

    Long forgotten memories returned to her in a flood. She could remember a time when she was a naïve little girl and stuck her finger in the cigarette lighter in her father’s car just to see what would happen. It had only been for a second, but the blister lasted for a week. She remembered crying because the pain wouldn’t stop.

    

    What was happening now hurt a lot worse. The tranquilizer had not numbed her tactile senses, so her nerve endings were able to detect every millimeter of skin on her finger burning and bubbling and sent signals of pain shooting up through her forcibly relaxed arm and straight to her brain where these signals could be recognized and exacted.

    

    After almost five whole seconds he finally pulled the flame away. Courtney wanted to cradle her hand and maybe pinch her finger to prevent some of the pain signals from reaching her brain, but once he let go all she could do was stare down at her hand and see the black, peeling, blistering skin above the last knuckle on her pinky. Her whole arm was twitching involuntarily. Her face was wet with tears and she felt like throwing up.

    

    Dane simply smiled and told her, “Pain is something you still feel.”

    

    He then outstretched his own pinky finger and put the lighter to it, letting the flame lick at the skin freely. He was smiling the whole time and didn’t wince at all, even as the flesh began to bubble and peel away. When he was finished he displayed his mutilated finger to Courtney, stench and all.

    

    She gagged and let her head fall to the side once more.

    

    “I don’t feel pain,” Dane explained. “The nerve endings in my body no longer function. I feel nothing. My cells have ceased all stages of mitosis. By rights, I should be decaying, but my skin and muscles have stabilized. My heart beats but my blood runs cold. I breathe but I don’t require oxygen. I am technically dead.”

    

    Courtney turned her head to face him again and mumbled, “Are you trying to say you’re a zombie?”

    

    Dane nodded.

    

    “You’re not a zombie,” she sneered. “You’re just a loony tunes masochistic misogynist.”

    

    “Those are some big words for a little girl,” Dane countered. “But I already explained to you that I’m the sanest person you’ll ever meet. Why, you ask? Because I accept what’s happened to the world.”

    

    Gritting her teeth to ward off the pain in her finger, she asked, “What are you talking about?”

    

    He stood long enough to return to his chair and sit down again. He shoved the lighter back into his pocket. Then-making Courtney gag once more-he put his burnt finger in his mouth and started nibbling on it. But it wasn’t like he was simply chewing his fingernail-he was chewing the seared flesh.

    

    She told him, “You’re sick.”

    

    “No,” he replied. “I’m hungry.”

    

    He rolled up the sleeve on his sweater and lifted the chainmail underneath, displaying the bite wound on his forearm that he had used to impress the Superintendent and the Procurement Committee at Eastpointe. He then lifted his arm and put his open mouth over the bite wound to show her that the teeth marks were at the perfect angle and perfectly matched his own.

    

    She realized now that the wound was self-inflicted.

    

    “God, you are a freak,” she said.

    

    He rolled his sleeve back down and replied, “God? No, I’m an atheist. I’m a man of science. You call the dead rising an apocalypse? An apocalypse is something out of the Bible. What happened to the world wasn’t an apocalypse. It was an occurrence in nature.”

    

    “What are you talking about?”

    

    “Evolution,” Dane replied. “It was the theory for the longest time that evolution occurred so slowly that it wasn’t noticeable in a single lifetime. But then the theory was advanced that evolution occurred in leaps and bounds.Many believed the next phase of our evolution would be to grow wings so we could fly through the air. Others believed that the next phase would be to grow gills so we could breathe underwater. Both ideas are incorrect. The next natural phase of evolution would be-obviously-to beat death. To beimmortal.”

    

    “You’re not immortal,” Courtney told him. “You’re just loony.”

    

    “Au Contraire,” Dane replied. “I am proof of the success of evolution.”

    

    “No, you’re just a crazy bastard and I hope you rot in hell.”

    

    Dane chuckled. “Of course you wouldn’t understand,” he said. “Just look at how quickly you abandoned your own species once they evolved beyond you. You call them zombies. You don’t refer to them by name or even by male or female. They’re all just zombies to you. They’re immortal and you’re jealous.”

    

    Courtney scoffed. She knew there would be no reasoning with this psycho, so she decided to stay quiet and concentrate on anything but the pain in her finger. It was making her nauseated and combined with the dizziness she was already feeling from the sedative, the idea of throwing up didn’t seem so farfetched anymore.

    

    Despite her detachment from the conversation, Dane continued, “Evolution made a slight mistake in that it didn’t allow zombies a large mental capacity to solve problems nor the means to procreate. But being stuck here on this boat-searching for a cure-I was forced to use myself as a guinea pig most of the time. My evolution didn’t occur naturally. You wouldn’t believe all the things I had to inject into my own skin.”

    

    Courtney couldn’t resist commenting, “Heroin junkie?”

    

    “No,” Dane said. “The serum of the reanimated dead. It was all part of finding some mythical Cure. Instead it had the opposite effect. It made me one of them-Except I maintained my mental faculties.”

    

    “That’s what you think.”

    

    “But it changed my diet,” Dane continued, unfazed by her interruption. “You have no idea what its like to feel true hunger-hunger that can’t be tamed with the food from outdated military rations. No, a very specific sustenance is required to satisfy me.”

    

    Courtney’s eyes grew wide. She gulped and softly asked, “Is that what I’m for?”

    

    Dane formed another smile and replied, “Do you think I’d bother explaining all this to you if all I wanted to do was eat you?”

    

    He stood and proceeded to one of the nearby control panels where he picked up the satchel bag she had seen him carrying earlier. He opened it and pulled out a syringe. He placed the syringe on the chair he had been sitting on before and hung the bag over his shoulder.

    

    He stood in front of Courtney and gazed down at her.

    

    He said, “Since my cells have stabilized and my body doesn’t radiate heat, the zombies consider me one of their number. In case you haven’t noticed, they don’t attack me. I walk with the dead.”

    

    She let her head fall back so she could look up at him. She asked, “So what? Does that make you their leader or something?”

    

    “No,” he replied. “I’m their messiah. And I’m going to deliver them into the new world.”

    

    “What new world?”

    

    “A world where the old products of evolution are washed away-a world where your kind is gone. I’m taking my army to Eastpointe and I’m going to destroy the last remnants of you.”

    

    Courtney scoffed. She wanted to laugh, but her immobility wouldn’t let her. Instead she asked, “And you plan to accomplish this how?”

    

    “Using equal parts physiological psychology and equal parts sensory stimulation using modern technology. The reanimated dead are a lot more complicated than you think. When there’s no food around, they operate with a pack mentality. And as you noticed earlier, I’ve equipped some of my shipmates with blades and armor. I only need to send electrical impulses to the pack leader and the rest will follow. I’m going to march my army to Eastpointe and pick up thousands of stragglers along the way, all willing to join the pack. Once I’m there-and since your city leaders were kind enough to give me a tour-I’m going to direct my army straight to the power plant.And from there, straight to the central housing.”

    

    “You’ll never get past the wall.”

    

    “The wall is nothing a pipe bomb won’t eliminate.”

    

    Courtney struggled once again to move. Now more than ever she wanted to push her thumbs through his eyeballs.

    

    Dane motioned to the needle he had placed on the chair and said, “That syringe will allow you to evolve like I have. It contains the serum of the reanimated dead. And then you and I together can procreate and give evolution the boost it so desperately requires.”

    

    Courtney scoffed, “You and me? Don’t hold your breath.”

    

    He chuckled. “You keep forgetting that I don’t require oxygen.”

    

    “Whatever.”

    

    “I’m going to leave you here while my army marches to Eastpointe. I advise you use the syringe before I get back. You’ll either be my Eve or you’ll be my dinner. It’s up to you.”

    

    “Go to hell,” she snarled.

    

    He chuckled again, then motioned to the small cooler against the far wall below the girly posters. He told her, “You’ll be hungry after you use the syringe, so I took the liberty of chopping up your teammates. You’ll find a leg or two in the cooler over there.”

    

    She wanted to scream. She wanted to shout and yell and curse him into the ground, but her lungs didn’t give her ample energy to do so. All she could do was tell him in a loud voice, “I’m gonna kill you.”

    

    He smiled and replied, “Good luck with that. I’m immortal.”

    

    He then turned away and exited the bridge. Once the door was closed behind him, she could hear something metallic being propped up against it on the other side. She heard his footsteps go down the hallway, then she heard nothing.

    

    She looked out the window and traded glances with the sea gull perched there. She stayed this way for some time, trying to fight away the tears and the pain still burning on her blackened finger.

    

    

    

    

    

    

   

    Starting small, at first she concentrated solely on trying to wiggle the index finger on her right hand. She focused all her attention there, both body and mind, refusing to cry another tear.

    

    It took at least an hour but finally that finger started moving, twitching at first, then curling from every knuckle much to her satisfaction. She moved her other fingers after that, enjoying the sensation of being able to ball up a fist, even if it was weak at first. She worked her wrists next, then her elbows, then her shoulders.

    

    None of it was easy.

    

    As soon as she could she cradled the burnt finger in her other hand and pinched the area below the scorched skin. It looked messy-a gigantic blister bigger than her fingernail was pushing up through the peeling, blackened tissue. She was taking deep breaths now and exhaling hard and fast, attempting to make the pain go away.

    

    The hurt was still there, however, lingering even as she concentrated on moving her legs. She bent her ankles first, then her knees.

    

    She fell forward on the sun-warmed tile floor of the bridge. She planted her forearms and brought her legs underneath her chest, then pushed herself into a crawling position. She struggled to the nearby chair, then reached up and put her hands on the cushion, immediately smacking away the syringe Dane had left for her. It clattered to the floor and slid to the base of a nearby control panel.

    

    She lifted herself into the chair and sat down.

    

    From there she lunged at one of the big windows lining the walls.

    

    Holding fast, she peered through the glass and viewed the main deck of The Atlantic Princess from up high. A lot had changed since she had last seen it.

    

    Now there were dozens and dozens of armored zombies moving rather rapidly across the bow, and-like a tide of lemmings-they each in turn fell over the railing and onto the golden sands below. From there the long line of them disappeared into the woods beyond the beach, with plenty more still following.

    

    There had to be at least a hundred.

    

    The passing of time had shifted the shadow of the cruiseliner off of thehumvees her team had left parked on the beach. Squinting her eyes, she saw Dr. Dane standing next to those humvees, controlling the same handbox she had seen him utilizing during the ambush in the casino. She knew that somehow the antenna sent simplistic commands to the helmeted zombies, perhaps telling them which direction to go. He had revealed that much in their conversation earlier.

    

    She also noticed how the zombies simply walked right past him without a second glance. Either he really was technically dead or his delusions were real enough to fool even the mindless automatons surrounding him.

    

    He had mentioned physiological psychology and sensory stimulation and something about electrical impulses. She had no clue what he was talking about, but regardless of the jargon he had used or the absurdity of the idea, Dane had had plenty of time to himself aboard the ship to pursue and perfect this insane vision.

    

    And now he really was leading an army.

    

    Courtney watched for several minutes as the last zombie fell over the railing and joined the rest of the storm troopers marching across the beach. They were walking with long, fast strides-moving quicker than any zombie she had ever seen before.

    

    Once the last of them disappeared into the woods, she saw Dane push down the antenna on the handbox and climb inside one of the Black Berethumvees. She then saw exhaust come out the tailpipe and the vehicle pull forward.

    

    The sight of this was enough to ignite the rage brewing in her gut.

    

    Mustering her strength, she picked up the nearby chair and flung it against the window as hard as she was able. However, instead of glass breaking there was just a weak-sounding boink as the chair bounced off and hit the floor. The window hardly wobbled. Snarling, Courtney picked up the chair again and held it by the legs. She beat it against the glass over and over, resulting in nothing more than her own fatigue.

    

    She dropped the chair and smacked her palms against the window.

    

    “Dane!” she screamed. “I’m gonna kill you!”

    

    But the humvee disappeared into the woods. Dane was gone.

    

    She collapsed, her back sliding down the wall until she was sitting on the floor once again. She gasped in breath after breath, her entire body trembling. Her face-which had only recently been dried of the tears she cried-was now soaked with sweat. Her hair was sticking to her cheeks and forehead.

    

    She brushed it away.

    

    Struggling for air, she put her fingers down the collar of the wetsuit to pull it from her throat. As she did this she became even more aware of the pain in her scorched finger. She pinched the knuckle again, trying to make the pain stop.

    

    It wouldn’t.

    

    She screamed long and loud, “GODDAMNIT!!!”

    

    As soon as the last syllable left her mouth, she fell forward and started gagging, dry heaves collapsing her stomach and sending ripples of tension up her chest and neck. She wanted to throw up as long as it would make the pain stop, but nothing came out. It was just one dry heave after another.

    

    She lifted her head and saw the cooler against the wall beneath the girly posters. Dane said he had chopped up her teammates and put pieces of them inside for her to eat after she used the syringe.

    

    This was the trigger.

    

    She puked. It spilled to the floor in a gross splash, relieving her of some of the pressure in her gut.

    

    Breathing hard and unsteady, she brought herself to her feet and picked up the glove Dane had taken off her hand before burning her. She used it to wipe her lips, then tossed it away again.

    

    She then staggered to the big metal door-the only door on the bridge-and tried to turn the handle. She could get it to go halfway, but something on the other side was preventing it from completely turning. She tried yanking on the handle in the hopes that somehow the door would open both ways and Dane had been too stupid to know, but gave up when she realized it was to no avail. She then took a couple steps back and gave the door a hard front kick, but it didn’t budge at all.

    

    It didn’t even react.

    

    She clinched her fists and let loose a cry of pure despair, then turned around and put her back against the door. She slid down and returned to a sitting position with her knees against her chest.

    

    Her eyes were turning red as wetness formed once again across her lower eyelids. Tears came, rolling freely and indiscriminately down her cheeks. Her face fell into her palms soon after. She seized several strands of her hair and tugged them violently between her tense fingers.

    

    She didn’t want to take her hands away from her face and she didn’t want to open her eyes again. She knew that if she did she would see the syringe on the floor where she had flung it earlier. Some kind of green gunk was swirling inside the casing. She knew there was no way in hell she would ever use that syringe. She knew there was no way she would ever give herself to Dane, even if it was the only way to stay alive.

    

    And the others were all dead-Leon and Chris and Delmas and Mike and Vaughn.

    

    Slaughtered.

    

    Eastpointe was doomed too. Her new friend Alexis was going to be Dane’s dinner and Courtney was powerless to stop it. The same went for Superintendent Wright and all the Committees and the rest of the five hundred or so people living within the walls. All they had wanted was a Cure, but instead all they got was deception.

    

    So, with her decision made and her eyes closed, her right hand found its way down her leg and maneuvered into her boot. Her fingers wrapped around something inside, then brought it out.

    

    She opened her eyes, but focused only on the new object. It was a little white container about an inch wide.

    

    She popped it open.

    

    Inside were dozens of little white pills. She had seen them used by others. She knew that once she swallowed them she would be dead within moments.

    

    Sniffling, she wiped her eyes with her forearm and dropped the pills out of the container and onto her open palm. She opened her mouth and prepared to place the pills on her tongue.

    

    That was when there came a light knocking on the other side of the door she was resting against. A voice asked, “Courtney? Is that you? Are you in there?”

    

    The pills fell from her hand as she stood up and faced the door. She didn’t believe it at first, but the voice on the other side had been instantly recognizable.

    

    She uttered, “Leon?”

    

    “Yeah,” the muffled voice replied. “Are you okay?”

    

    She sniffled long and hard and wiped her eyes again. She said, “No, I’m pretty far from okay. Get me out of here.”

    

    “Hold on.”

    

    She heard something get pulled away from the other side of the door, then saw the handle turn freely. A moment later the door swung open.

    

    Standing there was Leon Wolfe. His beret and visor were gone, as was his handgun and rifle. Blood was leaking from the scabbard where his wakizashiwas held. His hair was clumping together and his face was paler than usual.

    

    She asked, “How did you find me?”

    

    “I used deductive reasoning,” he replied, attempting to show one of his cocky smiles. “You know, like Sherlock Holmes and Jessica Fletcher. Maybe even Matlock.”

    

    She showed him a confused expression.

    

    “You were making enough noise to wake the dead,” he said with a sigh. “Pun intended.”

    

    Despite his arrogance and his annoying accent, her only reaction was to embrace him. She wrapped her arms around his torso and put her face against his neck. She had thought the worst when she saw him fall over the balcony in the casino and assumed Dane had dismembered him like he did the others.

    

    Leon seemed to hesitate for a moment before returning the hug, but he winced and pulled away before he got his arms completely around her. He took a step back and all of a sudden his cheery attitude was gone.

    

    She asked, “Leon, what’s wrong?”

    

    “I’ve had a really bad day,” he replied.

    

    He turned around, showing her his back.

    

    Courtney could see that his suit was ripped below his left shoulder and there was blood running from a gash there. At first she thought it was just a puncture wound from the bayonets the armored zombies were wielding or maybe an injury he received when he fell off the balcony. However, neither scenario was the case. She could see, very clearly now, that there were two rows of indentations surrounding the bleeding hole in his shoulder.

    

    Teeth marks.

    

    

    

 

    

    

    They returned to the beach.

    

    Luckily there were still no zombies roaming around. All of them in the vicinity probably followed Dane’s storm troopers into the woods.

    

    Courtney and Leon opened the rear hatch of the remaining humvee to obtain the supplies stashed there. It had been her humvee-the very same one she had used to go from Georgia to Rhode Island. However, this fact wasn’t what was foremost on her mind at the moment.

    

    As she tended to the wound on Leon’s shoulder, she explained all the things that had happened to her after the ambush in the casino. Leon took several minutes to contemplate what she told him, then commented, “So this psycho put metal choppers on the zombies’ teeth?”

    

    She replied, “Among other things.”

    

    Leon shook his head and rolled his eyes.

    

    Courtney finished cleaning and bandaging the bite wound on his shoulder, then grabbed a roll of duct tape from the back of the humvee and began patching the tear on his wetsuit.

    

    She was sniffling the entire time.

    

    It was growing late in the day now. She guessed it to be about five o’clock or so. The sun was still high in the sky and the sea gulls were still swarming around the cruiseliner nearby. It was actually quite a beautiful setting, it was just too bad that circumstances didn’t allow Courtney to enjoy it.

    

    After applying the last patch of duct tape, she patted Leon on the back and said, “All done.” She then grabbed a canteen from the cooler in the back of the humvee and took another swig of cold water. It was somewhat refreshing.

    

    Leon peered over his shoulder as best he could to inspect the first aid work Courtney had performed. His face was pale and his lips were turning white.

    

    After a moment he whispered, “I appreciate you playing Betsy Ross, but-”

    

    “-Betsy Ross created the flag,” Courtney interrupted. “You’re probably thinking of Clara Barton. She founded the American Red Cross.”

    

    “Whatever,” Leon said. “All I’m saying is that we both know it’s a waste of time. We’ve been through this routine before.”

    

    Courtney snapped, “Just shut up, okay?”

    

    She handed him the canteen and let him take a drink while she crossed her arms and stared off at the ocean. She had forgotten the smells and sounds of the beach. It reminded her of Florida. She wished she wouldn’t have taken it all for granted when the world was normal.

    

    After Leon capped the canteen and returned it to the back of the humvee, he motioned to her left hand and asked, “Want me to help you with that?”

    

    Courtney gazed down at her pinky finger. It was looking even more grotesque now. Puss was seeping from the blister and the skin around it was black and peeling. However, since finding out Leon was still alive, this was the first time she noticed how much her hand trembled on its own.

    

    She asked, “What do we have?”

    

    He paused a moment to think, and replied, “There’s Neosporin in the first aid kit. Should be cold wraps too.”

    

    She nodded and said, “All right.”

    

    Leon leaned inside the humvee and retrieved the first aid kit she had used to clean his bite wound. He fished out the Neosporin and the cold wraps.

    

    He said, “Okay doll, give me the finger. And I don’t mean that in a vulgar way.”

    

    She forced a smile, then turned her head away long enough to sniffle and wipe her eyes just in case emotions were getting the best of her. Then she turned to face Leon again and extended her scorched pinky finger.

    

    He squeezed some Neosporin out of the tube and onto his index finger, then dabbed the cream lightly on Courtney’s pinky. When he had it covered he tore off a piece of cold wrap and put it over her finger, making certain the adhesive was sticking only to the healthy skin near her bottom knuckle and not on anything tender. Finished, he returned the unused supplies to the first aid kit and put the box back in the humvee.

    

    She inspected the bandage on her finger, realizing the skin would be scarred forever. After a moment she softly stated, “This sucks. My finger’s gonna be deformed for the rest of my life.”

    

    “Maybe, but it’s just your finger,” Leon replied, taking her hand and examining it. “The rest of you will still be beautiful.”

    

    She grunted and pulled her hand away. She stammered, “Don’t.”

    

    “Don’t what?”

    

    “Don’t flirt with me. Not now.”

    

    “Not now? Why?”

    

    She turned away and faced the ocean again. She mumbled, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry about everything.”

    

    Leon exhaled deeply and leaned against the fender of the humvee.

    

    Courtney watched the sea gulls for a while as they went about their routine, all of them oblivious to the happenings in the human world. Her body trembled as she thought about Eastpointe and the army of zombies marching there to attack it. If Dane used a pipe bomb to blow up the wall as he mentioned-and if he did so where patrols where few and far between-then it was quite possible everyone in Eastpointe would be devoured before they even figured out what the explosion was.

    

    The worst part was that she knew she could never make it to Eastpointe in time to warn them. Dane would be taking his army via the most direct route, so even if she somehow got past them or went around them and beat them to their destination, she knew precious moments would be wasted trying to explain to the Superintendent and the Committees about the danger headed their way. It would be hard to convince them she was serious, that this wasn’t a joke, and that Dr. Aaron Dane had really assembled his own undead army and was currently leading them to conquer the last bastion of living humans.

    

    Courtney gritted her teeth and smacked her palm against the side of the humvee. Too many thoughts were going through her mind to allow her to stop and focus on any of them.

    

    She remembered Dane mentioning a pack leader and that zombies worked in a pack mentality when there wasn’t any food nearby. She knew the handbox Dane used somehow sent signals to the zombies, but what if it only sent signals to one zombie? That sounded right. Dane would only need to send signals to the pack leader and the rest would follow. Not only that, but other zombies the army met would also fall in line and follow the pack. Courtney realized that could add up to at least a thousand if Dane led his army through Wakefield.

    

    There may be even more. If zombies just lying around somewhere somehow sensed that a large herd was moving, they may get up and follow even if it was from miles away. She wasn’t totally sure how far away a zombie’s senses could work, but she knew she had to factor it into her reasoning.

    

    She turned to face Leon again.

    

    He had his head down and his arms crossed. He didn’t look very healthy at all. She knew it would only be a couple of hours before he got too sick to move. He would be coughing and vomiting and then several hours after that he would be comatose. He would then die and reanimate.

    

    However, a Black Beret never got that far. Usually they swallowed their barbiturates long before now. Leon was setting some kind of record.

    

    She said, “Everyone at Eastpointe is going to die unless we stop Dane before he gets there.”

    

    Leon lifted his head and gazed at her. He replied, “We?”

    

    She nodded, pulling her hair back and tucking it behind her ears. She explained, “Yeah. If we can take out the lead zombie and then take out Dane before he creates a new leader, the zombies will just stop marching and lay down. They won’t migrate unless they’re being led. We don’t have to fight them all. We just have to kill Dane and the pack leader. We can do it.”

    

    Leon shook his head side-to-side and weakly stated, “I’m sorry, doll. But this beach is really nice. I think I’m just going to lay down and take my pills.”

    

    “No,” she said. “I need you. I can’t do this alone.”

    

    Leon sighed and looked away, appearing to stare at the reflection of the sun on the calm ocean waves. He kicked at the sand at his feet. “I think I understand why Black Berets take their pills so quick after being infected,” he said. “It’s because they know the inevitability of death. They want to die before that fact really hits home. That’s what I want too. I don’t want to sit here and cry. I don’t want to be depressed about it. I want to keep my pride and die quietly. If you were me, you’d understand.”

    

    Courtney stepped in front of him and looked into his eyes. She softly said, “Leon, I need you. We have to do this together or everyone’s gonna die.”

    

    “What do you care?!” he snapped. “Since when do you give a damn about anybody at Eastpointe?!”

    

    “Of course I care,” she stuttered. “What, do you think I’m totally heartless or something?”

    

    “You live in your own world anyway,” he continued, glaring. “Why don’t you just find a nice little island someplace where you can be alone for real? Swim to Martha’s Vineyard or Block Island for Christ’s sake. Clear out a house and spend the rest of your life dreaming about James Spader. What the hell do you want from me?!”

    

    Without hesitation or anger, Courtney replied, “Your help.”

    

    “But what can I do? I already feel this gross stuff building up in my lungs and I’m gonna start hacking and coughing like an eighty year-old smoker. I’m not going to be much help. Just let me die.”

    

    Courtney crossed her arms and told him, “I’m not exactly stopping you. What you mean is that you need me to put a bullet in your head after your heart stops.”

    

    Leon nodded.

    

    “Well, fine,” Courtney said. “Help me kill Dane and I’ll make sure you don’t reanimate after you swallow your pills. Fair?”

    

    Leon sighed and shrugged his shoulders. A throbbing red vein was visible beneath the pale skin on his forehead. The color in his blue eyes was fading a little. His hair was falling messily across his ears and one of his eyes and altogether he looked very weary.

    

    He said, “Fine. Let’s kill that psycho.”

    

    Courtney looked away and sniffled, then replied, “Glad you’re with me.”

    

    Leon started digging through the supplies in the back of the humvee. He said, “No more visors or berets, doll. We’ve got another sword and a couple rifles here, but not much ammo. There are a couple Socoms, but they’re not assembled. I’ll have to attach the laser sights and load up some magazines. I’m pretty sure they’re in a box back here somewhere.” He paused a moment as he reached deep to retrieve something buried under the cooler, then added, “And here’s another belt for you.”

    

    She took the belt and fastened it around her hips, taking the time to secure the lower holster strap around her right leg. She took another wakizashi and scabbard but held on to it for now instead of fastening it to her belt right away.

    

    She said, “Let’s get moving.”

    

    Leon grabbed a couple of handguns and laser sights, along with a couple of rifles and scopes and a box of ammunition for both. He walked around the humvee and climbed onto the passenger seat. He immediately started attaching the laser sights to the handguns and loading bullets into magazines.

    

    Courtney walked around to the driver’s-side door, but stopped halfway. She leaned with her back against the humvee, then lowered her head and closed her eyes.

    

    It was hard not to be overwhelmed.

    

    She sniffled and wiped her eyes-just in case there was any emotional residue-then opened the driver’s-side door and climbed onto the seat.

    

    She held her breath as she turned the ignition, thinking that Dane might have taken the time to somehow booby-trap it or something. Despite her fears, the engine started without a hitch. She shifted into gear, let out the clutch, and the humvee sped forward down the sandy beach.

    

    As the tires met the gravel on the road leading through the forest, Leonlooked up from the magazines he was loading and commented, “Do you ever miss fiddling with the radio?”

    

    She turned her head long enough to glance at him, then faced the road again. She asked, “What do you mean?”

    

    “It’s just that every time I ride shotgun I’m still in the habit of wanting to cycle through the radio stations. Kind of stupid, huh?”

    

    She shook her head and stated, “No, it’s not stupid.”

    

    

    

 

    

    

    Dane’s trail was easy enough to follow.

    

    Despite being the very same road the Black Berets had traveled originally, everywhere she looked zombies were being pulled out of hibernation and drawn to the pack like a magnet. She simply went in the same direction the walking corpses were going.

    

    There were all kinds-men and women and children zombies, plainly-dressed zombies, formally-dressed zombies, policemen zombies, postal worker zombies, even a zombie in full football gear, minus only the helmet. However, no matter what gender, race, occupation, or age they were before becoming infected and reanimating, they were all pretty much the same now.

    -Wrinkled, with blue skin.

    

    Some of them had wounds that would be fatal to a living human. One had an exposed ribcage, another was missing both its arms, and another had a large gash running from its ear all the way down to its waist. These injuries might have been received when they were still alive and could have been what killed them, or the injuries might have been sustained after reanimating, which meant they didn’t feel the pain at all. Either way, it certainly wasn’t slowing them down today.

    

    And Courtney didn’t bother slowing down either. Any dead person getting in her way was promptly rammed with the bull bars. This humvee was very familiar to her, after all, so handling it felt much more natural than any of the others she had driven.

    

    The further she went the more tightly packed the zombies became. Eventually she had to forsake ramming them in favor of simply going around. It was quicker than climbing a pile of disfigured corpses.

    

    The trail eventually led back to Wakefield. The sun was only shining through the narrow alleyways now, highlighting the heads and shoulders of the zombie citizens and proving that the day was coming to an end. This was what she had feared; that Dane would take his army down Main Street and amass hundreds of more recruits. None of the zombies here were lying down anymore. All of them were on their feet, staggering after the more nimble armored zombies Dane had previously outfitted. Courtney could see the vanguard about fifty yards up the road, but the ordinary zombies following them were packed shoulder-to-shoulder on Main Street. It would be impossible to ram her way up to the leader.

    

    Leon pointed and said, “I don’t believe it. Look at that.”

    

    Courtney’s eyes followed where his finger was pointing until she saw what he was indicating. She couldn’t believe it either-parked off to the right of the street in downtown Wakefield, out of the way of the undead parade, was the second humvee-the same one Dane had stolen.

    

    Leon screwed a silencer onto his handgun and started rolling down his window. He said, “Get alongside it. Let’s get this over with.”

    

    Courtney steered their humvee past the masses of walking corpses and slowly pulled up next to the other humvee. Leon had his Socom aimed out the window. She could see the red targeting laser pinpointing a dot at the approximate area where someone’s head would be if they were sitting normally on the driver’s seat in the other vehicle. However, once she got fully in line with the second humvee, they both could see very clearly that no one occupied it.

    

    “What the hell?” Leon said. “Where could he have gone?”

    

    By now they had drawn unwanted attention from a few dozen zombies in the procession, and these zombies were currently straying from the herd to come pound on the windows on the left side of their vehicle, trying to get at the humans inside.

    

    Courtney gave them a glance, then again focused her attention on the second humvee and the missing messiah. Besides, she knew from experience that the windows of her humvee were shatterproof. The worst those zombies could do was hold the vehicle under siege.

    

    “Would Dane be walking?” Leon asked.

    

    Courtney looked over the hood of their humvee and beyond the heads of the mob of dead people migrating down Main Street. She knew zombies didn’t look upon Dane as a viable source of food, so she figured maybe he had decided to play George Washington and lead them into battle himself. However, she could still see the armored zombies at the vanguard and Dane wasn’t with them.

    

    She realized he would probably want to be someplace where he had full view of the procession. He would need to guide the pack leader with his remote control and make sure it didn’t lead the herd into any crashed semis or flooded areas caused by the dam break at the Indian Run Reservoir.

    

    Peering through the windows of both humvees, Courtney caught sight of a fire escape in the alleyway next to the building beside them. The stairs went back and forth up several flights, then a ladder at the summit went the rest of the way to the rooftop.

    

    That must have been where Dane went.

    

    Courtney pointed and said, “There.”

    

    Leon looked and saw the winding fire escape for himself. He followed it up with his eyes, gulping when he reached the very top. He uttered, “More heights.”

    

    She asked, “Are you ready for this?”

    

    “Now or never.”

    

    He handed her a Socom modified with the laser sight and silencer she was accustomed to. She slipped it in the holster on her right leg, then attached the scabbard containing the wakizashi to the V-shaped strap on her left leg. She slid three extra loaded magazines for the handgun into the slots in the back of her belt. Finally she grabbed another rifle and slung it over her shoulder. All she lacked was a visor and a beret and a glove to replace the one missing from her left hand and she would once again be perfectly outfitted as a Black Beret was meant to be.

    

    Ready to go, she glanced out her window and saw the hundreds of hungry corpses waiting for her on the other side. Some of them were trampling the others so they could press their faces to the glass and stare at her. They hadn’t yet ventured to the area between the two humvees on Leon’s side of the vehicle.

    

    She said, “I think we’ll go out through your door.”

    

    He solemnly replied, “Good idea.”

    

    Leon readied his weapons, then lifted the handle and threw the door open. Courtney followed him out and they immediately dashed around the second humvee and into the alleyway. The mob of zombies that had strayed from the herd staggered after them, but the ones in front were put down with a single shot each from Courtney’s silenced handgun, the red dot on their foreheads replaced with a gaping bullet hole. As they fell it caused the ones behind them to trip and stumble, effectively slowing them down.

    

    A lone meter-maid zombie was blocking the fire escape. Rather than waste a bullet, Leon tossed the ghoul over his hip. Once it landed on its back, he planted his metal heel in the creature’s skull, then scraped off the gooey residue on the stairs. Courtney figured it must have been like therapy for Leon for everything he had already been through.

    

    They ran up the noisy metal fire escape, leaving the streets behind.

    

    Like so many dead cities, gaspless moans and the stench of decay were everywhere in Wakefield. It certainly wasn’t the most pleasant place to fight for humanity’s right to live. Nevertheless, Courtney knew that in the event of an apocalypse any field of Megiddo would have to do.

    

    

    

    Vastly outnumbered yet having the advantage of greater mobility and higher ground, Courtney and Leon surveyed the town of Wakefield from the rooftop. There were a string of zombies stretching back as far as their eyes could see-thousands-and all of them were scampering to join the herd. On the other side of the building, stray zombies could be seen emerging from the flooded areas of town. Thankfully none had scaled the fire escapes to join them on the roof.

    

    Now they just needed to find Dane.

    

    Courtney took the rifle off her shoulder and pointed it into the distance, using the scope to view the rooftops far away. Most of the buildings in downtown Wakefield were the same height. None of them seemed to rise above six stories tall, so there was only about a ten-foot difference in some places. Most had a shack or a trap door with a staircase or a ladder that would lead down inside. She knew if she didn’t take care of Dane fast enough he might retreat into one of the buildings and hide, in which case she would probably never find him again.

    

    She figured he would be near the vanguard of his army, but the rooftops in that direction were bare. She then turned her rifle in the direction she and Leon had traveled, towards Point Judith Neck.

    

    That was when she discovered Dane.

    

    He was hiding behind a small greenhouse erected on top of a building five rooftops away. Though she couldn’t see him directly due to the translucent panes of glass, his shadow betrayed him. The sun was beginning to fall from the west, so its light was concentrated to the east-right through the glass panes of the greenhouse, casting a long silhouette of his figure across the rooftop. It had to be him-the shadow of the antenna on the remote control he was holding gave it away.

    

    She knew she would need to be much closer to fire an effective shot. Dane’s position was simply too far away and she couldn’t judge where exactly his head would be on the other side of the greenhouse.

    

    An old piece of rusty iron grating was situated between her rooftop and the next, forming a makeshift bridge over the alley. It was only three feet wide and it was hard to tell how long it had been there. It didn’t look very secure, but that must have been what Dane used to cross over.

    

    She lowered her rifle and turned back to Leon. “I know where he’s at,” she said. “He knows we’re here. He’s hiding from us.”

    

    “No, he’s probably setting a trap,” Leon replied. He covered his mouth to suppress a cough, his face tensing up from the pressure in his lungs. He painfully continued, “If he’s smart enough to organize an undead-pride parade, then he’s smart enough to bait us into something.”

    

    “Won’t happen,” she told him. She pointed to the rooftops in the other direction, past the vanguard of the mob, and said, “I’ll take Dane. You get the pack leader. Get in front of them where you can get a clear shot through the eyes of its helmet. Don’t go back down to the street. Stay up high.”

    

    “You think I’m an action hero or something?” Leon scoffed, motioning with his arm to the gaping chasm three buildings away. “There’s an alley to jump over.”

    

    “You can do it, stud. Just get the pack leader. It’ll be the only one that doesn’t look so damned aimless. You’ll recognize it.”

    

    Unable to hold back any longer, Leon turned away from her, leaned over and put his hands on his knees, then began a coughing fit so hard and fierce that it startled even her. It sounded wet, like he was on the verge of vomiting.

    

    Courtney put her hand on his shoulder and tried to comfort him. She whispered, “We’re almost done. The pack leader is probably the only zombie Dane equipped with a receiver to collect the signals he’s transmitting. If we stop the pack leader and Dane at the same time, it’ll be over.”

    

    Leon continued coughing, eventually spewing droplets of gross yellow saliva. After taking a few moments to get his lungs under control again, he mumbled, “I’m trying, doll. I really am. I just don’t feel too good right now.”

    

    She stepped in front of him and lifted his head so she could see his face. Though his physical appearance hadn’t worsened since the beach, she knew the infection inside his body was multiplying and consuming his organs. He was obviously trying to hide this pain from her, but his legs were noticeably trembling.

    

    Through pale, chapped lips he uttered, “I bet you don’t think I’m such a pretty guy anymore, do you?”

    

    She forced a slight grin as she replied, “You’re still a pretty guy.”

    

    “So you finally admit it?” he asked. “You sleep with me, but you have to wait until I’m dying before you pay me a compliment?”

    

    “You’re not dying.”

    

    “Save it for the tourists,” he replied, bringing himself fully upright again. “Let’s get this over with.”

    

    She took a step back and nodded her head with finality.

    

    “Be careful with Dane,” Leon said.

    

    “I will,” she replied. “You be careful too. We’ll meet back here when we’re finished.”

    

    He nodded, though they both knew that meeting again might not be possible.

    

    Leon took the rifle off his shoulder and held it at ready as he walked to the other side of the rooftop. He threw a leg over the short wall and put his foot on the adjoining building, then continued in the direction the zombies were headed on the street below.

    

    

    

    The wind rippling calmly through her hair, Courtney carefully balanced her feet on the grating that spanned across the alley between the two buildings. It was wobbly and made all kinds of noises under her weight, but she knew it had to be what Dane used to get to where he was. If the bridge supportedhis weight, then she knew it could support hers.

    

    Several zombies had flocked to the area below. Some were ascending the fire escape she and Leon had used to access the rooftop, but she knew it would take them a long time to reach the summit. When they did, they would then have to negotiate the ladder extending from the top floor to the rooftop. Zombies weren’t known for their outstanding coordination, but they wereknown for their persistence. They would be able to climb the ladder, but it would take even more time than climbing up the stairs on the fire escape.

    

    She wasn’t too worried about them, even as their moans and groans echoed up the alley and haunted her ears.

    

    She finished crossing the bridge and hopped down on the adjacent rooftop. She took her rifle off her shoulder and slid the bolt lever back then forward again to load a bullet into the firing chamber. She hurried across the rooftop, heading to where Dane was hiding. Luckily there were no more alleys to cross. Every building between her and her target was flush.

    

    As she stepped over to the next rooftop, she found a fully clothed human skeleton in a sitting position against the wall. Its biker-style leather attire suggested it was male. A large hole erupted out of the top of its head. A rusty discolored shotgun was positioned vertically across the chest, the barrel situated below the jaw and the butt planted between the corpse’s legs. A bony index finger was still stuck in the trigger guard.

    

    Unlike the corpse she had seen dangling from the noose over Main Street on her first trip through Wakefield, this body had no suicide note. The person probably figured it was a waste of time to write a letter. After all, the city was populated only by the undead and they weren’t known to be heavy readers.

    

    This corpse, however, was a likely candidate to have been the one to place the metal grating over the alleyway. She wondered if the person ever considered that someone else would be using the makeshift bridge all these years later.

    

    She passed the corpse and continued across the rooftop.

    

    There were only three buildings separating her and her target now; a distance of about fifty yards.

    

    She figured this was close enough.

    

    She lifted her rifle and took aim.

    

    Dane’s silhouette had changed somewhat. Now instead of the shadow of the remote control in his hands, there was a shadow of a revolver-probably the same one he had had pressed to her head on the cruiseliner.

    

    She squinted her left eye and peered through the scope with her right eye. She took a few moments to judge where his head might be on the other side of the greenhouse, then situated the crosshairs in that area.

    

    She steadied her shoulder and pulled the trigger.

    

    These .22 Hornets didn’t give off much noise when fired and since they were for distance shooting, silencers weren’t necessary. The unmuffled sound of the gun was quite satisfying for Courtney, especially when the fired bullet burst through the panes of the greenhouse and sent shards of glass crashing to the rooftop in a fantastic display of lights and colors.

    

    Dane’s silhouette was moving sporadically, showing panic. She could see some of the area on the other side of the greenhouse through the broken glass, but none of Dane’s body was visible. She waited for a moment, hoping he might come out of hiding, but he didn’t.

    

    She cocked the rifle and took aim again, situating the crosshairs in the area where Dane’s head might be.

    

    She pulled the trigger.

    

    Another satisfying firing sound came from the rifle and an even more satisfying crashing sound of glass breaking followed. The entire frame of the greenhouse was beginning to crumble now, losing stability due to the missing panes that used to help support it. As more and more of the structure fell, more of the area beyond was becoming visible. Soon she saw a most promising sight:

    

    Blood.

    

    It was sprayed against the glass on the far side the greenhouse. She knew now that she had hit her mark-hopefully fatally.

    

    She saw the revolver fall and clatter to the rooftop, then Dane emerged from behind the greenhouse, blood spilling from the shoulder where his familiar satchel bag dangled. He appeared to be heading to the stairway shack on the other side.

    

    Courtney quickly fired her rifle again, missing. She cocked it and took aim once more, trying to keep up with the moving target.

    

    Her next shot sent a bullet into Dane’s arm, spilling more blood across the rooftop. However, he appeared unfazed and hardly lost his stride. When he reached the door to the stairway, Courtney cocked the rifle and put a bullet into the door.

    

    This was enough to finally deter Dane. Instead of opening the door and running inside, he dashed around the shack and hid on the other side.

    

    All of her rifle ammunition depleted, Courtney laid it down and pulled theSocom from its holster. She knew she had expended most of the magazine shooting zombies on the street, so she dropped it and loaded a new one.

    

    She held the handgun at ready as she hurried across the rooftops to get closer to Dane. She cast occasional glances at the revolver he had dropped, making sure he didn’t try to retrieve it.

    

    As she got near she heard him yell, “You shot me!”

    

    “Well, duh, asshole!” she replied. “Does it hurt?!”

    

    “Of course not!” he called back. “It’s just annoying! You should have stayed locked up on the ship! Now I’m going to catch you and I’m going to eat you!”

    

    Courtney didn’t return a taunt. She slowed down as she stepped over the short wall separating the rooftops and then sidestepped around the shack Dane hid behind, staying far away so he couldn’t get a jump on her. She kept the red dot from the laser sight at the approximate height of his head, waiting for him to appear so he could eat a bullet.

    

    “I bet you’ll be soft and tender!” Dane shouted from the other side of the shack, laughing maniacally. “You’ll taste good with ketchup!”

    

    From the direction of his voice, she realized he was circling around the shack the opposite way, keeping the obstruction between them. She fired three shots into the rotting wood in one-foot intervals, hoping maybe they would go all the way through and hit him.

    

    None appeared to. Dane was still laughing like the whole thing was a joke. If he had been shot again he certainly didn’t care.

    

    Courtney continued sidestepping, then dashed back the way she came, hoping to cut him off. However, Dane predicted her movement and stayed away.

    

    Frustrated, Courtney shouted, “C’mon, Dane! I’m tired of playing ring around the rosey! Come out and I’ll make it quick!”

    

    “But I can keep this up forever!” he retorted. “I’m immortal, stupid girl.”

    

    “I’m twenty-two, dumbass!”

    

    “And you could have been twenty-two forever if you’d have used the syringe I left for you! Now you’re going to be naked on a platter with an apple shoved in your mouth!” Then, in singsong, he added, “I’m-gonna-eat-you-uuuuup!”

    

    Having enough of this game, Courtney sprayed the shack with bullets from her Socom, keeping them all at head level and sending splints of wood flying through the air.

    

    Dane simply laughed during the entire onslaught. When it was over, she could see one of his eyes peeking at her through one of the many holes the bullets left in their wake. She dropped the magazine from her gun and quickly locked in a new one. If she had to bring down the whole shack to get to him, then so be it.

    

    However, just as soon as she locked the new magazine into the butt of her gun, Dane seized the opportunity and dashed from around the shack and lunged at her. She hurriedly lifted her gun and fired two rounds, one hitting him in the shoulder and the other missing entirely.

    

    She didn’t get a chance to fire again.

    

    He was already on her, latching on to the barrel of the gun with both hands and aiming it away from his body. She tried forcing the silencer towards his head, but he was too strong.

    

    They went to the ground, both struggling for control of the gun. Courtney instinctively went to her back and used her legs to form a Jiu-Jitsu guard, preventing him from gaining leverage by keeping her feet planted on the insides of his hips. While he wasn’t able to move up on her, he was able to slip a finger into the trigger guard of the Socom and force her own finger to squeeze off the remaining rounds in the magazine.

    

    Every bullet flew into the air unanswered until there were no more bullets left and the gun made only a clicking sound when the trigger was pulled. Both Courtney and Dane gave up on the gun and allowed it to fall to the rooftop.

    

    He tried punching her, but his fists swung like uncoordinated sledgehammers and he was grunting before each one to add extra impact. He may as well have been sending a telegraph to announce their arrival.

    

    She ducked her head left and right and dodged them all. The closest one got was barely nicking her ear.

    

    He then reached forward with both hands, spreading his fingers, making it obvious he was going to attempt to choke her.

    

    She elevated her legs and rolled onto her shoulders to prevent him from grabbing hold. She then shifted her hips, putting her body perpendicular under his, and swung one leg around to try trapping his right arm so she could lock it between her legs and break it with a thrust of her pelvis, but he was too strong and he easily pulled his arm free.

    

    She seriously doubted he knew Jiu-Jitsu-much less the maneuvers she was attempting-but despite his sissy temperament the pansy was actually pretty tough.

    

    None of her tricks were working.

    

    As she struggled beneath his weight, she could hear another .22 Hornet being fired in the distance. It meant that Leon had caught up to the pack leader and was putting bullets into its brain.

    

    There were three shots, then silence.

    

    Leon had done it.

    

    “You know what that was?” Courtney gritted, staring up at Dane and catching her breath. “That was the sound of your army being put down.How’s it feel to be a loser?”

    

    Dane snarled and reached out to try to choke her again.

    

    Courtney trapped his arms against her chest and grabbed his sweater with both hands, feeling the chainmail underneath, then pulled him forward as she kicked his knees out from under him, causing him to lose his balance. She swept him off and quickly stood up.

    

    She drew her wakizashi.

    

    Dane scurried away on his hands and knees to the remains of the greenhouse about twenty feet away. He picked up a long shard of glass and then stood up and pointed it at her in a threatening manner.

    

    His crude weapon didn’t stack up too well when compared to her sword. Courtney could tell Dane understood this. She could see the fear growing in his eyes.

    

    “You know it’s not just me you’d be killing,” Dane uttered, almost stuttering. “You’d be killing evolution itself.”

    

    “What happened to the world wasn’t evolution, you psycho,” Courtney replied.

    

    “It is evolution!” Dane shouted, throwing his arms in the air and waving the shard of glass like a baton. “You know how I know? Because zombies attack and feed only on warm flesh! They don’t kill each other! Before the dead began to rise, all we humans did was make war and rape and pillage and plunder like a bunch of goddamn pirates! Zombies are beyond that! They’reabove humans! Can’t you see it?!”

    

    Courtney raised the wakizashi and started to step forward.

    

    “Wait! Just wait!” Dane shouted. He removed the satchel bag from his shoulder and displayed it to her. It was covered with blood from the many times he had been shot. He said, “Don’t kill me. I’m going to get something out of this bag. It’s not a gun or anything. Just let me show you.”

    

    Before Courtney could reply, he slowly opened the bag and reached into it. When he pulled his hand out-slowly-he had another syringe gripped in his fingers. This one had pinkish liquid swishing around inside and the capped needle was almost six inches long.

    

    It wasn’t another tranquilizer and it wasn’t the green gunk he left with her on the bridge of the cruiseliner. It was something else entirely.

    

    He whispered, “Do you know what this is?”

    

    She answered, “Should I care?”

    

    Dane rolled his eyes and said, “Use your head.”

    

    “What?”

    

    “Your head! It’s that useless lump three feet above your ass!”

    

    Having quite enough of this standoff, Courtney readied her wakizashi and stepped forward again. However, she stopped in her tracks when Dane casually tossed the syringe at her feet.

    

    It laid there on the rooftop, shining under the setting sun. She gazed down atit , then back up at Dane.

    

    He informed her, “That’s the Cure-The one and only. I saw your boyfriend in the humvee when you drove into town. He’s infected, isn’t he?”

    

    “He’s not my boyfriend,” Courtney solemnly replied. “But yes, thanks to you, he’s infected.”

    

    “Then take that syringe and leave me alone. Stop interfering with evolution and the natural order of things. Take him and find an island somewhere and spend the rest of your lives making wild, passionate love. Just leave me alone.”

    

    Courtney could admit that Dane’s somewhat romantic French-Canadian mannerisms almost made him sound convincing. He probably would have made a very good spokesman for some expensive brand of cologne.

    

    Then again, she knew there was no such thing as a Cure.

    

    “I’m not stupid, Dane,” she said. “Why would a freak like you carry a cure around when you just want to kill every last living human?”

    

    “The reasons should be obvious,” Dane replied. “I locked you up and left you a serum so you could be immortal like me, but I knew there was a chance you wouldn’t use it. If I found another attractive lady after the attack on Eastpointe, I could save her if she had been bitten and bring her back to you. If you used the serum, we could dine together. If you didn’t, the other lady surely would and we would dine on you.”

    

    Courtney gulped and gazed down at the syringe once more. No matter how creepy his explanation was, it made sense in its own diabolical little way.

    

    She knelt down to pick up the syringe, keeping her wakizashi pointed toward Dane.

    

    As she did this, Dane tucked the shard of glass under his arm and pulled a very familiar lighter out of his pocket. He then took something else from the satchel bag-a cylindrical aluminum pipe about five inches wide and a foot and a half long. It was capped at both ends.

    

    Courtney stood up once more, syringe in hand.

    

    Dane was smiling as he put the lighter to the end of the pipe where a fuse was sticking out. He held this position, threatening to ignite it as he calmly explained, “I never lied about finding a Cure. I never lied about using a pipe bomb to destroy Eastpointe’s walls either. It would be a shame to use it here and now, but I will if I have to. I’ll blow us both to smithereens. Leave.”

    

    Courtney tucked the syringe into her belt where extra rifle ammunition used to be stored. It fit nice and snug. She then gripped the hilt of the wakizashiwith both hands, getting a firm hold.

    

    She reeled back the blade and stepped forward.

    

    “You don’t have time to fight me!” Dane shouted, hurriedly lighting the fuse. “This’ll go boom in thirty seconds!”

    

    Courtney replied, “Thirty seconds? I only need one.”

    

    

    

    

 

    

 

    

    

    Had she been a lip-reader, she might have realized what Dane was trying to say were the foulest obscenities a man can throw at a woman. It proved that-just like zombies-Dane’s head would continue to function when severed as long as the brain was undamaged. However, since he no longer had access to his vocal cords, he couldn’t give sounds to the curses his mouth was forming.

    

    It didn’t matter though. He wasn’t going anywhere.

    

    Next to his head was his severed arm, chainmail sliced cleanly in two. Though the arm didn’t move, it still held the pipe bomb in a tight grip between its fingers. Courtney kneeled down and pulled the bomb loose, then pinched the fuse between her thumb and forefinger of her gloved hand. To her dismay, the sparks continued to burn down the fuse from the inside out.

    

    Panicking, she flung the bomb off the roof where it fell six stories down toMain Street. It bounced off some random zombie’s head, leaving a large dent in its cranium, and landed on the pavement amidst hundreds of shuffling feet.

    

    Covering her ears, Courtney peered over the edge to watch the result.

    

    It was magnificent really. There was a thunderous boom and a fiery explosion that sent every zombie in a thirty-foot radius sailing through the air in little bits and pieces and dominoing many others, showering them with blood. When the dust settled and the smoke cleared, there was a large crater in the middle of the road.

    

    Courtney uncovered her ears.

    

    She picked up her wakizashi and sheathed it, then picked up her Socomwhere it had been lost during the struggle with Dane. She reached into the back of her belt for another clip and loaded it into the gun. Finally, she situated the red dot on Dane’s forehead and pulled the trigger. His existence ended rather awkwardly in mid-swear with his tongue dangling out of his mouth.

    

    Courtney dashed back across the rooftops.

    

    Leon was on the other side of the bridge across the alley, putting bullets into the heads of all the zombies who had followed them up the ladder. There were at least thirty walking around on the rooftop now, with many more already terminated and lying face down.

    

    Courtney began highlighting their heads with the red dot and pulling the trigger. When her clip was exhausted, she dropped it and loaded the final one. With five more shots and Leon’s help, they cleared all but one of the zombies. Deciding to save her last few bullets, Courtney gave the final zombie-some horrendously ugly dead guy with wire-frame glasses-a hard front kick to the ribcage, sending it head over heels off the roof and down to the alley below.

    

    However, it landed on something a lot softer than concrete.

    

    Peering down there, Courtney could see that every zombie in Wakefield was gathering around the building, shoulder-to-shoulder as they clawed at the bricks. She could not even see the actual street beneath their bodies. Hundreds more undead were in line coming up the fire escape and negotiating the ladder. They had also engulfed the two humvees parked below. Everywhere she looked, wrinkled blue faces were staring back at her.

    

    In her hurried plan to eliminate Dane, this was something she had forgotten to factor in. Since there wasn’t a pack leader herding the zombies anymore, the entire undead army was coming after the food stranded on the rooftop above.

    

    The odds were not in her favor.

    

    

    

    Leon staggered across the makeshift bridge to the rooftop Courtney was on and then collapsed, sitting weakly with his back against the wall. His arms hung lazily at his sides and he let go of his gun. He started coughing.

    

    Groaning and gritting her teeth, Courtney grabbed the sides of the heavy metal grating and lifted it enough to drop it down into the alley. It whistled as it fell, thencame down hard on the skulls of several zombies, crushing them upon impact. Now it didn’t matter how many ghouls came up the fire escape-they still wouldn’t be able to cross the chasm and get to their meal on the other side.

    

    Courtney went to Leon and knelt in front of him. She said, “They’re all over thehumvees. They’re everywhere. But we might be able to cross the next rooftop and find a way down somewhere else.”

    

    He lifted his weary head, eyelids halfway closed, forced a cough to stay in his chest by swallowing it back down, and muttered, “You can, but I’m just going to stayhere. Sorry.”

    

    She reached into her belt and pulled out the syringe Dane had given her. She displayed it to Leon and said, “You’re going to be okay. This is the Cure.”

    

    He forced his eyelids open and replied, “Says who? Says Dane?”

    

    “Yeah,” she said. “I think he was telling the truth.”

    

    “And what if he wasn’t? What if it causes me more pain?”

    

    “Leon-”

    

    “-No,” he interrupted. “I’m dying, Courtney. I don’t want any more complications. I just want to go easy.”

    

    Courtney dropped the syringe and put her palms on his cheeks, forcing him to focus on her eyes. She sternly told him, “Leon, yes, you are dying. And you will die unless we take a chance that Dane was telling the truth.”

    

    Leon weakly shook his head side-to-side.

    

    “Leon, please,” Courtney begged, “Let me do this. Let me at least try to help you.”

    

    Leon, seeing wetness forming across her eyelids, asked, “Why?”

    

    She swallowed hard. She knew there were a lot of reasons why she didn’t want him to die and she knew she didn’t have time to discuss them all. For starters, it would take both of them working together to even have a chance of escaping this dead city. If one died the other would probably end up like the leather-clad corpse on the next rooftop who had swallowed his own shotgun. Besides that, she wanted to tell Leon that maybe he wasn’t such a bad guy after all and that she thought he died once already and she didn’t like it. On top of that, there weren’t many decent guys left in the world to pick from. She didn’t want him to simply fade away.

    

    So she stated, “I don’t want you to die.”

    

    He sighed and turned his head. He mumbled, “It might be too late anyway.”

    

    “But it might not,” she quickly replied.

    

    “And suppose it is the Cure,” he pointed out, “Are you sure you want to use the last of it on me?”

    

    She gently turned his head so he was looking at her again and very sincerely replied, “Yes. Every drop of it.”

    

    He stared into her eyes and she stared back.

    

    After a moment he whispered, “Okay, we’ll give it a try.”

    

    With a breath of relief, Courtney pulled the cap off the needle and-after seeing how long and thick it truly was-commented, “I think it has to be injected straight into your heart.”

    

    “What?!”

    

    “Your heart,” she repeated. “You know, like an adrenaline shot?”

    

    “You’re using a lot of guesswork here.”

    

    “But it makes sense. By injecting it directly into your heart it would spread the dormant infection through your bloodstream a lot faster. Don’t you remember Dane’s lecture?”

    

    Leon weakly shrugged his shoulders and mumbled, “Dane was full of shit about a lot of things.”

    

    Courtney motioned for him to lean forward, then she unzipped his wetsuit in the back and pulled it off his shoulders, minding the bandaged bite wound, and tugged it off his arms.

    

    His torso was no longer just pale-it was turning blue.

    

    Courtney ran her finger over his chest, using it to feel for the area where his heart was beating. When she found it she memorized it before pulling her hand away.

    

    She hoped it wasn’t too late.

    

    She sniffled and wiped her eyes, clearing her vision. Her breath was beginning to flutter. She forced herself to stay strong just a little longer.

    

    She took aim with the needle and reeled it back. She knew she would need a lot of force and momentum to pierce his breastplate.

    

    She whispered, “Are you ready?”

    

    He nodded.

    

    With one powerful stroke she drove the needle into his chest and pushed the plunger. Leon’s head fell back and his mouth opened and he screamed long and loud-so loud he drowned out the moans and groans of the dead city.

    

    His body startled convulsing.

    

    She pulled out the needle and tossed it, then wrapped her arms around him to hold him still. His body shook for several more seconds, then gradually the shaking subsided.

    

    She let go and studied his face, almost expecting him to be dead, but he was still very much alive. Actually, nothing seemed to change at all.

    

    She asked, “Do you feel any different?”

    

    He paused as he evaluated his condition, and replied, “I can’t tell.”

    

    Courtney sat down beside him and leaned against the wall as zombies on the adjacent rooftop started moaning and hollering even louder, angry that they could no longer see their would-be meal. She situated herself close to Leon and let her head rest on his shoulder. She brought her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, locking her fingers.

    

    They had a nice view of the setting sun from here.

    

    After a moment Leon said, “If I’m still alive in the morning we’ll see about getting out of here.”

    

    “And we’ll know the Cure works,” Courtney added. “We can go back to the ship and search for more. Later, of course.”

    

    “Oh, hell with that,” Leon tiredly replied. “Somebody else can do it.”

    

    “Good idea.”

    

    He turned his head to face her and added, “But if it doesn’t work you’re going to have to shoot me. You know that, right?”

    

    Courtney sniffled and nodded slightly. She whispered, “I know.”

    

    Together they watched the sun go down. Aside from the riotous noise of all the moaning and groaning and shuffling feet of the thousands of undead surrounding them, it was a perfect twilight.

    

    And she didn’t take it for granted.