“INNOVATIVE AND BREATHTAKING . . . WILL REIGNITE

LONG-LOST FEARS AND KEEP YOU UP AT NIGHT.”

—BRYAN BEATTIE, AUTHOR OF OASIS

Inside its walls, a community of survivors scratches out a terrifying existence. Outside, hordes of undead pound relentlessly against the barriers and rattle the gates of the humans’ last sanctuary—Eden.

Overnight, the world transforms into a barren wasteland ravaged by plague and overrun by hordes of flesh-eating zombies. In the aftermath of the gruesome destruction of New York City and its inhabitants, a small band of desperate men and women stand their ground in a fortified compound in what had once been the outer borough of Queens. Those who built the walls of Eden fell prey long ago to the undead . . . those who remain survive by sheer determination, camaraderie, and human ingenuity, making forays into the outside world through the network of pipes under the city streets.

Harris—the exceptional honest man in this dead world—races against time to solve a murder while fighting to maintain his own humanity. Ultimately, the danger posed by the dead and diseased masses clawing at Eden’s walls pales in comparison to the deceit and treachery Harris faces within.

“A WONDERFUL, ENGAGING NOVEL THAT WILL

CONTINUE TO RESONATE EMOTIONALLY, LONG

AFTER THE FINAL PAGE IS READ.”–HORRORSCOPE

TONY MONCHINSKI a high school teacher, lives with his family in Peekskill, New York. His other novels include I Kill Monsters, Fury, and the sequels to Eden—Eden: Crusade and Eden: Resurrection.

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The wall surrounding Eden had been constructed shortly after the beginning of the outbreak. Dozens of people worked night and day while dozens more patrolled the perimeter, keeping the zombies out, or so the story went. No one inside the walls today had been around to witness the erection of the walls.

Harris thought how insane that must have been, building this wall with the undead gathering, hundreds of the things, thousands, innumerable.

If he closed his eyes, he could almost hear the block as it once had been: children crying out, playing stickball and tag. A Mr. Frosty ice-cream truck blaring its tune. Kids screaming to mom and dad for money to buy bomb pops, Nutty Buddy cones, soft serve. A chopper barreling down the block, car alarms set off by the barely muffled V-Twin engine.

When one looked at the walls and beyond, one realized just how different things had become. Normal had done a complete one-eighty.

Praise for Eden:

“Zombies. Guns. Chaos in New York. It’s hard to go wrong in a zombie book where the hero is infected right from the get-go.”

—Bryce Beattie, StoryHack.com

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

Copyright © 2008 by Tony Monchinski and Permuted Press. All Rights Reserved.

Originally Published in 2008 by Permuted Press

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions

thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Gallery Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Gallery Books trade paperback edition December 2011

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Designed by Renata Di Biase

10   9   8   7   6   5   4   3   2   1

ISBN 978-1-4516-4684-9

ISBN 978-1-4516-4686-3 (ebook)

For Kilgore Trout

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

The frailty of everything revealed at last

—Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“Yeah they’re dead. They’re all messed up.”

—Sheriff McClelland,

Night of the Living Dead (1968)

So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the

garden of Eden Cherubim, and a flaming sword which

turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life

—Genesis, 3:24

“The whole burden of civilization has fallen on us.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means we do not cross against the light.”

—Night of the Comet (1984)

1.

The bite woke him up.

“Motherfucker!”

Harris exploded out of bed, naked. Julie, his woman, startled awake beside him, was sitting up and blinking. He bodily drove the rotten, undead thing that had invaded their bedroom and attacked them in their sleep, propelling it across the room, ramming the creature with his shoulder hard enough to drive it through the drywall. Something inside the beast broke audibly on impact, but its teeth were still gnashing, still straining to taste flesh as its jagged black fingernails clawed at Harris.

He felt no pain. His senses were nearly overpowered, so much washing over him at once: the low inhuman moans, the stink of necrotic, mottled flesh, the shambling forms stumbling through their bedroom. Harris’s last night on Earth was behind him forever.

Weak, predawn trails of sun leaked in through the blind-covered windows. The stench of putrid flesh was everywhere, nauseating. What once were human beings were now dead things, lurching through their bedroom, coming for him, coming for Julie.

“Harris!” Julie yelled.

Bull-fucking-shit! In a pure, white-hot rage, his fists balled, Harris aimed three feet past the head of the undead pinned against the wall. As the monster struggled to dislodge itself, Harris punched it with everything he had and then some. The soft, decaying skull collapsed under his clenched fist, and he was wrist deep in its head. He pulled his fist back; gore and gray matter clung to his hand, stuck between his fingers, gobs of it dripping to the floor.

The thing was truly dead now: a death it wouldn’t be coming back from.

Julie was fully awake, her revolver retrieved from the bedside—Boom! Boom!—the sound was deafening in the confines of the bedroom, the hammer dropping repeatedly. What feeble sunlight filtered into the room illuminated each blast from the Magnum. A zombie’s body jerked, head-shot, its skull contents spraying off into the shadows as the thing dropped. But a troupe of them still surrounded the bed, reaching for Julie. She methodically dispatched them one by one.

The darkness battled the light of the false dawn, casting so many more black stains on walls already shadowed.

Another of the undead attacked, this one moving fast, loping, wearing dreadlocks under a tam that, miraculously, had not become dislodged during its undead adventures. It charged as Harris yanked the sheet from the bed, draping it over his shoulder, his nudity awkward, uncomfortable, and vulnerable. Harris was capable of coherent, linear thought again; he was no longer only reacting to a waking nightmare.

The zombie made noises, clacking what teeth it had, intent on making a meal of him.

Harris roared gutturally, something human but only just, a primal fury unleashed as he launched himself forward to meet the thing, colliding with it in a diving tackle. Both of them sprawled.

Harris scrambled around on the floor, got above the zombie, and punched down on its head repeatedly. This one’s skull was solid and refused to yield.

The undead shifted its weight, dislodging him. It clawed its way around the bedroom floor, finally losing the tam, its ratty dreadlocks splaying around its head. It greedily sought its prey, looking to grab onto a foot, a limb, to drag Harris close, to sink its teeth into his flesh. Its hunger was insatiable and instinct driven. The beast knew no fear.

Looking up, it saw the man with the bedsheet about his torso and shoulder like an improvised toga.

Harris had the 12-gauge, the pump always kept barrel up beside the bed. He thumbed the safety, no need to trombone the slide. As the undead creature sprang shrieking from the floor toward his throat Harris squeezed the trigger—

The headless thing flopped onto the floor. Cordite and gunpowder competed with fetid putrescent flesh. Harris pumped the shotgun, vaulting on top of the bed where Julie—her revolver emptied and now being used as a club to bat at the zombies groping for her from the other side—grunted as she kicked and swiped at their heads, fighting for her life, determined not to—

The shotgun blast was devastating in the confines of their bedroom. It yanked both undead from their feet, slamming one against the wall, the brunt of the buckshot buried in its torso. The second beast was dumped on the floor, half of its face and its entire jaw missing.

Harris tromboned the shotgun and stepped down from the bed, the empty shell bouncing off the mattress and clattering across the hardwood floor.

“Are you okay?” he asked Julie.

She was cool and calm in her actions, quietly reloading the revolver from one of the speedloaders on the nightstand beside their bed. The key to survival was to keep one’s head straight at all times and in all situations. Julie was aware of this. Only her voice betrayed her, trembling, barely concealing the shock and revulsion gripping her.

“I’m okay,” she lied. “I’m fine.”

“Okay.” Harris breathed deep, working one foot and then the other into his low-rise chukkas, still loosely laced from the night before.

He could hear them coming, more of the zombies beyond the bedroom door. They were creeping down the hallway, searching. Leveling the shotgun in the direction of the door, Harris skirted the bed to the bureau. The chair there had toppled in the confusion of the early morning melee, and his shoulder holster holding the twin 9-millimeters was somewhere on the floor.

A faint rustling, an undead—its spine severed by the shotgun blast—slapped with one hand at the wall against which it lay. Its eyes followed first Harris, then Julie. The zombie couldn’t move any more than to pound the wall with an open palm, a fish out of water, doomed to flop about on solid ground.

Julie flicked on the lamp at her nightstand as Harris spotted his shoulder rig and pistols under a corpse. He pulled the leather strap from beneath the limp body, slinging the holster across one shoulder the way Buddy used to do with his saddlebags.

A soft moan came from the doorway. The zombie was revealed in the light from the lamp. It had been a nurse once; its stained uniform bore a smudged nametag. Harris had no inclination to know its name; such a thought was a strange one to have anyway. Whatever had once constituted its humanity was long absent. The thing staggered into the room looking for breakfast.

Julie put it down clean, one between the eyes.

“I’ll clear out the rest of the house,” Harris told her. He worked as he spoke, retrieving his utility belt with the holstered .45, the extra magazines, the sheathed machete, strapping it onto himself around the bedsheet at his waist. “You stay here. Stay safe. Let me see what the hell is going on downstairs.”

“Harris.”

He looked at her questioningly.

“Don’t go pulling a Richard Simmons on me.”

He raised an eyebrow at her.

She gestured.

“Your balls.”

Harris adjusted the sheet.

The paralyzed undead was propped up in the corner, a streak of blood and viscera dripping down the wall above it. Its eyes darted between them. Though it appeared grievously injured, the thing felt nothing, darting a marbled tongue in and out of its drooling mouth.

Harris caught a glimpse of himself in the full-length mirror. In any other situation, he would have laughed at how he looked now, decked out as he was, wrapped in a bedsheet, bristling with guns, a foot-long machete strapped to his back. In another situation.

A bandolier of shotgun shells went over his shoulder, the one covered by the bedsheet.

Harris knew he’d been wounded, bitten. He just didn’t want to think about it yet.

Four easy strides took him to the bedroom door. They were out there, a lot of them. He could see two of the undead bouncing against the walls, reeling down the hall toward him. The first wore jeans and an open flannel shirt over a bare chest. Its bloated belly was sagging. They would eat until their stomachs burst and then they would keep eating.

The second wore a bathrobe and one slipper. Harris wondered how it’d managed to keep the one slipper all this time.

Behind the two on the landing, a third undead spied Harris and howled at the top of its lungs, something both evil and intelligent in its gaze.

The first two caught sight of him and also started to make noise impatiently. The sounds they made never ceased to send chills up Harris’s spine.

He pumped the 12-gauge, all business. Thumbed another shell into the slide.

He looked back at Julie.

“Honey,” he said, motioning at the thing on the floor, the zombie impotently palming the wall. “Do me a favor and take care of that one.”

“I will,” said Julie. Now dressed in shorts and one of Harris’s T-shirts, she checked the safety of the tricked-out black rifle. The collapsible stock, vertical foregrip, rail-mounted flip-up front site, M-7 bayonet, and carbine-length free-floating rail system all lent the AR-15 a ventilated look.

They always slept with their guns next to their bed, fully loaded. It was what one did.

Harris turned back to the hallway, stepping out onto the cool carpet, determined to drive the undead invaders from their home.

His curse had woken her, had saved her. Julie had only heard Harris curse once before. She wouldn’t describe him as a prude. He claimed his job had taught him patience, taught him to temper his tongue. Harris reserved what he considered strong words for situations that required them.

The one time Julie had heard Harris curse, the words had accompanied actions she considered out of character for the man she knew better than anyone else.

Julie spread her legs above either side of the felled beast, the thing spastically flapping its one hand against the wall faster than before, excited. She lunged with the AR-15, embedding the fixed bayonet into its braincase under one eye. She jiggled it there, feeling the tip of the bayonet scraping the back of the zombie’s skull. The hand had gone limp in its lap.

She pulled the bayonet free, the eyeball collapsing farther back into the socket.

Harris walked the house, dispatching the undead, clearing rooms. He could hear gunfire from outside as the residents of Eden joined the fray. It seemed like there were dozens of zombies in his house. He wondered how many all told had breached their walled enclave.

Five of them had Mr. Vittles trapped under the entertainment center in the living room.

“Vittles,” Harris called, alarmed. The zombies looked up at him from where they crouched and squatted, swiping at the cat in his hideaway. Vittles hissed from somewhere unseen, presumably safe, still in the fight.

Propping the shotgun against the living room wall and unsheathing the machete, Harris waded into the zombies. Their arms, outstretched and reaching for him, dropped to the hardwood floor, their skulls cleaved.

The zombies moaned outside, audible even over the whoops—human sounds—and staccato gunfire.

Harris brought the cutting edge of his machete down as hard as he could, missing the intended skull, splitting a zombie from sternum to stomach. It was unfazed and wrapped its arms around Harris’s knees, threatening to take him to the floor. Harris wrenched free from its embrace, brought his booted foot down once, twice, again, and mashed the zombie’s head into the floor, dislodging an eyeball from its orbit, cracking its skull. Still Harris pummeled it, switching to his other foot now, all sorts of gore adorning the steel-toed chukkas.

When most of its skull contents had pooled on the hardwood around it, Harris stepped back and looked over the scene. He bent and wrenched the machete free from where it was lodged in the unmoving nasty’s trunk.

Vittles poked his head out from under the entertainment center, then shot like a bolt into the kitchen, out of sight again.

Harris was breathing heavily as he scabbarded the blade. He took up the shotgun and reloaded it from the bandolier. Two more zombies were stumbling over each other to get through the doorway into the house. Harris put them both down, thumbed more shells into the shotgun, took one last look around, and made his way outside.

The firefight in the street was intense. The wall had been breached and hundreds of the undead stumbled about. Eden’s denizens fought back, firing their assault rifles on semi-auto, always aiming for the head, conserving ammo, keeping it together as they set about their grim task.

Julie sat in a window on the second floor, sniping at the undead with the AR-15.

It looked like their house had been the first one hit, which meant that the break had to be nearby. Harris stood in his doorway and fired the shotgun, pumped it, fired, pumped and fired until he emptied it completely. The zombies were close enough that each shotgun blast scored a head shot.

There was a scream and a zombie came at him full speed. Harris raised the shotgun and clobbered it over the head. The thing puddled on the steps to his porch. Harris drew one of the twin 9-mils and sent a single bullet into its skull.

He closed the door to the house and buttressed the shotgun against it.

Harris worked his way down the street toward the wall, both 9-millimeters filling his hands. He waited until he couldn’t miss, walking right up to each undead and firing. One thing he had learned fast about shooting a gun: even in close quarters, most of your shots missed. What seemed to him now like a lifetime of fighting for his survival had steadied Harris’s hand. His aim was true.

Pop. One in the temple, the thing went down. Pop. Another through the mouth, the back of a skull lifting off. Pop. In one ear, out the side of a head. And so on.

“Howya, Harris!”

It was Bobby Evers, his neighbor in Eden. Bobby had a flamethrower and was hosing the undead down with a withering stream of fire. Evers and some other men and women were in a line, making their way toward Harris and his house. They herded the zombies back toward the wall before them, advancing in a staggered enfilade. They covered one another as they reloaded. Such tactics had been drilled and practiced.

Harris dropped the mags in the 9-millimeters, sliding home fresh ones, nodding in Bobby’s direction. Neither Bobby nor any of the others were fully dressed, but none of them was wrapped in a bedsheet either.

A steady stream of rifle fire came from above. Julie paused only to switch magazines. She concentrated on the zombies outside the shepherding gunfire and blaze, those lurching about wildly, some alight and flailing, screaming in their immolation.

Julie tried to lead one zombie that was lurching about like a caterwauling torch. A round from the AR-15 pocked the asphalt; another disappeared into the flaming mass as the thing reached the sidewalk. A third round kicked up cement dust from the walk. The zombie collapsed burning, draped over a fire hydrant, wailing the whole time until Julie breathed, sighted afresh, and placed a fourth round into the region of its flaming head. It shuddered once and slipped off the hydrant, gobs of its melted body clinging to the casement of the discharge pipe.

One by one they collapsed in the street and on sidewalks to burn and smolder silently.

Harris and Evers found the breach. When the wall around Eden had been constructed—before Harris or Julie or even Bobby had arrived—the residents had failed to build gates. They were more concerned with keeping the dead out and had no intention of ever leaving their haven. When those first inhabitants ran out of food, foraging missions had been led through the sewer system. The monsters outside their walls seemed unable or unwilling to navigate the miles of extensive tunnels beneath the city streets. After several unfortunate, jarring incidents, and after much arguing and discussion, the walls of Eden had been rebuilt, revamped this time to include gateways.

The break-in had occurred at one of the doors. The wall itself rose twelve feet above the street. Though some of the undead remained extremely agile, none could scale it. This particular gate was a heavy-duty security door salvaged from a Home Depot. Before the world had gone to shit, people who lived on these blocks in this outer-borough neighborhood would have installed such a door to protect themselves from crimes like burglary. That was long before anyone had to worry about the reanimated dead being hungry for human flesh.

Harris and Bobby Evers reached the door together, and found it unlocked and wide open. They would have looked at each other but they were preoccupied, Harris squeezing off round after round, Evers dousing the undead with flames. Some undead dropped while others were driven back outside, past the gate.

With his 9-millimeter out, Harris made a mad dash for the door, the machete loosed and hacking at undead heads and outstretched arms. He severed limbs and cleaved skulls, firing the .45 in his right hand, allowing for the recoil that jerked his arm up with each shot.

Thrusting the machete like a rapier before him, Harris drove it through the jaws of a particularly rotten undead. The blade lodged and the beast was propelled back, through the gate, and out into the no-man’s-land beyond where thousands of its kith thronged. Harris slammed the door shut, leaning his full body weight against it.

He pressed himself against the door, waiting while Bobby Evers slipped out of the flamethrower harness. Evers retrieved the crossbar from the cement as a zombie, charred black, reached for him. The fingers of its hands had been fused together in a blistery welding. The Irishman brought the crossbar down on its skull twice. By the time the steaming mass stopped twitching on the street the crossbar was in its proper place and the door was secured.

Evers, his back against the door, slid down to a seated position. He was huffing, his asthma catching up to him. Harris stepped back, mopping his brow with a forearm, contemplating the morning’s events and their implications.

“Looks like you done lost your machete,” Bobby noted.

“Looks like,” Harris agreed, panting.

“The fookin’ gate, Harris.” Bobby said what was on both their minds. “Go way outta that! How in the hell did this happen?”

Harris didn’t always understand Evers’s brogue. He stooped down and picked something up from the ground.

The gunshots within Eden’s walls slowly petered out. Those still alive within were finishing off those who were not.

“You’re a fookin’ mess, Harris. You okay?” A look of genuine concern was on Evers’s face. Harris looked like something that spent its days crawling around the floor of a slaughterhouse.

Harris knew Bobby was one of the good guys. Harris never doubted Bobby.

“None of it’s mine,” Harris lied, referring to the blood all over him.

Bobby nodded. “By the way, grand outfit.” The Irishman winked.

“Harris!”

Julie was coming down the block, her hair pulled back and kerchiefed. She was cradling the black rifle and the .357 holstered on her hip looked huge on her lithe frame.

Harris hugged her, ignoring the muck and gore and guns, and she hugged him back.

“Julie.”

Once in their bathroom, the door locked, Harris set about cleaning and inspecting himself. The plumbing did not work and hadn’t since before he’d moved in. Jugs of rainwater in the bathtub facilitated his cleanup. The communal baths erected on the opposite end of the block had hot water. Julie’d gone there, direct from their embrace.

Harris didn’t care to be seen as he peeled out of the damp, bloodstained bedsheet, letting it fall to the cool tiles.

The bite was on his upper right arm, almost at his shoulder. It wasn’t even such a bad bite: the skin was broken, but only just. His kid brother had been attacked by a dog once when they were young. One bite—way worse looking than this—but his brother had been fine. A shot from the doctor, a few stitches, a hug from Mom, Dad tousling his hair, and James was good as new.

Harris understood it wouldn’t be this way for him. The rules had changed. He knew what this bite meant.

If I ever get bitten, Buddy once told him, and I can’t do it myself, you do it for me, okay?

Harris sighed. He had always figured it would end like this.

If I can’t do it myself. The only hint of weakness Buddy had ever let on.

He’d told Buddy to be quiet, not to talk like that. But Buddy had persisted. Buddy always persisted.

Promise me, Harris. You put one in my head if I can’t do it myself. Promise me.

To shut the other man up, to get them off the topic, Harris had promised he would.

Harris looked at himself in the mirror. It is always strange, he thought, to gaze at oneself in the glass, to see oneself as others do, and not as we imagine. He hadn’t shaved, hadn’t cut his hair since . . . Since it all began. How long ago was that? A year and a half? Maybe more? Time no longer meant what it once did.

You don’t shave or cut that hair of yours, Buddy had told him, you’re gonna wind up looking like Charlton Heston in Planet of the Apes.

Harris had taken it as a compliment. Raquel had always thought Heston was hot in that movie.

Skull fragments were entangled in his hair.

Harris was feeling old. He was forty-four now. Perhaps it was time to feel that way, at least once in a while. He was already feeling a bit unwell, not quite himself. How much that was due to the bite as opposed to the circumstances surrounding the bite—being jolted from sleep by undead cannibals ferociously attacking him and the woman he loved—Harris could not discern.

He knew what would happen, what was bound to happen. What had to happen.

Harris would turn into one of those undead things after degenerating. He’d come back as something that would try to eat Julie and Bobby and anyone else it could. No matter how much they begged, no matter how much they implored and cried about what had been, the thing he would become would ignore their words and feast.

How would Buddy respond if he were here now? What would the big man say to him in a situation like this?

If it’d been Buddy injured like this, Harris had no doubt the man would have gone off on his own somewhere and eaten a bullet.

The skin around the bite was discolored, purple.

You da man. Buddy would have clapped him on the shoulder—the other shoulder. They’d have gone for a walk, Buddy’s idea, and as much as it might hurt him to do so, Buddy would have raised his silenced 9-millimeter when he thought Harris was unaware and dispatched him to whatever came after this life or the nothingness in its absence.

And Harris could not have blamed him.

For the first and only time, Harris was glad Buddy wasn’t around at that particular moment, because there was one thing he knew he had to do.

Harris reached down and picked up the object he’d found outside, next to the door in the wall. He’d known what it was as soon as he saw it, known whose it was.

The door in the wall had been unlocked. Someone had let zombies into Eden. Purposefully. The lock on the door to his and Julie’s house had also been broken open. Someone had meant for them to be the next human Happy Meal for the undead parade.

Why? Harris had his ideas. Who? Who, he was more solid on. There was little doubt there.

Harris flicked the wheel on the Zippo lighter he’d found, watching the blue and yellow flame flare up and catch. It was Thompson’s Zippo lighter, the one the nineteen-year-old fancied and carried everywhere.

This Harris knew.

2.

Joey, don’t forget,” Joy Noddings reminded the tenth-grader as he left her algebra class.

“What’s that, Ms. Noddings?” Joey was a good-looking kid, popular with the girls.

“Do your homework.”

Joy knew Joey wouldn’t do his homework. Joey didn’t do homework.

“Fo shizzle.” He was still good enough to go through the motions, to act like he cared. Maybe he did.

Joy Noddings was in her first year of teaching high school, fresh from a master’s degree program. The Hillcrest Alternative School had taken a chance and hired her to teach math.

The school was small, with a dozen staff members serving thirty children labeled emotionally and learning disabled. Though the small school was located in the upscale New York City suburb of Bedford Hills, the student body itself was quite diverse. Hillcrest had earned its reputation as the last stop for students who couldn’t cut it on the main high school campus across town.

The staff provided a more therapeutic setting than what was available to these kids at the regular high school, where over sixteen hundred students packed the halls. The main campus was an institutional setting where the traditional Hillcrest kid found herself, more often than not, in trouble.

Still, Joy was surprised that Hillcrest had taken her on.

Nervous at her interview, she’d gone home doubting herself, wondering how badly she’d bumbled the questions. To this day she was convinced that she owed the job to the good graces of Hillcrest’s principal. He was at least a couple of decades older than her. An attractive man, the type of guy who would be described as “distinguished” in a few more years. Joy admired her principal, especially his tough-but-fair demeanor with the often trying students of Hillcrest.

She also appreciated his professional attitude. Joy was used to drawing looks and the occasional catcall from the men on the corner waiting for work. She was relieved that her principal never crossed any lines with her, as opposed to her colleague in the math department whose eyes immediately went right to her chest whenever they encountered each other. Her principal wasn’t that way at all.

Ed was the boyfriend Joy had been dating for going on three years now. Ed was a nice enough guy and Joy figured she’d probably wind up marrying him when he asked. She honestly believed there was no one better out there. Her principal was married anyway.

Three years with Ed already and when was he going to ask? Joy found it ironic that even after she’d made up her mind to settle, she’d still had to wait for the man to whom she’d resigned herself. Propose already. Maybe settle was too harsh. Ed was a good man; he just lacked an edge she’d been drawn to in other men.

Four months into her first academic year at Hillcrest, Joy fit right in with the rest of the staff, some of whom had been with the program for years. Although rewarding, the job was challenging because of kids like Joey. Her students, who had so much to offer, could sit attentively in class, absorb information and use it to pass exams—even state exams at the end of the year. But these same students were unmotivated and rarely, if ever, turned in assignments. They never cracked a book at home nor made any attempt to capitalize on their God-given gifts.

Still, Joy knew that without Hillcrest, many of them had no hopes of graduating. They’d fall through the cracks. No child left behind, right?

Fourth period was a free one, her prep period. Joy considered going upstairs to the staff office. There were a couple of parents she needed to call. It seemed Alex was continuing to take his meds in the morning, meaning he spent most of his first three periods off-the-wall, driving his teachers nuts. The kid needed to take the medication before he went to sleep. Joy had had had this conversation with Alex’s mom more than once.

Shanice, on the other hand, persisted in wearing clothing that was way too revealing—belly shirts and spaghetti straps. The kid caused a distraction in Joy’s seventh-period math skills lab. Joy thought back to when she’d been in high school—not that long ago really—when you wore a belly shirt if you didn’t have a belly. Today these girls wore whatever they wanted, no matter what they looked like.

Joy decided she’d put off the calls and walk across the street to buy herself lunch at the deli. She hadn’t had anything to eat since a protein shake before she left her apartment that morning. Joy was thin but shapely, and worked hard to keep herself that way, so that she could wear belly shirts when she was out with Ed. A turkey breast sandwich wouldn’t be so bad.

Boar’s Head skinless with American cheese. Yellow.

Joy locked her classroom door, walked down the hall, and admonished a few stragglers to get to their next class before they were so late they received cuts from their teachers.

Out on the street, it was a beautiful early November day. There’d been a brief cold spell at the end of October. Ed always wanted to keep the window open when he slept over, claiming that he “breathed better.” But Joy usually prevailed, eventually closing the window, despite his protestations. October’s cold had been followed by a brief return of warmer weather; close to sixty degrees when it should have been much cooler. A late summer’s last hurrah.

The sky was beautiful, blue, limpid for the most part, with some puffy cumulous clouds over in the distance.

Joy walked down the street toward Gary’s Deli. Hillcrest was located in downtown Bedford Hills, right in the middle of the shopping district. Quaint little stores, a dog groomer’s, a judaica, a consignment shop.

One of the draws of the Hillcrest program, from the students’ point of view, was the off-campus rule. Once they’d earned the privilege with good behavior, students were allowed to spend their lunch break eating in one of the local delis or pizzerias, checking out the latest arrivals at the video game store, or browsing the CDs at Borders. It was to be hoped that they wouldn’t make use of this privilege to go off and smoke weed.

Weed. Joy smirked. Buddha, ganja, astro turf, hay—between the kids and the rap music Ed liked to listen to, she heard new names for it every day. The low-level dealer she had dated her freshman year in college called it Baby Bhang. No one called it weed anymore.

Gary’s Deli was adequate, but Walter’s two blocks down was better. The extra two blocks were not something Joy felt she wanted to commit to. Gary’s was competent enough to put together a turkey and American sandwich on whole wheat with lettuce, tomatoes, maybe a little mayo. But not too much; better the light Hellman’s. She had spin class at the gym tonight.

“Joy!”

Susan McGreevy, a teacher’s aide at Hillcrest for the last six years, was well liked by the students. Susan was in her middle forties and married with three boys. She was always up on the latest gossip, from Hollywood celebrities to Hillcrest staff members. She hailed Joy as she approached her on the street.

“Hi, Susan.”

Susan looked spooked.

“What’s wrong, Susan?”

“I don’t know—I was in the deli and I heard something on the radio, rioting in the city or something.”

“What?” Joy said, not comprehending.

“It’s bizarre. They interrupted the music, said the National Guard was called in to put down some kind of . . . gang violence or something. It was spreading up Fifth Avenue from downtown.”

“I haven’t heard anything.” Joy realized it was a dumb thing to say as soon as she said it. Of course she hadn’t heard anything—she’d been in the classroom teaching all morning.

“If you find anything else out, let me know.” Joy could tell Susan was antsy, that she wanted to get going.

Promising she would, Susan made her way back toward Hillcrest. Joy resumed her walk, thinking. Rioting in New York City? Moving up Fifth Avenue? Gangs? What the hell?

She stopped and breathed in the November air. Not as cool and crisp as it should be yet, the way Ed liked it. That would come.

Something about Susan’s story bothered Joy.

Ed worked on Fifth Avenue. Around Forty-fourth Street. His building was well protected with its own security. Ed himself was on the sixtieth floor, away from any street protest turned violent, away from anything that was going on.

Still . . .

The turkey sandwich was not as tempting as it had been a few moments before, even with the thought of the mayo.

Joy turned and headed back toward Hillcrest, picking up her pace. She didn’t run, but she moved ahead with determination in her stride.

Her cell phone was locked in her desk.

Inside the building, Joy was relieved to find the halls empty. The kids were all in their classes.

She let herself into her room and let the door close behind her, not locking it.

Sitting down in the executive chair at her desk, Joy unlocked the drawer where she kept her valuables during the day. She liked the kids at Hillcrest, but she didn’t want to put them in a position where they were tempted to rifle through her purse.

The ten seconds it took her phone to power up when she thumbed it on felt more like ten minutes.

Joy checked the digital display. There were no messages waiting for her. Ed’s office number was stored in her phone’s memory.

Connecting . . .

The phone began to ring.

“Hello?”

“Ed, listen—It’s Joy. What’s going on?”

“Joy, Jesus! You’re not going to believe this shit. Things are fucking crazy out there on the street. I’ve never seen anything like it. Turn on the news. Joy, they’re fucking eating people—”

“Ed? Ed?”

Disconnected.

Redial. A quick succession of beeps, a ring, then a recorded voice saying “all circuits busy.”

Exhaling, Joy redialed again. All circuits busy.

Snapping her phone shut, Joy walked across her classroom and out into the hall, not bothering to close the door. She went directly to the staff office on the second floor, redialing twice more on the way, receiving the same message. In the staff office, Joy found the principal making some copies.

“Joy, what’s up?” he said, reading the concern in her face.

“Can we talk in your office?”

He cast a quick look around the staff room. Hillcrest’s secretary was on the phone, on hold, ordering supplies; the English teacher was surfing the net.

“Sure, come on.”

The principal’s office adjoined the staff room.

As he shut the door behind them, the secretary held out the phone and looked at it quizzically. “Huh?”

On the edge of the couch, leaning forward with her hands clasped together on her knees, Joy motioned to the television set on the shelf. It was a TV/VCR combo, and anyone who needed it for class was free to sign it out.

“Does that thing get any local channels?”

From out in the staff office they could hear the English teacher saying to the secretary, “Holy Christ. Check this out.”

“Yeah, it does,” said Mr. Harris, already moving.

“Turn it on, please.”

He did so.

3.

Listen, Harris,” Buddy said, pulling his friend to the side, out of earshot of the others.

It was an overcast spring morning. An intermittent moan from the undead beyond the wall reached their ears. The ever-present stink of them wafted in.

“What’s up?” Harris asked the big man.

“I want you to keep an eye on Diaz.” Buddy cast an eye toward the others. A dozen men and women had gathered around the manhole in the middle of the block to bid farewell to a rummaging party preparing to head off in search of supplies for Eden.

Diaz was a young buck, born and raised in uptown Manhattan, something he made sure everyone knew. A Dominican flag flew outside his house in Eden. The apocalypse gripping their world hadn’t jarred the piss and vinegar out of him, at least not at this point. If anything, it had just raised his intensity, an intensity that was always there, sometimes hidden—but sometimes exacerbated by all the PCP he did.

Buddy continued. “He’s going through a lot right now. Not sure what he’s capable of.”

The wind had been blown out of the braggart’s sails the night before, when his girlfriend Shannon had been infected. She was in Diaz’s house now, being tended to by some of the others. Her last hours were fading fast. Julie couldn’t stand Diaz but had set aside her revulsion and gone to bring what comfort she could to Shannon. Away from Diaz, everyone said that it was amazing that Shannon could hold out so long.

Once you were bitten, it was only a matter of time, and the outcome was inevitable.

“You think he’ll come unhinged?” Harris asked Buddy.

Bobby Evers was going over a list of supplies with Sal Bianaculli. Harris heard the word “ibuprofen.”

“Come unhinged?” Buddy raised an eyebrow. “Fucker’s already unhinged if you ask me.”

Harris, thinking he knew the answer, asked anyway. “How do you mean?”

This was a pattern they’d established. Harris looked at Buddy as something of a father figure. Sometimes it was a game between them, and sometimes it was earnest on both their parts.

“Usually young brah all up and at ’em, but notice how quiet he’s become? Withdrawn, even.”

Harris nodded. Diaz was definitely keeping under the radar. When Shannon was wounded Diaz had gone nuts, screaming his head off in both Spanish and English, the Spanish too fast for Harris to catch. Harris, Buddy, Davon, and a couple of others were forced to subdue Diaz, trying not to hurt him, while Evers, Tina, and Bianaculli’s wife Camille had helped stop Shannon’s bleeding and gotten her back into Diaz’s house.

After they’d wrestled Diaz down, Buddy had asked him, “You all right?” Diaz’s eyes were spacey, hyper alert; his body was limp under them. When Diaz didn’t say anything, they assumed he was okay and they’d let him up to go be with Shannon.

Thompson adjusted an empty knapsack on Panas’s back. The idea was to go out empty, return with the knapsacks full.

“Plastic wrap,” Sal Bianaculli read from the list.

“Yeah,” Harris said to Buddy, “I know what you mean.”

Buddy chin-nodded him, then turned to the group. “All right then, we good?”

There were assorted nods, verbal assents, a grunt.

Buddy lifted his saddlebags from the cement, slinging them across his wide shoulders. His shotgun—the big semiautomatic with the cylinder magazine that held twelve rounds—hung over his back. Buddy nodded toward Thompson, and the younger man began prying open the manhole cover with a crowbar.

The thing must have weighed a couple hundred pounds or more. Harris remembered when he’d lived in Queens, before he and Raquel had moved out to the suburbs. One night there had been a huge explosion down the block. Everyone had gotten out of bed, assuming some terrorist act. Harris had worried that an airplane had gone down somewhere near their house. That’d happened before.

It had turned out to be an explosion of gas in the sewer system, which had sent a manhole cover skyward. The thing returned to Earth through the roof and windshield of someone’s car.

Harris never liked the look of the manhole, a gaping man-made maw in the earth. It made him feel uneasy, like something in a horror movie. He didn’t like going down into the sewer system, but so far the miles of tunnels had somehow remained free of the undead.

A spiraling undulation passed the wall. They never shut up, even when feeding.

“Okay, let’s go.” Buddy climbed down into the manhole, grasping the ladder below. Harris bent forward, passing him a Maglite.

Buddy was waist deep in the street. He set the flashlight on the asphalt and unholstered his 9-millimeter, the silencer not threaded on. Checking to make sure a round was chambered, Buddy returned the piece to its holster on his waist, and took his flashlight back up.

“Hey,” Harris said, beckoning. Buddy looked up at him from that place.

“You da man.” Harris said it with his thumbs up.

“No,” Buddy said, grinning, correcting Harris as was their habit. “You da man.”

It never ceased to amaze Harris. After all the carnage, all the slaughter, after the drama with Graham and the Pole, with Dom with his wife, the nights on the run, the innumerable times their backs were to a wall, certain this was their last—after all that, Buddy’s indefatigable smile was a mile wide, and his laugh so life-affirming and optimistic.

“Peace.” The big black man laughed, starting his descent into the city’s underground. Sal Bianaculli, with his supply list and their handmade map charting various tunnels and outlets explored over the months, followed. Panas, Larry Chen, and Biden went after. All the men carried shotguns or assault rifles and one or two pistols apiece. Larry Chen had drawn the shortest straw and now lugged the flamethrower.

The Earth swallowed them up.

Harris stood there, staring and thinking, until he became aware of Thompson looking at him.

“That’s it, then,” Thompson said.

Harris bent down to help Thompson slide the cover back into place. The rest of the day they’d take turns sitting beside it, waiting to hear the foragers return.

Harris saw Julie leave Diaz’s house and come walking toward them; he noted that Thompson watched her too.

A lot of men looked at Julie. It was easy to do. Harris briefly considered what was wrong with him, why he didn’t seem able to appreciate her the way he thought he should, the way another man could.

“Want a smoke?” Thompson had a pack of stale Parliaments.

“No, thanks.” Harris had never liked smoking.

“Guys.” Julie greeted them. Harris was aware that Julie knew Thompson had the hots for her. He was also conscious that Julie found Thompson less annoying than Diaz—because Thompson, unlike Diaz, never got high and, also unlike Diaz, was never heard to say what a magnificent lover he thought himself, nor how he’d show all their women what a true man was about. And though Thompson was nowhere near that obnoxious, Julie wasn’t interested in him or any man, other than her own. And Harris knew this.

If Thompson had such thoughts he kept them to himself, which was just fine by Harris.

Should he, or Diaz, or anyone else ever act on them, Harris could deal with that when the time came.

“How’s Shannon doing?” Thompson inquired, flicking his Zippo, firing up a Parliament.

Julie shrugged her shoulders and frowned, her look said it all—and none of it was good.

They knew what was going to have to be done soon.

Thompson drew the smoke deep into his lungs.

Harris sighed, thinking of Shannon, of Diaz, knowing it couldn’t be anything but ugly when the time came. He did not know, however, that he’d just seen his friend Buddy for the last time.

4.

Hoofing it to the corner, Adlard held up a hand, halting everyone else. They hunkered down in place on the street, squatting behind cars strewn pell-mell. Harris was next to Bear between an SUV and a Lexus, the other trying to be as inconspicuous as a three-hundred-plus-pound man-mountain could be. Harris signaled the others behind them.

It was daylight, and all of them were exposed in the street, far from the relative safety of Eden’s walls.

Adlard motioned and Buddy crouch-ran forward, passing Harris and Bear. Bear gripped the ancient mace, which someone now dead had procured from a museum somewhere, and he had his chain saw slung over his back. There was some fat on Bear, but most of him was muscle and bone and girth. One of his eyes was dead in his head, always staring off somewhere else, looking like a rock troll, like some monstrosity from a fantasy novel. Harris always wanted to ask Bear about the eye but never did.

Buddy was abreast of Adlard, pressed to the wall.

“What we got?”

“Round the corner, on the avenue.” Adlard kept low, his AK-47 pulled in tight against his torso. “A few hundred of them. At the minimum.”

Buddy nodded, leaned forward, and chanced a glance around the building, then pulled back.

“Damn.”

They spoke quietly to one another, Adlard bobbing his head, agreeing to whatever was being said. Buddy hoofed it back to Harris and Bear’s position, waving the others over. Davon, John Turner, and Orlando all gathered close.

The six men were in the street, between the cars and among the piles of bones in empty clothes scattered about the road, bloodstains long ago washed away by the elements. The streets in front and behind were much the same: vehicles everywhere from the panic of the last days, cars connected like dominoes, some crunched together, doors ajar, abandoned in the general congestion. Their occupants were long gone, having obviously taken their chances on foot. Each of the six was aware of his vulnerability, was wary of the desolate stillness of the block, leery should an undead stumble into sight.

“Here’s the deal,” Buddy said, speaking quietly, straightforwardly. “We got an avenue at the end of this block and it’s packed.” Every man knew with what.

“How far are we from the warehouse?” asked Bear, drumming the flanged end of the mace up and down in his massive palm.

“Two blocks,” John Turner answered after quickly consulting the map.

“We sure there’s even going to be anything in it?” Orlando hadn’t wanted in on the rummage, so why, he kept asking himself, was he even here?

“There better be.” Harris scanned the three-family row houses on either side of the street. The vacant windows, curtains drawn in some, stared down upon them like a skull’s empty sockets.

“What’re you thinking?” Bear asked Buddy.

Adlard was out of sight up ahead, somewhere between the cars.

“I’m thinking we cross this intersection,” Buddy said, laying it out, “one by one. Car to car. Cover each other. We keep quiet, keep our heads down. We can do this.”

“What if they spot us?” Orlando sounded worried.

“They spot us, we run.”

“No, they spot us, I run like hell,” Davon spoke up. “I’ll lead them off.”

“And what about us?” John Turner wanted to know.

“I don’t know, you guys hide or some shit.”

Orlando shook his head. “Hide where?”

“In the cars, in a house.” As Davon said it, he thought better of it, picturing the skeletal remains locked in the cars around them, what was left of the people who’d died doing just that—hiding, trying to wait out the predators beyond. “Shit if I know. Run or something.”

Bear scoffed good-naturedly. Put him under a thousand pounds in a powerlifting competition, he’d squat it into the hole and bring it back out again, the bar bending over his shoulders the whole way. But ask him to hustle, well, there were just certain things that some men were not meant to do.

“You want to go back?” Buddy asked them all.

The temptation to say “Shit, yeah” strong, Orlando held his tongue, waiting for someone else to say it so he wouldn’t have to.

“Let’s do this.” Harris had a 9-millimeter in each hand. People in Eden were depending on them. “And let’s do it fast.”

“All right, then.” Buddy grinned.

They darted, one by one, from stalled car to truck to SUV. Orlando was the next-to-last before Adlard. He only got a move on when Adlard hissed at him to do so from the corner. Orlando duck-walked, trying to retrace as much of the route he’d watch Turner take, staying as close to the ground as possible. He went out into the intersection, the traffic lights hanging dead above him, not chancing a look up the avenue, not needing to see the hordes there. He could hear them just fine.

Turner made it to the other side, touched the wall, and let his breath out, conscious for the first time that he’d been holding it. Buddy, Harris, Bear, and Davon were all lined up, their backs to the bricks. Bear was sweating profusely. Buddy whispered to Davon, telling the former high school football star to go on ahead and scout their way.

Harris followed Orlando’s progress as best he could as he watched the other man appear and disappear among the cars. Adlard was in plain view of Harris, tucked away around the corner where the undead could not see him.

A bunch of pigeons nestled on the power lines overhead.

Orlando misjudged the path, deviating slightly, a little too high and too slow to boot, momentarily out in the open between a BMW and a motorcycle. He had a perfect view of the mob down the street, and they had a perfect view of him.

“Sheeee-it.” Buddy drew the word out, raising his silenced 9-millimeter.

The ruckus from the zombies was unmistakable. The ones that were capable were screaming, bawling. The faster ones were already dashing madly to the intersection, the stumbling mass behind them roiling, moving as one, a tide rolling in.

Fuck! mouthed Adlard from across the intersection, looking from Orlando to the other men, bringing the AK to his shoulder, wondering what the hell he should do.

Orlando hugged his knees behind the motorcycle, pissing himself, and risked a look over the seat of the Harley.

Buddy waved Adlard off, pointing back the way they’d come. Orlando stood up in the open and started to scream hysterically.

“Fuck!” Yelling out loud, Adlard stepped round the corner. The pigeons scattered above as the AK-47 started bucking on semi-auto into his deltoid. He fired at the advancing mass, the AK spitting shell casings out into the street. “Orlando, move your fucking ass fucking now!”

Harris readied the 9-millimeters, moving to step out onto the avenue, when Buddy stopped him. “Run. We gotta run!” Louder to Bear and Turner: “We out!”

The other two did not need to be told twice, and hoofed it in Davon’s direction.

Across the avenue, Adlard dumped a mag. Zombies in the fore were running over those brought down, scrabbling their way toward the intersection. Orlando extended his pistol and fired out the clip, not hitting a single one.

“Run, bitch—run!” Adlard himself fired more rounds from the assault rifle, turning and hauling ass back in the direction they’d come. Buddy pushed Harris—“Go!”—but Harris didn’t move fast enough. Buddy shoved him ahead, propelling him with his free hand.

Orlando tried to reload his pistol on the run and fumbled a fresh clip; it bounced to the asphalt out of sight under a car. Orlando shrieked, legs moving faster than they’d ever moved before, burning him his own zigzag path down the avenue between the lifeless vehicles.

Halfway up the block on the fly, Harris risked a look over his shoulder. “Oh shit!” A dozen or more of the things had turned on the street after them. The majority pursued Orlando, his yelps and cries diminishing with distance. It was the last anyone from Eden ever heard from him.

“Up ahead,” Buddy said, pointing. Davon signaled from an alley between two buildings.

“Harris, Buddy,” Bear gasped in the alley, rivulets of sweat streaming down his face. He looked like he was prepping for a coronary. He summoned them farther along the path, Davon and Turner at the opposite end.

Passing a Dumpster, Bear stopped, hands on knees, his breath gone. “I can’t,” he wheezed.

“Alamo time.” Buddy didn’t even think about it, tracking the 9-mil toward the mouth of the alley, shrugging the shotgun off his back and into his free hand, tensing it on the sling.

“Wait,” Bear gasped, squatting down and finding a grip under the Dumpster. With a rapid succession of grunts and jerks he catercornered the metal bin, cutting off the alley.

“Nice.” Harris patted the giant on his sweaty back.

The next hour was spent navigating back alleys and roofs, avoiding the mass of zombies on the avenue streaming past in one direction.

The street outside the MJ’s Wholesale Club was deserted. Most of the zombies in the area were hot on the trail of Orlando or Adlard. It was unsettling to the men, how one street could be empty of them, another thronged.

The parking lot behind the discount warehouse was equally barren, save an unhitched trailer from an eighteen-wheeler.

Inside the building’s cavernous depths, Davon and Turner wheeled the gate shut and fastened the chain from the inside. Dust motes swirled in the beams of their flashlights and the high-powered torches as they fanned out. Their cursory glances through the looming aisles sought to ascertain they’d not stumbled upon a warren of the undead.

John Turner said it as he pushed his glasses up his nose. “Doesn’t look like anyone’s been here since we were last time.”

“Hmmm.” Buddy was concerned. Eden was not the only enclave that periodically raided this store. He didn’t envision any of the refugees in Jericho across town making it this way, but the place they called the Farm had to be less than a mile from this spot. No one from Eden had ever met the survivors from the Farm, but they knew of its existence from those at Jericho.

As the younger Turner had said, however, it didn’t look like anything had been touched since their last visit.

“Let’s get working on those lists.” No time to mull it over. “Somebody check the pharmacy section, see if there are any inhalers left for Bobby.”

Bear filled two gunnysacks, leaving them next to the gate with his chain saw. Against his better judgment, he walked over to what had been an employee office. He’d been there before, knew what he would find, and the lure was inexplicably strong.

A suite of rooms. The first was the largest, with tables and chairs for staff, a refrigerator long dormant, and a row of cubbies for personal belongings. Two doors led off into smaller offices, one with a copy machine and watercooler.

There were three dead zombies outside one of the doors, decomposed, crumbling into flakes on the tile floor. That door was broken open. Inside, a skeleton in a chair sat hunched over a desk. On the desk were a flashlight and a couple of framed pictures of a family with two kids. There was an organizer with pens and a ruler sticking straight up, and a faded white monthly desk calendar took up much of the surface area.

One other item lay on the desk. A personal journal, closed.

Bear shined his lantern about, the same as last time. Over their visits to this place, he’d pieced together a tale, what he thought had happened in the room. The skeleton, judging from the clothes in the chair, a man—a manager? Employee? Some hapless schmuck wandered in from the street? Whoever he’d been, he’d locked himself in the office, the three zombies outside.

Whoever he’d been, he’d written entries in the journal: some long, others two or three sentences. A few were moving, personal. Others were detached, written in the third person, the first person interjected randomly. Bear imagined the man in the chair, the door locked, listening to the things outside, the things that kept him from the water in the cooler one door over, the things waiting for him. Bear pictured the man writing in the journal by flashlight, filling pages as he slowly dehydrated and starved to death, the flashlight dimming and dying, leaving the man alone in darkness with the noises outside.

Bear imagined someone else, someone from the Farm, maybe some other anonymous group of wanderers, first gaining entry to the warehouse where they found the three zombies outside the door, the man inside long dead. The zombies had been felled, the office door forced, and anything worth taking was gone. If the man had any weapons with him, they were part of the booty. But Bear couldn’t imagine the man inside with a weapon and not using it, opting instead to wait for death in the dark. Either the original plunderers hadn’t read the journal, or they’d decided to leave it on purpose, just as Bear had abandoned it each time.

He’d read from the book before, sometimes only getting a few sentences before he’d had to close it and leave. The words written there were nouns, adjectives, and verbs, yet they were too much for him. Bear looked at the journal, wondering if he should, knowing he would. Placing his lantern on the desk, the calendar beneath it brittle, he opened the diary at random, crossed himself, and picked up at the first full paragraph, reading an entry he hadn’t before.

We had to call them something, so we came up with a variety of names. Undead, walkers, zombies, ghouls. Other more colorful, less polite terms. Whatever one chose to call them, there was no doubt to what one referred.

They own the world now. There is no telling where the first undead came from, what made them sally forth and seek human prey, though in the first few weeks of contagion there was no shortage of theories. As world governments and military forces scrambled to at first annihilate and then contain the spreading threat, scientific establishments, rooted in empiricism and rational thought, sought to cope with the very irrational—but nonetheless real—idea that the dead had come back to life, kept coming back to life, attacking the living.

Within a couple of months of the first outbreaks, the human population had pitched into a frenzy. Towns, counties, provinces, then whole countries crumbled. Large urban areas, home to great populations, were the first to fall.

Zombie numbers expand exponentially. For every one felled two take its place.

The major communications media broke down within the first week, followed in short order by the infrastructures of most countries. On the streets and plains it became chaotic, sheer pandemonium, with humans doing their best—our best—to arm ourselves and find refuge. Safety isn’t necessarily found in numbers. Isolation is the key, being able to lock yourself away someplace safe from them. But no refuge is completely impenetrable, either from the undead without or from demands within. Human beings need food and water, supplies, some word of what the hell is going on outside everyone’s individual little private sanctuaries, and eventually they set foot outside their areas of protection only to be pounced upon by the waiting undead.

They, the undead, are nothing if not patient. If they chase you into a room and the door is solid enough to keep them out, they will wait, standing around outside the door, just as those outside now wait for me. Others would join them in the following hours, in the ensuing days and weeks, knowing something edible is locked away behind that door, something worth the wait. But I suppose when you’re already dead, you’ve got a lot of time to kill. Eventually hunger or thirst would drive survivors out of their hiding places, in weakened states, and they’d be no match for what awaited them. I will not leave this place.

Those who managed to survive for some length of time did so because they found out a few things quickly. The undead “rules” so to speak. First and foremost, there are only a few ways to bring them down. The easiest way involves destroying the brain, just like in the horror movies. Head shots, bludgeoning the skull, even a well-placed blow to the temple if powerful enough, all can fell an undead. Burning works too, although one has to be careful to really fry them, to burn them until they collapse and stop twitching, and then, just to be sure, to burn them even more or shoot them in the head.

Blowing them up works, but not well, because explosions cause massive damage but not all of it to the brain. This strategy worked well enough for the armed forces early on, when their helicopters and bombers would rain missiles and bombs on cities and large concentrations of the undead. Poison gas and nuclear weapons didn’t do shit to them. It took a horrendous toll on the civilian population though, but what could one do?

The brain has to be destroyed. That’s all there is to it. An undead can literally lose its head—have it severed—and the thing’s mouth will still attempt to bite at human beings. Zombies with their legs blown off by explosives or weapons fire will crawl after living prey. The disemboweled stagger forward tripping over their own intestines. None of their major internal organs seem to be necessary.

They are driven by hunger and human beings are their favorite meals, but they will also eat cats, dogs, any other animals they can get their hands on. Unlike other mammals, people often rise as undead themselves after being bitten. It all depends on the severity of the feasting. If a slew of the undead take a human down and eat him, devouring most of his innards, separating limbs from trunk, rending flesh and muscle from bone, for some reason these dead humans remain dead. They will not get back up. They will not start walking around.

But if an undead takes a few bites out of you, or even one nibble, you are doomed to walk the Earth as one of them. From that point it’s just a matter of time, and the length of time seems to be related to the severity of the bite and its proximity to the brain. Humans with their throats torn out, writhing on the street while their arteries pump out the last of their precious lifeblood will often get back up within a minute of dying. I have seen this all too often with my own eyes. If the zombies are gathered around to start feasting on the newly dead, they immediately stop when the dead one stirs, signaling his ascension to their ranks.

On the other hand there are human beings who sustain relatively small bites, mere scratches to their ankles or feet, and the wounds will often appear to start healing over the next few hours. But they too turn, within a night or two at most. At least the dogs and cats, the rats and goats, the horses, whatever else the undead get their hands on and their teeth into, at least these things don’t return.

There are different types of the undead that we survivors have armed ourselves against. The majority of the undead are shamblers. These creatures stagger through the streets and country, moving relatively slowly. In open areas you can see them coming from a distance and easily avoid them. In the dark or in enclosed spaces they are especially dangerous. Such are at my door now.

The bookers are so called because they really move, they chase you down. These undead (were they spry human beings when alive?) launch themselves into a sprint in pursuit of fresh flesh. Some are fast, others extremely fast, and most human survivors do their best to avoid these creatures. Not only are they quick, bookers, unlike the survivors they chase, don’t tire. They are relentless. The silent bookers are especially dangerous, as they are on you before you’re even aware of their presence.

Howlers can be either shamblers or bookers. These undead scream, literally howling, their range covering everything from shrieks of frustration to roars of anger. They’re never able to keep quiet, so you can hear them well in advance of their appearance on a scene.

Only one of the things outside this room now makes any noise—and it won’t stop.

Most of the undead appear to lack anything but rudimentary intelligence. They don’t work together. If a group corners a human being they attack all at once as individuals, each jockeying for position and attempting to secure the choicest meat for itself. At times they appear aware of the presence of other zombies, but mostly they ignore one another, shuffling past each other with the bookers racing between slower-moving shamblers.

The most dangerous of the undead are the brains. They are cunning. They will stalk prey, awaiting the best opportunity to pounce. They also work as individuals, but their stalking and waiting behavior is like a form of hunting. Brains could be shamblers or bookers, but there aren’t many howlers amongst their numbers, probably because stealth and bloodcurdling cries don’t go well together.

Each time the undead eat, it is as if they are eating for the first time. Their hunger cannot be satisfied, but they can go weeks or months without eating until a human being or a rat shows itself. They don’t appear capable of starving to death, and they aren’t deriving energy from their feedings. Their feedings are hedonistic frenzies, pure bacchanalian gluttonies. Three bookers—they eat as fast as they run—could reduce a human being to the bone within five minutes of its being brought down. Shamblers eat more slowly, seemingly taking their time, perhaps even savoring the experience more than their booker cousins. I will stay in here rather than suffer that fate.

The elements don’t seem to bother the undead. Rain, snow, extreme heat, there they are, moving around the countries, invading cities and farmhouses, waiting out human strongholds until supplies and patience disappear and those safe inside are forced to venture beyond their confines. Standing around in rain and snowstorms, the weather burns and rots their undead skin. Some of them are no more than walking skeletons with shreds of flesh and the clothing they died in hanging from exposed tissue and bone, yet they also seek food.

Some survivors refer to the coming of the undead as “the plague.” The more religious amongst us dub it “the apocalypse” or “end times.” No savior has appeared. The origins of the outbreak are unknown; the nature of the contagion, spread by bites, is unclear. But there is one stark reality left we survivors: being human after the outbreak isn’t easy, and the tenure usually isn’t long.

“Bear, we’re ready to get out of here,” Turner called from outside the office.

“Just a sec.” Bear gently closed the journal, considering, as always, taking it with him, but deciding, as usual, not to.

He retrieved his lantern, cast its beam toward the door, and looked back toward the desk and chair at the clothed bones in the sightless dark.

5.

You shaved.”

Julie’s look of surprise transitioned into a smile. She’d never seen him clean-shaven before.

“Yeah.” Harris rubbed his smooth chin between thumb and forefinger. “It was time for a change.”

His dirty blond hair, streaks of gray showing through, was still shoulder-length, shaggy like some aging British rock icon.

Julie, Bobby Evers, Bobby’s third wife, Gwen, and half a dozen other men and women worked throughout the house Harris and Julie shared, carting off trunks and limbs, scrubbing walls and carpets, trying their best to get things back to the way they’d been before the predawn assault.

“Damn, look at you,” said Keara. “A new man.”

“They never could get one over on you, Harris.” Mickey saluted and Harris sighed, forcing a smile. He got along well with Mickey because Harris liked movies, and Mickey—well, Mickey loved movies. But this was tough, keeping it together in front of all these people.

He’d stitched the bite wound on his left upper arm as best he could, wrapping it with gauze, securing the gauze in place with surgical tape. He’d changed to a fresh set of clothes: loose carpenter jeans, a flannel shirt over a ribbed tank T-shirt, different boots.

“We got lucky,” Harris replied, still not sure what to say. Telling them he’d been bitten was not an option. He knew what they’d do. He knew what he’d do if he was in their situation. Julie might hesitate and he loved her for it. She loved him, and love lent itself to hope, even when hope was absent.

Harris knew what Bobby Evers would do, decent man that he was, and he knew Bobby would do it with regret, probably an apology. Not the way Buddy would do it, but still, Bobby would do it anyway, which would be doubly awful, for both of them, seeing it coming. When the time came, Harris would figure something out, maybe tell Bobby then and let Bobby handle it.

Or maybe he’d deal with it all himself. In the meantime, he had the remainder of the day, at most, to figure things out. To put things right.

“Here’s what I don’t get.” Keara stopped scrubbing at the polyurethane-coated floors. “How did they get into Eden? Harris, you and Bobby said the security door was open, right?”

“Aye,” Bobby Evers piped up from across the room. He and Gwen were loading a cadaver onto a makeshift stretcher to lug outside and cremate. “That would be open as in unlocked.”

“Well, what sick fuck would purposely open that door?” Paul asked. His partner Larry Chen had disappeared with Buddy and the others down the manhole months back and they had heard nothing from them since. “I mean, they put us all in danger, whoever did it.”

Harris didn’t say anything about the door to his and Julie’s house being forced open, or speculate aloud about why someone had chosen that particular security door in the gate, when there were half a dozen possible entrances and exits in the walls around Eden. Why was that door left open? Because he knew the person who had done it had known that doing such would place the undead as close to Harris and Julie as possible. Someone had attempted to murder him and Julie, and Harris knew this, but he kept it quiet, watching and listening to Paul very carefully, hearing his words, reading his eyes, watching his hands, looking for any sign of . . .

Of what? Nervousness? Harris was almost a hundred percent sure he knew the one responsible. Still, it didn’t hurt to pay attention, to be alert for as long as he could, to figure out if this was the work of one man alone or of many. Harris needed to know who he had to kill before his own demise.

“No way it could have been a mistake?” asked Mickey. “You know, someone checking the locks last night—accidentally unlocked the gate?”

“Even if it was a mistake . . .” Gwen responded, as she and Bobby lugged the body outside, “. . . this needs to be treated like it was intentional. Like Paul said, it put us all in danger.”

Mickey shook his head at the absurdity of it all and went back to his task of plastering the buckshot- and bullet-pocked wall.

“There he is,” said Julie. Mr. Vittles watched them work, meowing, while his tail swished slowly.

“This stain on the floor is tricky,” said Paul, “but I think I can get it out.”

“Hey boy,” Harris called to the feline, crouching down and beckoning him over. The cat sidled up to Harris and started to rub up against his leg but thought better of it, cast him a look, and disappeared under the dining room table.

Harris went to Julie, wrapped his right arm around her, pulling her close to him, and thought of the poison, the virus, or whatever it was coursing its way through his blood, consuming him. He kissed her on her kerchiefed head, excused himself, and went up to the roof.

The sun wended its way to the meridian, and Harris alone surveyed what was left of the neighborhood. Eden was a walled enclave, one square block in area. The one square block was part of a place formerly called Queens, one of the five boroughs of the City of New York. Manhattan itself was uninhabitable, Staten Island was inaccessible, and Brooklyn was much like Queens. No one who’d ventured up into the Bronx or farther had ever returned to tell what they’d found.

Harris couldn’t blame them.

Beyond the walls, a congress of the undead massed like some perverse mortiferous charade of an everyday that was nothing and no more, consigned to memory. Their stink. Their wails. His future.

The wall surrounding Eden had been constructed shortly after the beginning of the outbreak. Dozens of people worked night and day while dozens more patrolled the perimeter, keeping the zombies out, or so the story went. The story they told themselves. No one inside the walls today had been around to witness the erection of the walls.

Harris thought how insane that must have been, building this wall with the undead gathering, hundreds of the things, thousands, innumerable.

Beneath him was a normal-looking block with cement sidewalks, neatly parallel parked cars, little squares of green dotting the sidewalks in front of each house. Stoops, an American flag or two still flying on someone’s porch, Diaz’s Dominican standard announcing his residence. The homes were, for the most part, attached on two sides. Alleyways had been at a premium on this block before the outbreak, Harris suspected, as there were only two on each side of the street.

The only things that looked out of place on the block were the public baths—corrugated metal, jerry-rigged affairs, roofed to protect from the sun and possible peeping toms—and the overhangs that covered the generators. The generators supplied their energy needs, giving them light, air-conditioning in the summer, refrigeration; in general, lending Eden some semblance of normality.

Harris had grown up on a street very much like this one, albeit in Brooklyn. He’d moved to the suburbs when his wife had accepted a position as a Wall Street lawyer. The move cut down Harris’s commute to Hillcrest, and he hadn’t needed to worry about Raquel, as she could take Metro North into the city.

If he closed his eyes, if he imagined, he could almost hear the block as it once had been: Children crying out, playing stickball and tag. Hopscotch diagrams chalked onto the sidewalk. A Mr. Frosty ice cream truck blaring its tune. Kids screaming to mom and dad for money to buy bomb pops, Nutty Buddy cones, soft serve. A chopper barreling down the block, car alarms set off by the barely muffled V-Twin engine.

When one looked at the walls and beyond, one realized just how different things had become. Normal had done a complete one-eighty.

The walls were twelve feet high and two feet thick and built up around a steel mesh for added durability. Security doors were strategically placed, each locked and bolted from the inside. There was a much larger opening in the northern wall, large enough to let a truck through. The original architects of Eden, when they had rebuilt, had placed a sliding steel door there, replete with bulletproof windows.

After a vote by the community, Panas had painted over the glass, blackening it out. It was appreciated by the residents, who were more than a little unnerved by the zombies on the other side always looking in.

The northern and southern ends of the block were the most vulnerable to breach. There, cargo containers were placed flush against the wall, reinforcing it. Atop the cargo containers were stations where one could look over the wall to the other side, and keep tabs on the things beyond.

The walls continued around the back of the houses, and whoever had originally designed them had done it in such a way that the backyards of each house were still intact. Existing fences that had separated the yards from residential days had been torn down, and it was there, along two strips of green on the west and east behind the homes, that crops were grown. Corn, tomatoes, squash, green beans, melons, and some wheat. Wheat was a tough one to grow, given the climate. As it was, there was never enough food, and sometimes it seemed that everyone was slowly starving to death.

The tops of the walls were ringed with thick loops of concertina wire, which was strung with aluminum cans. If, somehow, an undead managed to scale a wall, the idea was that it would get tangled up in the wire and the noise from its struggle to free itself would alert those inside. They’d never made it over the walls, but sometimes the undead did get inside.

Harris looked to the east, out beyond the mass of the undead, past where the breach had occurred that morning. The cacophony of battle had attracted a plentitude of zombies. He looked past the burned-out homes, past the empty cars. The walls of Jericho were visible even at this great a distance, and Harris didn’t need binoculars to see what had befallen Eden’s sister stronghold.

The undead had gotten into Jericho. Harris and Buddy and a few others had gone to investigate. What they’d found when they’d crept their way inside in stealth mode was something none of them was likely to forget. Jericho was an outpost of the dead now.

Harris looked at his watch: noon. This time tomorrow he wouldn’t be remembering anything ever again. The thought was sobering.

“No matter how many times I see the bloody devils”—Bobby was on the roof behind him—“it never ceases to amaze me.”

The undead ringed the walls, with thousands of them along the southern wall where the gate had been left open earlier. Some were milling about, others standing in place, shifting from one leg to the other. A booker darted past, disappearing down an alley.

“Look at that one,” Evers said, shouldering his .30-.30 hunting rifle and sighting along the barrel. He said “pow” as he exhaled.

“The one behind the school bus?” Harris asked. It was important to appear normal these last hours, a task he was certain would increase in difficulty as time passed.

“Yeah.” An undead peered from the back of a yellow bus at the two men on the roof. It could see them clearly and watched them intently. “I hate brains.”

Harris knew Bobby Evers had a reason: the smart ones had been responsible for the death of the man’s second wife.

“Ever wonder, Harris, what they’re contemplating? Like, what is that sneaky son of a bitch behind that bus thinking as it looks at us?”

“You want to know what they’re thinking?” For a moment, Harris felt like the man who had gotten into bed the night before. “Think of the best meal your mom would make when you were a little potato over in Ireland.”

“Okay.” Bobby chuckled, still staring the thing down over the barrel of his rifle.

“What is it?”

“Pepper steak.”

“Pepper steak?” Harris would have thought it would be something else. Bobby Evers, naturalized American citizen with the Irish brogue.

“Eh, what’d you think I’d say? Corned beef and cabbage or something?”

“Actually, yeah.”

“Cop on, Harris.”

They laughed together.

“Anyway, remember when your mom would spend the afternoon cooking that pepper steak, and you’d smell it? Then she’d call for dinner and you’d all go and sit around the table, and just seeing the pepper steak there in front of you, knowing how good it was going to taste and that you’d be digging in in a few minutes—remember how good that felt?”

Harris said all these things like he knew they were how Bobby had experienced them, but in fact Bobby had been a stranger to him outside of Eden. His past could have been anything or nothing Harris could imagine.

“Yeah.” The barrel of the .30-.30 pointed muzzle down at the rooftop.

“Well,” said Harris, “that’s how that thing feels looking at you and me.”

Bobby scoffed. “That’s fooked up. Go way outta that, Harris.”

Bobby was quiet for a moment.

“Thanks for ruining a memory,” he laughed. Then, serious again, “Harris, listen. This morning. You and I both know that was no accident.”

Harris nodded slowly. “Yee-app.”

“Question is, who would have opened that door? And why that door?”

If Bobby or anyone else knew what Harris was thinking of doing, they’d try and stop him, or at the least tell him to take some time to think it over. But time, that was the one thing Harris did not have, though he couldn’t let Bobby know it. He’d rehearsed answers to questions like this in his head.

“Probably that door because we only have the watch on the north wall.”

True enough. When Harris and Buddy first arrived in Eden, all four walls had been guarded at all times. Eden had been a different animal then, an armed camp under the dictator, Graham.

When it became apparent that the undead were incapable of scaling the walls, when Graham and his thugs were out of the way and attitudes were somewhat more lax, the western watch was pulled first, then that on the east, and finally the south. The north, with its huge sliding door gate, was the only side of the compound to have a full-time watch with rotating shifts. Those looking to Eden as a refuge from the horror outside usually tried to get in from that direction.

Not that anyone had tried to get into Eden for a while.

A Quonset hut sat atop the cargo container at the north wall. Whoever happened to be on watch sat inside the hut with a view of the block and the southern wall while remaining tucked away, out of the direct line of sight of the zombies on the streets. Otherwise, dozens, then dozens of dozens, ad infinitum, would gather, spying the human being atop the wall.

At night, when people were trying to rest, the screams and howls of the undead were nightmare inducing at best, sleep depriving at worst.

“I already thought of that,” admitted Bobby Evers, “and you know Turner was on this morning.”

Fred Turner hadn’t been the same since his son John died. The man’s A-Game had left him, and if it wasn’t for the safety of the armed garrison, Fred would have been just so much meat on the street.

Harris felt for Fred Turner. Turner had tuned out. Diaz had been out of it, too, ever since Shannon’s death. Where Diaz pretty much kept to himself, smoking his PCP-laced marijuana, spending his time blitzed out of his mind, Turner at least tried to fit in, but Fred wasn’t like everyone else anymore, and that was something everyone knew.

Last night wouldn’t have been the first time that Turner had fallen asleep on watch. It used to anger Harris to no end, yet he never said anything. The reforms in the wake of Graham’s ouster encouraged public opinion and group decision-making, and the group had decided that Turner was to be left on rotation like everyone else. With the zombies unable to climb walls, Turner’s position was more a sinecure than anything anyone took seriously.

Except that now Harris was dying because of a lapse in security.

“You know how I feel about Fred and his whole situation.” Harris chose his words carefully. “The man’s been through a lot.”

Though everyone in Eden had been through a lot, Fred’s nightmare had been communal. The dead taking his son had been shared by all.

“Okay, here’s the thing of it then,” said Bobby Evers. “I can’t think of anyone here who would want to see the camp destroyed. Can you?”

No, Harris could not. However, he could think of one man who probably thought life would be much easier with Harris out of the way. He had the man’s lighter in the pocket of his carpenter jeans.

“I’m stumped,” said Harris. Out of the corner of his eye he was aware of Bobby studying him, looking for something that wasn’t being said.

“But you know what, Bobby?” Harris said, turning, facing his friend squarely, a smile on his face, thinking God damn you, Bobby, you try and stop me and I will pitch you off this goddamn roof and tell the others it was an accident. Aloud, however, he said, “I want to thank you. You and the others came running real fast this morning. I don’t know what would have happened otherwise. Actually, yes I do.”

Bobby Evers held Harris’s gaze, his words belying how he felt inside. “The noise you made holding down the fort brought the cavalry, Harris, F Troop.” Both of them laughed, and Bobby steered the conversation somewhere he thought Harris would be more comfortable. “This is Eden, Harris. We stick together, or it’s all over.”

“I hear that,” Harris agreed.

“What’s that line from The Wild Bunch?”

Harris scoffed. “Ask Mickey.”

Bobby sighted along the barrel of the .30-.30, wanting to ask Harris why he’d left the door to his house unlocked last night. Bobby had spent enough time at the house to know that Harris still locked the door at night, every night. But how else could the zombies have gotten into his house?

The brain was under the bus now, staring at them from the shadows beside a flattened wheel. As safe as Eden could be within its four walls, it wasn’t like Harris to forget to lock the door at night. Bobby decided he’d ask Harris more about it later.

“One day soon, lad,” Bobby promised the brain. In the meantime, he’d keep an eye on his friend. Maybe it was nothing. “One day soon.”

Maybe.

“If only if it was that easy.” Harris sighed, thanking Bobby silently.

6.

You sure this is what you want to do?” Buddy asked Siobhan McAllister.

Her hair was up in a bun under her best Sunday bonnet and the septuagenarian replied, “I think it’s for the best.” Her voice was young and strong. And it wasn’t cold toward Buddy anymore, not since what he’d done to Graham; not since Markowski had failed to return from their sewer trip. Her voice was not cold, but neither was it animated. Although she didn’t deign to voice judgment on the situation, Mrs. McAllister’s silence was judgment enough.

Siobhan reminded Buddy of his grandmother: the slow, steady gait, the way her eyes would lock on his. Her gaze was not hostile, yet it was implacable, and her no-nonsense manner was soft but firm.

When people arrived, they brought with them stories of what was happening “out there.” When they left, as Mrs. McAllister was preparing to do right now, they were never heard from again. Maybe they found a better place.

She’d had grandkids before all this. Buddy was sure of it.

McAllister was seated in the back of a Hyundai Santa Fe next to Vanessa and Mel, her cane on her lap. Paul and Bert circled the vehicle, giving it a final once-over, making sure everything looked good. Everybody else in Eden was standing around, watching them as they loaded the Santa Fe, offering hands and helpful tips.

“Mrs. McAllister . . .” Buddy was genuinely concerned. He leaned in through the window, looking Siobhan directly in her eyes. “I know you’re not happy with what I’ve done here. You haven’t said anything and I know you won’t, but you don’t have to.”

“This isn’t about anything you did or how I feel about it, Buddy.”

“It’s dangerous out there, ma’am. I know you know that. I worry about you.”

“Bless your heart, son.” She laid an arthritic, liver-spotted hand on his. “But remember, I wasn’t born in Eden, and it was a dangerous place out there before I got here. I did all right then and the Lord’ll look out for me.”

“I don’t doubt it, Mrs. McAllister, but if you stay here, I can look out for you. Stick around and you’ll see, things will be different here.”

“Things are already different,” said Vanessa, seated next to the old woman. She hadn’t meant to contradict Buddy, but neither did she mean to dissuade McAllister. It was just an observation. Discussions and deliberations—things that hadn’t been allowed in Eden under Graham and his stooges—were now the order of the day. The world had gone to hell outside their four walls, but inside there was some progress. All now had a voice where once one voiced all.

“Believe me . . .” Siobhan McAllister let go of Buddy’s hand where it rested on the window and patted it. “This isn’t about anything you did. No, I wasn’t happy you doin’ what you did to that man, but I ain’t pigheaded enough not to admit things are better here without that bad man and his evil ways.”

Buddy pressed on, despite sensing this was a battle he could not win. “So why leave?”

“It’s been a long time coming, son.”

Buddy looked down, shook his head, and laughed a bit. He thought of his gray hair, the lines in his face. No one had called him “son” in a long time.

He didn’t want to let Siobhan McAllister go. The others, Vanessa, Bert, Mel, they’d been planning to leave Eden for weeks, talking about armored caravans out West, maybe in Pennsylvania by now. They’d talked about hooking up with one of those troupes, about getting north into Canada, contemplating the idea that the winters there might be enough to freeze the zombies, to grant a seasonal reprieve.

Bert could leave Eden for all Buddy cared. The man had been contributing jack shit since Graham had forcibly abdicated. Bert sat around at their community meetings—if he showed up at all—doing only what he was told to do when it came to the crops. The whole time, it was obvious the man would rather be elsewhere. The wind had left his sails since Markowski and Buddy had gone down into the sewers and only Buddy had come back.

Siobhan McAllister was a whole other story. There was no way the woman was capable of making it out there in the world beyond Eden’s walls. She refused to even carry a gun, claiming if she got into a situation where she needed to use it, her good Lord would look out for her, would do “what’s right” by her. Buddy had his doubts, having seen too many people eaten alive, hollering the entire time for divine intervention.

Maybe it was a miracle of sorts that Siobhan had made it to Eden to begin with. Not a lot of old or very young folk were around in Eden. The most vulnerable got picked off first.

“There’s nothing I can say to make you change your mind?” He already knew the answer.

“Bless you, Buddy. I do believe in your heart you are trying to be a good man. I need you to understand, this is what is meant to be.”

Whatever, he thought, but Buddy was not going to argue with her.

“Okay, you’re ready,” Paul announced as Bert climbed into the driver’s seat. Panas and Al Gold began fitting metal plates into place over the windows, welding them to the vehicle body.

Seeing the concern on Buddy’s face and appreciating the sentiment, Siobhan took Buddy’s hand from the window frame and squeezed it, her grip a vise.

Buddy squeezed back.

“You watch out for yourself, Buddy,” the woman who reminded him of his grandmother said. “You watch out for all these people here, too.”

Buddy nodded, said, “I will,” and walked away. Harris and Brenner got to work on the passenger side of the SUV, acetylene torches hissing.

On the southern wall, Bobby Evers stood with his .30-.30, and some others began sniping at the undead, the cracks of their weapons reverberating throughout Eden, the gunfire drawing the zombies.

The SUV was sealed, the windows welded with plate metal meant to keep anything from breaking its way in. A large plate with pre-cut eye slits replaced the windshield. They had enough food to last them a week, water, extra gasoline.

Buddy thought that so long as Bert was able to keep the vehicle upright, so long as the man could navigate between everything cluttering the streets, so long as the car didn’t catch a flat, they’d be okay.

John Turner was on the north wall giving a thumbs-up from the hut.

“You’re clear,” Harris told Bert, patting the side of the SUV.

The northern gate rolled open and in the street beyond was a lone zombie, sitting in its wheelchair. Clearly, it had been a paraplegic. Half its face, most of its chest and neck were gnawed off, but enough had been left for it to come back. It couldn’t operate the wheelchair any longer, however, and had been sitting there in the street for a couple of weeks. Buddy had no clue how the thing could have gotten there in the first place.

The Hyundai eased out of Eden through the gate, swerving around the wheelchair-bound zombie. The undead thing moaned, turning its head the few degrees it could, trying to follow.

“They’re a crazy bunch of motherfuckers.” Diaz exhaled a long stream of marijuana and something else. People gave him dirty looks.

The gate slid back, secured. Evers was still yelling at the zombies from the southern wall, like a cowboy slapping his horse’s rump. “Yeeehaaaah!” He whooped it up between rifle shots.

Staring at the southern gate, the vehicle already out of eyesight, Buddy thought of Siobhan McAllister. “There they go,” said Buddy. “Doomed souls.”

“Their souls aren’t doomed.” Bear spoke with a quiet self-assurance.

“You all right?” asked Harris.

“Yeah, I’m cool. What’s the Irishman up to?”

“Shoot,” Harris said with a smirk, “he thinks he’s John Wayne or someone.”

7.

Shannon,” Diaz whimpered, all cried out.

“She’s gone.” Julie glanced around nervously.

Shannon had been bitten the night before, and most of her throat had been torn out. They’d gotten to her quickly, while fending off the undead, and had stanched and bound her wounds, then carried her back to Diaz’s house.

Diaz had sat on the floor next to her bed all night, holding one of her clammy hands as she drifted in and out of consciousness, unable to speak. Lisa administered autoinjectors of morphine from the National Guard armory the way she’d done as a nurse-practitioner. There was no way to know what Shannon was aware of in her final hours.

Diaz cried silently, the tears burning down his cheeks, as he sat there with no gun.

There were always other people in the room with the couple. Julie, Beth Evers, Al Gold, and Davon were there when Shannon passed, their deathwatch fulfilled.

Julie looked at Al Gold, who nodded, pulled the flask from his back pocket, and swallowed a mouthful of whatever it contained.

Big, strapping Davon, his high school football career ending when the world did, stepped up, a .40 caliber Glock by his side.

“Diaz,” said Davon. “Diaz, you hear me?”

Diaz stared at the wall.

“Diaz, look, man. You gotta go with Beth and Julie. Get out of here, man.”

“Just shoot her, kid,” said Al. “Shoot her now.”

Diaz’s unfocused eyes looked up from the wall, then moved to his girlfriend lying on the bed. Despite what Shannon had been through, she looked peaceful and at rest. Diaz knew they were going to take his Shannon and do horrible, terrible things to her. They were going to shoot her in the head and then burn her beautiful body until there was nothing left.

“Diaz, come on . . .”

Diaz stood. Julie backed away from the bed, uneasy in Shannon’s presence now that she was dead. Soon. It would be soon. Shannon had been tough. The bite had been bad, and she’d almost bled out on the spot. Julie was surprised the woman had made it through the night.

Beth Evers placed a gentle hand on Diaz’s arm, and began to guide him toward the door. Diaz went with her a few steps, appearing to comply, then, lightning-fast, he tore free of Beth’s grasp. He lunged at Davon, who was standing over Shannon, his back to Diaz and Beth, bringing the Glock up. Diaz bashed the black kid in the back of his thick neck.

The blow caught Davon by surprise. He stumbled and went down across the bed, the Glock falling from his hand, thudding on the floor.

Diaz scooped up the pistol, waving it wildly at the others.

“Stay the fuck away from her!” he screamed. “Leave her alone.”

“Diaz!” Al took a step forward, one hand hovering over the holstered .45 on his right hip, his other hand still holding his flask. “Let’s talk—”

“Fuck you, Al—you fucking drunk fucking fuck! Fuck all of you! That’s my Shannon, putas. Leave her alone.”

Diaz backed himself against a wall, fear in his eyes, spittle flaked around the sides of his mouth. The pistol in his hand was unsteady, wavering.

“This is insane.” Julie looked from Al to Diaz to Beth, to the bed where an unconscious Davon was sprawled across Shannon’s sheet-covered legs. “Just insane.”

She started walking for the door.

“Where the fuck are you going?” Diaz demanded, wiping at his nose with the back of the hand gripping the Glock.

“I’m getting out of here. This is nuts.” Julie said it calmly and exited the room. They all heard her break into a run in the hallway and down the stairs.

“Now what?” Al Gold looked at Beth Evers.

Davon groaned, got up on his hands. His head was groggy. Everything swam out of focus.

At that moment Shannon came back, so sudden that the others did not even have time to react. Davon had no idea what hit him. The undead Shannon sat up in bed, grabbed Davon’s shaved head in her hands, twisted his face toward her, and ripped away a hunk of his cheek and nose.

Davon bellowed, rose to a kneeling position on the mattress, and pushed the zombie off him. The former Shannon, now a booker, sprang off the bed and across the room at Al Gold. Al dropped his flask, fumbling with the flap of his holster, trying to get the .45 out.

Beth Evers screamed, a cry of pure terror. Diaz backed against the wall, the Glock aimed nowhere, eyes zoned out.

Davon lost his balance, fell backward off the bed, and cracked his skull on the dresser with a dry thump.

Beth looked toward the door, the way out, but instead of running to it she rushed to Al, trying to pull the undead off him. Beth got an arm around the thing’s neck, attempting to put it in a full nelson. It stood, leaving Al writhing on the floor, an eyeball on his cheek hanging from its optic nerve, the other eye missing completely. Al’s face was ground up, his flask gurgling out onto the floor.

Beth Evers hung on for dear life, the undead wheeling them around the room. As she clung to its back, the thing’s fingers tried to pry her arm from its neck and into its jaws.

Sightless, Al cried out, kicking at the air and trying to regain his footing, instead slipping in a puddle of alcohol and blood.

The undead slammed its back, Beth attached, against the wall. The wind was knocked out of her, but Beth held tight, knowing she couldn’t let go. A second collision with the wall weakened her grip and the third dislodged her entirely. She slumped to the floor, breathless, the back of her head split open, pulsing.

Davon was bleeding out all over the floor, a puddle of blood gathering around his skull.

Beth looked up and blinked at the undead pouncing—a vision from hell—all teeth and nails. She started shrieking.

On a lawn chair in the middle of the street, Harris kept an eye on the manhole cover. He wouldn’t say it to anybody, but he was worried. Buddy and the others should have been back a long time ago.

The 12-gauge rested across his lap.

“Harris!” Julie ran out of Diaz’s place, screaming for him.

“Diaz,” Harris spat. Buddy had been right. He ran, reaching Julie and seeing that she was not hurt.

“Shannon’s dead—Diaz pulled a gun on everyone—Davon—”

Harris broke back into his run, aware that Bobby Evers and others were following him.

He bounded through the open front door and up the stairs to the second floor, then down the hall to the bedroom where Shannon had been taken earlier.

Pausing outside the doorway, Harris listened to the sounds from within and did not want to enter. He tightened his hold on the pump, leveling the barrel at his hip.

“Beth!”

Bobby barreled up the stairs wheezing. Harris stepped into the doorway before Evers could.

“Oh no . . .”

Al Gold was lying on the floor, blind, both eyes out of their sockets. Al had managed to draw his .45, and was waving it in front of him as he lay there shaking, quivering, whimpering in agony. With his blood-covered free hand he tentatively, gingerly touched the ravaged mess that was his face.

Davon was dead, lying in a pool of red on the floor, his ankles still resting on the bed. Harris could see that part of the kid’s face had been bitten off. It smelled like someone had evacuated his bowels.

Beth Evers was still alive, swatting at the undead Shannon, ever-weakening cuffs from her right hand. Beth’s left arm was mangled, chewed through to the white bone. The zombie ignored the blows. It had Beth’s stomach open, her intestines uncoiled and lassoed about the floor around them. Blood was smeared on its face as it gorged itself.

The room: the stink, blood, booze, and feces. And the dead.

“Oh, Beth . . .” Bobby Evers’s lament jarred Harris.

Harris aimed the shotgun at Shannon and whistled. The booker looked up, reared back on its knees with something from inside Beth’s body clenched in its hands, and cracked open its blood-caked maw. Most of its head disintegrated as Harris fired, a splatter of blood and bone and brain splashing the wall behind.

Diaz was hoarse, crying out from the other side of the bed.

Harris stepped fully into the bedroom, allowing Bobby Evers to pass him and go to his wife.

The shotgun was pumped and aimed at Diaz, who was down on the other side of the bed, sobbing. Harris kept one eye on him as he moved over to Al Gold. Al was all fucked up. Harris said, “Al, it’s me, Harris.” He said it a little too quietly so then he said it again louder. “It’s okay now, Al.”

Al’s free hand clutched at Harris’s shirtsleeve, then at his arm, where he got a firm grip. Al’s mouth was moving; he was trying to say something.

“Don’t, Al. It’s okay.” Harris clenched the man’s shoulder, turning to stare back at Bobby and Beth, placing the shotgun on the floor next to him. He drew one of the twin 9-millimeters.

Seated next to Beth on the floor, Bobby stroked his wife’s hair tenderly. She had stopped crying, the color drained from her face. Bobby’s .38, the one he kept on his ankle, was in his right hand.

Harris tried not to look directly into Al’s ravaged face. Al clung to Harris’s arm like a drowning man, trying to talk, trying to say something. Harris aimed the 9-millimeter at Al’s forehead.

“Al, it’s okay now. You hear me? It’s okay now.”

Al swallowed, quieted for a moment, his grip on Harris’s arm never loosening.

“It’s okay, Al. You were a good man, you hear me? You are a good man.”

Though his ears were still ringing from the shotgun blast, the 9-millimeter was not as loud as it normally sounded.

Another crack sounded behind Harris.

Bobby Evers gently laid his second wife’s head down and rose, having done what needed doing.

“Bobby.”

He looked at Harris and nodded.

Harris nodded back. He sighed. It’d been a different situation with Bobby’s first wife. Harris had had to take care of that.

Drawing its knees to its chest, the thing that had been Davon rolled over and began to get into a position where it could push itself up.

Harris aimed at the big guy’s head but Bobby beat him to it, striding over and putting one in the left side of the undead’s skull. Bobby stood above the fallen zombie, firing a second and then a third shot into the back of its head.

“Diaz.”

Diaz was comatose in the space between the wall and the bed. He’d dropped the pistol and was curled in the fetal position.

Harris looked him over, deciding the man had not sustained a bite.

“You got any objection . . . ?” Harris asked Bobby, indicating Diaz with his gun.

Bobby shook his head, nothing to say.

Harris straight-armed the 9-millimeter in Diaz’s direction. Undead or not . . .

“Harris.”

Julie stood in the doorway with the AR-15. Mickey was behind her with an assault shotgun. Mickey was the one who had spoken.

Julie was pale from the sight in the room, her eyes finding Harris’s, a question there.

“Mickey,” Harris said, lowering the 9-millimeter, “do me a favor and get Lisa in here to look at Diaz.”

Julie waited until Harris holstered the handgun under his left arm.

8.

He awoke ten minutes before the alarm. It was still dark outside.

Harris didn’t get up. He popped the earplugs out, rested them under his pillow. He could hear the birds outside. They were always loudest in the hour before the sun rose.

He rolled over and wrapped an arm and leg around Raquel, who was sleeping quietly.

Harris kept his mouth closed because he could taste his breath. He always slept with his mouth shut, which was good. Nothing could fly into it. He’d seen too many Three Stooges episodes as a kid; the one with the feather aloft from Curly’s breath made an indelible impression on him. But a closed mouth meant sour breath when he woke up.

As a kid he’d wake to piss and have to brush his teeth at the same time. The taste used to bother him that much. That continued up until the first year or so of his marriage, at which point he stopped brushing his teeth every time he woke. These days he brushed once in the morning and once before he went to bed and kept his mouth shut next to Raquel.

Theirs was a quiet block, a cul-de-sac, but he still needed the earplugs to sleep. It was a dependency from a time long ago. Without them, he found himself lying in bed, listening to the creaks of the house, the occasional car going somewhere, the dog roused by a raccoon or skunk outside. It wasn’t so bad in the summer, with the low steady hum from the central air conditioner vent lulling him to sleep.

With two minutes left before the alarm clock would ring, he pressed his nose to Raquel’s head, breathing deeply, inhaling the scent of her shampoo and conditioner, her natural smell under that. He liked her smell, even that slight musty smell she got after a long day when her deodorant wasn’t up to the task. It wasn’t full-blown body odor, the type that made people on the subway wrinkle their nose and turn away, just a vaguely discernible emanation. It would embarrass her should he mention it, but it secretly turned him on.

As he got out of bed, pulling the sheet and light blanket back up over Raquel, Harris wondered if that made him a pervert. She would sleep for another fifteen minutes before he woke her up, as was their custom.

He thumbed the selector on the clock radio one notch, turning off the alarm. Had to be careful, two notches and the radio station would pop on.

He pulled on a white T-shirt to go with his boxer shorts, and stepped into his slippers. His robe was hung up on the door. He slipped it on, leaving it hanging open in the front. The bedroom door opened without noise, and Daffy looked up at him with expectant eyes and wagging tail, her whole rear starting to shake.

“Good morning, Daffy-doggy.”

There was one major concession he’d made for Raquel: keep the dog out of their bedroom when they slept. Part of the reasoning had been that they were going to have a kid, and maybe keeping the dog away from the sleeping baby would be good for everyone involved. But they hadn’t been able to have a kid and somehow Daffy was still relegated to the hall.

“How’s daddy’s little girl?” She followed him down the hall.

In the bathroom he urinated, shook it out—and farted loudly, a trumpet blast but no smell. Good to know his gastrointestinal tract still worked. Harris yawned, exhaling rank breath. He flushed and put the seat down, a common courtesy when living with the opposite sex.

Heading downstairs, he could smell the hazelnut. Every night before they went to bed, Raquel set up the coffee machine. Fifteen minutes before Harris stirred, the automatic timer kicked the brew on and a full carafe was waiting by the time he got to the kitchen.

Harris went to the refrigerator and poured himself a glass of orange juice from a gallon plastic jug. Fresh, not from concentrate. Raquel liked pulp; he preferred none. Sometimes they compromised, as with this container: some pulp.

He looked at the calendar on the fridge as he drank his juice, farting twice more. Daffy cocked an eyebrow.

“Damn squirrels,” he said to her, though she didn’t care.

Another week and a half, he’d have two days off. Thanksgiving. Five weeks after that, a full two weeks for the holidays.

“Come on, girl,” Harris said, beckoning Daffy. She wagged her tail, slipped out through the sliding glass doors in the dining room, and ran into the backyard. Harris watched her do her business from the house, drank his juice, yawned again, and tried to squeeze out another fart: empty. He noted the squirrels chasing each other in the tree, and thought he should get up on the roof this weekend sometime, clean out the gutters, check the shingles. Three years ago, they’d had to replace the original roof and it had cost over twelve thousand bucks. The joys of home ownership.

Daffy finished what she was doing and came back to Harris. He let her inside the house and closed the sliding glass doors.

In the kitchen, he fished out a dog cookie, made her give him a paw. “Good girl, good girl.” He let her have the treat. Harris rinsed the glass out and put it in the dishwasher.

He thought about breakfast as he went to the front door, opening it and looking outside. The blue plastic of his New York Times home delivery greeted him on the lawn. The glow from the sun started to spill over the horizon.

Harris cinched the robe shut, then walked outside to retrieve his paper. The grass was wet, but he couldn’t feel it in his slippers. The neighbors were not out yet. Still, it wouldn’t do for a man in his early forties to go outside and get the newspaper in his boxers. People would talk. That’s what people did.

He could always make eggs, it would only take a few minutes. Mix two or three in a bowl with some milk, a little pepper, pour the concoction in a frying pan with some melted butter coating the bottom. Mrs. Harris’s oldest boy was no Emeril but he wouldn’t starve to death. There was a box of Cheerios on the kitchen counter beside the fridge, and a second box of some sugary breakfast cereal. Raquel occasionally liked the sweeter stuff; he shunned it the way he shunned bologna for breakfast. Harris was of the mind-set that some things were just not meant for consumption before noon.

He slipped the paper out of its plastic container and laid down the international news section, the metro section, and the sports, casting a cursory glance at the headlines as he did so, figuring out what articles interested him enough to read when he was ready. Another suicide bombing in the Middle East, four U.S. soldiers killed. The Fed raising interest rates another quarter of a point, the third time this year. Albany struggling to find a few billion in funding for the state’s school systems. Looked like there was going to be a hockey season this year.

He unscrewed the top of the insulated carafe, poured three quarters of a cup of coffee for himself, and added a good dose of milk, lightening it up. He stuck to decaf these days at home, as all they had at work was regular, and Harris couldn’t shake this image of his gut rotting out from too much caffeine. The hazelnut smelled great and it tasted delicious, but he’d heard they sprayed the beans to get them that way, and that couldn’t be good for him.

Daffy had settled herself beside the kitchen table, front paws stretched out before her, head resting between them on the cool tiles.

Harris looked at the clock on the wall. He straightened his arms, hearing his elbows crack, and headed back up the stairs. Time to wake Raquel.

9.

Any of you fuckers run, I’ll kill you myself!” roared Lieutenant Bonham, the look on his face telling them he meant it.

Private First Class Udit steadied his M-16 at the plate glass entrance to the office tower. The entrances were all locked but the zombies were pressing up against the glass, banging on it. The sheer weight of their numbers—it had to be hundreds of them out there—might shatter it eventually.

The ragtag group of National Guardsmen, Marines, Army soldiers, and police officers that had grouped together in the lobby of the building leveled their weapons.

“Hanging in there, Udit?” Private First Class Kimberly Sams asked. Sams was a big, tough German–Puerto Rican broad. She’d dragged Udit in from off the street when their platoon was overrun down on Columbus Circle. Sams had the squad’s M240 B machine gun set up on an overturned leather couch. A uniformed cop she’d grabbed stood next to her to feed the ammunition.

“I’m good, Kimmy,” he said, mustering his courage.

A broad-shouldered black cop was up in the lieutenant’s face. “What the fuck are you talking about, man? You don’t be threatening me and my people!”

Bonham’s face was going from red to crimson. Udit thought Bonham might kill the cop where the cop stood.

Around the elevators the crowd had thinned but there were still dozens of civilians waiting to hitch a ride up into the building, out of the lobby and away from the hordes of zombies filling the streets. Three firefighters were overseeing the loading of the elevators, trying to keep the process running smoothly.

“Get—out—of—my—face—nigger!” Bonham screamed at the black cop, pausing between each word. Udit looked down, shaking his head. Oh boy . . .

“Nigger? Who you calling nigger?” Another black cop stood up.

“You’re out of line—” A white officer started to put Bonham in his place, but the lieutenant flipped and brought his M-16 up and fired a three-round burst into the first cop’s chest.

Udit ducked as things got crazy again.

The cop’s two buddies fired their service revolvers at Bonham and the lieutenant pirouetted, screaming about “niggers” as blood geysered out of him. Bonham triggered a second and third three-round burst from the M-16 before he dropped to the marble floor.

Seeing their lieutenant lit up, Hale and Kucharyk fired on the cops. The white cop was lifted off his feet and slammed back down, deceased. The second black cop ducked and rolled, and came up firing, the bullets from his Glock missing their targets. One errant round pierced through Sergeant Gloria Grant’s lower back, below her body armor.

The cop who’d taken the chest full of lead from Bonham thanked his god: he was saved by his vest. He was down but still in the game, firing his pistol, blowing holes in Hale’s center mass.

Grant grunted and fell forward, firing her M-4 as she went, a full-auto rip punching through a hapless emergency service worker and the glass windows of the lobby. The firing stopped just as suddenly as it had started. All eyes watched the spider webs rippling across the glass. Sheets of it began cascading down, shattering on the floor. The zombies poured in, more glass breaking around them.

Civilians by the elevators started screaming and didn’t stop.

“Fuck!” Kimberly Sams let them have it with the M240 B. The squad machine gun started rattling off six hundred rounds a minute, the 7.62-mm belts flying through it, shell casings and links spitting out, littering the marble floor.

Everyone opened fire; the noise was deafening. Private First Class Udit lost his nerve and fired out his first clip in a matter of seconds on full-auto. Not a good move, as none of his shots brought anything down.

The first zombies that came into the building absorbed the withering salvo. Limbs were severed and dropped off, blood exploded across their torsos. The few humans who kept their cool brought many down and a pile of undead built up, but more continued to invade the building, climbing over their fallen.

Udit swapped magazines and moved his weapon’s selector to single shot.

Sams screamed at the zombies as she mowed them down. Udit couldn’t make out a word she was saying.

He was so close he didn’t have to aim, just point and shoot, and Udit did so, starting to hyperventilate. Legless zombies dragged themselves across the floor toward the line of defenders, leaving streaks of blood on the waxed floor behind them.

Sergeant Gloria Grant was pulling her own paralyzed body across the floor when a group of zombies fell on her and started chewing up her legs. She couldn’t feel anything, but she cried anyway, yelling through the tears for them to “Get off!”

Around Private First Class Udit, people were up and running, and not just the cops and National Guardsmen.

“Fall back!” a Marine screamed, firing a pistol out as he retreated toward the elevators.

“Udit, let’s go!” Sams had the machine gun by its handle, lugging its thirty pounds around with a belt of ammo slung over her shoulder, the muzzle faintly glowing red.

Udit followed her and they merged with the crowd trying to push their way into the elevators. There were only six elevator banks.

Sporadic gunfire continued as the zombies bore down on those inside the lobby. One of the black cops from the shootout dived over the counter behind the front desk, half a dozen undead right behind him. Several gunshots later the man was up, trying to get back over the counter, but arms pulled him cursing back down out of sight.

“Move!” A National Guardsman pushed some women and men in office attire out of the way to squeeze himself onto an elevator. There were too many people and the doors couldn’t close.

Someone tossed a grenade and it detonated, knocking down several of the undead, sending clouds of plaster dust roiling through the elevator bank.

“Get out, get the fuck out!” The guardsmen threw a hysterical secretary out and the doors closed.

Ding!

At the end of the elevator banks, another car opened. Sams and Udit moved to it as humans screamed. People lay dying all around them, zombies tearing into their flesh.

Someone was on a full-auto tear, and his friendly fire mowed down civilians, cops, and zombies without prejudice.

The secretary was dragged out of the elevator car by her hair, and sank to the floor on her knees, crying and hugging herself.

The elevator was pretty much full by the time Udit and Sams got to it.

“Shit,” muttered Udit.

He turned, watching in horror as the zombies overran the elevator banks. One elevator’s doors were closing when a zombie forced its way in, the automatic sensors opening the door. Someone inside shot it in the head but others pushed in behind it. People were screaming in that elevator, and someone fired what sounded like a wide-open M-16.

The kneeling secretary was enveloped and buried under a huddle of the undead.

“Move!” A Marine screamed desperately—a big brawny guy crying out in a high-pitched squeal, and when nobody got out of his way fast enough he sprayed his M-16 into them, bodies collapsing around another open elevator. The Marine jumped over the dead and dying into the elevator, kicking the bodies out so the doors could close.

“Fuck you!” someone else yelled at the Marine, tossing a grenade into the elevator as the doors closed.

“Go, Udit!” Sams pushed Udit into the elevator in front of them.

“Kimmy!” he cried out but it was too late, the doors slid shut.

There was a muffled thud as the hand grenade in the elevator with the Marine exploded.

“Fuck,” Udit cursed.

The people in his elevator were crying and breathing heavily, one babbling desperately.

That was the second time that day Sams had saved his life. Udit wondered if he’d ever have the chance to thank her.

10.

The day it all began, Harris did his best to keep his cool, for his own sake as well as that of his staff and students. Joy Noddings told him to turn on the television, and the science teacher, Gus Cupolo, stumbled across an MSN news bulletin on the outbreak.

The first thing Harris did was to make a call to his superintendent at the central office. The superintendent was not in, and her secretary didn’t know when she’d be back. The secretary was puzzled that Harris asked her about any instructions left for the district, so he told the woman to turn on a television or radio.

He called the main campus of the high school next and got through to an assistant principal, a woman named Burns. Harris liked Burns. She always shot from the hip.

“We’re going Code Green,” she explained, suggesting that Hillcrest should do likewise.

Code Green was basically a lock-down, the entrances to the school were sealed so no one could get in. The color code system had been implemented a few years back following a spate of high school shootings.

In the Hillcrest staff room, Joy Noddings punched numbers into her cell phone. Cupolo alternated between the web site, reading to the secretary and Susan—“attacking people, eating them”—to casting quick glances out at his car in the parking lot.

Best thing to do, thought Harris, is be honest with the students and faculty. He stepped into the hall and knocked on the door of the nearest classroom, Ms. Hernandez’s art class. He asked her if he could borrow two students for a moment. She sent him Yasmin, a junior, and Benjamin, a sophomore.

“Listen, I need you guys to do me a favor, okay?” He looked them both in the eye. “I need you to go from class to class, tell everybody we’re going to have a community meeting downstairs in the lunchroom. Right now. Yasmin, you get the classrooms downstairs, all right? Ben, up here. Thank you both.”

They agreed, and Benjamin asked, “Mr. Harris, this got something to do with the calls and texts students been getting in class?”

Harris nodded. Cell phones and text messages. These kids probably knew more than he did. “That’s exactly what this has to do with.”

Harris had two students wheel the big thirty-five-inch color television into the lunchroom. Three dozen students and staff members sat around in chairs and on the edges of tables, craning their necks to get a better view of Fox.

Harris stood, hands on his hips. Channel Five was reporting live from the West Side Highway somewhere in the mid-thirties. A National Guard unit was engaged in a firefight. The cameraman delivered some amazing footage. The audio from the reporter was fuzzy, but the gunfire and shouts were crystal clear.

Alone and in groups, people staggered into view, emerging onto the West Side Highway from side streets. Before them ran other people who were screaming, wounded, and bleeding. The National Guard were doing their best to separate assailants from victims, gunning them down, and they watched in horror as the cameraman followed the pandemonium proceeding up the highway.

The brrrrrrrrrrrpt of a light machine gun sounded nonstop, tracer rounds zipping down the street, meeting the humans running in their direction. Many of the humans were going down, but others—blood jetting from their wounds—staggered on.

The mass moved closer to the news team, and a reporter was saying something about how he “didn’t see anything like this shit in Iraq,” then apologized to the audience for his choice of words. The reporter stumbled over his own words, chalking the imprecation up to the situation, to the guard firing indiscriminately on full-auto, and to their position being overrun.

The cameraman zoomed in on a stringy black man keeping his head down, trying to outdistance three others chasing after him.

The man yelled, grasped his knee, and went down from friendly fire. He twisted around on the asphalt, gripping his ravaged leg, blood pulsing from between his fingers. He was promptly pounced upon by those who gave chase.

Harris and the others stood transfixed by a close-up of the attackers tearing into the fallen man as he screamed, punching at them. One of the aggressors chomped furiously around the bloody knee, and Harris abruptly shut off the television right as the unfortunate man’s lower leg was ripped off.

Rumbling complaints from the kids—Why is Mr. Harris shutting off the television?

“Jesus Christ,” the secretary said.

“Why’d you shut it off, Harris?” demanded the phys. ed. teacher.

“That’s enough of that,” said Harris. “The kids don’t need to see that.”

The students and staff were murmuring, the noise level rising. Some were scared and upset; others thought it was cool.

“Did you see that one with one arm chasing that lady? That was hella dope!”

“Listen up!” Harris shouted once, injecting as much authority into his loudest, deepest, I-command-thee-to-listen-to-me voice, the one usually reserved for the few times a year he had to break up a student fight.

“Do I have your attention?”

The murmurs quieted down.

“Yo, listen!” someone hissed.

“All of your attention?”

He had it.

“Okay.” He was winging it, not knowing what to say. “Something really bad is going on in the city. We’re not sure what, and from what we can tell, the people on the television don’t know either. A lot of us have family and friends down in the city, and we’re going to be worrying about them. I understand that. It’s natural.”

He worked his way to the center of the room, projecting his voice, turning his head. At one point or another he faced everyone in the room, making sure to make eye contact with each person.

“The main campus is on Code Green. That means no one gets in and no one gets out. No one,” he repeated, and the gym teacher looked away.

“The best thing to do is sit here until two o’clock dismissal. Just wait it out. We don’t know if whatever this is is confined to the city, or if it’s reached this area too. I don’t want any of you getting hurt—not one of you—and that means we stay where we are until we hear otherwise.”

Harris said it again. “That means all of us.”

“Can we turn the television back on?” a student asked.

“No. We don’t show you R-rated movies, and I’m not showing you that crap. Somebody get a radio out of one of the classrooms and hook that up. Bruce, you still have that boom box in your room?”

The phys. ed. teacher said he did, and left to go get it.

“Okay. Staff, I want the kids here or next door in Joy’s classroom. I want people accounted for, and I don’t want anyone wandering around. The main thing is to try and stay calm. We aren’t helping anyone out if we go crazy here, right?”

A few “yeahs” and “a’ights,” even an old-school “word,” some silent nods. A couple of the girls were crying, but the students had been with Harris long enough to know that he would never steer them wrong.

“Mr. Harris,” said Shanequa, a scared ninth-grader with afro puffs, “are those things gonna get us?”

“I’m not going to let those things get you, Shanequa. Any of you.”

No one who heard his promise doubted it.

The gym teacher came back with his radio and said he was going to Ms. Noddings’s room to plug it in. Several of the students and staff followed him.

“Susan,” Harris said to the teacher’s aide, “I’m going upstairs to make a few phone calls to the superintendent, the police, and whomever else to see what I can find out. You okay?”

Susan shrugged, the look on her face indicating that she didn’t know what to do or how to feel.

Harris reached out and placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. He left it there for a moment. “Everything is going to be okay, all right?”

“All right.”

In case anyone was watching, he walked calmly down the hall and up the stairs to his office. He closed the door, then thought better of it and opened it again. He tried to call his wife.

11.

Breathe in, breathe out; in, out. The man concentrated on his breathing, on the inhalation and exhalation of air, conscious of the rise and fall of his chest, his eyes closed to his surroundings. He was aware of an itch on his arm, but ignored it, striving to center himself.

The counting of breaths was a technique he’d practiced for years. He’d had the time on his hands to do so. A breath, another, again. Assigning each a number, focusing on the numeral in his mind, envisioning it in empty space, and concentrating on the number allowed him to void all else around him; the itch was not so much forgotten as no longer important.

The numbers, the visuals cast on the screen of his mind, dissipated, his awareness now was only of breathing. Somewhere his corporeality continued. The inflation of his chest, blood coursing through his veins, electrical impulses through his brain and sensory motor system—these processes were external to him, his sense of self transcended.

He was one with the emptiness, one with everything, until a clang of keys on metal brought him back to the world, out of his meditation. The hack suited out in riot gear stood over his cot, looking down on him. One hand was pulled in close to the guard’s body. It looked injured. The other steadied a mini-14 trained on him.

The man made no moves, giving not the slightest indication that he had a stake in what transpired next.

“You’re free,” said the corrections officer. “As much as it pains me, as much as I wonder and worry if what I’m doing here is the right thing, the just thing, I’m letting you go.

“But before you leave, I’m going to tell you something, and you’re going to listen. Sit up.”

The man sat up, hands on knees.

“You think I’m kidding don’t you? That this is all some sick joke, right? You think I’m going to blow your brains out all over this place, spit on your body? Part of me wants to do nothing but that. But this is no joke, and I’m not kidding.”

The turnkey glanced over his shoulder into the hall of D-Block, winced, and looked down at his hand.

“Now you listen to me. I hate you. I fucking detest your very being. Everything you are, everything you represent, is an abomination to me. I’ve spent the last twelve years of my goddamn life trying my best to make the last twelve of yours as miserable as I fucking can.

“Hell. That’s all I ever wished for you. Hell for your soul in death, but also here on Earth while you lived out whatever was coming to you. I did what I could to make hell real for you here, for all of you death row scumbags as a matter of fact. But especially you.

“When I look at you, I don’t see a man. I see a beast. Ain’t no man capable of what you done, nothing human. I see all those little girls . . . their arms cut off . . . struggling up out of those ditches . . . screaming and crying their way down the side of the road. All bloody between their legs.

“I see their mommies and daddies weeping, wondering why God would let that happen to their children. I see little ones . . . robbed of their innocence . . . their futures. I see families robbed of the promise, the covenant, the idea . . . the idea that if they do right by the world and God, that the world and God would do right by them.

“I ask myself, who are you? Who are you really? What kind of man . . . what kind of thing could do this, could visit this upon others? It’s not so much the mechanics that concern me. I been here in this place long enough, I seen enough what one human being can do to another. It’s the motivation, the thought process. You’re something I don’t understand. Something I can’t understand. Best thing that could have happened is that they would have killed you when they took you, but they didn’t.

“I’m a religious man . . . but I don’t know. I’d kill you right now. That’s why I came down here to begin with. But death is too good for you. If you die, and if there’s a hell, I have no doubt there’s a special place reserved for you. If you die and there ain’t nothin’, well, I don’t believe that, but on the off chance there ain’t, then death for you ain’t nothin’ but a reprieve. And I’ll be goddamned if you’re gonna get that.

“That’s why I did what I did in here over the years, kept you alive. There were those wanted you dead, you know. Dead for what you did outside, dead for what you did to others in here. Inmates, guards—I kept them from you. Death isn’t enough for this one, that’s all I kept thinking. You die, no matter how painful, no matter how much suffering anyone or anything could inflict upon you in your final hours, it’s still all over for you, the way it’s all over for some of them kids, mercifully. The other ones . . .

“The ones that lived . . . I don’t even want to think about them.

“I came down here to kill you. You’ll see what’s going on outside, the world’s gone to hell. If I killed you, no one would notice. Even if they did, fuck, nobody’d give two shits now. So I come down, and in my heart of hearts I’d made up my mind to end you. But then this motherfucker—a man I know, a good man, a guard I’ve known longer than I’ve despised you—he attacked me, and I had to kill him. Had to shoot him with this gun.”

He raised the barrel of the mini-14 to the ceiling, his eyes running up and down the stock, contemplating the weapon in his hand.

“He bit me, the fucker. Don’t know why. That’s when I changed my mind, thought how death was too sweet a deal for you. Maybe I don’t know what I’m doing . . . I’m not feelin’ so hot right about now. But, you know what? Fuck you. You live.

“But before you thank me, you go on. You see what this world holds for you. You’ve no idea what I’m letting you out into. You might not make it long out there, but I think you will, and I hope you do. That’ll be your punishment, and I pray it’s punishment enough.”

The man on the cot stood, stretched, and rotated his head on his neck.

He took nothing with him and stepped into the hallway, leaving everything in the cell as it was. All the cell doors along the block were rolled back, open, and all the cells were empty. Somewhere there was a ruckus, muted clangs of metal on metal, the screams of men.

“Everything’s gone to hell, buddy. I think the world is ending.” The corrections officer walked off down the block, calling behind him, “And don’t you walk my way.”

The man stood there for some time, considering this turn of events.

Buddy, he thought, that’ll do. With no destination in mind he strolled off in the opposite direction, toward the bedlam.

12.

Okay, favorite junk food,” invited Fred Turner.

Fred, his son, John, Bobby and Beth Evers, Buddy, Harris, and a bunch of others sat around some patio tables set up in Eden in the middle of the street. It was well past midnight and most were asleep. Mickey was on watch along the southern wall, Sal Bianaculli on the northern. This group was up late, under the stars and luau lamps, ignoring the occasional moan and yelp coming over the wall, drinking and talking.

“Favorite junk food,” mulled Beth. “You know those little chocolate donuts, the kind Hostess used to make?”

“Yeah,” said someone else.

“Well, those. But only if they’re frozen. I don’t like them when they’re room temperature.”

Davon nodded in agreement. “That’s how I feel about my Devil Dogs.”

“Chocolate cream pie,” said Bobby Evers, “but what I’d give for some of the black stuff.”

“You talk about other women that way in front of your wife?” John Turner asked, pushing his glasses up on his nose.

“You’re twistin’ hay there, boyo. I’m speaking of me Guinness.”

“This is America, Bobby,” said John. “Speak American.”

“And not the instant pudding type either,” Bobby continued, “the one with the pudding you gotta make with milk and stir.”

“Jeez, you guys were made for each other,” said Buddy. “All these qualifications and whatnot.”

The game continued around the loose circle.

“Crumb cake,” said Isabel, following it with another shot of tequila.

“Tiramisu,” was Fred Turner’s answer. He was glad Mickey was on watch, otherwise they’d probably be talking movies, because between Mickey Harmon and Harris they could talk about them all night. Turner had grown up when the radio was still America’s number one form of entertainment. Talk about The Shadow and he was in his element. Spielberg or Cameron? He could keep up. But with Kurosawa or Truffaut, he was out of his depth.

Buddy raised his eyebrows and offered, “Lemon meringue pie.”

“What about you, Harris?” Isabel asked the other directly.

Isabel was a good-looking woman in her early forties, and buxom. Buddy used to kid Harris that there were two good things about Isabel, the twins—her boobs. Harris thought she had been flirting with him on occasion.

“I have one,” said Harris, “but like my Irish friend and his lovely bride here, it comes with a qualification.”

“Uh-unh, here we go.” Buddy rolled his eyes in his head in mock annoyance.

“Like my brother from another mother, Buddy, it’s chocolate—”

Bobby Evers interrupted in a good naturedly way. “Jay-sis, Harris, always gotta bring race into it, eh?”

“You noticed that too, right?” Buddy was just as quick.

Harris ignored their ribbing. “There used to be this chocolate shop, and they sold everything, anything you could want in chocolate. You know, chocolate bunnies at Easter, chocolate-covered nuts, chocolate this and chocolate that. What I really liked there, they sold this loose chocolate, I think they called it ‘chocolate chunks’ or something, and you could buy it by the pound. They’d scoop up these nuggets of milk chocolate for you, put them in a bag. Good stuff.”

“Sounds like it,” said Isabel, and Harris noticed she wasn’t wearing a bra. She never seemed to be wearing a bra. “Where was this store?”

Harris told them the name of the place. “Not too far from where I grew up.”

“And where was that?” Isabel pursued.

“Not too far from here.” Again, almost to himself, “Not too far from here.”

13.

Mickey had a huge collection of DVDs. He’d had a couple thousand before the outbreak and often lamented the loss of his collection. In his months in Eden he’d steadily amassed thousands more. When he was on rummage expeditions for canned goods and supplies, Mickey Harmon always kept an eye out for another flick to add to his library.

One time Harris had been in Mickey’s home. The walls of the man’s living room were stacked with DVDs. Mickey had them arranged according to genre, from French New Wave to Hollywood blockbuster to Hong Kong shoot-’em-ups. Mickey’s living room had been converted into a media room with a plasma screen television and a surround sound home theater system. The television was from Palmer and Ryan. Mickey had asked and they’d let him have the television, even helped him carry it over and set it up in his place.

Mickey facilitated a weekly Eden movie view-and-discussion group. He’d studied film in school for two semesters, but most of what he knew was self-taught.

When spring came to Eden, Mickey enlisted the aid of several of the men and women and they all set up an outdoor theater. Folding chairs, recliners, and couches were all arranged to face a white screen on a stand. Phil Caputo, an electrician, hooked a laptop to a projector and a whole bevy of speakers to the laptop. They watched movies on the big screen in nice weather, carting the laptop, projector, and other electronic devices indoors when the weather was inclement, covering the seating arrangements with tarps. Everything was up on two-by-fours, out of the runoff from the rain showers.

If a sofa or rocking chair got ruined it’d be easy enough to burn it or toss it over the wall; replacing it was not a problem. There were whole houses on the block left to raid, buildings with no inhabitants. Guys like Harris and Buddy preferred to have their own places, and there were shacked-up couples, some married like Bobby and Beth, or Sal and Camille. Those who didn’t want to live alone had housemates, like Palmer and Ryan, or the unlikely pair of Davon and Al Gold.

Tonight a western was showing. Harris had seen it several times before.

A dozen or so men and women lounged about. The volume was turned way up, almost drowning out the sound of the undead beyond the walls.

“You could at least have the decency to draw your guns,” the sheriff told his old friends Butch and Sundance. Newman and Redford—a classic. The duo on the run, relentless foes on their trail.

“Come on, Sundance, start trussin’ my feet.”

This part of the movie always made Harris sad. He’d seen the movie the first time as a little boy on Million Dollar Movie late one night. Butch and Sundance went out in a hail of Bolivian lead. The ending was effective, in large part because you don’t see the two men check out. They just come running out of the building they’re holed-up in, wounded and bloody, toting two six-shooters each. The frame freezes, the first hail of rifle fire, a screamed command, a second volley. Harris always felt sad; you just knew they were shot to hell.

But that part wasn’t until later in the film. Right now the sheriff was laying it out for them; prophetic, though they knew it not.

“There’s something out there that scares ya, huh?” Redford was peeking through the drawn curtain out into the night.

“But it’s too late. You know you should have let yourselves get killed a long time ago when you still had the chance.”

Harris got up, walking away from the others.

“It’s over, don’t you get that?” Harris could still hear the sheriff scolding Butch and the Kid. “Your times is over and you’re gonna die bloody. And all you can do is choose where.”

When he’d walked far enough away that the sound of the movie was inaudible, he sat down on somebody’s stoop and looked at his feet. He thought he was doing a good job holding it all together, everything considered. He’d avoided taking to drink, to other drugs. Al Gold was polluted half the time. Harris wondered if Al had been that way before all this, or if circumstances had changed the man.

Who was he kidding? The situation had affected him too. It was affecting him, every day he woke up and every night he went to sleep. How else did he explain the way he’d reacted to that psychic? Harris liked to think he was not a violent man. Hadn’t his years teaching and being a principal shown him he had a vast reserve of patience? Yet the last several months, he’d been doing . . . what? Hacking people up with a machete, shooting them in the head. Okay, maybe they weren’t exactly people anymore. Or were they?

Harris’s existence, and everyone else’s, had devolved to nothing other than a matter of survival. Questioning it was a luxury that was only possible in the relative safety of Eden.

His wallet was in his back pocket, an old habit. He pulled it out, noting how much thinner it was. He’d never been one to carry cash in his pocket. He’d used a rubber band as a young man, later a money clip. He’d already chucked his credit cards, his library card. Old habits did die hard, though. He’d cut up the credit cards before he tossed them, but still held onto the social security card.

Harris still had the pictures but there weren’t many. He looked through them, starting with the last one, working his way to the front of the wallet. A group shot of his parents, his brother, both their wives, his brother’s kids. He’d taken the picture, so he wasn’t in it. Tonight he was here, and they were all gone.

A picture of Daffy girl, sitting in the grass of their backyard on a hot day, tongue lolling out of her mouth.

His wedding picture. He’d never been big on ceremony, and neither had Raquel. They’d done the whole church thing and reception for the sake of their families. That and the idea that they didn’t want to grow old one day and regret not having done it.

A head shot of Raquel, the first picture of her he’d ever possessed. She’d always been beautiful to him. The black-and-white photography lent her an ethereal quality.

Her face just wouldn’t leave him alone. Harris wondered when this haunting would stop. He hummed a few lines of Status Quo’s “Pictures of Matchstick Men” to himself, lines he thought appropriate.

“What are you looking at?”

It was the tall girl, Julie. She’d come over and was standing at the foot of the steps holding an open can of beer. In her other hand she had the plastic webbing with two more unopened.

“Ghosts,” he responded, more to himself than to her.

“Mind if I sit down?”

“Go ahead.” Harris made eye contact to be friendly. He hadn’t lost all of his social skills.

“Thanks.”

Harris wondered why she’d wandered over. He’d talked to her once or twice since the day she’d arrived in camp. There was no denying that Julie was an attractive woman, beautiful even.

Harris hadn’t thought about another woman in years, not seriously. He’d left the dating game behind him with Raquel, the both of them pledging each to the other, though neither expected it to be easy. But at the end of every single day, when he went home to her and she to him, Harris knew he’d made the right decision.

Thinking about Raquel bothered him. This world had robbed him of her.

“Did that hurt?” Harris asked about Julie’s arm. She was wearing a T-shirt with cutoff sleeves. Her right arm was covered from shoulder to elbow with tattoos, some intricate-tribal-art-black-ink-thing.

“Oh man, did it ever,” she laughed. “Especially on the underside of my arm, inside of the triceps. Right here.”

She held her arm out and pointed to the area she meant. Her arms were long, tight, flawless.

“You have any? Ink, I mean?”

Harris blushed. “No.”

She didn’t say anything, so he continued. “My generation was the one where everyone started doing that, getting tattoos, piercing themselves. I always meant to get around to it—”

“What, a piercing?”

“No.” He laughed a little. “A tattoo. But I’m glad I didn’t.”

“Why, you don’t like tattoos?”

“No, I don’t like what I had in mind then. Now, I mean, I would have been one of those who regretted getting it.”

“Why, what did you have in mind?”

“You ever seen that Bad Boy logo? You know, the one with the jar-headed kid with the short hair flexing one arm?”

Julie laughed. “My brother had a decal of that on his truck.”

“Yeah, well, when I was eighteen, that’s what I would have gotten on my body if my parents wouldn’t have thrown me out of the house for getting a tattoo.”

“The Bad Boy logo, hmmm,” she mused. “Maybe it’s a good idea you didn’t get a tattoo.”

“Yeah, I think so too.” Harris smiled.

They sat quietly for a minute, comfortably.

“You mind if I ask you a question?” asked Harris.

“Ask it first.”

“How old are you?”

“How old do I look?”

“Well, I, uh . . .”

“I get it. You’re worried if you answer too old, or too young, I’ll be offended. Don’t you know you shouldn’t ask a woman her age to begin with, Mr. Harris?”

“Social niceties were never my forte.”

“Oh, I don’t believe that.”

“I’d be willing to bet I’m a bit older than you.”

“So, was your question about me, or was it about you?”

“I’d have to think about that one.”

She told him her age and asked him how old he was.

“Yeah,” she said when he told her, “you’re really older than me, old enough to be my older brother maybe.”

“And have a Bad Boy decal on my truck?”

They both laughed, and Julie sipped her beer.

“You want some?” she offered the can.

“No, thanks.” Harris gestured. “I never did like the taste.”

“Wish I could say the same,” sighed Julie. “If you had known me in college, you’d have thought my major was hops and barley or something.”

“Hey, to each his own. Speaking of which, you have any others? Tattoos, that is.”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Okay, do tell.”

Julie pulled a leg of her jeans up over her calf, revealing a little purple, red, and green butterfly with circular motion arrows on her ankle. Harris thought he could probably wrap his thumb and forefinger around that ankle.

“Nice. Nature girl?”

“No. My friends and I all went together, got the same tattoo on our ankles when we turned sixteen. Had to lie to the tattoo artist about our ages. I don’t think he cared, though. He didn’t even check our IDs.”

Harris admired the little butterfly.

“Here, hold my beer, will you?”

Harris took it and Julie turned around and lifted her T-shirt, showing him her back, upon which was etched a multicolored rendering, a girl’s head and shoulders. Her bra strap hid the girl’s eyes, yet Harris still recognized it.

“Cosette.” He was pleased.

“Yeah, how’d you know?”

“Everyone knows Victor Hugo,” Harris said, then thought, no, surely enough, not everyone does.

“Les Mis is my favorite musical.” Julie pulled her shirt back down, turning to face him again.

“Yeah, ours too—mine and Raquel’s, my wife’s, I mean.” Harris wondered why he’d added that part about Raquel—“my wife’s, I mean”—and why, the thought vexing him just as equally, just why shouldn’t he have?

Julie only missed one beat.

“I thought you were married. That ring on your finger and all.”

Harris held up his hand, looking at his wedding band.

“But I haven’t seen you with a woman around camp.”

“No, my wife . . . my wife was in Manhattan. I don’t know what happened to her. I mean, I think I know . . . What about you? Were you with anyone before . . . well, you know what I mean.”

“I had a boyfriend, if that’s what you mean. But things weren’t working out for us.”

Harris found himself looking at her, really looking at her. She had a beauty mark above her lip. It looked like it’d been placed there on purpose. He liked it.

“I guess it was only a matter of time, before things ended officially. Then, this.” She gestured with both hands.

“I still find myself . . . it’s just, damn. It’s crazy isn’t it?”

Julie finished her beer. “Yes, it is.”

“It’s one of those things. Words can’t do it justice.”

“I agree.”

“Julie, let me ask you . . .”

“Go ahead.”

“Why aren’t you watching the movie?”

“I’ve seen it before.”

“Big western fan?”

“My mom, she had this thing for Robert Redford. Always said if Robert had come along before my dad . . .”

Harris laughed. “My mom had this thing for the guy who played Tom-Tom in March of the Wooden Soldiers.”

“That one I didn’t see,” she said.

“Laurel and Hardy?”

“I’ve heard of them. Let me guess—your generation, right?”

“What do you mean?”

“Before, when we were talking about tattoos, you said something about your ‘generation,’ like you’re some old man.”

“I only feel that way sometimes.”

“Let me ask you, Harris . . . this might sound strange. All this time I’ve been here, you haven’t . . . how should I put this? You haven’t talked to me. How come?”

“Oh. I didn’t know I was supposed to.”

“No, it’s not that, I just—look, I’m sorry, Harris. Look, let me ask you another question.”

“Go ahead.” He smiled.

“You and Buddy. Are you two . . . you know?”

“What, gay?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re serious?”

“Yeah.”

Harris laughed at that. “That’s a good one. He’ll love that. Oh man, will Buddy love that.”

“Well, I mean, it’s not like there’s anything wrong if you two were . . .”

Harris laughed harder.

“It’s just, you’re always together, you know? I mean, I usually have a good eye for that kind of thing, but I couldn’t really tell.”

“Is that what your gaydar was telling you? That me and Buddy were an item?”

“No, I wasn’t sure. I didn’t think so . . .”

“Julie, Julie, Julie. No, I’m not gay. And I don’t think the big man is either. He’s just my boy. You know what I mean? I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you if it wasn’t for Buddy.”

Harris wondered if the look on her face was relief.

“I’m sorry if I offended you—”

“No, you didn’t. Don’t worry.”

“It’s just that, you and him are also . . . oh, how can I say this without sounding conceited?”

“Just say it.”

“Buddy. You. Neither one of you guys have tried to hit on me. On any of the women here.”

“That’s a bad thing?”

“No, that’s a great thing! You don’t know what it’s like for a woman around this place. All these guys have this mind-set, like, it’s time for everyone to pair off and hook up or something, you know?”

Harris considered it. “Yeah. The only single woman I can think of here, aside from yourself, that is, would be Isabel.”

Julie rolled her eyes. “And with her, oh, well, you know how she is. And some of these guys, well, I think they think all women should be like that around here.”

“Why, did someone get pushy with you?”

“Well, Diaz is a jerk.”

“Diaz was born a jerk. Don’t worry about him. Shannon will kick his ass if he tries anything with you. Come to think of it, though, I have noticed how Thompson seems to like you.”

“He’s a nice guy, Harris. But he follows me around.”

“That’s not good, huh?”

“No, that’s not good.”

“Well, tough luck for Thompson, then. But now that I know how you feel, I’ll make an effort to show you some attention in the future.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“You don’t mind if I stalk you sometimes, do you? Leer a little now and then?”

“You’re a funny guy, Harris. You shouldn’t sit here brooding by yourself.”

“I wasn’t brooding. I was contemplating. There’s a difference, you know.”

“Do tell.”

“You gotta see for yourself. So give me one of those beers. Sit here and contemplate with me.”

She looked at him directly and he winked at her. It felt natural.

“Okay,” said Julie. “All right.”

She handed him a beer and he popped it open.

“To Cosette,” Harris toasted as they tapped cans.

“Damn, Julie. This stuff still tastes like crap.”

14.

Harris thought about the fact that last night had been it for him, his last night of sleep. Ever. It was a staggering realization, and part of him felt detached, as though it was not his fate that he was cognizant of, but that of a stranger.

The bite was so small, only a few teeth impressions on his upper arm. But the skin had broken. He never could figure how rotting corpses kept such strong teeth.

All the way he’d come, evading death on the streets . . . alone at first, then with Buddy. He’d managed to avoid catching any contagious diseases, any of the things all that death and decay brought in their wake.

And here he was, hoping maybe he’d make it through the day. He thought of Diaz’s girl. Shannon had suffered a horrendous wound, but she’d lasted a night, into the next day. Thing was, what kind of an existence was it? Things started to happen once you were infected. What Harris looked forward to least were the bloody shits. He knew they were on their way.

He changed the bandage and put his shirt back on.

Part of him really wanted to tell Julie but he couldn’t. He just couldn’t.

He didn’t think she’d shoot him. Julie was still shaken up herself, waking with a house full of undead attacking them. Throwing something like this at her, right now . . .

The others, they would shoot him if they knew, if they had the nerve. Harris knew Bobby Evers suspected something was amiss, that the other man knew something wasn’t quite right.

He wondered if, when the time came, would he let them kill him? Could he let them? If he marched out onto the street and exposed the wound and told them what happened, would he let them draw down and blast away on him? Would he pull the 9-mils and take as many of them along as he could for no good reason?

Harris felt a bit nauseous already, but nothing debilitating. It was just a general sense of not feeling well, not feeling the way he should, the way he used to.

Maybe this wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. Harris had suffered from some kind of slight depression most of his adult life, or at least had convinced himself he had. He could never put a finger on it. He noticed it on Sundays mostly, a certain sense of dread with the close of the weekend. Harris liked work, especially teaching and administration, so it wasn’t like he was ruing going back to the job, whatever the job was.

He’d found that keeping busy helped. If he occupied his hours, if he didn’t give himself much downtime, he wouldn’t get caught up in the blues. Raquel always said she admired that about him, his ability to manage time, to always have four or five things going on at once. The way that, as soon as he completed one thing, he’d move seamlessly into a new task.

Thompson, Harris thought, fingering the lighter in his pocket.

Leave it to human beings, he said to himself, everything goes to hell and you’d think we’d pull together. Some did, and he thought of Dom. He thought of the old man in the boat, of William Richardson, of the good ones. Where were they all now? Here in Eden, where, for all he knew—for all anyone knew—what was left of humanity had gathered, even here some wanted to put one over on the rest.

Harris had a pretty good idea regarding Thompson’s motivation. But Thompson had let zombies into Harris’s house when he knew Julie was there, and that didn’t make much sense. Then again, the more Harris thought about it, maybe it did make sense, maybe it made a lot of sense.

He considered running his idea past Evers. Bobby was a pretty level-headed guy, considering. Evers would listen to Harris, and of course Harris would leave out parts, the part about his being bitten, the part about planning to murder Thompson. Maybe later.

Harris left the shower area of Eden. Water had stopped running in the houses a long time ago, so they’d constructed a public bath area. Toilets with cesspools and hot running water for the showers. The water collected when it rained. Everyone had job assignments, and everyone rotated among jobs unless it was a task demanding certain skills that only specific people possessed, like Phil Caputo, the electrician. Those people were expected and encouraged to teach what they knew to others, lest they die, and with them, their knowledge.

Harris had been on bathroom duty last week, cleaning the toilets, gassing and torching the cesspools, scrubbing the showers. Bathroom duty was a necessity, but one he wouldn’t miss.

“Harris.” A few people gave him small waves as he walked down the street, smiles, a thumbs-up from Ryan.

Harris nodded back, forced a grin, let them know he was okay. He wore the twin 9-mils, one under each arm. Everybody was armed in Eden and nobody gave it a second thought. He imagined the old West might have been this way, minus the zombies.

Thompson was up the block, sweeping his property. Harris was careful not to avoid eye contact, though he didn’t go out of his way to make it, and once it had been established, Harris didn’t allow it to linger. He worried lest his eyes gave something away. Lest they sent Thompson the message: I know it was you, and I’m going to kill you.

“Harris!” Julie hugged her man.

Harris hugged her back, hard, because he still could.

She’d taken a shower and cleaned up after carting the last of the bodies to the other end of the block to the smoke and stink of the pyres.

“Harris, have a listen to this,” said Palmer. “It’s an idea a few of us had.”

Harris sat himself at a folding table in the street. Funny, the scene reminded him of block parties they’d had in his neighborhood when he was a kid, all the neighbors sitting around, talking, having a good time. The difference was that this block was surrounded by an army of flesh-eating zombies clawing at the walls around them.

“Remember that couple that came through here about two weeks ago?” Brenner asked.

Everyone remembered them. They’d driven in with an armored personnel carrier. Nice couple, young, heavily armed.

Brenner continued, “They mentioned there’re whole cities and towns, farther north, south of here too, holdouts.”

“They mentioned they’d heard there were towns and cities where it was safe,” Kate Truman corrected.

“True that,” admitted Brenner. “But they’d heard about them from someone who’d been there.”

“So what do you want to do?” Harris asked him.

“Look, we got the vehicles, we got the guns . . .” Brenner addressed the larger group. “I say we get out of here.”

“Eden’s safe, though,” said Truman, crossing her arms in her folding chair.

“Yeah, Eden’s safe,” agreed Brenner, “but Eden’s . . . Eden’s a cage. Look at us. We’re like pets. Those fucking things are toying with us.”

“Those fucking things don’t think,” said Phil. “At least, not like we do. They’re not toying with us. They’re waiting around for us to get antsy and come out. That’s what they’re waiting for, if they’re waiting for anything.”

“It’s a good idea, Brenner,” said Harris, “but I ain’t buying it right this second.”

“Harris, come on, man,” Brenner tried to persuade him. “You and me, Julie”—he nodded at her beside Harris—“we can make it out of here. Others have before us.”

Harris thought about those that had come and gone. Graham and Markowski had had a way of chasing folks away, but there were fewer zombies outside the walls back then. As time went by, the streets teemed with more and more of the undead. Eden had gone from Graham’s rule to everyone’s. Those who came for respite and those already here were more amenable to staying, to sticking it out inside the four walls.

People left. Harris thought about old Siobhan McAllister, the way her departure had bothered Buddy so, though Buddy never said anything about it. Whatever happened to all those people who came and went, to all those people on the outside he’d met, when he and Buddy were jogging through the streets, just trying to live another day? To Raquel? To Daffy? Harris longed for closure. He was even willing to accept the certainty of something he didn’t want to hear.

“Just promise me you’ll think about it, Harris,” said Brenner. “All of you.”

“Yeah, we’ll think about it,” said Phil. “From here, safe.”

Harris coughed suddenly, bringing his hand up to his mouth. He couldn’t control it. The coughing spell lasted long enough for people to notice, which made him uncomfortable.

“Whoa, that’s some cough you got there, Harris,” Palmer said. “You coming down with something? Come by the dispensary, we’ll hook you up with some antibiotics.”

Harris thanked Palmer, excusing himself. Life continued as usual in Eden in certain weird ways. People got colds, the flu. Bobby Evers battled his asthma flare-ups.

Julie made to follow Harris but he turned, stopping her.

“What is it?” She looked concerned.

“Nothing. It’s all good. I want to get something out of the house. Meet me up the block by the grill. I’ll be there in a few minutes. You’ve got to be starving. We haven’t eaten.”

“Okay.” The look in her eyes said she didn’t want to leave him and he loved her for it.

Harris turned and started toward their house, thinking about how he’d turned his back on Julie in other ways since he’d known her. Julie loved him. A part of Harris really loved her, but there was always Raquel in the back of his mind. He thought Julie knew this.

Harris wondered if he was capable of giving himself fully, emotionally, to Julie. So much of what he’d felt had been blunted by all the death. Maybe this was the best he could do, given the times in which they lived, given the man he was now. He just didn’t want to shortchange Julie, as she loved him deeply and unconditionally.

Harris thought about these things as he unlocked the door to their house. About three months after she’d come to Eden, Julie had moved out of her own place and moved in with him.

Inside, he closed the door and leaned against it. Harris opened his left hand, the hand that had come away from his mouth wet when he’d coughed. The same hand he’d kept down by his side, clenched tightly, hoping no one would notice. Harris stared into the palm of that hand, at the blood freckled there.

He didn’t have much time.

15.

Buddy and Harris kind of stood back and followed the National Guardsmen’s lead as they secured the supermarket. Though they weren’t full-time troops, they were trained, even if for only one weekend a month and two weeks every summer. It was best to follow their direction, to not step on their toes, to go along for the ride for as long as it seemed feasible. That, plus the fact the guardsmen outgunned them with some pretty heavy weaponry.

The supermarket had been closed. They’d forced their way in, blasting the locks off one of the riot gates and pulling it down behind them again, the guardsman named Shapiro going to work with an acetylene torch. Standard issue guard gear? Or something useful picked up along the way? Harris wondered, but didn’t ask. The others fanned out, canvassing the aisles of the supermarket.

No zombies were inside the store. All the exits seemed secure. Sergeant Edmond posted his men in what looked to be the strategic spots. The windows were protected by pull-down riot gates, like the one covering the entrance. The gates were meshed at eye-level. Looking through the links, Buddy watched the undead out on the street.

The zombies were looking back in at them. Several had their faces pressed to the grating and were pulling and pushing at it futilely, moaning.

“Don’t do it,” Edmond cautioned Annunziata. The man was sighting down the barrel of his M-16 at one of the undead staring in at them. “Conserve ammo.”

“You seen what the fuckers did to Bevilacqua and Gordon, Sarge,” growled the other. “Look at Koster. They bit the shit out of Koster. You know what that means? He’s got a five-year-old at home, Sarge.”

“Annunziata, you listen to me.” Edmond took his hand and forced the barrel of the other man’s rifle down. “You stand the fuck down. We’ll have our payback, but until I say fuckin’ so, you fuckin’ cool your heels. Got it?”

Cowed, Annunziata said, “Yeah.”

Hundreds of zombies were gathered outside, joined every minute by dozens more of their kind.

“Roof access through the back,” shouted Gill.

“Let’s check it out.” The sergeant invited Buddy and Harris, motioning one of the other men to stay with Annunziata.

“Have you ever seen this many of them gathered together in one place?” Harris asked Buddy and the sergeant on the roof.

“Manhattan was worse than this.” The sergeant shook his head. “Manhattan was bad.”

“You were in the city?”

“We got out before the jets, and we barely got out at that. Hopped the Seven train in Times Square, pulled into the station at Grand Central and there were I don’t know how many hundreds, maybe more, of these things all on us at once.”

“We lit their shit up,” noted another guardsman on the roof.

“Barely made it out of there ourselves,” Edmond continued. “Hoofed it through the train tunnel. Had to carry Koster.”

“He would have died on that train,” said the other guardsman. “Sarge dragged him off himself.”

“And maybe I should have left him,” mulled the sergeant. “As it is, it doesn’t look good. Any of you guys ever see someone get chomped on by one of these motherfuckers and then get better?”

“No, I haven’t,” said Harris. Buddy shook his head silently.

“Well then, ain’t we in the . . .”

“Shit, huh?” offered Buddy.

“Shit’s right,” Edmond agreed. “I understand Annunziata, though.” He said it as if someone had asked him. “It sure is tempting to just open up on those freaks.”

“You guys low on ammo?” Buddy inquired.

“Nah, we’re okay, I guess.” The sergeant didn’t sound too sure himself. “We picked up a lot along the way. Lot of dead soldiers out there. Thing is, how many of these motherfuckers are there?”

“Looks like they’re going to hang downstairs,” responded Buddy. “See if we don’t come out to play.”

“Shit no,” Edmond cursed. “Homey don’t play that. Me and my boys are going to stay right here. Keep Hernan on that radio, get our asses extracted first things fucking first.”

The roof itself was huge and as they walked it, they saw they were surrounded on all sides by the undead. Most of the zombies were congregating where they’d come in earlier, at the front entrance.

“Sarge.” Brophy came up to them, still lugging the general-purpose machine gun. Burdett was beside him, festooned with links of ammunition. “Where you want me and Burr to set this bitch up?”

The sergeant went off to consult with his men, leaving Buddy and Harris.

“What you thinking?” Buddy asked.

“This is nice and all,” said Harris, “but I am not into it.”

“I’m with you on that, man,” the big man replied, thinking of their options. Manhattan was out. They’d both seen what had happened there and heard what Edmond had said.

“You seen that alley in the back?” asked Buddy.

“Yeah.” Harris smiled. The rear of the supermarket fronted a large alleyway running between buildings. It was big enough for eighteen-wheelers to pull in and drop off their freight. There weren’t too many zombies down there when they’d looked.

“Man might be able to mosey on off in that direction . . .” said Buddy, “. . . if he had a mind.”

“Yeah, I bet he could,” Harris agreed. “If he had a big enough distraction to cover him.”

“Now we’re thinkin’ the same.” Buddy grinned. “You da man.”

“No. It was your idea. You da man.”

When they told Edmond what they were planning, he looked at them like they were crazy.

“You’re fucking with me, right?” He could see by the looks on their faces that they weren’t. “Oh Lord, they are not fucking with me.”

Harris and Buddy, for their parts, watched Edmond very carefully. The sergeant had been extremely cool with them up to this point, but facts were that Edmond had more men on his side with bigger guns. If he tried to force them to stay, it would get violent fast.

Edmond remained true to form and played it straight with them, no matter how harebrained and hell-bent on destruction he might have personally found their scheme.

“Okay, I guess if you’re crazy enough, we can make a racket out front, rile them up down there.” Edmond smiled the more he thought about it. “It’ll give my boys a chance to let off some steam.

“But I got to let you guys know,” he continued, dead serious now, “I think, as soon as you get off this roof, you’ve got about two minutes left of breathing between the two of you.”

Harris and Buddy returned downstairs for some impromptu shopping, taking items they thought they might need. Harris stowed things away in his knapsack, Buddy in his saddlebags.

“What the fuck?” asked a smirking guardsman, his face in a bag of chocolate chip cookies. “You guys looting?”

“Hey, Chris,” another guardsman called to the first. “You remember them assholes running out of Best Buy with the flat-screen TVs, getting pounced on by zombies, still trying to carry off those television sets?”

“I do, and I hope every one of those Puerto Rican motherfuckers got eaten.”

“You got a problem with boricuas, Gill?”

“No. I got a problem with Hispanics in general. Puerto Ricans are the niggers of the Latino race.”

“You never met a Hispanic you liked, Gill?”

“I don’t know, Hernan. I like your sister just fine.”

“Ohhh—”

“Milk,” Buddy said in the dairy aisle. “Drink up. Once this shit spoils it might be a while before we ever have any again.”

Milk’s good, Harris thought, chugging from a half gallon of two percent.

“Damn if I ain’t lactose intolerant though,” said Buddy. “One time they had me locked up overnight, in holding with this white boy. He loved him his milk, so I let him have mine. He gave me his orange juice.”

It was the first time Buddy had mentioned anything to Harris about having been away, yet it wasn’t surprising. Harris could tell that Buddy was a hard man, a tough man. Buddy had proven himself a good sort, although he was quiet about his past. Out on the street, a perverse form of survival of the fittest was quickly shaping up, and Buddy was one fit son of a bitch. Harris only wondered how he himself had come this far. He wondered when it would end for him and how, and hoped it would be as quickly and as painlessly as possible.

Back on the roof they were ready to go. The drop from the roof to the alley below was too far to make without risk of their being injured. Harris spied a dumpster they could hang-drop onto, and from that leap to the ground. He and Buddy stood away from the edge of the roof, not letting the zombies below see them.

“When we go, I go first,” Buddy told Harris, withdrawing the silenced 9-millimeter pistol from the saddlebags.

“You guys about ready?” Edmond asked.

“We good,” said Buddy. “Thanks, Sergeant.”

“Yeah, Sergeant,” agreed Harris. “Thanks.”

“Then luck to you men. We’ll be thinking about you when the helicopter comes to take us out of here.”

Edmond shook both of their hands, left them where they were, and went to the front of the roof where his men had lined up.

Annunziata stood there with a mad dog look on his face. Most of the others were nonchalant, aloof almost, like it was perfectly normal, even natural, to be stuck on a roof, looking down on thousands of cannibalistic reanimated corpses.

A couple of them had carried Koster up to the roof, laying him off to the side. The color was drained from the man’s face and he was wrapped tight in a government issue blanket, shivering.

“Give them hell, Sarge,” Koster shouted weakly. There was the sound of fluid in his lungs.

“Okay, guys, when Brophy starts, let’s rip.” Edmond pulled a grenade from his web belt, his assault rifle taut on its sling. He’d seen what the grenades could do. They’d knock those things down and a few of them wouldn’t get back up, shrapnel to the head. But most would.

Still, the idea was to provide a diversion for the two crazy bastards about to step off the roof.

Edmond looked back at Buddy and Harris. They were crouched across from him, at the edge of the roof, keeping low.

“Okay, Brophy,” Edmond told his machine gunner. “Light those motherfuckers up.”

“I ain’t no sniper, and this isn’t a precision instrument,” Brophy warned lackadaisically.

“I don’t care.” His sergeant hocked a loog. “Just make some noise. Burdett, feed the pig.”

The M-60 came alive, laying down hundreds of rounds a minute, the other men joining the fray, unloading on the zombies below. Edmond pulled the pin on his grenade, threw it as far as he could, letting off a “fire in the hole” no one heard as he did so, then shouldered his Mike One Six and fired on semi-auto, one round at a time, aiming for heads.

The grenade blew and a dozen of the undead were swept off their feet, with at least two or three of them not getting back up. Brophy strafed them across their chests and heads, their bodies jerking backward. The M-60 did its deadly work, the shell casings spitting out one side of the machine gun, Burdett feeding a link belt into the other.

Edmond emptied a thirty-round magazine and as he changed mags, he cast a look over his shoulder—but Buddy and Harris were gone.

He turned back to the carnage on the street below. He and his men fired and reloaded, hundreds of the things collapsing in the street, and soon little piles of them were forming. Yet still they came, fresh ones pouring in off the side streets, heedless of the hot lead flying down from the roof. Stupid almost, Edmond thought, like lemmings . . . The incessant chatter from the weapons fire was punctuated by grenade blasts.

“Whoo-hah!” Annunziata screamed when there was a lull in the shooting. “Look at ’em, Sarge. They keep coming.”

“How many you think are down for the count?” Shapiro wondered.

“Not enough,” Gill spat. “Let’s kill more.”

“Goddamn that felt good! ’Nother round, Sarge?” Annunziata almost begged.

“Okay, one more salvo,” granted Edmond. “Then we lay low until the choppers come.”

16.

Should I make reservations for the Greek place tonight?” Raquel asked, applying her make-up with the mirror affixed to the visor above the passenger seat.

Harris thought about it as he waited for traffic to let up, wanting to make a left turn. “You know what? I don’t really feel Greek tonight.”

Raquel reached over, squeezed his thigh with one hand, her other applying mascara. “You’re right. You don’t feel Greek.”

“Hah-hah.” Harris made the turn, accelerated, heading toward the train station. “Here’s an idea. Why don’t you make reservations for Antica.”

The Italian restaurant had been a favorite of theirs since they’d lived in the little studio apartment in Queens, and they’d been going there for years.

“I can meet you in the city this afternoon.”

Raquel seemed pleased. “You can do that?”

“Shoot,” Harris said, assuming a mock authoritative tone, “I’m the principal. I can do whatever I want.” He laughed. “Yeah, it’s Friday. Today shouldn’t be a hard day. I can meet you at the office at—let’s say what, six?”

“You’re going to take the train in?”

The train ride from their station to Grand Central was only fifty-five minutes, but then it was a pain in the ass to get from the city to Queens and the restaurant by public transportation. It would involve a subway ride followed by a bus ride, and then they’d have to do it all over again after dinner with a carafe of the house red in them.

“No, I’ll drive in, pick you up at work.” Harris could drive safely and soberly enough if he split half a carafe with Raquel. A full carafe would have been another story.

“No need to do that. Just meet me in Woodside at six. How’s that?”

“That’ll work.”

Depending on what time he got out of work on Friday afternoons, the ride into Queens could be a pain in the ass. The kicker was he’d be going against traffic and it’d still be a hassle. Everything seemed to slow down around the Whitestone Bridge. The Throgs Neck wasn’t much better. There was always construction on the damn things, those and the Long Island Expressway. Harris didn’t miss his Queens-to-Westchester commute and hadn’t since they’d moved north out of the city.

The thought that Raquel would meet him in Queens, that he wouldn’t have to cross the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge—or worse the Midtown tunnel into Manhattan after that—was music to his ears.

Woodside had always been their favorite subway stop. It held a lot of memories. Harris used to drive into Queens after work and park there, walk past the Irish bakeries and bars, the Korean corner store, the newsstand owned by Middle Easterners. He’d hop on the Seven train, head to grad school back when he was working on his administrative degree. They’d lived in the area, so Raquel had been able to take a local bus to the train and into work at her firm.

“What about Daffy?” Raquel asked.

“I’ll stop by the house before I head in, let her out. We still have that thing at your mom’s on Sunday?”

“Yes, the shower.” Raquel’s second brother, the black sheep of her family, was getting married for the third time. The first two marriages had ended in divorce, with two kids in there, because Chad was a piece of work. A piece of shit, actually, although Harris never said that to his wife. He let her say it when she wanted to; he just listened.

Harris thought maybe he’d drive in on Sunday again, take Raquel to the shower and stop by his brother’s for a few hours, see his niece and nephew, wait around, pick Raquel up and take her back home. He told her so.

“Sounds good.” Raquel was pleased. They’d been married ten years now and it had gone fast. They still enjoyed their time together, which was a lot more than could be said of many of their friends who seemed like they couldn’t wait to get away from a spouse for a boys’ or girls’ night out. “Thanks for the ride, honey.”

Harris slowed the Lexus to a stop at the curb outside the Metro North station.

Raquel gathered up her attaché and the gym bag she kept her dress shoes in. She had her sneakers on and would change at the office.

“Love you, honey.” She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “See you tonight.”

“Let me get some more of that,” Harris said and she leaned in again for a deeper, more animated kiss.

“You’re an animal.” She quickly checked her lipstick in the mirror, then flipped the visor back up.

“I’m a sexy beast, baby,” Harris said in his best Austin Powers voice as she got out of the car. “Love you, babe.”

“Six o’clock in Woodside then?”

“I’ll be there.”

She blew him a kiss and closed the door. Harris tried to ignore the stirring in his slacks. After all these years, first dating and then marriage, Raquel still had what it took to get him going. Sure, they didn’t do it like they had the first few years they were dating and married, but who did? Harris knew other men his age who relied on testosterone therapy, Viagra, or a mistress. Not him.

He watched Raquel disappear into the entrance of the station, put the coupe in drive, and pulled onto the main street headed toward Route 35 and his way to work.

Friday. He drummed the wheel with one hand, twisted the volume on the radio higher. They’d had it set to 1010 WINS, which promised “the world” every twenty-two minutes, but the volume had been down on the ride so they could enjoy small talk. He was hoping to catch something about the weather and traffic—were they still doing construction on the Whitestone?—but instead got something about “doctors and authorities are still unsure about the nature of the contagion infecting some city residents, but hasten to assure the populace that this is nothing to be alarmed about . . .” And that didn’t interest him, what with all the hype and unwarranted scares surrounding the avian flu, the West Nile virus, Pam Anderson’s hepatitis, whatever it was this month. He flicked over to satellite radio, the Stern show.

Howard was interviewing some porn star talking about double anal, and asking her if she’d been molested as a kid.

It was another concession he made to Raquel. He could listen to the shock jock all day, but she had her limits and wasn’t too crazy about Stern. Maybe it was the lesbians, the phony phone calls, or the always grating Eric the Midget. Harris listened when he drove to work, but by the time he got to work and got out of the car, he was all business.

17.

William Richardson prided himself on being a family man, and he was doing his best to keep that family together.

They’d all made it back inside the house. The kids had been in school, Maggy at work, and he was on the road when news of the outbreak first came in over the radio two days prior.

Today they were hiding in their house, doors and windows boarded up from the inside. Empty gallon milk jugs were filled with water, as were the bathtubs. He knew the water would eventually stop working and it wasn’t like they were going to be heading out to the Dairy Barn to pick up more anytime soon.

There was nothing new on the radio. When the news station had interviewed the evangelical preacher and the old man started spouting off about liberals, gays, and feminists and their responsibility for this, Will had changed the station, looking for one playing music, but the stations had all switched to talk, and despite all the talk no one had any answers.

Maggy was downstairs in the kitchen with Billy and Sarah, listening to it, trying to occupy the kids with a board game.

William sat in the upstairs hallway, looking out the only window not boarded up yet. Several planks of wood, a hammer, and nails rested under the window. Just in case.

So far no one had bothered their house. William had heard them out front in the street. Cars early on, some screeching around the corner, the roar of a heavier military vehicle later, then people on foot, many of them calling out as they went. Finally there had been silence punctuated by an occasional otherworldly howling, something human but not quite.

Last night there had been a muffled crash, like a car accident, somewhere nearby, but he couldn’t see anything from this vantage point.

He’d listened to the radio when he could. He had some idea of what was going on out there. He knew about those things, the zombies, what they would do to his family if they got into his house.

Will knew because he’d rescued his daughter Janis from one of them only a few hours ago. She was resting in her bedroom now. The door was only a few feet away from William’s chair where he sat looking out the window into his backyard.

He had the cop’s 9-millimeter and he knew how to use it, although he wasn’t comfortable with it. The pistol was on the lacquered floor of the hallway next to him.

When things had gotten really crazy the night before, when William had gone out—to the Dairy Barn as a matter of fact, which, though open, was unattended—to get milk and bread, that’s when he’d gotten a hold of the pistol.

His car had been abandoned several blocks from the house; the road ahead was consumed in fire from an accident involving a brown UPS delivery truck, an SUV, and a motorcycle. A police cruiser had pulled up as Will watched from half a block away, and two officers had come out, weapons drawn.

One cop circled around the flaming mess behind the smoke and fire out of Will’s sight and also out of view of the second officer.

Will got out of his car, called out and waved, walking toward the first cop.

“Who are you?” the cop yelled. He didn’t look strong and confident the way Will thought a cop should, the way they looked when they pulled you over on the road with all their lights flashing.

“I’m William Richardson. I live nearby.”

“What are you doing out of your house? Jesus man, don’t you know about the curfew? I could have shot you.”

Gunfire erupted from where the second officer had disappeared and then three people—all quite dead—came running around the flames toward Will and the police officer. William ran back to his car and locked the doors, ducking down below the dash.

Pop-pop-pop-pop. He heard the cop’s pistol sound off, and then something jumped onto the rear of his car, over the roof, and across the hood. More pops, about a dozen of them, then silence.

When Will dared to peek over the windshield it looked safe enough, so he got out of his car.

The cop was feebly trying to reload his piece. The three undead were sprawled in the street and a fourth was heaped a few feet from the front bumper of Will’s Oldsmobile.

Will approached the officer and saw that the man was hurt. Deathly pale. The cop’s uniform shirt was soaked with blood. Lots of it.

“Officer . . . you okay?”

The cop jacked back the receiver of his sidearm, looked up at Will and tried to say something, but only blood bubbled up in his mouth and welled up and out, down the front of his uniform.

The police officer collapsed on his knees and caught himself with one outstretched hand, refusing to go flat on his face in the street. The crackle of the flaming vehicles could not disguise the disembodied moans drawing closer.

Will walked over to him. The fire still raged in the street behind them and there was no sign of the second cop.

After all he’d seen and heard on the radio and TV, Will did not hesitate. He pried the handgun from the officer’s fingers. The man was still alive, but he had been wounded somewhere and was unable to talk. There was a pleading look in his eyes, and when Will forced open his grip to take the pistol, the man tried to grab onto Will’s shirt, silently imploring for help, but his blood-slicked hand slipped right off Will’s sleeve and this time he did collapse on the street in a bloody pile. But he was not dead yet.

He lay there panting, looking forlorn and defeated.

“I’m sorry, officer. I’m really sorry.”

Will stood and there were four or five of them coming down the block, slowly but relentlessly lurching in their direction.

The cop clawed at Will’s sneaker, gargling something incoherent.

“I really am sorry,” Will said, then ran off between two homes, leaving the wounded cop out on the street, leaving his groceries in the car.

He made his way home through backyards, clambering over fences, cutting himself on one of them, avoiding the streets because of the things in them.

Today he sat in his window looking out onto the backyard. He had a pretty good view of the whole of his property, the wooden fence surrounding it and the back of the house behind his. He could also see in between that house and the houses on either side of it, to the street beyond. All morning he’d watched, and once he had seen one of the things stagger into view on the street beyond, unaware it was being watched.

He’d recognized the thing too. Jim Harrison, lived three houses down. Used to, at least. Jim listed into view and shuffled off.

Not much had been going on since.

There was smoke in the distance, and Will worried whether his house would catch fire if his neighbors’ houses did, like those wildfires out in California.

The squirrels that routinely raided his bird feeder clung to their tree. He hadn’t gone out to replenish the bird feed and didn’t plan on it.

A man ran into Will’s yard.

“Jesus.”

The guy looked to be in one piece. He wasn’t a zombie. But he looked cornered and he had a big revolver in his hand, which he kept aimed back in the direction he’d come from. The man had a knapsack similar to Janis’s.

Will considered his options. Hopefully the guy would go away. He’d run into the backyard, which made Will pretty sure he was being pursued. If this man was being chased, then those things couldn’t be too far behind, and the last thing Will wanted was for them to come hanging around his house while Maggy and Billy and Sarah played Cranium and Janis tried to rest.

Yeah, hopefully the guy would disappear as suddenly as he’d appeared.

He didn’t.

The man was bent over, holding his knees and that big revolver, catching his breath. He walked over to the fence separating Will’s property from that of the house behind Will’s, and then peered over it on tiptoe, appearing to weigh his options.

That’s when he turned and looked right up at Will in the window.

“Jesus,” Will said a second time, ducking down below the sill, one hand going for the pistol, not knowing why. He wasn’t going to shoot the guy unless he had to.

The man outside was smart enough not to yell out. That would have given away his position to anything out on the street.

Will waited a couple of minutes and in that time he got a hold of himself, hoping the guy would do the smart thing and scoot, thinking that’s what he’d do if he was in someone’s backyard and that person was purposefully ignoring him. Maybe the man hadn’t even seen him. When he sat up in the chair, the man outside was gone.

He breathed a sigh of relief, sure the guy hadn’t seen him.

Will looked over at the door to Janis’s bedroom. He had to keep his family safe, that’s what it all boiled down to.

Tap-tap-tap.

He almost wet himself. The man from his backyard was standing outside his window, having climbed up onto the first-floor roof. How the hell had he gotten up here and what did he want?

“Damn,” Will muttered, then, loud, “What? What do you want?”

The man kept quiet and gestured to Will to open the window. Will noted that the revolver was tucked in the waistband of the man’s pants. He didn’t look like he meant any harm.

What choice did he have? His play with the police officer still bothered Will, leaving the guy like that on the street yesterday. It didn’t take much imagination to figure out what had happened to that cop. Will opened the window.

“Thanks for letting me in. I hate heights,” Harris said. “They’re all over the place out there.”

“How’d you get up here?” Will Richardson asked incredulously.

“You left a ladder in the backyard.”

Will pictured it, the twelve-foot aluminum one he used to change the bulbs of the light in the driveway. Even though they lived in a safe neighborhood in Queens, Will didn’t like Maggy coming home to a dark driveway.

“I pulled it up behind me,” Harris explained. “So none of those things could get up here. I don’t know if they can climb.”

“They’re following you?”

“They were. I think I lost them.”

Will noticed Harris’s shirt was black with sweat.

“Man,” said Harris. “Some of those things can move too.”

“Any news?”

“Nothing. I was hoping you could tell me something.”

Will shook his head. “Same old crap on the radio. TV’s been out for a while now. ‘Stay in your house, National Guard’ll handle it’—that kind of thing.”

“Yeah, the National Guard and the army are shooting anything that moves. Looks like you got this place pretty well secured. I noticed that on my run down the block.”

“Yeah, well . . .” Will thought of his family and their safety. “You can’t stay here.”

“I wasn’t planning to.” The man said it without hesitation or anger. “If you’d be kind enough to just let me catch my breath for a few minutes, I’ll be out of your hair.”

“It’s just that . . .” Will had a tough time being tough, especially in a situation like this. “You know, food, water, provisions—we got enough for us for a few days but that’s—”

The man cut him off, gently, genially. “That’s fine. No need to explain yourself.”

Will saw something in the other man’s eyes and understood he was right not to fear this man.

“What’s your name, anyway?” the man asked.

“It’s Will.”

“Mine’s Harris. Well, Will, let me rest up just a bit if you don’t mind, and I’m gone.”

“Where are you in a rush to go?” Will couldn’t understand why anyone would want to be outside with those things.

“Manhattan.”

“The city?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

Harris was quiet for a moment, then he said, “My wife’s there.”

Will mulled this over. He thought how lucky he was to be with Maggy and the kids in the safety of their own home when so many others had been dislocated and separated. Like this man here.

“Listen, Harris,” Will decided, “stay awhile. At least eat with us. The gas and water are still working. Amazing, right? Hell, catch a shower. You can have a change of my clothes.”

Harris nodded, thanking Will, overcome by the man’s generosity. Harris knew that in stressful situations people could either be real jerks or stick together, and he was lucky that this man seemed to be in the latter camp.

“Let’s close this window and then go on downstairs. You can meet Maggy and the kids.”

Harris stepped aside while Will secured the storm window.

“Daddy?” a woozy voice came from the bedroom next door.

“I’ll be right there, honey.” Will spoke loudly enough for Janis to hear.

“Daughter?” Harris asked.

“Yeah, my girl, Janis. She’s resting. One of those goddamn things bit her leg earlier today. Mag!” Will yelled down the stairs. “Come here a second, sweetie. We’ve got company.”

18.

They sure aren’t like in the movies, are they?” Larry Chen asked. Keara shrugged her shoulders alongside the others looking over the wall at the undead drawn together on the street. From a moan to a howl, the crescendo of a cold dead lament peaked, then ebbed.

It reminded Larry of the collective noise the crowd at a Mets game made. The sound when there was no direct action on the field, when anticipation of the next line drive or strikeout hovered in the air like something real, something tangible.

Whenever someone inside Eden climbed up onto one of the cargo trailers fronting the walls, they were in plain view of the zombies. The walking dead would gather, reaching up and motioning, fruitlessly attempting to draw one of them down. They were packed down there ten deep, with dozens and dozens of others stumbling along the street to join the mass. A few were running, dipping in and out of buildings, around corners and out of sight, down the alleyways and side streets between the abandoned shops and homes.

“I don’t know, they ran in that Dawn of the Dead remake,” John Turner pointed out.

“Yeah, but not all these guys run,” said Buddy.

“Thank Christ for small favors.” Diaz spat down onto the upturned faces of the zombies below.

“Why’d you go and do that for?”

“Fuck off, Buddy—all right? Don’t tell me it bothers you that I spit on them. Don’t try and give me any of this respect for the dead shit, okay?”

Buddy gave the other man a look.

Diaz must have not caught it. “Why don’t you go down there and try talking to them about respect for the dead and all. How ’bout respect for the living? About how it’s rude to spit on a bunch of motherfuckers trying to eat you?”

Buddy considered pushing Diaz off his perch into the crowd below.

“You’re a flaming asshole, Diaz.”

Diaz spat something back in Español, but Buddy chose to ignore it.

“Boys,” said Keara, “could you both shut the fuck up? We’re having a conversation here.”

“I wonder how that works,” Larry Chen put it to the group. “I mean, the ones that run, why do they run? What’s special about them that they can run like that? The ones that can’t run, why can’t they?”

“Rigor mortis?” volunteered the younger Turner, pushing his glasses back up on his nose with an index finger.

“Granted the slow ones move kinda stiffly,” said Al Gold, “but they can move too.”

“It’s futile,” announced Buddy.

“How’s that?”

“It’s like wondering why dead people are coming back to life in the first place. Wondering why they’re attacking the living. You’ll knock yourself out searching for an answer.”

“Any of you guys ever seen Zombie? The movie, that is.” Mickey had seen movies no one else had ever seen, movies maybe no one would ever see again. “Directed by that Italian guy, what’s his name?”

“Fuck them, fuck their mothers, and fuck movies about them,” shot Diaz. He stared down at the massed undead with contempt.

“Hey, that’s no way to talk about Eye-talians,” John Turner tried but no one laughed.

Diaz enjoyed dusting off the Walther WA 2000 he kept over the mantel of the faux fireplace in his living room, and sniping at the zombies from time to time. The Walther was a beast of a weapon. It vaporized heads. Once he cut an undead clean in two with it and then watched the upper half of the thing roll itself over and crawl away.

Lately the Walther wasn’t shooting straight and Diaz didn’t know how to fix that. Sometimes now, when he took aim and fired, he wound up hitting something he never meant to. Twice people in Eden had warned him not to snipe on the zombies. Those pendejos were worried about attracting more of the things.

It was different with Graham and the big Pole. They’d let Diaz pop as many of the fuckers out there as he wanted, even invited him into Markowski’s basement from time to time to get some up close hand-to-hand knife action with one of the things tethered to a pole. That had been some crazy shit.

“I think it was directed by Argento,” Mickey rambled on. “You know his daughter, Asia, starred in Romero’s Land of the Dead right? It was Romero’s nod to the old man.”

What Diaz really wanted was to get a flamethrower up there and torch two or three hundred of the things. He’d seen it done before, had watched the things burning up, still staggering around until there was nothing left to walk with and then they’d crumple to the ground and smolder, emitting an odor worse than they did now, though not by much.

Diaz had plans. When humans once again regained control of this world, he’d open something like a game reserve. He’d charge bored, wealthy tourists for the opportunity to pick up a rifle and bust a few caps in these things. Diaz had heard once that you could fire a rocket launcher at a water buffalo in Cambodia or some other godawful place. That kind of thing.

Mickey asked if anyone had ever seen Return of the Living Dead and had better luck with that one.

“Is that the one where they’re looking for brains?” asked Keara.

“Yeah, they eat brains.”

“I remember that one.” John Turner laughed, mimicking the zombies in the movie when they’d gotten on the radio in the police cruiser. “Send more cops.”

Diaz shook his head. “Mamaciyalla.” He climbed down the ladder to go in search of Shannon.

Buddy watched him go. He thought he might have to kill that man someday, and thought that not too long ago he would have done just that.

The work for the day had been done and a couple hours of daylight were still left before they’d crank the generators up to power the lights. There was a badminton game going on in the street.

Isabel wore short shorts and a halter top. She’d probably looked good twenty years back, Buddy thought, but now her ass was too big, and for Buddy—a man who could appreciate a big ass on a woman—that was truly saying something.

Hanging out of those ripped shorts like that, the thing almost scared him. He could imagine her butt all lumpy like cottage cheese from too much cellulite, and way too dry from all that time spent in the sun trying to perfect her tan. Buddy had known a guy inside, an old Italian who was supposed to be somebody. The guy used to spend his hour of rec out in the yard lying there shirtless with this big aluminum thing, sunning himself. That’d made it all the easier for the Guatemalans when they moved on the old man, shanking him right there on the yard, and no one had seen a thing.

Most of the men in the camp seemed to like Isabel, and many had slept with her. Buddy hadn’t, and he was pretty sure his boy Harris hadn’t either. Bel wasn’t the type of woman Buddy would want to hook up with, and it had nothing to do with her sex life. Hell, her sex life probably would have turned him on back in the day, when he was younger.

Buddy knew people like Diaz dealt with their stress by climbing up on the wall and unleashing a hail of lead into the things below. Others, like Isabel, turned to sex to help clear their minds of the anxiety and bullshit that came with this so-called existence. Buddy preferred to close himself away and focus on one spot or count his breaths, to go inside and beyond himself. He’d learned that during his time with the State.

“Okay, favorite horror movie,” said Larry Chen. “I go first. Friday the 13th. The first one, when it was Jason’s moms killing everybody.”

“That’s a good one,” said Keara. “I remember we were afraid to get in the bathtub after that one, what with that little creep popping out of the lake at the end.”

“Yo, what was up with Jason?” asked John Turner. “Not the grown-up Jason behind the hockey mask. I mean the kid in the lake. His face was all messed up.”

“Maybe he rotted down there all those years in the water,” offered Keara.

“No, no, no,” explained Mickey. “He had Down syndrome. He was born deformed. Remember, Jason was conceived out of wedlock. That’s a whole theme with those early eighties slasher movies—premarital sex leads to all sorts of bad shit.”

“Yeah,” agreed Keara, “it’s always the teens who are having sex that get killed in those movies.”

“Right,” said John Turner, “like remember when Johnny Depp got killed at Camp Crystal Lake, that spearhead stuck up under the bed, right through his neck? That was awful!”

“No, that wasn’t Johnny Depp,” corrected Mickey, “that was Kevin Bacon, before Footloose. Johnny Depp died in the original Nightmare on Elm Street.”

“How about C.H.U.D.?” John Turner asked.

Buddy chuckled. “C.H.U.D.?”

“Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers.” Mickey knew the movie and the acronym. “Lots of cheap slasher films came out in the eighties, following Friday the 13th and Halloween.”

“That’s what I was going to say,” said Paul, “Halloween. But since you mentioned it, I’ll go with The Thing.”

At least now they were talking about movies Buddy had heard of or seen.

Mickey asked, “You mean the original or the remake by John Carpenter?”

“We were just talking Carpenter and Halloween here, right?” said Paul. “So I’m talking about the remake with Kurt Russell.”

Mickey thought it was one of Russell’s finest roles, albeit one that never won him much acclaim. That last scene, of MacReady and the other guy sitting there waiting it out and freezing to death, that was just awesome. People didn’t tend to take horror movies seriously, at least not until Silence of the Lambs took home an Oscar.

“What about you, big man?” Larry Chen asked Buddy.

“Well, if we were sticking to a John Carpenter motif, I’d have to go with The Fog.”

“Ooooh, nice,” Mickey agreed.

“What’s The Fog?” asked John Turner.

“What’s The Fog?” Buddy was shocked. “Man knows C.H.U.D. but don’t know The Fog.”

“I saw the remake,” offered Keara.

“Don’t go there,” warned Mickey, then said to John, “The Fog’s a ghost story.”

Buddy nearly protested. He’d never thought of The Fog as a ghost story. Ghost stories were lame-ass movies that never scared him when he was a child, watching Channel 11. Or kid-friendly stuff like Casper. But he thought about it, and Mickey was right. The Fog was a ghost story. Blake and those guys on the boat with the burning coal eyes, looking for their gold . . . they were ghosts.

“But it’s a kickass ghost story. Anyway, since I’m old-fashioned, you know I’m going to have to go with one of them late fifties–early sixties joints. Maybe The Blob or Day of the Triffids.”

“Day of the Triffids.” Mickey laughed. “I used to watch that movie on Sundays when I was a kid. They’d always run it.”

“I’ve seen The Blob,” Keara said, “but again I think it was the remake.”

“Yeah, they did remake it,” explained Buddy, “in the eighties. But I’m talking about the original, with my man Bullitt, Steve McQueen.”

“There was a sequel to that too, to the original,” Mickey pointed out.

“Yo, wasn’t The Blob supposed to be an allegory for the Cold War and all?” asked John Turner. “I think I took a class on that in college.”

“Yeah, well,” Mickey took over, “a lot of those 1950s movies were influenced by the Cold War. That ever-present threatening menace. We couldn’t really stop it, but maybe we could contain it. The blob gets frozen at the end too, remember? They can’t destroy it.”

“And the blob was red.” The younger Turner held up a finger.

“Blob was red in the sequel,” said Buddy, and Mickey called out the name of the movie—“Beware the Blob”—as Buddy continued. “Blob was red when they colorized the original, but the original Blob was black and white.”

“No, the original Blob was red,” Mickey corrected somewhat pedantically. “They filmed it in Technicolor.”

“Blob was supposed to be red, even in the original,” proclaimed John Turner. “You know, communism—reds?”

“Oh I love that movie!” said Keara. “Warren Beatty is so sexy.”

“Warren Beatty’s dead,” announced Larry Chen, gesturing with his chin. “Think these fuckers out here—think they can be destroyed? All of ’em I mean?”

They were all looking at Buddy, like he’d have an answer for them.

“What, you think because I’m old I got all the knowledge or somethin’? Hell, I don’t know. It’s a waiting game, that’s what it is.”

“True, true,” said Larry, looking all serious.

19.

Julie did her best to stay in one place in the back seat as Bob swerved the Thunderbird, weaving between the undead and abandoned automobiles, trying to avoid those he could, clipping the ones he couldn’t. The windshield was spider-webbed and smeared with gore in places from zombies that had catapulted over the hood. Bob was doing his best to avoid a full-on collision with them, as it would do more damage to the car.

“Right! Go right!” Lex yelled back into the car, leaning out the front passenger’s side window as he did so, firing an AK-47 at the sprinting undead. The zombies that were standing off to the sides, staring at the spectacle and slower to react, Lex didn’t bother with.

The AK-47, locked open, fired out. Mika, seated between Lex and Bob up front, took it, and handed over the smaller 9-millimeter Spectre submachine gun.

Gus, Phyllis, and Snyder yelled, banging inside the trunk, hysterical in the enclosed space with the sounds of chaos thundering from outside. They’d drawn straws to see who could sit inside the car and who would have to ride it out in the trunk, and those three had drawn the shortest straws.

Julie was glad she didn’t have to ride in the trunk. If she was going to die this morning, she wanted to see it coming. She gripped the .45 in her left hand, her palm sweaty. The gun was too big for her, but she knew how to use it.

The Thunderbird swerved and Julie pitched first into Mitchum on her left and then into little Kelsey on her right. “Sorry!”

Mitchum was turned around, looking out the back window.

“I don’t see the Lincoln!” he yelled.

There had been almost thirty of them holed up in a warehouse less than two miles from this spot. For two weeks they’d watched the compound across town through binoculars as their own supplies ran low. The night before, it had been decided that their only chance lay in making it to the walls of the compound and hoping the people inside would let them in.

“I don’t see the fuckin’ Lincoln,” Mitchum barked again.

“I heard you, I heard you.” Bob pressed harder on the gas.

“We ain’t going back—” shouted Lex.

“We can’t go back!” Mika sounded like she was crying.

“—we ain’t fucking going back!”

Julie wondered what Floyd had been thinking. He’d driven the Lincoln Navigator right through the garage door. The door had given but the Lincoln had been damaged, one tire running on a rim, steam coming up from the engine block. The Lincoln dropped to the last in line as the four-vehicle convoy raced through the streets.

The Hummer, which Julie had hoped to ride in because it looked safest, had missed a turn a few blocks back and was nowhere to be seen.

“I’m out!” Lex barked and Mika passed back the AK, fully loaded, a live round chambered.

“Hold on!” screamed Bob, wrenching the steering wheel hard to the right. They fishtailed around a corner and the rear driver’s side of the car smashed into a zombie, flinging it into the air. The thing landed on its head and didn’t get up.

Julie looked at the twelve-year-old next to her. She wanted to say something, anything, to Kelsey, to reassure her, but what was there to say?

They were on a long, straight avenue, a clear view ahead and behind. The mass of the undead were forming behind, only a dozen or so ahead of them, slowly responding to the sounds of the onrushing cars and the gunfire.

“Fucking Floyd!” yelled Mitchum, causing Julie to turn around and look.

The Lincoln, both front wheels flat, rolled to a halt behind their Thunderbird and the station wagon behind it. The windows on the Lincoln were down, and gun muzzles flashed, cracks from semi-automatics and rips on full-auto filled the air.

Bob, spying all this in the rearview, slowed the Thunderbird. Lex ignored what was happening behind them and continued to fire ahead, his aim more accurate now with the Pontiac slowing down. Zombies up the street fell like dominoes from his head shots.

Someone in the trunk screamed something that sounded like “What’s happening?”

The station wagon was in reverse, picking up speed as it headed back down the street.

The steam coming out from under the hood of the Lincoln obscured her view, but Julie clearly saw two of the doors on the Lincoln open and people clamber out, firing as they did so. No sooner had they exited the Lincoln than the first of the sprinting undead were on them.

Lex fired with the Spectre, a spray of blood jetting up from the back of an undead’s skull. He picked off the two or three bookers loping their way, burning through the submachine gun’s fifty-round box magazine.

Julie watched as three zombies took down one woman outside the Lincoln. Another man fired a shotgun repeatedly, blowing other bookers down. Muzzle flashes still sparked from one side of the Navigator. What the hell are they doing? Julie thought. They’ve got to get out of there!

But it was too late for the people in the Lincoln Navigator. The shamblers were on them and though many of the things were collapsed head-shot in the street, innumerable others swarmed the car, climbing up onto the hood and roof. The man with the shotgun dropped it, firing out a pistol as he was tackled and dragged down into the street behind the SUV, out of their sight.

If he was screaming Julie could not hear him.

“Mika!” yelled Lex, the Spectre out. Mika was twisted around in the front seat, trying to watch what was happening down the avenue behind them. She jerked back around and handed Lex the freshly loaded AK she had been holding, trading it for the empty Spectre.

The driver of the station wagon, sensing the futility of attempting to reach the broken-down SUV, stopped again, shifted to drive, and peeled out, barreling back down the street in their direction. Three undead shamblers barred the car’s path and the station wagon never slowed, plowing over and through them, sparks flaring between the undercarriage and the street. Something under the station wagon was damaged and the car was veering first one way and then the other, not losing speed but not picking up any either.

“Bob, let’s go!” Mitchum yelled.

Julie stayed twisted in the back seat, one arm around the crying Kelsey. She watched as someone in the Lincoln slammed the doors shut. They were probably trying to lock themselves in. The undead were all over the SUV, punching at the windows, trying to pry the doors open.

Julie knew there was no hope for anyone inside that vehicle.

Turned and facing the opposite direction like she was, Julie did not see the booker that came sprinting out from behind a dumpster on the sidewalk, reaching their Thunderbird just as Bob really began to pump the gas. The thing latched onto Lex from behind as he fired the AK at the undead up the block.

Lex made a noise somewhere between a scream of pain and a roar of anger as the booker wrapped both decaying arms around his upper torso and sunk its teeth deep into his back.

Julie didn’t hesitate. With her right hand she shoved Kelsey’s head into her lap and with her left she straight-armed the big .45 across her body and started pulling the trigger. The pistol bucked in her hand, and she should have maintained her calm, but she was panicking as Lex was savagely mauled, the undead hanging from his back, its feet dragging in the street, skin scraping off onto the asphalt. Lex attempted to dislodge the creature with one hand, the other holding onto the window frame so he was not dragged from the Pontiac.

Most of Julie’s shots missed, even at this close range, but two of the .45s buried themselves in the undead’s back. It let go of Lex, rolling away into the street, as the Thunderbird accelerated past.

Mika pulled a wounded, bloodied Lex back into the car, chunks of his pink raw back ripped out. His eyes squinted with pain and he punched the dashboard in front of him in rage and frustration.

“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”

Bob accelerated down the street, reaching thirty miles an hour. The undead were less massed here, and their turn was coming up.

“Oh Christ,” Mitchum breathed, and Julie looked again.

Behind them the station wagon’s axle was broken. She could see it bent under the car. Sparks were flying. As the Thunderbird turned the corner, they watched the station wagon try the same thing, lose control, and ram into a parked van.

Someone in the front seat of the station wagon came through the windshield headfirst, smashing against the van, sprawling onto the street.

Julie couldn’t understand a word of what the people in the trunk were screaming.

At the end of this street was the wall of the compound. Half a dozen of the undead stood around the wall. They turned to look as the Thunderbird veered down on them. Zombies came shuffling out of the buildings on either side as the car roared by. Atop the wall, one or two figures with guns watched the Thunderbird race down the block.

“It hurts! It fucking hurts!” Lex screamed, clenching his fist. Mika was hugging him, crying. Lex’s back bowed as the pain seized him.

Mitchum yelled up at the driver, “Bob, slow down, slow this thing the fuck down!”

Bob had both hands on the steering wheel, and they were white from his gripping it so hard. He was bent over low in the seat, manipulating the wheel, avoiding the undead reaching out for them.

“Bob, slow down!” Mitchum barked.

The people on top of the wall were firing now, sniping at the undead.

Julie looked up and saw the wall and knew Bob would never be able to stop in time. Bob waited until the last second and then slammed on the brakes, the Thunderbird sliding out from under him, turning sideways, and skidding the final twenty feet, until it slammed into the wall of the compound, flush on its driver’s side, air bags deploying.

Black.

Movement next to her . . . Mitchum?

Black.

Lights went off in her head. Stars. Julie saw stars.

She shook her head and cleared it of all save the enveloping dark. Not now! Julie felt something in her hand—the .45—and Kelsey’s head was still in her lap. Julie’s vision came back to her, and with it came screams, a pounding from the trunk as Snyder, Phyllis, and Gus shouted, wanting to be let out, terrified in the confines.

The gunfire was closer as more people were firing from atop the wall. Julie looked out the open door on Mitchum’s side and saw the parade of dead things coming down the block toward them. Mitchum kneeled in the street, firing the Stoner M-63 light machine gun. Julie saw its flash and watched the shell casings from the 150-round belt arching slow motion into the air. Its report was muted; her head was swimming.

Mitchum hollered something at the advancing ranks of the undead.

Julie closed her eyes, held them that way for a second, then opened them and could see clearly. Suddenly the racket from the machine gun was nearly deafening.

“Come on, you cocksuckers! Come on, then!”

Bob, blood streaming out of his nose, was screaming to Mika that they had to get out of the fucking car. Lex was slumped in the front seat, his head smashed back by an air bag. Mika was having a time of it reaching around Lex, trying to pry the passenger side door open.

Mitchum fired.

“You want some, bitch? Eat this! You too, motherfucker!”

Kelsey did not move. Julie looked down at her. Her head was twisted at an awkward angle. She looked peaceful. Julie would have cried, but she wanted to live.

The people in the trunk were going crazy in there and the gunfire on the wall picked up. Atop the wall men and women were yelling things too but Julie couldn’t understand them.

“You like that? You like that? Fuck you, then!”

Something wasn’t right in Julie’s head. Mitchum’s voice was crystal clear, but it was like the volume on everyone and everything else had been muted.

The windshield and rear window had both come out in the crash. Or maybe Mitchum had blown it out when Julie was out of it.

She glanced down one more time at Kelsey before pulling herself out of the back of the Thunderbird, cutting her palms on the glass as she rolled onto the trunk. Julie could feel the vibrations as the people inside pounded.

“Come and get some, assholes!” Mitchum was standing none too steadily, wobbling a few steps toward the hundreds of zombies advancing down the block. Two dozen bookers led the pack. Julie watched three go down. Six others shuddered as bullets pounded through them, but they kept coming.

Julie became aware that the people on the wall were calling out to her.

“Up!” a voice commanded and Julie, kneeling on the trunk, spotted a rope ladder hanging down from the wall to the roof of the Pontiac. Funny, she hadn’t noticed it a moment ago.

“Mitchum!” she cried, clambering onto the roof, almost losing her footing and toppling off to the street, grasping at the rope ladder and pulling herself up hand over hand. The .45 was gone. Arms were reaching down for her, pulling her up onto the wall. Half a dozen people fired at the onrush.

Julie lay atop the wall where the arms placed her, turning her head in time to see an alleyway off to the side of Mitchum come alive as zombies streamed through between the houses.

“Who invited you bitches?” Mitchum started walking backward, firing the Stoner M-63, chunks of flesh exploding from zombie bodies; and yet they still came, reaching the car. Mitchum eyed the ladder, which he could’ve reached if he’d made it to the roof of the car, but he never even made the trunk. The undead pulled him down, dragging him to his demise. Mitchum didn’t scream or cry or beg. He unsheathed the big knife on his belt and began plunging it into their heads as they converged on him and smothered him on the street.

“There’s someone in the car! There’s someone in the car!” a person atop the wall gasped, and Julie knew Lex had changed then, chewed up as badly as he’d been. Mika was screaming, and then Bob as well. Those on the wall aimed their fire down into the vehicle, above the front seats, the bullets peppering the roof and the car, ventilating whomever or whatever was inside with hundreds of rounds.

At that moment, somehow, the trunk popped open, and Gus, Phyllis, and Snyder piled out, only to be swarmed by the undead. Snyder fired his shotgun once before he was overwhelmed, dragged down, braying. It was so bad down there that Julie couldn’t even see what was going on, but she heard Phyllis cursing for a moment. A zombie made off with Snyder’s arm, the shotgun still clutched in its hand.

“Julie!”

In amazed horror, Julie watched as Kelsey, apparently not dead, rolled out of the back window frame onto the trunk lid, the trunk closing under her weight.

“Kelsey!” Julie yelled, reaching out to her from where she lay, and the twelve-year-old started to haul herself up onto the roof of the car. Greedy hands from the horde of undead latched onto her ankles and feet and pulled her off the car into the street.

For a moment she was borne aloft, a crowd surfer at an undead concert.

Julie would never forget the look of terror she saw in Kelsey’s eyes as the young girl was pulled down onto the street to be eaten alive.

“Grenade!” someone yelled and everyone on the wall hunkered down as the explosive was tossed into the sea of ghouls in the exact spot where Kelsey disappeared. Some man pulled Julie away from the edge of the wall and shielded her face as the grenade exploded, the blast muffled by the press of bodies below.

Another man on the wall opened up with a flamethrower, incinerating the undead, driving them back away from the wall and the car.

“Let’s get you off this wall.” A woman took Julie by the arm.

“Wait, “Julie said, and looked back over the lip onto the street below.

Kelsey—scorched by the flame, disemboweled by the undead, one arm chewed or blown off by the grenade beneath the elbow—lay on the street, her flesh bubbling. As Julie watched, the little girl sat up, looked around, and stood, the last of her innards spilling out of its ruptured stomach. She staggered down the street.

“Oh my God” was all Julie could say. They were dead. All of them.

20.

He always knew he was going to die, but to know with certainty the approximate time and situation was somewhat overwhelming to Harris. Up until his mid-twenties he’d suffered from the all too human delusion that mortality was something that affected other people.

Then he’d gotten the hernia that had eventually been surgically repaired. The procedure was elective, his intestine wasn’t strangulated or anything, and he was back in his parents’ home recuperating later the same day. But just the thought that his guts had broken through his abdominal wall made him realize that he too was going to die one day. That he was, after all, just like everyone else.

On the day he’d been bitten, Harris spent the early afternoon around people. He liked people, always had. He’d never been one to seek attention, but he played well with others, and his people skills had helped him a lot in life, from being a competent teacher and administrator to meeting and marrying his wife.

He spent what remained of his time with the people he liked in Eden. He worked with Bobby Evers in the garden, turning the soil for the coming planting. Evers was back to his usual jocular self between hits from his inhaler.

Harris avoided those he disliked. Thompson kept his distance, but he always had since the night Harris put him straight about Julie, about respect.

Harris avoided Diaz. Diaz had never done anything to him, but he didn’t like the man. The Dominican just wasn’t his type, and ever since Harris put Shannon down, he’d gotten a vibe off Diaz, something he didn’t care to pursue.

Isabel was another one he steered clear of. She was harmless, with her infant on her hip and her flirty talk. But again, not the kind of person he wanted to spend his last hours with.

Harris figured he would spend his time around other people for as long as possible. He was starting to cough more, and carried around a bandana so no one would see the blood and sputum. He still felt relatively well, though bouts of cramping came and went, seizing his stomach. Fortunately, they weren’t too frequent as of yet and he could feel them coming and get away from the others before they gripped him.

“Can I ask you something, mate?” Bobby Evers rested a hairy forearm on a shovel, wiping his forehead against it.

“Go ahead.”

“Through all this, you ever done . . . something that you regret? Something that really bothers you, eh?”

Harris stayed silent for a moment, thinking that as long as he could put up a good front he knew he’d be safe around everyone else for a little bit longer. He had no intention of letting himself become one of those undead nor of harming any of them. Except Thompson. He was going to kill Thompson.

“Yeah, we all have. Why, Bobby, what’s bothering you?”

“Shite, I’m that obvious, am I? Well, I wouldn’t mind tellin’ you.”

“And I wouldn’t mind listenin’.”

“When Graham and his blackguards—goddamn them all, I say—when they were here, this one time a group of people, I don’t remember, six, maybe seven of them, showed up on the other side of the wall.

“Fred Turner let them in but we could see something wasn’t right with them from the get-go. There was one man with the group and he was kind of jumpy, had him a shotgun, he did, and he kept himself close to this woman and child in the group, the both of them two all bundled up, and this is a spring day, mind you.

“Graham and Markowski, that mentaller, they come over talking about put down your guns, and they got theirs leveled, right? But that man with the shotgun, he refused, saying they just needed a place to rest for a few days, that they’d be movin’ on soon enough.

“Well, that wasn’t good enough for that header Markowski. He snatches one of the group, an old lady, and puts his gun to her head—and now we’ve got ourselves a regular Mexican standoff.”

Harris listened to Evers, thinking about how he could walk up to Thompson right this minute and execute him, take him out quick-fast, like Buddy had done Graham. But Harris was envisioning something special for the man who’d dropped his lighter and, in so doing, revealed his intentions.

Thompson would die, but he wouldn’t die quickly. The slower, the better.

“There’s a bunch of shouting and cursing going on from both ends and the little kid’s crying fit to break your heart, and finally Markowski just straightens that pistol of his and blows a big hole through that man with the shotgun. Just like that. End of conversation. Then he lays a big wet one right on the old lady’s cheek, the wanker. I thought she’d faint.”

Harris needed Thompson to know he was dying. He had never been a cruel man. If anything, he would avoid or walk away from a fight—that incident with the self-proclaimed psychic notwithstanding. He’d never taken pleasure in the hardships of others. Schadenfreude was a word Harris knew, but not a word in his vocabulary.

This was different, though. Harris wanted Thompson to really experience his death, to be aware of his every last minute, every second. That involved getting Thompson alone and being able to implement whatever his plan was going to be. Time was running out, and Harris really didn’t have a plan yet.

“Anyway, Graham orders them all to strip, and they do, and guess what? Three of them have been bitten, including that woman and that little boy the man was so keen on protecting.”

Harris thought about just walking up to Thompson and throwing him a beating in the street. He had no doubt he could still do it if he acted right away. The time was quickly approaching when he’d be too weak and his coherency too compromised.

That, he thought, is what it all boiled down to, no matter how he had fooled himself otherwise all these years. A man sizes other men up, figures if he can take them, whether it’s in a dance club, a conference room, or an octagon, that’s the way it is. People might like to kid themselves about human beings, their higher natures, but Harris had read his Freud in college, and he thought there was a lot of truth in what the Austrian had written: Man’s instinct for aggression; man being a wolf to man. Civilization had let them tell themselves something different.

Since the undead had come back to life to wreak havoc on the living, Harris had seen and learned a thing or two about his fellow human beings. Some of it was sheer beauty, but much of it was stuff he would have cared to ignore or deny.

So, yeah, Harris knew he could physically take out Thompson, even though the other man was younger. That really primitive mindset may have been superseded by other considerations at another time, but it was coming out again, and Harris did not fight it.

“Graham doesn’t even hesitate. He has Paul and a couple others line the three up against the wall and Markowski mows them down. Just like that. Nobody says anything. I don’t say anything, and that’s what bothers me.”

Walk up to Thompson, Harris thought, slug him in the face, squash his nose against his cheek, break his jaw with an uppercut. Drag the man across Eden, up onto one of the trailers in front of all the people. They’d try to stop him of course, so he’d need to get them to hear him out—need to get Thompson to cop to it, to admit it: Yes, I let them in. I broke the door to your house. If I can’t have her neither can you, Harris!

He could hip toss the loser over the wall while he still had it in him, let Thompson fend for himself among all those goddamn freaks out there.

Harris stopped himself. Bad plan. The people would move in quickly to break up the fight and by the time everything had been sorted out Harris would be showing symptoms and Thompson would have the satisfaction of watching him check out first. And that was a satisfaction Harris silently vowed to himself he would never deliver the man.

Even if his idea worked, Thompson’s death scenario wasn’t nearly as long and drawn out and vicious as what Harris wished it to be.

Bump that, Buddy would have said.

Harris looked at Bobby Evers, who was staring at him expectantly, waiting for him to say something, and Harris realized he hadn’t heard one word of what Bobby had said.

“Sometimes things just happen . . .” Harris picked up the ball effortlessly, “and we don’t know if they were meant to be that way or not, they just play out that way. The plays aren’t written in stone, Bobby, not before we have to deal with them.”

“So you’re saying there’s no use in me beating myself silly over it, then, is that it?”

“That’s it.”

Bobby thought it over.

Harris squatted down to pull some weeds from around a tomato post when the idea came to him. The post was a pole sunk into the ground, a much smaller version of the metal poles embedded in the concrete of his basement floor, the house Markowski used to live in.

He thought about it some, and then Harris knew how Thompson was going to die.

21.

Buddy was away inside himself, so he heard neither Adlard come down the dark street, nor zombies taking steps toward the man and then shuffling off away from him. Adlard’s every step was deliberate, as if each required an effort.

Adlard leaned up against the burned-out hull of a car, and while he caught his breath he gazed at Buddy atop the wall and smiled to himself, shivering. His body quivered briefly under the crescent moon. It took everything he had and more to climb onto the hood of the vehicle and seat himself against what was left of a cracked windshield. Mercifully, it held.

Adlard was sitting there like that, watching him, when Buddy opened his eyes.

“Buddy.”

“Adlard.”

The greetings were spoken as if they were not out of the ordinary.

“Why are you out there, Adlard?”

“The zombies aren’t going to bother me, Buddy.”

Buddy saw that the undead nearest Adlard did indeed seem disinterested in the man atop the car.

“And why’s that?”

“I’m diseased, Buddy. Infected.”

“Bitten?”

“A bite wouldn’t stop them.”

“What then?”

“I’ll tell you . . . how’re the others?”

“Not enough to eat, but besides that as well as can be expected.”

Adlard stared off into the night for a moment.

“Adlard?”

“I’m still here, Buddy.”

“Where have you been?”

“I been all over.”

“What have you seen?”

“It’s bad, Buddy. It’s really bad.”

“This is all over then, isn’t it?” Buddy gestured down the street, to the stalled cars and undead.

“Yeah.”

“You meet any other people out there?”

“Some.” Adlard was gripped by a series of tremors and couldn’t speak for a minute or two. Buddy watched the man from the relative safety of the wall. When he was able to, Adlard resumed.

“Most of them don’t have half a chance, Buddy. This is a dead world.”

“You know about Jericho, then?”

“Yeah, I know about Jericho. And I found the Farm, Buddy.”

“So it exists.”

“It did.”

“Not anymore? Zombies?”

“No, this.” Adlard motioned with his hand, encompassing himself. “Disease. The zombies never got inside. I found everybody there dead.”

“What kind of disease is it?”

“I don’t know, but I’ve seen what it can do.”

Buddy nodded. The undead were steering clear of the man on the street.

“Buddy, listen, I’m glad I found you. I’ve heard rumors, talk. There’re places, farther north, where the winters freeze everything. There are people, societies, life. Good life. Or so it’s said.”

“So it’s said,” Buddy echoed.

“Everybody has to get out of Eden, Buddy. You’re all going to die. The plague’ll come and you’ll all get like this.”

“I don’t think most people here want to move on, Adlard. They feel reasonably safe.”

“They’re safe from these things out here. But there’s worse things spawned in this world, Buddy. Just take a look at me.”

Buddy couldn’t make Adlard out in the dark and told the other man so.

“You got a light? Shine it on me.”

Adlard raised his head high as Buddy centered him in light from his lantern. There were black splotches on Adlard’s face, like welts made of tar.

“Look at this, Buddy.” Adlard reached up, gripped one of the welts on his cheek between an index finger and thumb and pulled, taking a chunk of skin off his face.

“Oh, Jesus.”

“Yeah, it’s real bad, Buddy. I’m losing fingers and toes.”

Adlard held up his other hand and in the lantern light Buddy could see the man was missing two fingers and a thumb.

“What can I do for you, Adlard?” Buddy asked.

“Nothing you can,” the other said calmly. “I wouldn’t come in if you invited me, and I won’t get any closer. I’m contagious, Buddy.”

Buddy breathed out and turned his head, looking inside Eden. The street was empty and the houses were dark. He was alone out here on the wall talking with Adlard. When he turned back, Adlard had slid off the hood of the car and was standing, barely.

“Well, I should be moving on.”

“Where are you off to?”

“Oh, here and there. Maybe catch me a little nap soon. I’m tired, Buddy, I’m tired.”

“Adlard—”

“You listen to me, Buddy, you’ve got to get those people out of here. Eden won’t hold. Head north.”

“They say there’s people and all, huh?”

“They do. But a man needs a purpose, doesn’t he?”

“Adlard, you want a gun, food—anything?”

“Nah, these things out here don’t bother me anymore. You take care of yourself, Buddy.”

“Yeah, you too, Adlard.”

Buddy watched the other man walk away until he was swallowed up in the night.

22.

Panas couldn’t take any more of the man’s bullshit, so he got up and walked away. Harris sat where he was, taking it all in, his anger mounting.

“I see a man, a young man, no, an old man . . .” Philip looked beyond the people seated in front of him, as if he could see something they couldn’t.

“An old white man? Anybody have a grandfather, an uncle, maybe a friend? His name starts with a J, yeah, a—No, a T. Terrance maybe? Troy?”

“Thomas!” said Siobhan McAllister, “My grandson’s name was Thomas.”

Philip smiled at her.

This asshole might actually believe what he’s doing, thought Harris, but he’s full of it.

“Mrs. McAllister, was your grandson white? Because this spirit I see is definitely Caucasian.”

“Well, he was light-skinned,” admitted McAllister. “Our family used to call him Red Bone.”

“You sure the name isn’t Toni?” asked Camille Bianaculli. “Sal had a niece named Toni.”

“Toni?” Philip called aloud, looking into empty space. “Toni? Yes, that’s it, her name is Toni!”

There were a few gasps. Camille Bianaculli clutched her husband, looking like she was going to cry. Sal did his best to look aloof, but it was clear on his face that he wanted to believe. Markowski, looking like he thought Philip had two heads, spit tobacco juice into a plastic cup. Larry Chen elbowed Mickey and the two of them tried to suppress their laughter. Philip ignored them.

Harris and Buddy had pulled into Eden only two weeks prior and Harris thought maybe it was best to keep his mouth shut, but this guy here was pissing him off to no end. A couple of the people in camp had recognized Philip from some late-nineties public access television show, where he’d been touted as having psychic powers. He claimed he could contact the dead, channel whatever it was they were thinking and feeling.

This kind of thing had never really bothered Harris in years past, largely because he was able to tune it out, ignore it, change the channel. Circumstances being what they were here and now, though, this son of a bitch was getting to him. Harris didn’t feel the blood rising in his face, but Markowski saw it, and he nudged Bert, nodding toward Harris.

“Yes, Toni.” Philip was all smiles. “He says he’s glad to be watching over his Aunt Camille and Uncle Fran.”

“Sal,” corrected Sal, the correction not shaking his faith one iota.

“God, Sal,” gasped Camille, “we’ve got our own little guardian angel looking out for us! How is she, Philip? What happened to her?”

Philip bowed his head, kept his eyes up, quiet for a moment, like someone was whispering something in his ear.

“Toni says she misses the both of you. She says not to worry about her, that where she is now, there’s no pain—that it’s really very peaceful and wonderful. She says she’s got someone with her you might want to talk to, a little girl, little boy maybe?”

“Giovanni!” cried Camille. “Sal, it’s our Giovanni!”

“Yeah.” Philip was nodding. “It is Giovanni. He says he misses his mom and dad. He says to tell you not to worry, that when his end came it came peacefully. None of those things hurt him too badly.”

Sal looked at Philip out of one eye. “Giovanni died when he was a year and half. Childhood leukemia.”

“Is that so? Hmmm. Who’s this? Rachel? Someone know a woman named Rachel, Rhianna, Rebecca, or something?”

Later Buddy would wonder why he was surprised Harris had it in him. But what had set the man off like that? Something came over Harris’s face, something primeval and bad, and he launched himself out of his chair and after Philip, sputtering, “Shut up, shut your goddamn fucking mouth!”

Julie took a step back, startled.

“Stay clear, little lady.” Markowski spit into his cup. “This should be good.”

“Look,” Philip said and held his hands up, palms out, “take it easy, pal—”

Harris pushed Philip, and the man stumbled backward several steps, regaining his balance in time to take a crushing right hand to the side of his head. He dropped to the street.

Markowski was smiling, nodding his head, holding his spit cup.

“Harris!” Buddy was up next to Harris, gripping his arm.

“You see that?” Bert half whispered to Markowski.

“Yeah.” The big Pole smiled. “But why didn’t he? He’s the psychic.”

Harris couldn’t take his eyes off Philip. He was seething and trying to say something, overcome with emotion, tears streaming down his face, tears of rage. Philip did the worst possible thing he could have done at that moment. He got up.

Buddy wasn’t expecting Harris to break free of his grasp, but his friend did, shrugging off his hand and laying into the psychic again.

Harris delivered a hard right directly to Philip’s nose, then an uppercut with his left to the man’s torso. Buddy wrapped his arms around Harris’s trunk, pinning his arms to his sides, hauling him back.

“Day-yem!” Bert shouted approvingly.

Markowski snickered and spit in his cup.

Philip stayed down this time, bleeding from the face, retching. A few of the people gasped and gawked at Harris.

“Harris, Harris!” Buddy turned Harris and let him loose in the other direction. “What the hell’s gotten into you?”

Harris looked past Buddy, looking like he’d love to jump on top of Philip and beat the man some more. He breathed hard, shook his head as if to clear it, then stalked off in the opposite direction.

Markowski raised his spit cup up in a mock toast, laughed, and pitched the contents onto Philip where he lay.

“Oh, sorry about that.”

Bert laughed.

Buddy followed Harris. He didn’t say a word to his boy, just shadowed after him as Harris walked to the house they’d claimed as their own.

Harris went through the front door, Buddy right behind him.

Inside, on the couch in the living room, Harris crossed and uncrossed his legs.

Buddy settled down in a recliner across from him and didn’t say a thing.

Harris bent forward with his head in his hands. He laughed nervously. “Jesus, that was uncalled for, huh?”

“You cool now?”

“I’m good, Buddy. What was I thinking?”

“I don’t know, Harris. Why don’t you tell me what you were thinking?”

“It’s just—it’s just that those people out there—they’ve been through a lot, man. We all have. And this guy shows up, and he’s going to pull the wool over their eyes?”

“You gotta remember he’s telling them what they want to hear. You saw Camille and Sal eating that shit right up.”

“Yeah, but they don’t need to hear that.”

“Who are you? Graham? Markowski? Who are you to decide that?”

“But man, it’s so, so, I don’t know, condescending? So wrong, man. On so many levels. I mean, these people, all of us, we’ve all lost people, Buddy. We’ve lost people in bad ways.”

“You don’t have to lecture me on loss, Harris.”

“I’m not trying to, I know. I just don’t—I—Christ, what was I thinking?”

“Harris, look, man. I don’t buy the guy’s program either, but you’ve gotta ignore him, okay? Just avoid him as much as you can.”

Harris sat for quite some time.

“Did I hurt him?”

Buddy smiled. “Nothing that won’t heal. Looks like you busted his nose pretty good. I figure you would have done worse if I wasn’t there to stop you.”

“Man, I hope I didn’t hurt him.” Harris was genuinely apologetic.

“Sit here awhile, Harris, chill out. Then I’ll go find out what kind of damage we’ve done.”

“We, huh?”

“We’re in this together, right?”

“Completely.”

“Well, I need you to keep as cool and clear a head as you can, Harris. The time is coming—and it’s coming quickly—when we’re going to have to make a move on Graham and his crew, or they’re going to move on us.”

“You think it’s going to come to that?”

“I’ve seen it before. It’ll happen.”

“People are going to die, aren’t they?”

“People always die, Harris. It’s part of what we do. Question is, which people, and how many?”

“Well, it’s not going to be us.”

“That’s what I’m thinking.”

23.

He got home a little after five in the afternoon. Harris stayed at Hillcrest until all the buses had come and gone. One driver freaked out and didn’t show up for his run, so another had to be brought in, which delayed everything for a half hour or so. Harris dismissed his staff as soon as the majority of the students left, knowing they’d want to get home to their families. He waited with the last kids until the final bus arrived.

The science teacher, Gus Cupolo, had boogied soon after they’d all met in the lunchroom. A part of Harris was really angry at the man for sneaking out like that, but part of him understood Gus all too well. He’d talk to the science teacher later.

Neither his cell phone nor any landline in the building worked. All circuits were busy. He needed to hear from his wife, to know she was okay, that the National Guard had things under control where she worked downtown, that she was safe in her building. Raquel worked at a major law firm, after all, and it had its own security. Maybe she was already on her way home to him.

When the last school bus pulled away, Harris locked the front door and walked briskly to his Lexus in the parking lot. He’d never cared much about cars as a young man, something that set him apart from his friends, but as he got older and settled into a comfortable upper-middle-class lifestyle, he started to pay attention to people’s rides. The Lexus was still considered a luxury ride, and Raquel and he had agreed to buy it when it became apparent that they couldn’t have their own child.

No need to save for college, so why not splurge and buy each other nice sedans?

In the last couple of months they’d been talking about adopting. They had friends who’d adopted a cute little girl from Russia. Harris didn’t care where the baby came from. He knew a lot of white couples adopted from European countries because color was important to them, and they couldn’t get a white baby here in America.

Color wasn’t important to Harris. Working in public education had taught him that there was good and bad in all races. He saw it with the kids, and even other adults. If a child went home to a family that valued education and kept their kids off the streets, that child usually turned out okay. A kid who returned to a home where one or both parents were absent, either from walking out or because they had to work two or three jobs to make ends meet, or to a home where schooling wasn’t considered important, where resentment against the “system” for perceived ills festered? Less okay.

As Harris drove to their house, he thought back to how his mom and dad had never let him or his brother hang out on the corner when they were young. The way his parents spoke of it, the corner was some mythical evil place teeming with drug use and wayward youth. Truth turned out to be it was just a bunch of kids with no adult supervision and way too much free time on their hands, and a good many of them did wind up getting themselves into hot water for it.

Harris’s dad used to troop him and his brother down to the park to play some ball, keep them active.

He’d have to call James when he got to a phone that worked.

There was surprisingly little traffic on the roads home, and Harris made the commute quickly, staying five to ten miles above the speed limit the whole way, trying not to freak out about events over which he had no control. He didn’t see any police cruisers on his whole ride.

He parked the coupe in the driveway and let himself into their home. Daffy greeted him at the door, licking his hand.

“Good girl, good girl.” Harris patted the dog on her head, and she followed him through the first floor where he unlocked the sliding glass door and let her out into the backyard to do her business.

While the dog squatted on the grass, Harris tried his house phone. Not even a dial tone.

“Damn, “ he breathed. Calm. Gotta stay calm. Freaking out wasn’t going to get anything accomplished. His wife hadn’t made partner in a prestigious Manhattan law firm on her looks alone. Raquel was bright, sharp, much more conservative and, Harris sometimes thought, much more on the ball in many ways than he was. Harris could trust Raquel to put herself in a position where she’d be safe.

But he worried about her. Raquel also had a side of her that liked to help people, and he could picture her stopping on the street to assist somebody who was hurt, the rioters closing in—

Whatever. Harris forced himself to stop thinking about it. Raquel was either safe somewhere, probably as worried to death about him as he was about her, or she was on her way home, or . . . anyway, there was nothing he could do about it in the meantime.

Daffy’s pawing at the sliding door made him blink.

“Come on in, girl.” Harris let the big blonde collie into their kitchen. He squatted down and patted her neck and back. “Somebody needs to be brushed.” She licked his hands.

He turned on their home computer and checked his email accounts. He had three accounts: one for work, one for home, and an old Hotmail account he’d had since forever. He checked each. Nothing but Bigger-Harder-Longer and Stop-Thinning-Hair spam. Not a thing from Raquel. To keep busy, he clicked on an email she had sent him the week before and replied to it, letting her know he was home waiting to hear from her, just wanting to know that she was okay or that she was on her way home to him and Daffy.

He wanted to get back in the car and drive down into the city. He decided to wait around the house for a while. What if Raquel came home while he was out, and then she would be stuck here alone wondering about him?

He left the computer booted up.

He fixed himself a plate of leftover roast pork and mashed potatoes from the night before, and sat in front of the television. Daffy sat obediently at his feet, eyeing the plate.

Some of the local television stations were off the air. One was playing reruns of Battlestar Galactica. The cable news stations were live, and it appeared that whatever had happened in Manhattan had spread. CNN was broadcasting from Russia, where tanks were rolling across Red Square and rifle fire punctuated the anchor’s words.

Harris was staring incredulously at Fox’s coverage as a line of soldiers in South Africa fired on a wall of human beings coming down the street when the station cut live to a press conference with the vice president.

Harris ignored the plate of food on his lap.

He didn’t particularly like this guy, but Harris listened to the man’s every word. The vice president usually delivered his talks extemporaneously, unscripted, but today he stood at the podium with the flag behind him and a sheaf of papers in his hands. The announcer introduced the vice president, who put on his glasses and began to read.

“Ladies and gentlemen, fellow citizens, men, women, and children of this great nation. The events of the past day, unfolding as I speak, have caused some people to—” yadda yadda yadda . . . Harris waited to hear something substantive, something that would tell him the fate of Raquel. “The armed forces of these United States are acting now to contain this outbreak of rioting, and we believe that order will be restored within twelve hours at the latest—”

Daffy whined and looked at Harris with pleading eyes.

“Furthermore, I urge all citizens to stay in their houses, with doors and windows locked. For those of you for whom returning home at the present moment is not feasible, be advised that temporary relief stations, where you will receive food, shelter, and first aid, have been erected in nearly all—”

At the bottom of the screen, a scroll listed the neighborhoods and the nearest relief stations.

“—above all, do not attempt to counter this threat on your own. The men and women of our armed forces are the best trained in the world, and you have my assurances that this threat will be curbed within the next few hours.”

That was the end of his speech, and the vice president looked like he was ready to leave, but there was a rustle from the reporters and a “Mr. Vice President, Mr. Vice President!”

“The vice president won’t be answering any questions,” one of his aides said off camera.

“No, no, Jim, it’s okay, I’ve got this one. I’ll answer a few questions”—the vice president looked at his watch, like answering questions was the last thing he wanted to do, an imposition—“and then I’ve got to go.”

Harris wondered where the man was in such a hurry to get to. Smug bastard.

“Yes, Peter.” The vice president pointed.

“Uh, Paul, sir,” a reporter offscreen spoke. “Mr. Vice President, is it true sir that some of the rioters are eating people on the streets?”

The vice president shook his head derisively and waved a hand, dismissing the idea. “Listen, in trying times like these, there are stories concocted—concocted, hear my word? Fabricated. People embellish what they think they see. They hear one thing from one person, and it becomes another thing when they pass it along to another person. But—no. Cannibalism? No. I don’t think cannibalism—”

“Mr. Vice President,” another reporter interrupted, causing a vein to stand out on the veep’s forehead, “we have footage of a group of rioters eating their victims.”

“Look,” the vice president said, sounding peeved now, “in any situation of great stress, you’ve got individuals who pursue extreme measures. But cannibalism? I wouldn’t be surprised if a few fanatics are resorting to it, God only knows for what reason. Probably to strike fear in the hearts of the people. And that’s exactly what we can’t let them do. We have to retain our resolve and stand firm in this attack on our freedom.”

“Who’s that, Mr. Vice President?”

“Who?” The vice president looked at the woman like she was retarded.

“Yes, who can’t we let strike fear into our hearts? Who is attacking our freedom?”

“I’m not at liberty to divulge that information at this time”—the vice president glanced at his watch again—“but make no mistake, the enemies of America, the enemies of freedom, are not to be underestimated.”

“You’re not at liberty, Mr. Vice President, or you have no clue?” another reporter asked off-camera.

The vice president turned crimson, wrapped his hand over a microphone, then released it.

“Who are you with? What organization?”

“Z Magazine.”

“Huh, ‘Z Magazine’?” The veep nodded to one of his aides, who wrote something on a legal pad.

“Mr. President,” one reporter mistakenly called, and there was a chuckle from the press pit. Even the veep smiled.

“Go ahead, Fran,” said the vice president.

“Will today’s events have an effect on next week’s elections in the Middle East?”

“Good question, Fran,” he said and launched into a three-minute answer, toward the end of which the vice president started to look a little queasy. Once or twice he placed a hand on his chest. When he looked like he was going to vomit, his handlers hustled him off the podium and out of the cameras’ view.

His press secretary took the podium. The man looked like a shark.

“The vice president has taken ill and—”

“Has the vice president been bitten, Randy?”

“Is it his heart?”

You’ve got mail!

Harris hopped off the couch and crossed the room to his computer. He checked the subject heading from the sender. Hi I Victoria From Russia You Meet Me? Harris deleted the email and went back to his couch.

“Who exactly do you think the vice president could be implying when he said enemies of America might be responsible for today’s events, Harry?” Two network talking heads were engaged in a postmortem analysis of the address. “The Venezuelans? Al Qaeda? The Iranians?”

Daffy was licking her lips now, looking from Harris to the plate of food he’d taken three bites from, and back to her owner.

“One thing we haven’t considered in all this, Sam, is nanotechnology and its potential for abuse—”

24.

They moved quickly and silently through the sewer system, no map necessary. They’d visited their destination enough to know every turn and straightaway needed to get where they were going.

An hour before, the heavy gunfire emanating from Jericho had given way to thick white smoke on the horizon. Even with binoculars, the best view from Eden had revealed nothing but thick plumes rising from several burning houses in the other camp.

Harris was behind Buddy at the front of the pack with his twin-9s holstered under each arm, a Mossberg ATP 500 12-gauge with mounted bayonet in both hands, and a flashlight duct-taped to the barrel.

Buddy had the Armsel Striker with the rotary drum magazine, tensing it on its sling. A Maglite in his free hand illuminated the path before them.

The three men behind were similarly well armed. Evers had left his hunting rifle behind, opting for an H&K MP5, more suitable for the close-quarter fighting they might be walking into. In addition to the MP5, Evers had three pistols holstered on his person and an M-79 single-shot grenade launcher strapped to his back.

There was only one reason Jericho might be burning. If what they suspected were the case, no amount of firepower was likely to prove adequate for what they’d find.

Harris reached the ladder and paused.

There were two functional sewer entrances into Jericho. One led directly onto the main street. They avoided this one. Whatever had befallen the camp, they didn’t want to come up in the middle of it.

The manhole looming above them would deposit them in an alleyway behind a row of houses. The homes and storefronts of Jericho were set up exactly like those of their own Eden, with community driveways in the same spots. The only major difference was that a series of fire escapes were built onto the rear of the houses in Jericho. They could access the fire escapes a short distance from the manhole.

Harris stared warily upward and Buddy followed his gaze.

There was a big slab of light where there shouldn’t have been; the manhole was partially uncovered. A crescent of weak light from the overcast sky filtered down on them, causing Thompson to squint.

“You smell that?” Thompson scrunched his nose.

Harris had rallied this posse, deciding to bring Thompson along. They’d had their little “to do” a few days earlier, but Harris had resigned himself to a few facts since then. He might be living with Thompson at Eden for a long while yet. Asking Thompson to come along was meant as a first step in letting the younger man back into his good graces. A public means of allowing Thompson to save face.

Buddy hadn’t questioned Harris’s choice. He understood Harris’s thinking.

“Yeah, that’s not good,” said Fred Turner, shifting on his feet. Turner hadn’t been the same since his boy had died.

“Give me a second.” Buddy handed his shotgun to Thompson. “I’ll have a look.”

He drew his 9-millimeter from its spot on his hip and threaded the silencer. Buddy had left the saddlebags back in Eden, just in case they had to move fast in Jericho. He hadn’t counted on the manhole cover being like this. None of them had.

Harris watched Buddy ascend the ladder, climbing with his feet and one hand, the silenced 9-mil aimed at the gap between the manhole cover and the street in case anything tried to come down while he worked his way up.

Fred Turner was shining his flashlight on the tunnel where it continued on ahead of them. Harris thought he knew what the man was thinking. If that manhole cover was unsealed even slightly, there was no telling what was down here with them now.

Harris banished an image of being chased in the dark tunnels from his mind.

Bobby Evers must have been thinking the same because he was keeping an eye and a light on the tunnel they had just come from, with all its sinister pitch-black connections stretching off unseen into the distance.

Buddy came back down the ladder.

“Can’t see much. Didn’t see anybody or anything, but I didn’t get much of a view either.”

“What do you want to do?” Harris asked the older man. Buddy’s thinking had kept both their asses alive up until this point.

“What I want to do,” said Buddy, “is close that manhole cover and go back to Eden.”

“Class idea, that,” agreed Evers.

“What we’re going to do, Harris, is you, me, Thompson—we go up there, we check it out. Fred, you and Bobby stay here, and close that manhole up behind us. Keep an ear cocked, because we might be coming back fast.”

“You sure you want to do this?” asked Bobby Evers. “Is it even necessary?”

They had all listened to the volley of gunfire in Jericho dwindle, then disappear. They’d seen the plumes of smoke billow from black to white. Whatever happened was winding down up there, and the best thing was probably to pull that manhole cover back into place and get the hell back to Eden. Forget about Jericho forever.

“Closure,” said Buddy. “Right?”

“How about payback?” Thompson asked.

“No. Matter of fact, we leave the big guns down here with Bobby and Fred. Pistols only. This is pure sneak and peek, then get the fuck out. Can you handle that?”

Thompson looked reluctant to discard his 9-millimeter Colt submachine gun. “Yeah, I can deal with that.”

“Bobby, you keep an ear out on that radio, right?”

Buddy, Harris, and Thompson stacked their assault rifles and shotguns against the curved wall of the sewer and started up the ladder one at a time, Buddy at their head.

“Be wide!” Evers whispered, telling them to be careful.

At the top of the ladder, Buddy reached up, braced himself with his feet, and grunted as he pushed with one hand, sliding the manhole cover back over his head. He winced at the noise it made. Buddy moved it just enough to allow him to slide out with the silenced 9-millimeter, scanning the alleyway, not seeing any zombies, but hearing the noises from beyond the buildings, the acrid smoke hitting his nostrils.

He got up out of the hole in the ground, turned to cover the blind spot behind him, and understood how the manhole cover had come ajar.

The remains of a young man—everything below the sternum gone, bits of flesh and clothes hanging off his spinal cord—lay with its arms askance. Buddy didn’t recognize anything that was left of the face.

There were three zombies kneeling around what was left, finishing it off, seemingly engrossed in their task. One looked up at Buddy as he shot the other two in their heads, the silenced 9-mil laying them down.

“Fuck you.” Buddy shot it through the upper lip, the exiting round lifting off most of the top of its skull.

He covered Thompson and then Harris as they climbed out, Thompson aghast at the sight of the half-eaten man.

“I know that guy,” Thompson whispered.

Buddy and Harris looked at him.

“John or Joe or something, maybe Jim. Something with a J.”

Their view of the alleys ahead and behind them was obstructed by fences. Where Eden had wide-open areas behind its houses, Jericho’s lots were fenced in. Each fence had an opening that let out into the next area. A home four or five houses up was ablaze, and Buddy figured they were probably all burning, but he got up onto the fire escape anyway, ignoring the scraping shriek when Evers pulled the manhole cover back into place.

All three froze as a final, ragged salvo of gunfire sounded from somewhere out front, followed by silence.

Buddy looked at Harris.

He went up the fire escape to the first landing, squat-walking past the windows in case anything inside cared to look out. The higher they got, the more smoke Buddy could see, and the more difficult breathing became. Smoke was billowing three houses down.

They made the roof. Buddy peered over before climbing up. Wisps of smoke obscured his view, but it looked like the roofs between their position and the blaze were empty and intact. No zombies.

Buddy wasted no time, duck-walking to the other side of the roof, getting down onto his hands and knees first, then elbows and knees, crawling up to the lip. He peeked down over the gutter onto the street below, into the heart of Jericho. Harris hunkered down on his left and Thompson on his right.

“Oh God,” said Thompson.

Jericho had been overrun. It looked as if the undead had breached the electrified fence to the south. Smoke and flames from the buildings and the streets obstructed their view of the other end of the block.

Beneath them, an undead bacchanal was in full swing. There were bodies and zombies everywhere. Many of the zombies were unmoving, head-shot or skulls caved in, bludgeoned. There were also dozens of the people who had lived here, people who’d broken bread on various occasions with Buddy and Harris, with Thompson and everyone else in Eden.

Zombies grouped around bodies like wild animals, tearing at the flesh and viscera, gnawing through limbs and carrying them off to eat alone. Blood was smeared all over the street where people had been felled, dismembered and disemboweled, fought over, and dragged off. There were two or three who were more or less skeletons, bones glistening white through all the red.

As Thompson watched, a zombie reared its head back out of a midsection where it’d been buried like an ostrich, its entire skull slick with blood, something sausagelike between its masticating teeth. Thompson turned to the side and vomited all over the roof.

“You hear that?” Harris asked Buddy.

The other man wished he hadn’t. Somewhere down there, beyond the smoke, people were still alive. As they listened, someone screamed and another called out. There were a few scattered gunshots. The smoke masked the view from the roof. All they could see were the already-dead bodies below and the undead feasting on them.

They stared at it all in shock and disgust for some while.

Buddy keyed the walkie-talkie. “Bobby, we’re on the roof.”

“What have you got?” the Irishman came back.

“It’s not good. We’ll talk.”

Harris watched a zombie chewing the toes off a severed, charred foot.

“Payback time, right?” Thompson asked.

Buddy didn’t hesitate. “No.”

“What do you mean, no?” Thompson asked Buddy. “You see what they’ve done down there. Fuck them. Fuck them all.”

Slowly, calmly, Buddy replied. “It’s too late for everybody down there. But it isn’t for us. It isn’t for Eden. We just go.”

“What do you mean, ‘we just go’?”

“If we go and open up a can of worms just to get some satisfaction for something we can’t change, we’ll only be putting more lives in danger.”

“Bullshit.” Thompson said it more to himself than to either of them.

“Where are you on this?” Buddy asked Harris.

“I know what you’re saying, Buddy. And I know you’re right too. But I’m with the kid this time.”

“Shit,” Buddy breathed.

“Buddy, listen to me, man,” said Thompson. “You know up the block, they keep that big eighteen-wheeler of gasoline, right? You’ve seen it before, right? If I can get over there, maybe across the roofs and down a fire escape—”

“No, forget it,” Buddy interrupted him, but Thompson continued unabated, fighting to keep his voice down.

“—if I can get over to it, I can unseal the valves, flood the fucking street. Then we either torch it or one of those fires already burning down there will destroy them all. Look at them, Buddy. There must be thousands of them down there.”

“Thompson. Harris. Now you both listen to me. What’s done down there is fucked up. No doubt. But it’s done. We aren’t doing anybody any good risking our lives. All for what? A little payback against fuckers that don’t even know what payback is? Fuckers won’t even know what’s happening to them as it’s happening?”

Thompson stared Buddy dead in the eye and Harris saw the edge of the younger man’s mouth quiver.

Someone below cried out, something that sounded like “Oh God, no!”

Thompson looked away from Buddy, and with his face averted asked, “That sound done down there to you?”

“This ain’t open to debate,” said Buddy.

“Guys.” Harris rolled away from the edge of the roof toward its center, bringing the twin-9s up.

From the smoke billowing across the roof a few houses down emerged first two, then three, then half a dozen zombies.

“Fuck!” Thompson brought his Colt Detective Special up and started firing the .38.

“Ah hell!” Buddy aimed slowly and deliberately. The 9-millimeter coughed and a zombie fell back into the smoke.

Harris stood and fired two-fisted. “Let’s go!”

Thompson fumbled a speedloader and dropped it on the roof. Buddy pushed him toward the fire escape.

Harris covered the other two men as they started down the fire escape, firing out the 9-mils, knowing he’d taken at least six of the things out for good. He dropped the magazines, not bothering to gather them up, reloading and holstering both pistols, the Colt M1911 up and out, booming, blasting through the nearest zombie. The undead had cut the space between them and were only two roofs away.

Harris had one hand on the ladder and was starting to lower himself when there was a shriek. A booker came tearing out of the smoke, bearing down on him. He straightened the .45 and fired once, a hole the size of a fist blowing out of the zombie’s back. He fired again, catching the dead thing in the shoulder and twisting it in mid-stride. His third shot took off the side of its head, and the thing stumbled off course, pitching over the roof to the yards below.

Harris ignored the shamblers heading his way and started down the ladder.

What they could see of the alley below was still empty. Buddy got on the radio as they descended to the last landing. “Open up, Bobby, we’re comin’ down!”

The manhole cover immediately slid back a foot and a half.

Buddy squatted, his 9-mil tracking for a target, and Thompson slipped down below. He nodded, indicating that Harris was next. Harris disappeared and Buddy passed him his pistol, reaching up and over as he balanced himself on the ladder under the ground. Buddy pried the manhole cover forward and slid it into place.

Harris and Thompson had looks on their faces that told Bobby Evers everything he needed to know, looks that said it was better not to ask.

“What you seen up there?” Of course Fred Turner asked.

Buddy didn’t say a word. He’d watched with Turner as Turner’s boy had perished. He was glad that he hadn’t had to actually see anyone else go the same way out there in Jericho, that the smoke and flame had hidden most of it. Slinging his shotgun, Buddy stalked off the way they had come, his flashlight bobbing.

Harris felt like he had to say something to Turner, so he told him it wasn’t good. Bobby Evers nodded and laid a hand on Fred Turner’s shoulder.

The others had to hurry to catch up to Buddy.

Buddy had seen some bad shit in his life. A good deal of it he’d been responsible for. And he’d seen some straight-up horrible shit since all of this had gone down. But today took the cake. The scale, the mass. Just a waste . . . what a terrible, terrible waste.

Buddy figured he’d remember what he’d seen in Jericho all his days.

25.

By the time Harris reached exit 12 on the Hutch, traffic in the southbound lane was at a standstill. People were out of their cars, standing around in groups, calling over to one another.

Harris put the Lexus in park. There were already cars pulling up behind him, stopping, boxing him in, the queue lengthening.

Only two or three cars passed in the northbound lane, and Harris wondered if they had gotten out of Queens or were just coming from some spot farther south, maybe Yonkers or the Bronx.

All the radio stations had gone over to news. Reporters and officials were telling people to stay in their homes, not to panic. The vice president had suffered another minor heart attack but it wasn’t believed to be life-threatening. Only on satellite radio did some of the channels continue to play music.

Harris tapped on the steering wheel and grew agitated. This was bullshit. Raquel was waiting for him. Maybe in Manhattan, maybe in Woodside, somewhere in the city.

He killed the engine, got out of the car, and stretched. He had changed at home to jeans and his running sneakers and had thought enough before leaving the house to pack an extra change of comfortable clothing in the duffel bag.

He’d put Daffy out in the yard with food and fresh water, realizing it might be some time before he saw her again, hoping it wouldn’t be, hoping it wouldn’t rain, and figuring she could wait it out under the deck if it did.

“They say the bridges are shut down,” a man standing beside the car next to his announced. “Is this nuts or what?”

“Yeah, it sure is,” Harris muttered, trying to control his temper. He’d be damned if he was going to be stuck here on the highway, not moving an inch, while who knew what was going on farther south, his wife somewhere out there.

Raquel would hold on, find a place to lie low until he came for her.

Harris checked his watch. He had missed their six o’clock in Woodside.

He shook his head, thought never the time, the slang his kids at school would use, and reached back into his car, pulling the duffel forward. He reached in and touched, but didn’t take out, the .357 Colt Python he’d brought along. Loose rounds for the revolver were strewn about the bag, along with a full box of shells. Instead, he pulled out his sweatpants, stepped out of his shoes right there on the side of the parkway, unzipped his jeans, pulled them off, and placed them on the front seat.

“Mommy, what is that man doing?” a little kid outside the car behind Harris’s asked her mother. Harris was in his white boxer briefs, pulling the gray sweatpants on, untying his running sneakers so he could put them back on and lacing them up, double knotting each.

He rummaged through his jeans, pulled out his wallet and money clip, dropped both in the duffel bag. He folded the jeans and laid them in the bag, then zipped it up.

Harris considered taking the car keys but decided against it. He put the keys in the ignition so the automatic locks wouldn’t kick in, closed the door, cinched the duffel bag tight across his back. Ignoring the little kid and her mother, he started jogging off down the Hutchinson River Parkway at a steady pace, southbound.

“Hey, mister!” the woman called out to him but he ignored her. He stuck to the median, the asphalt under his feet, his knees feeling good, passing row after row of unmoving cars, people staring at him curiously as he passed.

One fat guy leaning on a Lincoln Town Car, stuffing a donut in his mouth, muttered “jerk” as he went by.

26.

You believe that?” Harris asked Buddy.

They were sitting in lawn chairs on the street, playing Uno. Isabel, pregnant and starting to show, was sunning herself down the block, wearing a thong and a string bikini top. Palmer and Diaz were sitting in chairs next to her, and Diaz was openly staring at her ass.

“Hey, it takes two to tango,” said Buddy.

“Yeah, but I hear sometimes she takes on teams with more than one player,” Harris joked, but it wasn’t really a joke because Isabel was quite open about her sexuality in camp.

Uno was a kid’s game but Harris enjoyed it. He had never learned it until he became a teacher. The kids needed something to keep them busy those last fifteen minutes of study hall before the end of the day, when they were itching to go and maybe get in trouble elsewhere in the school. A poker resurgence had swept the nation but he didn’t feel right playing Texas Hold ’Em with high school students.

“I wouldn’t let it bother you, Harris. She’s just living her life the way she wants. God only knows we might not have much time left to us, so I can’t blame her for trying to enjoy herself.”

Buddy laid down a blue six.

“So you don’t judge, huh?” Harris asked.

“We all judge,” said Buddy, “even when we say we don’t.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” Harris put a stack of sixes—red, green, and yellow—atop Buddy’s blue. Isabel had come on to him a couple of times, but he hadn’t gone there. It wasn’t because she slept around and he didn’t, or anything like that. Harris was beyond that way of thinking. There were other reasons.

“What about you?” asked Buddy, nailing him with a draw-two card. “How’s your love life these days?”

Harris snickered, plopping down a draw-two of his own. “What love life? Draw four, my friend.”

Buddy gave him a knowing look, drew the four cards. “I see how that girl Julie is around you.”

“You’re crazy, old man.”

“I might be crazy, that’s true, but you’re blind. That woman lights up when you come around. Why don’t you talk to her?”

“I do talk to her.”

“No, I mean talk to her. And don’t try and tell me you don’t know what I mean. You’re a man, Harris. What have you got to lose?”

“Right, Buddy. I don’t see it, but if you say it’s so . . . Draw four by the way. Again.”

“You don’t want to see it,” said Buddy. “Look, man, it ain’t wrong. Think about it. And draw eight.”

Buddy had plopped his own draw four down on Harris’s.

“Anyway,” Harris said dismissively, looking down at Buddy’s draw-four card on top of his, “Thompson seems to have a crush on her. He’s closer to her age as it is.”

“Yeah, I seen that too,” Buddy agreed. “And I also seen how she doesn’t pay him no mind. She’s not interested in him, man.”

Harris set a draw-two on top of the pile. “Ever occur to you that she’s playing hard to get?”

“You should know, way you’re treating the pretty lady.” Buddy threw down a second draw-four. “What’s the story?”

“Damn,” Harris mumbled. “Hang on, Sloopy.” He started to draw fourteen cards from the remainder of the deck.

“That’s another twenty you’re going to owe me,” said Buddy. “Not that I’m counting.”

“You haven’t won yet.”

“Yeah, but you have half the deck there in your hands.”

“Okay, wise guy. Watch this.”

Harris put down a green skip card, followed by two more skips, a blue reverse, a red reverse, and a green reverse, and on top of it all a wild card, saying, “Draw four. Color is red.”

“Man. You used to play the kids cutthroat like this?”

“Are you kidding me? Those kids would have beaten the pants off the both of us.

“Funny, though,” Harris observed, “how money doesn’t mean anything anymore.”

“That’s all it ever was, just paper. Only reason it meant anything is because everyone believed it meant something. Hey, get a load of this.”

Down the block Diaz and Palmer were slathering suntan lotion on Isabel’s back and legs.

“Arturo!” Shannon, Diaz’s girlfriend, stomped over to the spot.

“What is it, baby?” Diaz smiled, his hands hovering over Isabel’s thighs, slick with oil.

“I need to see you, in the house.” Shannon was fuming and casting evil looks from Diaz to Isabel and back. “Now.”

Isabel didn’t avoid eye contact but she paid the other woman no mind. Palmer continued to apply lotion to Isabel’s angel wings.

“Okay, I’ll be up in a minute,” said Diaz.

“No, Arturo—now!” There was no room for negotiation in Shannon’s voice. “Let’s go! And you . . .” Shannon glared at Isabel, the latter propping herself up on her elbows, craning her neck around to see what Shannon wanted. “You should be ashamed of yourself!”

“Ashamed of myself for what?” Isabel looked like she was going to laugh.

“Why, you fucking whore—”

Shannon took a step closer to Isabel but Diaz grabbed his girlfriend and started to hustle her back toward their house.

“What?” Isabel said. “Are you going to attack me? Kick my pregnant ass? Is that what you’re going to do?”

“Stay away from him, slut!” Shannon yelled and Isabel laughed at her as Diaz carried his girlfriend away.

Isabel said something to Palmer that neither Harris nor Buddy could hear. People on the street and in their windows who had watched the little drama went back to whatever it was they had been doing.

Palmer continued oiling Isabel up with a shit-eating grin on his face.

“He’s in now,” observed Harris.

“Think he’s been in once or twice before.” Buddy threw down a green two. “Uno.”

Harris still had a bunch of cards in his hands. He thought about it, put down another green card.

Buddy smiled, laid down his last card. It was a wild card.

“One more game?”

“Not a whole lot else to do, right?” said Harris.

“I deal this time. Let me see them cards.”

27.

Officer Tricia Morgan hunkered down in the closet, half blind and scared out of her wits.

She’d been in there like this for the past four hours.

Tricia had lost her primary weapon in the melee outside, and all she had now was the .38 backup piece she kept on her ankle, and the gun was in her hands.

Her knees were drawn up to her chin in the back of the closet where it was dark. She couldn’t see anything without her contacts, anyway.

She’d lost them in a wrestling match with a Hasidic zombie out on the street. She’d been helping corral people up Sixth Avenue. It hadn’t been orderly or calm at all. Anybody who could was running, and people were getting knocked to the ground and trampled.

Morgan didn’t know if it was because she was a woman, or because she was only two inches over five feet tall, but people didn’t listen to her as she first implored and then screamed at them to slow down. She realized they were just frightened out of their minds by what they’d been fleeing, just as she was at this moment.

She heard gunfire before she saw any zombies. When they came, they came fast, though most of them seemed to be pretty slow. In her three years on the force she had never had to draw her pistol on duty, but she didn’t hesitate when the first zombie showed up. The thing was easy to spot amid the stream of people screaming and making room around it, breaking away from it. The zombie had blood all over its mouth from whatever it’d been eating. Tricia aimed carefully but missed, accidentally shooting a man behind it in the arm.

The guy hadn’t stopped, just pulled his wounded limb close in to his side and disappeared up the street.

Though Tricia was shaking, her second shot caught the zombie square in the chest and the thing jerked back a step, then righted itself and kept coming. She put three more rounds from her Glock .40 into it, but the thing wouldn’t go down. Finally, when it was six feet away from Morgan, when she was considering turning and running herself, she nailed it between the eyes and the beast went down for good.

That’s how Tricia learned that headshots were all that counted.

Within the next fifteen minutes she had killed seven more and swapped magazines twice. Ammunition was going to be a problem.

The crowd started to change. There were uniformed soldiers hustling up Sixth Avenue. Morgan tried to get her commanding officer on the radio but the line was in use and all she heard were frantic conversations between people she didn’t know. They were yelling back and forth and talking over each other.

Several times she considered leaving, just running, finding a way back to the station or even to her family on Staten Island. But something—a sense of duty, she wasn’t sure what—made Tricia Morgan stand her ground.

She figured she’d be in enough trouble when all this was over and the guy she’d shot in the arm sued the department and the city.

What finally made her mind up for her was when the Bradley tank came barreling up Sixth, zombies clinging to its exterior, two battling with a soldier in the hatch. The tank didn’t slow down or attempt to go around the crush of people and Morgan felt sickened watching people go down under it, human beings popping like ripe fruit beneath its treads.

She heaved where she stood, vomiting up the dirty-water dog she’d scarfed down from a sidewalk vendor. Morgan wiped her mouth and started up Sixth.

The Hasid attacked from behind when she had gotten about eight blocks up. At first she didn’t know what was happening. Someone grabbed her from behind and pulled her down. They rolled and she managed to turn herself around, but not before one dark-suited arm rubbed up against her face and dislodged her contacts.

Morgan grabbed the creature by its payess and pulled its mouth away from her face. She fired one shot into its head and it went limp.

She sat there on Sixth Avenue for a minute, blinking, feeling with her fingers. One contact had come completely out. Another was halfway in but as she continued blinking it too came free.

She’d been wearing glasses since she was a kid. Her eyesight was bad. Not legally blind–bad, but not too far off. Glasses or contacts corrected that. She’d lied on the police medical and then when she got into the academy she’d never had a problem with her contacts. There had always been the fear that she’d lose her contacts in an altercation with a perp, and she usually had a pair of glasses with her in a case on her utility belt. But she hadn’t seen much action on the job and Tricia had grown lax. She had gotten to the point where she wasn’t bringing her glasses with her every day. Today was one of those days.

Without her contacts, everything was a blur. She could make out people going past her up the street and could see the buildings on either side, but she couldn’t discern any details. She couldn’t even see the license plate of the car parked less than ten feet from her.

Morgan knew she had to remain calm. She had seen too many people this afternoon screaming their heads off, tearing ass for who knew where, seemingly out of their minds. She stood up and brushed herself off. She had dropped the Glock and now she couldn’t find it. Maybe someone running past had snatched it up? If she got down on her hands and knees to search for it she might be trampled.

She pulled her backup piece off her ankle, glad she carried one.

Morgan tried to get someone on the radio but no one responded.

And so she found herself hours later hiding in the back of a closet in an office on the thirty-ninth floor of a building off Sixth Avenue.

It had been a hell of a process just getting into the building and onto an elevator. No one was willing to stop and help her. It seemed like everyone was trying to get out of the building, and she was the only one taking the elevator up.

She was in some kind of doctor’s office or something. She’d passed through a waiting room and a hallway with examination rooms on either side. She’d tried the phones but they weren’t working. Maybe she’d done something wrong, because zero didn’t even bring an operator.

What she had on her hands now was a waiting game. At one point she had to sneak out of the closet, find the bathroom. Fortunately the doctor’s office had its own. After she’d peed and washed her hands, she’d heard noises out in the hall and stepped into the receptionist’s area so she could hear better.

What she’d heard wasn’t good. A man’s voice screaming, someone was running. At one point it sounded like there was a fight right outside the office door.

Tricia Morgan went back to her closet then, shutting off the lights in the doctor’s office. Only the light in the hall remained on.

Sitting in the dark, she considered her options. She could try and find any other people on this floor. Being with someone, anyone, would be preferable to being alone. But she was scared of venturing out into the halls after what she’d heard earlier.

She could sit where she was and wait. Things had been pretty hairy out on the street, but would that last? The city had to have some kind of plan. If not the city, Albany. Still, the way the soldiers were running away, the way that tank had come down the street crushing people . . .

One thing she was determined about. She wouldn’t be eaten. No way, no how. She’d seen the people running past her, many gripping arms, shoulders, other areas of their bodies torn open. That Hasid had been trying to bite her face off when she’d shot him.

She hadn’t wanted to believe the early reports, that whatever these things were, they ate people. But it was true; she’d seen it.

Tricia Morgan had the revolver. It only had six shots.

She hoped they wouldn’t find her in this place, yet she feared they would.

There was nowhere she could go, no place to hide. If she heard them come into the office, she would stay where she was, listen. If they made it into the doctor’s room and there were only one or two of them, she could shoot it out. But if there were more than that, she would put the gun to her own head. If they opened the closet door, she’d—

Tricia would do what she felt she had to do when she felt she had to do it. The police officer sat back in the dark closet, watched the shadows, and waited.

28.

They stayed to the roofs as much as they could, coming down only to cross streets where necessary, keeping out of sight. They silently dispatched the few undead they encountered on the roofs. Buddy passed Harris his silenced 9-mil, opting for a knife. He took his targets from behind when he could, driving the blade up where the skull met the back of the neck, twisting it around before withdrawing.

Other times Buddy walked right up to the slower-moving zombies, grabbed them by their chins and the tops of their heads and wrenched their skulls to one side, audibly breaking their necks. That was a bold move, to say the least, one Harris sure as hell wasn’t going to try. Breaking their necks didn’t kill the zombies, but it left them paralyzed. They lay in place, immobilized, opening and closing their mouths as Harris and Buddy passed them.

Leapfrogging from building to building, avoiding discovery, they squatted atop an apartment building directly up the block from their destination.

“There it is.” Buddy scanned with his binoculars.

“How’s it look?”

It was a whole street walled in on four sides. The walls were dense and high, and there were people atop them moving about, and more people down on the walled-off street. Regular people. Living people.

“They got themselves a whole little community going on down there. I see something, looks like generators. Looks like they have themselves showers and latrines too, maybe.”

“That wall all around?”

“From what I can see, yeah.” Buddy panned with the binoculars and found himself looking directly into the face of another man, this one tall and cradling a bullpup assault rifle. He was staring back at Buddy with curiosity—and something else—in his eyes. Something Buddy recognized and did not like.

“Made contact.” Buddy chanced it. Against his better judgment, he stood up and waved, and Harris reluctantly joined him, looking behind them and then down to the street. The zombies below hadn’t noticed the two men on the roof.

“Hello, big boy.”

The man on the wall was joined by others, and some of these began to wave back to them. The tall man called out over his shoulder to someone. The undead, drawn by the presence of those on the wall, started to mill about beneath it.

Buddy pointed to himself and Harris, then at the walled camp.

There was some discussion on the wall. Everyone there was armed. The tall man was talking with a shorter fat man while a third man was apparently arguing with both of them. The tall man turned aggressively on the third, lashing out at him verbally. The distance was too great for Harris or Buddy to hear any of their words.

Buddy watched it all through his binoculars. Harris made out most of what transpired, though he was unable to make out the expressions on the individual faces.

The third man cast a glance toward Harris and Buddy, shook his head in resignation, and got down off the wall, disappearing from view on the other side.

“That doesn’t look good,” muttered Buddy.

The taller one, apparently done consulting with the fat man, turned to look directly at them once more. He shook his head and held up a hand, thumb down. Then he waved them away, once, showed his teeth, and turned his back on them.

“You gotta be kidding me . . .” Harris murmured.

“You saw that, huh?” Buddy didn’t sound perturbed. He sounded almost amused. Harris was getting to know that in situations like these, when Buddy would laugh or seem entertained, the other man was actually starting to seethe inside.

“What do they want us to do?” Harris was disgusted too. “Just lounge around out here with these things? Wait ’til it gets dark and see how long we last?”

“Well, looks for sure like they don’t want us joining them. But you know what, Harris?”

“What’s that?”

“I don’t give a fuck what they want.”

“So what’s our plan?”

Buddy started laying it out for him and Harris listened. Although it was dangerous, Harris knew it was better than sitting around on the roof waiting for the zombies to find them.

Ten minutes later they’d crept down the stairwell of the apartment building. Along the way they’d taken out nine zombies with silenced shots and up close knife work. Harris and Buddy were learning that the undead, one-on-one, could be dealt with, so long as they didn’t surprise you in a tight spot, especially the slow ones, which seemed to be the majority of them. The faster ones were a different story.

The lobby of the building looked out onto the street. The wall was a good hundred yards at the other end. Between their location and the wall were parked cars, a bus stuck in the middle of the street—and a couple hundred zombies.

Buddy sheathed his knife on his ankle, checked the silenced 9-millimeter, made sure it had one in the chamber, and placed another round in the magazine. The sawed-off shotgun jutted out of his saddlebags, and the H&K G3 was strapped to his back, two twenty-round magazines taped together. He cradled the Milkor MGL, a squat and brutish-looking South African multiple grenade launcher.

Harris checked the loads on the twin 9-millimeters he wore under his arms. The Colt .357, which had served him so well, was holstered on his right hip. A .45 rested on his left. He wore a machete strapped to his back next to an M-16 carbine fitted with an M-203 A1 grenade launcher. Like Buddy with his G3, he’d taped the magazines of his M-16 together. Harris unslung the M-16/M-203 combo.

“You ready, Harris?”

“Let’s do it.”

“Hey, Harris, if we don’t—”

“I said let’s do it, Buddy, before I lose my nerve.”

“Nah, nah, man,” grinned Buddy, “I wanted to tell you not to worry about it. I don’t think they were being unfriendly to us, ’cause of you bein’ white and all.”

Harris had to laugh. “You’re cracked, man.”

There were two undead at the bottom of the stairs letting out from the apartment building and Buddy allowed Harris to put one in each creature’s head with the M-16, the double cracks alerting everything else about. The zombies looked their way, mouths cracking open with hisses and screams, the fast ones breaking into long, loping strides.

Buddy braced the grenade launcher on his hip and squeezed the trigger, the launcher bucking slightly in his grip. He fired again, swiveling at the hip and tracking up and down the block, launching 40mm grenades at clusters of undead and the vehicles they stood around.

Harris fired the M-16 on semi-automatic from his shoulder, sighting down the barrel and letting off single rounds into the heads of the runners as they came.

The grenades detonated, drowning out the sound of Harris’s M-16. Cars parked along the curbs rocked, lifting off the ground as the fragmentation rounds detonated. Secondary explosions boomed as the gas tanks went up. Shrapnel from the grenades and the cars ripped through the undead, decapitating some, driving shards of metal into the heads and brains of others, tearing limbs off many more, knocking any too close to the blasts off their feet and flinging them through the air like rag dolls.

Harris fired out the magazine at the runners, dropped the mag, flipped it over, and slammed the taped mag home. He wrapped his hand around the magazine and sighted along the barrel at another booker, triggering the M-203, the 40mm grenade catching the zombie in its stomach, vaporizing the top half of its body.

“Nice shot,” said Buddy, all six rounds from the Milkor expelled. He abandoned it, motioning for Harris to follow as he brought his H&K G3 to play, firing single shots up the street, the undead closing from behind them pirouetting and collapsing.

They broke into a run, past the flaming metal of cars, past the undead standing there gawking, around those knocked flat from the explosions, some beginning to get up. The two men stayed clear of the creatures staggering toward them, looking out for bookers, seeing none, and headed for the wall at the end of the block.

A single man was on the wall. Buddy recognized him as the third guy who’d been chastised by the tall one. He was laying down covering fire, the cracks of his hunting rifle sharp.

As he ran, Harris tried to watch his step, avoiding any undead that were getting back up onto their hands and knees. He kicked one that blocked his path in its face, sending the thing over backward out of the way. Harris had never been out on the street with this many at once, and the situation was hairy.

Small fires were burning and they ran through a mist of smoke.

The people on the wall were watching them intently, seeing if they were going to make it, the lone gunman doing what he could.

A zombie popped out from behind a truck stopped halfway onto the curb, going for Buddy. Harris slammed it back with three shots from the M-16, not bothering to finish it, just letting it lie in the street where it fell struggling to right itself. The two human beings were already past it, racing up the block.

Twenty yards from the wall, they veered suddenly toward the left, aiming for the storefronts and stoops of the houses. Ahead of them, on the street in front of the wall, their path was blocked by a crowd of the undead. Neither Harris nor Buddy had to look to know that the zombies were massing behind them as well, new ones drawn by the racket, emerging from side streets and doorways.

“We do this quick!” Buddy yelled, and Harris brought the reloaded M-203 A1 grenade launcher mounted under the barrel of his M-16 into play, firing another 40mm grenade through the doors of the single-story building before them. It had been a home once, but nothing human lived there anymore.

The grenade took the doors off their hinges along with most of the molding.

The smoke wasn’t even clear and Buddy was inside the building. Harris could hear the G3.

Harris turned when he reached the smoking ruins of the entrance, coughing from the smoke. The undead were coming for them down the block, an impenetrable wall of them.

“Dammit.” Harris turned and ran into the building, into a veritable zombie nest.

“Harris, heads up!” Buddy yelled, ramming his blade into the face of an undead. Corpses lay sprawled in the hallway. Doors on either side of the hall opened or were opening, undead staggering out, going for the big man.

“Buddy, down!” Harris roared, and Buddy launched himself forward, tackling a runner, the two of them bouncing off the hallway floor.

Harris flicked the selector on the M-16 to full-auto and sprayed the remainder of the magazine down the hall, geysers of blood and gore erupting from the heads and shoulders of the undead, plaster exploding off walls in clouds.

With one hand wrapped around its throat to keep its teeth from his face, Buddy drove the index and middle fingers of his free hand into the eye sockets of the thing beneath him, sinking them up to the first knuckle. The beast beneath him fought and squirmed. He drove his fingers the rest of the way, twisted them about, and the zombie went limp.

Buddy got up, yanking his blade out of a zombie’s head and ramming it through the throat of another that was already on him, pinning the thing to the wall behind it. He found his saddlebags, yanked the sawed-off out, straight-armed it, and let both barrels off at the same time. Three forms were knocked down by the buckshot.

Harris used the stock of the M-16 to beat in the head of a zombie, and the gore streaked the floor of the hall. Letting the assault rifle fall to his side on the sling, Harris drew the .45 with his left hand and the .357 Magnum with his right, firing as undead emerged from a doorway.

Buddy and Harris moved, working their way down the corridor. The doors here opened outward, into the hall. Buddy slammed them shut as he went. Harris, bringing up the rear, flung the doors open as they passed, aiming to make it more difficult for the zombies to follow, even if only momentarily.

There were undead stirring in the rooms beyond those doors. They could hear them, but there were now dozens more starting to pour in from the front, crowding on the street, drawn by their mad dash and the din of battle.

At the end of the hall was a window. Buddy blew it out with his 9-millimeter. He launched himself through what remained of the glass without looking, landing on the grass four feet below, his saddlebags still on his shoulders. Harris followed suit, vaulting off the skull of a felled zombie, shrugging off reaching hands.

They found themselves in a small space between the wall of the compound they’d spied from the rooftop and the house they’d just jumped out of. The space was otherwise walled in with wooden planks. This house had once had a yard, and the people who had constructed the walled compound had built their wall through it, leaving the fences of the yard standing where they reached their wall.

The wall stood a good ten or twelve feet high, too tall for even Buddy to leap up and grab onto.

One of the people on the wall was saying, “I cannot believe they made it this far!”

“You’re goddamn right we did, now get us up there!” Buddy yelled back at them, thumbing new shells into the sawed-off.

Harris put a magnum round between the eyes of the first zombie that appeared in the window.

“No deal,” the tall man yelled down. “I told you before not to come here.”

“Come on, Markowski,” another person on the wall pleaded. “We can’t just leave them down there.”

A booker leaped through the window and Buddy grabbed its wrist as it landed. He yanked it forward, its momentum slamming the thing into the wall. Buddy fired the sawed-off and the blast took off the thing’s head and the hand it’d extended in front of its face. Blood and brain matter splattered the people up on the wall. Someone screamed.

Another zombie dropped from the window into the yard, and Harris gunned it down with two blasts from the .357.

A third was gripping the window frame and had its legs on the sill. Buddy gave it the other barrel, punching it back into the house out of sight as the zombies inside ululated.

The wooden fence separating the two men from the street rattled and shook violently under protest from the undead grouped against it. Harris knew if they didn’t get into the compound soon they were not going to make it.

“Fuck them. You heard what Graham said,” the tall guy named Markowski spat.

Harris aimed the .45 and .357 at the darkness of the window, into the hall beyond. He waited until he saw shadows inside before firing both pistols.

Buddy snapped the breech shut on his sawed-off and sent the contents of both barrels through the window, splashing blood out. Harris holstered the empty .45 and .357 and cross-drew the 9-millimeters, filling both his hands.

Buddy reached into his saddlebags and took out a big lump of gray putty. Harris had never seen him with it before.

“What the fuck is that?” Someone on the wall sounded dumfounded.

Buddy slapped it on the wall of the compound, where it stuck.

“That’s plastic explosive,” he yelled up, taking a grenade from the saddlebag, tossing it to Harris, pulling out a second.

Harris pulled the pin on his and put it through the window frame without having to be asked. Everyone on the wall ducked as the grenade inside the house exploded and plaster dust billowed out. There was a caterwauling from inside the house as the zombies clambered over their dead numbers toward the open window.

The people on the wall stood again, brushing themselves off.

“Oh no, he didn’t—”

Buddy had plugged the second grenade into the plastic explosive pressed to their wall. He had one finger around the pin of the grenade, his 9-millimeter in his other hand.

“Hey, big guy!” Buddy called to the tall man. “You see this? You let us up, or we let them all in.”

Buddy’s finger didn’t leave the pin of the grenade, even as he swiveled to fire three shots into the head of an undead that popped up in the window.

There were gasps and stirrings on the wall, and the tall guy named Markowski had a bullpup assault rifle trained on Buddy.

The zombies did not relent. Two or three heads would appear in the window at a time, and Harris would let them have it with the 9-mils. The wooden fence was threatening to collapse under the weight of the undead crowding against it.

“Evers, what the fuck are you doing?” Markowski roared.

A rope ladder dropped down to them. Buddy nodded to Harris and he holstered his 9-milimeters, scrambling up. Men and women at the top reached down to help him up.

“You’re not the full shilling, Markowski!” Evers yelled back. “Ya mad, man.”

“Help my friend out!” Harris yelled, mounting the wall, drawing the nines again and firing them out at the window of the house where undead spilled through into the yard.

People on the wall opened fire on the zombies below, a withering hail of lead from an assortment of assault rifles, shotguns, and a hunting rifle.

Buddy popped the grenade out of the plastic explosive but left the explosive itself in place on the wall.

He was reaching for the ladder when a zombie laid both its hands on his shoulders. Buddy whirled and rammed the barrels of the shotgun through its mouth, shattering the thing’s jaws and teeth. He fired a barrel and the explosion ripped out the back of the creature’s neck, decapitating the zombie directly behind it.

The zombie dropped to its knees, Buddy’s shotgun still impaling it through the mouth.

Buddy clambered atop the wall, out of breath.

“Fuck!” he wheezed, staring at the men and women around him. They stood on what looked like an empty cargo container pressed against the wall, something usually mounted on an eighteen-wheeler.

Most looked as surprised to see him and Harris as he and Harris were to see them. Only the one named Markowski still looked disgruntled, but at least he had the barrel of the FAMAS assault rifle in his hands cast down.

“Fair play out there!” said Evers, the curly-headed man with a hunting rifle and an Irish brogue, the man Buddy had seen arguing with the first two through the field glasses. He reached out to take first Harris’s and then Buddy’s hand. “Welcome to Eden.”

“Yeah,” said Buddy. “Thanks.”

29.

They loaded another batch of their wounded onto the chopper.

Marcos kept low, remembering his days in the Gulf aboard the aircraft carrier when that poor schmuck had gotten the top of his head taken off by the rotor blades on the flight deck. Someone had taken pictures of it afterward, put the pictures up on one of those web sites, one of the ones with all the porn and death vids. Marcos had never understood who would want to mix the two.

They were seventy stories up, which was a bad thing for Marcos because he hated heights. He kept well away from the lip of the roof, working with the firefighters, the EMTs, and other rescue personnel to transport the wounded onto the helicopters setting down and lifting off, ferrying as many people from the building as they could.

The street below was no longer an option and hadn’t been since last night. Soldiers and armed citizens held the stairwells, picking off the zombies as they lumbered up toward the roof.

Marcos wondered how long it would take them to make it up seventy flights. He lent an EMT a hand. The woman had a man on a stretcher. The man’s face was all eaten off and he was dying from his wounds. They carried the stretcher across the tarmac, keeping their heads low, passing it up to the men aboard the helicopter.

There was a spare tire around his middle these days, but Marcos found the discipline from his old Navy days came back fast. He’d feel safer if he had some kind of weapon, preferably a gun. He set his mind to the task at hand and tried not to think about his family at home. He had to trust they were still safe, as they were when he last spoke to them days ago, before he came down here looking to volunteer to help because he thought his country needed him.

A man on the helicopter signaled the craft was full and Marcos and the EMT hustled away from it.

Marcos turned from the downdraft and looked over the roof. Even with all the evacuation flights shuttling in overnight, there must have still been a good hundred and fifty, two hundred people left on the roof.

As the chopper lifted off, Marcos could hear the words of the EMT next to him, “Poor bastards.”

She was pointing across the street to a rooftop slightly below their own. Dozens of people were stranded there, waving their arms, gesticulating wildly. Marcos could see them but he couldn’t hear them. Helicopters couldn’t land for them because their building was nestled between taller ones with no clearance for rotors or their draft. Imagine, Marcos pondered it, making it off the street alive, climbing sixty-something flights of stairs—he assumed the power was out in that building like the one he stood on, so the elevators were out of the question—and finding yourself stuck on the roof, with no place to go, with no one to come and take you away. Those people were all trapped.

“Oh God, no!”

Marcos looked up. The helicopter they had just loaded tilted crazily in the sky. Something was going on inside it, and it was clear that the pilot was losing control.

“Oh shit—” the EMT beside him cried, but Marcos was already running for the door to the stairwell as the helicopter came back down toward them, skewed at an angle that defied its physics.

He knew he wasn’t going to make the stairs so he rolled behind the air-conditioning ducts and kissed his ass goodbye.

Screams were lost in the deafening vibrations of the rotor wash, a wrenching collision, and three loud explosions that followed in rapid succession. Lying where he was, Marcos felt the heat and watched bodies catapult through the air past him, one motioning with his arms and legs like he was swimming in the air. The bodies pitched over him and off the roof seventy stories down to the street.

He heard a ringing in his ears like the kind he’d get when he tensed his jaw, but this was involuntary. There was a muffled clanging that diminished in volume and then a muted crash somewhere far below.

When the heat had subsided, Marcos dared to stand.

Nearly everyone was gone. Bodies and parts of bodies littered the place. It looked like the helicopter had smacked into the roof, exploded, and bounced down to the street. The rear rotor had come off and sliced through dozens of people. Some of them were still alive, dragging legless torsos away from the burning fires, or lying, flailing their arms and screaming, but Marcos couldn’t hear them for the ringing in his head.

He watched a woman cut in two pull her upper half away from her lower. Her feet, legs, and thighs were still standing, draped in strands of burned skirt. She got about a yard before she didn’t move again.

A man stood in place, hopping around, his clothes burned off from the knees up, his skin bubbling and coming off him in dollops. He looked like a man stepping onto the scalding sand of a beach and hotfooting it back and forth from one foot to another in place.

Marcos felt something warm down the front of his pants and felt there, finding he had pissed himself.

A flaming man or woman—Marcos couldn’t tell which—ran past, arms beating at the fire engulfing its body. Marcos wondered if the person were screaming and he just couldn’t hear. Male or female, it went right over the side of the roof.

Maybe twelve or fifteen people were getting up, some wounded, others miraculously unscathed.

Marcos looked up into the sky. Off in the distance he saw a few helicopters, but they were heading away from the building and there were no others coming back.

He sat down behind the air-conditioning ducts where he wouldn’t have to see the severed arms and legs and burned flesh, where he wouldn’t have to watch the survivors writhing on the rooftop.

He wondered what had become of the female EMT he’d stood next to moments earlier.

Through the ringing in his ears he discerned a low roar, increasing in intensity. He stood once more and looked in all directions. The jets were coming in low.

Across the way, zombies had breached the roof and the people were fighting them.

He turned his back on the carnage and the incoming jets. Marcos stared into his lap and thought of his family. Looking over the edge of the building scared the hell out of him. He was petrified of heights. He sat with his back against the air-conditioning ducts and prayed like he had never prayed before.

30.

Harris watched the young guy, Thompson, put fire to his cigarette with a Zippo lighter.

“Thanks for bringing Harris over, Thompson,” said Graham, his chins jiggling. “Why don’t you wait in the next room?”

It wasn’t a question, and Thompson left.

“So, Harris, what did you guys think of Jericho?” The fat man sat at the other end of the table, his little sausage fingers tented in front of him, his wrinkly elbows resting on the table. Graham’s house was a mess, a pigsty. It fit the man, Harris thought, then thought that wasn’t true: it was unfair to pigs.

Graham and his lackey, Markowski, were looking at Harris, waiting for an answer.

“The people were nice enough,” he recounted. “A bit hippieish, if you ask me.”

“Bunch of sixties rejects,” spat Markowski. “Don’t eat the brown acid and all that shit.”

“They’re in there pretty tight, though,” continued Harris. “Only concern I have about them is that electrified fence. If that thing fails, they’re out of luck.”

“If that thing fails, they’re fucked,” Markowski said in his usual brusque manner.

Graham had sent Harris and Buddy with Markowski and a few other men from Eden to visit the neighboring encampment. The walk through the sewer system had been a little freaky and claustrophobic at first for Harris, and he wondered why the zombies were unwise to the system of tunnels and passageways running beneath the streets and houses of the city.

But they had made it, and the people of Jericho had welcomed them with open arms.

“Hippieish,” said Graham. “I like that.”

Harris had noticed that about the heavy man: the guy would repeat something you’d said two or three sentences ago. Harris figured Graham was doing it because he wanted to appear profound. That or the guy had a slow processing speed.

He and Buddy had been in Eden a few days now, and things were coming to a head fast. Graham ran this place with his thugs, the chief of which was Markowski, the tall Pole with the crappy attitude. The people in Eden did what they were told because Graham kept them safe from the undead and because they feared Markowski.

Harris had been getting the vibe that Graham was trying to win him over to his side, which he found funny because he detested the dictator and his ways. If the shoe had been on the other foot, if Harris had been in Graham’s position, he’d have tried to win Buddy over to his side, because Harris considered Buddy a much more dangerous adversary than himself, and that would make him a more valuable ally.

But Graham steered clear of Buddy as much as possible, and Harris suspected race was involved. It definitely was an issue with Markowski, who peppered his speech freely with references to “jigs” and “niggers.” The Pole might be six and a half feet tall, but he was cruising for a bruising or worse with Buddy.

“Hippie bullshit.” Markowski literally spat on the floor, which didn’t seem to bother Graham one bit. “They’re pussies, all of them. Let them have their Neil Young and their flower power.”

“You’ll have to excuse ’Kowski here, Harris. He’s a Skynyrd fan himself.”

Markowski was right about one thing. The roughly five dozen people who lived in Jericho didn’t seem very tough. Not that anyone here in Eden was. People listened to Graham because they were afraid. Graham reminded Harris of the schoolyard bully who was a mess himself. But there was a cruel streak in Markowski, something fundamentally wrong with that one. A mentaller, as Evers called him.

Harris wondered how everyone who had come to Eden or Jericho had survived as long as they had. They had to be tough, right? He and Buddy got where they were fighting hard, ready to die hard if necessary, but they always tried to deal fairly with anyone they met on the outside, never burning anyone. Harris imagined Graham getting by on cunning and deceit, weaseling his way here, and Markowski on brute force, shooting and slashing his way inside Eden.

One thing he couldn’t imagine was either Graham or Markowski in Jericho. Over there the people smoked a lot of pot, danced, and did seem somewhat frivolous. But they’d had their crap together enough to put up an electrified fence and get the tanker of gasoline in to fuel their generators.

“There’s a reason I’m asking you about Jericho, Harris.” Graham leaned forward on the table, as if he were taking Harris into his confidence.

“See, I made an overture, an offer, to Jericho three weeks back. Asked them if they wanted to join us here at Eden, you know, somehow consolidate what we all got into some kind of confederation, a co-op for the benefit of everyone involved.”

For the benefit of you and Markowski and anyone who does your dirty work, thought Harris, although he was careful that his face did not give away any of what he thought.

Graham held up a finger, like the next thing he was going to say was the loftiest sentiment known to their species. “And they refused.”

“Pussies.” Markowski plugged one nostril with a thumb and blew a stream of snot across the room. A strand of it dangled from his nose and he wiped the back of his hand across it.

“They want to be off on their own, Harris, but you saw how things are there. They’re smoking pot and carrying on like it’s the goddamn fucking Age of Aquarius. In the meantime they’ve got thousands of zombies massed outside their quaint little experiment in communal living. They ain’t going to make it without our help.”

“So what are we talking about here?” Harris asked carefully.

“It’s like with a child, Harris. You have any children?”

“No.”

“I do,” said Graham. “I mean I did. Your child wants to run across the street, you aren’t going to let him do so, right? He’ll run right into traffic thinking nothing of it, get his little skull peeled open for him by a Mack truck. That’s how those people in Jericho are, Harris.”

“Fuckin’ infants,” emphasized Markowski.

“They’re going to tune in, turn out, drop in and Woodstock their way into the mouths of those things.”

“Turn on, tune in, drop out,” said Markowski, but Graham ignored him.

“I don’t think I’m following you,” Harris admitted, although he knew all too well where the heavy man was going with this.

“We’re going to have to go in there and run things for them, Harris,” said an exasperated Markowski, and Harris couldn’t tell who the big Pole was short with.

“Take care of them,” amended Graham, “if you will.”

“What are you talking about here, Graham? They already told you they’re happy the way they are.”

Graham looked perturbed and Markowski shot his boss a look that said he just don’t get it. Graham looked down hard at his hands. When his eyes came back up they had softened.

“I know what they told me, Harris. But I also know what needs to be done.”

Harris figured Markowski for the true threat in the room, and if he had to he’d need to take the Pole out first, which was easier said than done. There was a roomful of other men next door and Harris found himself wishing Buddy were with him.

“That sound too harsh to you?” Markowski asked Harris, the challenge in his voice unmistakable, inviting.

Harris thought about what he was going to say before he said it, choosing his words. “Spell it out for me, then. What are we thinking here?”

The word “we” seemed to put Graham at ease, the fat man casting a reassuring glance at Markowski. The tall man didn’t lose his scowl. Harris wondered how many rounds from the .357 Markowski could take and keep coming.

“I’m thinking we send in a small team, maybe six or seven at first.” Graham laid out his plan as if it were the Battle of Inchon, starring himself as Douglas MacArthur. “I’d want you on that team. ’Kowski told me how you handled yourself in the drugstore, going back in there for Evers.”

“Mick faggot.”

“I wouldn’t have, but that’s just me. Then there’s that whole incident with the psychic. You know what that shit shows me?”

Harris waited.

“It shows me: One, this guy Harris here can handle himself. He’s got balls. Big hairy fuckin’ man balls. Two, it shows me you don’t take any bullshit. And three, let’s face facts, Harris, you’re a tough man, but you’re not a hard man, not like ’Kowski here. And see, I’m not expecting anybody in Jericho to give us a hard time, but if they do, I’d feel better knowing I got guys like you alongside ’Kowski to handle it. You got a way with people ’Kowski lacks, and he’s got a way with people you lack.

“Your friend there too.” Graham meant Buddy, and Markowski snorted, mumbled something about “spearchuckers” but Graham ignored him. “You guys go in there, explain to those peaceniks how things are going to be, set up some kind of government or some shit.”

“You think they’re just going to agree to this?”

“Let me tell you something about people, Harris. You walk into a room, you pop the biggest, toughest guy in there in his goddamn mouth, you leave him cradling his nuts crying on the floor, everyone else is going to pony up to whatever it is you’ve got to say.”

“Whatever you’re selling,” added Markowski.

Graham spoke like he knew what he was talking about from experience, but Harris couldn’t imagine the overweight man being able to pull that off. Still, the guy had Markowski tame enough, however that had happened.

“So if any of them want to kumbaya or any of that shit,” Markowski said, and drove one balled fist into the other open palm for emphasis.

“And we’re doing it for their own good, Harris. They might not see it that way at first, but they will, eventually.”

“Of course we aren’t going to benefit at all from this, are we?” Harris asked, trying to sound like they would, like wink-wink, fellas.

“But of course we will.” Graham picked up on his tone and broke into a leer. “I mean, to the victors go the spoils, right? This ain’t a democracy here in Eden, but it works pretty goddamn well. And to those who come up with the plans and protect the others goes the lion’s share. Nothing too indulgent, mind you, but we’re gonna get our fair share.”

“Should I tell him about my idea, Graham?” Markowski was all eager. “About the community of women?”

“Nah, save it for later. I’m gonna have a need for guys like you, Harris.” Graham laid it on thick, trying to seal the deal. “Guys who can think on their feet. Guys people respect and will follow. Me and ’Kowski here, believe it or not, we can show you a thing or two.”

“Yeah, like how to make better friends,” Markowski growled. “The only time I want to see black and white together is on a fucking cookie.”

“Calm down, ’Kowski,” said Graham. “You know, Harris, even your pal, Buddy, man’s got a lot of promise if he’d just learn to lighten up.”

“I’ll talk to him,” reassured Harris. “He’ll come around. I think he’s still angry that you”—Harris nodded to Markowski—“didn’t want to let us into Eden in the first place.”

“That old shit?” Markowski dismissed it like it was something that happened twenty years before and didn’t mean anything.

Graham showed his palms. “Harris, you and Buddy have to understand, you know how many people we’ve let in here and they’ve turned out to be dangerous?”

“Motherfuckers come in here bitten.”

“That’s true. They come in here bit, and they don’t want to show us, and then things get violent. Or they come in here with their own ideas about how things should be in Eden . . .”

“And then shit gets violent,” gloated Markowski.

“Same thing with those fruitcakes over in Jericho. Would you believe they kept a few of their own, a few of their own undead? The religious among them tried to minister to them, heal them.”

“They tried all sorts of bizarre shit,” said Markowski.

“Aromatherapy even.”

“Crazy, right?”

“Dangerous,” Harris admitted.

“You know what we do with the undead here, Harris?” Markowski asked, a sneer plastering itself across his face.

“For some reason, I don’t think that’s to Harris’s taste, but you can show him in a minute. Now, Harris, we got an understanding, between you and me, that is?”

Harris mulled it over, more for the sake of show than anything else. “Yeah, we do.”

Graham smiled, and Harris couldn’t believe how someone so stupid could get into such a position, lording it over everyone else.

“Good. I’m glad to hear that, Harris. I’ll keep you informed, and when the time comes, I’m going to ask you and your pal there to go with ’Kowski and some others over to Jericho.”

“I’m up for that.”

Graham ate it right up, smiling at Markowski. “ ’Kowski, why don’t you show Harris how we keep the boys entertained around here?”

“Come on, Harris, rock out with your cock out. I’ll take you to the playroom.”

Markowski’s chuckle was devoid of mirth as he motioned for Harris to follow him.

Harris stood, nodding at Graham, glad the other man didn’t want to shake hands.

In the next room, Thompson was flicking his Zippo open and closed while Bert stood around looking bored.

Markowski led Harris through the house, into the kitchen to a basement stairwell, and downstairs.

Halfway down the steps Harris stopped, reaching for his twin-9s. Markowski stopped as well and turned to Harris, bemused and smiling. “Relax.” Harris heard pussy in there, unspoken but implied.

The tall man ducked and continued down the staircase, flicking a light switch as he did, laughing to himself.

Harris didn’t like what was down in the basement one bit.

Metal poles had been driven into the middle of the floor and cemented into place. A chain attached to one pole tethered a zombie. She was topless and rotting, flesh hanging from her shoulders and back. She’d been a redhead in real life and tufts of her hair were gone, revealing the skin of her scalp.

When she saw Harris and Markowski, she pulled at her chain, coming as far in their direction as she could, hungry, trying to get at them, stretching out her fingertips. Her rotting tits swayed.

“Frisky one, this one. Hot, ain’t she?”

Markowski reached out and gave the zombie a mock high five, then backhanded it in the side of the face and the thing moaned.

Harris felt nothing but disgust.

“You’re probably wondering why in the hell we keep undead tied up in the basement.”

Harris didn’t say anything. He didn’t like being this close to the undead, even one tied at bay.

“Well, Harris, let’s face facts, a man has needs. And while we’re facing those facts, let’s face this one: zombie pussy is still pussy, right? Another fact for ya, Harris, one not widely known: zombie pussy is goddamn tight pussy. Tighter than a man’s ass. You have any idea how tight that is, Harris? You ever have you one? Zombie pussy, I mean.”

Markowski started laughing again. “I’m fucking with you, Harris. We don’t fuck ’em. Although, there was this one kid here who did, and you know what happened to him? He got sick and died, but not before his dick fell off.”

The Pole got all serious. “And that’s no joke. No, Harris, we use them for target practice.”

Markowski drew his pistol and pointed it at the undead’s head. The thing reached for him, fingers clawing at the barrel, mouth plopping open.

“Pssh! Pssh!” Markowski mimicked the sound of a gun firing, moved the barrel around a little, leading the undead that reached for it.

“Yeah,” he said, “she probably was a hot piece of ass in real life, don’t you think? And she’s a real redhead too, this one.”

Harris didn’t respond and Markowski didn’t seem to expect him to. The tall man holstered his pistol.

“Sometimes I like to get down here close with one of them, use a knife or a hatchet. You ever use a blade on one of these things, Harris? It takes balls, man, ’cause you gotta get in close. And up close, that’s where these fuckers can do the most damage.

“Natural inclination is going to be to drive that bitch right up into their chest or kidneys, maybe gut them. But these fuckers? They couldn’t care less about that. Cut their heart out and show it to them, they’ll still come and get you. No, man, you stick them in the head, scramble whatever brains they got left.”

Markowski finished with a look like he was immensely satisfied with himself.

“That’s what we use ’em for.”

31.

What are we going to do about Dom?” Buddy asked Harris one night on the roof. It was a question Harris had been meaning to ask Buddy, and he was perplexed when the other man asked him first, because he’d hoped Buddy would have an answer.

They were a few feet apart in their respective sleeping bags on the roof of Dom’s fortified house.

“That’s what I’ve been thinking about,” confessed Harris.

Harris and Buddy had been holed up with Dom for nearly a week. Eating Dom’s food, sleeping under the stars on Dom’s roof, spying on the undead as they filed by on the street below.

“Do you think he’d want to come with us?” Harris asked.

They both looked across the roof to where Dom sat in a folding chair, next to the Viking grill on which he cooked their meals, listening to his oldies music on the battery-powered boom box he’d dragged up from somewhere in his house. Dom hadn’t gone down into his house much since the incident with his wife.

“Well, I kind of have to ask you this question, Harris. Where are we going exactly?”

Dom liked the old novelty songs from the fifties and sixties, songs Harris remembered hearing when he was a kid driving around with his dad.

Gary Paxton was singing about the toughest caveman we all know, a cat by the name of Alley-Oop.

“I had an answer to that one once,” Harris said, thinking again of Manhattan, “but not anymore.”

Dom was a big man who smoked like a chimney. Even now he was dragging on a Marlboro. Neither Harris nor Buddy could realistically imagine him hustling along with them on streets teeming more and more each day with zombies.

“Anywhere’s as good as somewhere,” added Harris. “I’ve got no place in mind, but I don’t think I can just hang out here forever.”

“Yeah, I know. And all we’re doing is eating this man’s food.”

“We’ll talk to him in the morning.”

“Sounds good.” Buddy turned over on his back in the sleeping bag and looked up into the night sky so peaceful above, continuing as it always had been and always would be, oblivious to and uncaring of the hurly-burly beneath it.

Harris woke with the sun as Dom emerged from the Porta-Potty. He’d been meaning to ask the heavy man how he’d managed to get the grill and the portable toilet up on the roof in the first place, but it always slipped his mind when he had the opportunity.

The radio was low but Harris could hear the singer asking if one’s chewing gum lost its flavor on the bedpost after a night.

“Morning,” Dom said, firing up the grill and a smoke at the same time. The roof itself was clear of butts because Dom would grind them out and toss them down into the street when he finished.

“Hey, Dom.” Harris yawned, stood and stretched, prodding Buddy in the side with his foot, waking the other man.

“Who sings this song?”

“Lonnie Donegan,” said Dom. “You know it?”

“My father used to listen to these songs when I was a kid. On CBS FM, you know?”

“I knew it well,” said Dom. “The Do-Wop Shop, Cousin Brucie. Couldn’t believe they did that to New York, took away our only oldies station.”

“They brought it back.”

“Yeah, they brought it back, but they brought it back without the fifties music. Just the sixties, seventies, and eighties. Eighties oldies? What does it say about a man, Harris, when the music he grew up on isn’t even considered oldies anymore? Has time really passed him by?”

“Minds much greater than our own have no doubt pondered this question and its ramifications, Dom.”

They ate breakfast together, the last of the eggs Dom had stocked up in his fridge, with bacon and coffee. The milk was all gone, but Dom had creamer and Harris sprinkled it liberally in his coffee.

“Damn, this is a good cup of coffee, Dom,” said Buddy. “Strong.”

“How I always drink it.”

“What song is this?” Harris asked.

Dom smiled. “‘The Jolly Green Giant.’”

“Like in the vegetable commercials?”

“Remember those, huh?” Dom exhaled a stream of cigarette smoke. “Thought this band might have been before your time.”

“Well, I never heard this one. Or if I did I just don’t remember it.”

“You ever heard the song ‘Louie, Louie’?” asked Dom.

“Of course,” said Harris. That song had been an anthem at keg parties back when he was in college.

Dom winked. “Same band, the Kingsmen.”

“Yeah,” said Buddy, “but the Kingsmen borrowed this song from the Olympics.”

“Now you’re taking me back,” admitted Dom.

Buddy continued, “ ‘Big Boy Pete’ was the name of the Olympics’ song. And that wasn’t the first time they inspired a song either. They did ‘Western Movies.’ You know, ‘My baby loves the western movies.’ ”

“Yes they did that indeed,” acknowledged Dom.

As they finished their meal Harris looked at Buddy and Buddy looked at Harris and Dom finally said, “You guys got something you want to say?”

“Yeah, Dom, there’s something me and Harris been meaning to talk to you about.”

“You’re thinking of leaving, right?”

“Yeah,” said Harris.

“You want to come with us?”

“We want you to come with us, Dom.”

Dom laughed. “No, but thanks. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not exactly in any shape to be hotfooting it down these streets, and that’s what we’d be doing. You’ve both seen how many of those things are down there, right? Every day they add to the collection.”

Harris and Buddy both nodded. Things were getting depressing on the street. Over the last week, the undead had grown thicker and it was rare now when the road below was scant of them. Some of the things screamed and cried out, which would have kept Harris awake if not for the earplugs Dom had given him. Sometimes their wailing kept him up despite the plugs. And then there was the smell. Always the smell.

Buddy slept through the stink and the noise, and Harris suspected the man could sleep through anything once he lay his head down.

“Where you guys planning on going anyway?”

“We don’t know.” Buddy told him the truth. “We’re just going to do what we were doing when we met you.”

“Run around looking for something better than what you got?” Dom put out the cigarette on the asphalt of the roof, flipped it over the ledge, and lit up another.

“That’s about it.” Harris smiled, aware it was a stupid idea, knowing they’d probably die soon, hunted down by the zombies, boxed into a situation from which they couldn’t escape. Thing was, sitting up on this roof, as pleasant as it was with the affable man’s company, food, and music, Harris and Buddy were starting to feel boxed in already.

“Papa-oom-mow-mow, papa-oom-mow-mow,” the Trashmen sang.

“What about you?” Buddy asked Dom.

Dom smoked. “Shit. I still got enough food for another week or so. Think I’m just going to sit up here and do my best to smoke myself into cancer. Keep an eye on the street, watch what happens.”

“You sure that’s what you want?”

“Yeah, Buddy. This is my house. I paid for this. Paid off the mortgage, put a lot of work into it. My castle, you could say. I couldn’t figure another place I’d want to be, all things being equal of course.

“Don’t go looking all serious, Harris.” Dom exhaled a long plume of smoke. “Every man has to die. At least I know where I’ll be. It’s you two I’d worry about if I were you. Some of those bastards down there move quick.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“What we’re saying, though, Dom,” Buddy tried, “is if you wanted to come with us, it’d be cool, man. You wouldn’t slow us down. We’d stand with you.”

“Yeah, we owe you, Dom. You been looking out for us, feeding us, letting us eat up all your food—”

Dom waved a hand, cutting him off. “Don’t mention that. It’s something I would have done for anybody, something anybody would have done for anybody.”

“That’s not true, Dom,” said Buddy, “and you know it. Fact is, me and Harris have seen a fair share of the good in people brought out by this, but we’ve seen a lot more of the bad.”

“It’s the situation. You gotta remember you guys helped me out too.” Dom moved his head, gesturing to the trapdoor that led down into his house, his meaning clear. “But I ain’t going to stop you both from doing what you think you have to do. I’m going to ride this one out up here.”

Buddy gave Harris a look that said we tried.

“We appreciate all you’ve done for us,” Harris told Dom. “And if we make it out of this, if there is some way to make it out of this, we’ll come back for you.”

“Don’t worry about me.” Dom waved his hand again. “You guys find a safe place somewhere, stay there. Send me a postcard. Maybe a couple cartons of Marlboros.”

Buddy smiled, a smile bereft of joy but full of resignation. He looked to Harris and wondered how far they would get. If they left today, would they live to see the day’s close? Everything seemed up for grabs, indeterminable, unwritten.

32.

Ugh. Here we go again with the theology talk,” said Brenner somewhat derisively, though these discussions never failed to elicit some small amount of mirth from him.

Al Gold stood up. “I’ll leave the pondering of the imponderables to the goyim. Good night, gentlemen.”

Gold left the fire for the shadows, the fifty-five-gallon drum radiating warmth as the wood and fuel inside sent flames licking up.

“All I’m saying . . .” Davon continued from where Brenner had interrupted him, “is something like this happens, makes you think there’s got to be a god or something, don’t there?”

“And why exactly would that be?” asked Panas, Eden’s resident atheist.

“Because when some supernatural evil foul shit like this goes down,” the football player reasoned, “it makes you realize there’s got to be something more powerful than humanity at work in the universe.”

“You know, Davon,” Panas began. He smoked a cigar, and as he spoke, he exhaled and watched the plume dissipate. “Before the scientific revolution, people assumed any natural disaster was the work of God. You do know there was a noticeable decline in miracles with the spread of science, don’t you?”

“Natural disaster?” Buddy asked. “Is that what this is, a natural disaster?”

“Just a turn of phrase, Buddy. Who knows what caused any of this?”

“I’m not sure how I feel about the hand of any god in all this shit here,” said Buddy, “but I’m trying to keep an open mind.”

Beyond the northern wall a screamer let loose like a wild hyena, cackling and pounding on the sliding door.

“Nothin’ natural about that shit, Holmes,” said Brenner.

“See,” said Davon, “thing is—God is, like, testing us, man. Separate the wheat from the chaff, right?”

“Is that what all those billions of people who died are—chaff?” The contempt in Sal Bianaculli’s voice was obvious.

“Nah, man, that’s not what I’m sayin’.”

“I don’t know what it is about you people—”

“Sal.” Camille put a hand on her husband’s arm.

“ ’Scuse me?” Davon narrowed an eye.

“You people?” repeated Brenner. “No he just didn’t.”

“Yeah, you people.”

“You mean us niggers?” asked Davon. “That what you mean?”

“No, that’s not what I mean, and don’t go making it fuckin’ sound that way.”

“Then what exactly do you mean, then?”

“I mean ‘you people’ like me and my people, the Italians.”

“Your people?”

“I mean ‘you people’ the same way your leaders could talk about ‘their’ people, and that was okay, and no one would bat a fuckin’ eye. Don’t try and insinuate that racism bullshit with me.”

“If it sounds like a duck, and quacks like a duck, and—”

“Don’t give me that bullshit. You have any idea how my people were treated when they came to this country?”

“Were Sacco and Vanzetti brought here in chains?” Davon shot back.

“Fuckin’ hear me out, all right? You guys get to talkin’ about God, like belonging to the Mount Zion Church, or whatever it’s called, entitles you to spell it out for everyone else.”

“And you, Sal?” asked Brenner. “You take your marching orders from the pope?”

“Sometimes. But I got peoples out there, my people. And I know all of youse got yours out there past these walls, somewhere. And I re-fuckin’-fuse to believe my people are chaff. Some of them are good as gold.”

“Come on, man,” Brenner implored Fred Turner. “You a preacher and whatnot.”

“Not anymore.” The elder Turner shrugged his shoulders. He’d lost his faith shortly after his wife had turned and tried to devour him. The only thing he had left on this Earth was his boy.

“Listen,” said Buddy, “I never could get into all this talk about God, man. I mean, there’s so much fucked up about the world, even before this”—he gestured past the walls—“I mean, a tornado wipes out a trailer park, and one person’s left alive, right? One person, and the holy rollers jump on it like that’s a miracle right there, a miracle that that one man or woman lived.”

“And why ain’t it a miracle?” demanded Brenner.

“No. Why is it? What about all those other fuckers got deposited all over the Wal-Mart parking lot? No one pipes up and says, ‘Oh, there goes God again, He was responsible for that.’”

Davon asked, “So you’re wondering if God is all-knowing how can he be almighty, right?”

“I would if I gave a damn.”

“How can a God that knows all be all good?” mused Panas, drawing on his cigar.

“And the opponents of religion,” said Davon, “they say that if God knows all and still allows all this bad shit to happen, then God must be one sadistic motherfucker.”

“Well, why isn’t She?” asked Panas.

“You’re fuckin’ wit’ me, right?”

“Just a little. Whereas the religious say that their God is testing them. You said it yourself a minute ago.”

“I don’t know.” Buddy thought about it out loud. “I always used to tell myself, if I ever saw something, like a ghost or something—that that right there would prove it to me, that’d reaffirm my faith. But this shit, I don’t know. I got no clue. I ain’t believing much of anything anymore.”

“My whole point,” conceded Panas. “There has to be some rational explanation for this. An answer science can give us. We don’t have to throw ourselves on the mercy of some mountain god or anything.”

“Yeah, well we’re not going to try and capture one of those things and start tinkering with it,” said Brenner, “see if it got a soul in there somewhere.”

“You can argue about this all night, guys,” said Fred Turner. “Religion requires just that, faith. We aren’t going to reconcile reason and belief. Theologians and scholars been trying that for thousands of years.”

“For real,” said Davon.

“And we aren’t going to choose one over the other. For those who believe—that’s what they need. For those who don’t, I guess as long as they’re okay with that, that’s good enough for them, then.”

“That’s what I’ve been saying all along,” said Panas.

“So what you think happens when you die, Panas?” Brenner asked. “That’s just it, man?”

“Yeah, that’s just it. Like before you were born. What you think? Pearly gates and cherubs and the little baby Jesus and all?”

“Word, my nigga,” affirmed the other.

“What are you, an infant, Brenner?”

“Panas, that’s not really helping things,” noted Buddy.

“What I never got was the whole purgatory thing,” confided Sal Bianaculli. “Maybe that’s what this is?”

“What this right here is, is hell,” said Davon.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” said Sal. “Tell me somethin’.”

33.

Bear came by his handle because of his looks. At six foot two and 320 pounds, the guys he rode with in the Pagans used to call him Bam Bam, partly after the wrestler, partly after his propensity to make like Barney and Betty Rubbles’ adopted son on people he took a dislike to. Those were the days when wrestling was still cool, when top draws like Davey Boy Smith, the Ultimate Warrior, and Jake the Snake Roberts owned things. And he did resemble Bigelow. He shaved his head back then, at first because he thought it looked cool and it kept motherfuckers from grabbing onto his hair during brawls and tough man contests, but then his hairline started to recede and he would never consider being one of those suckers who did the comb-over, so he kept it clean. But, like a bear, the rest of his body was covered with a thick, curly down.

Unlike Bam Bam, Bear had no tattoos on his skull, although there were plenty on his arms and calves. He’d earned the teardrop tattoo beneath his eye and the spider-webs on his elbows the old-fashioned way: he’d killed for them. The nineties came and everyone started getting ink on their bodies, trying to make some kind of fashion statement. One night, hard looks from idiots who should have known better had led Bear to beat the daylights out of five college boys in a bar. The one guy had his elbow spider-webbed. Bear had the frat boy outside on the street, grinding the unconscious kid’s elbow back and forth on the cement between swigs of Jack. He had done a pretty good job of scraping most of the kid’s tattoo and skin off, when the cops surrounded him and let him have it with the Tasers.

Those were the old days, and Bear feared for his soul because of them. After he nearly died fighting four men in the parking lot of another bar—one let him have it half a dozen times in the torso with a butterfly knife—he’d a couple months to lie around in a hospital bed and think about his life. Sure, his bros from the Pagans came by, even kept vigil early on from around the bed when it looked like he wasn’t going to pull through.

But Bear made it, and when he was finally able to get around the hospital in a walker, he started to visit the chapel. At first he would sit there by himself and think. The third or fourth time he ran into the chaplain, and they started to have conversations. As he convalesced, Bear found himself looking forward more to his talks with the chaplain than to his visits from his biker brothers. He decided that the life he’d been leading wasn’t the one for him any longer, that down that road lay only despair and damnation.

He checked himself out of the hospital without letting any of his buds know. Bear sold his Harley and moved to a new city where he found work as a home health aide. The woman who hired him took one look at him and measured up his immense size as a boon. Bear was easily able to lift and carry his wards from their beds to their bathtubs or their toilets, whatever the job might entail. Years before, he would have laughed at the thought of carrying frail old men and women around, of digging between their asses with rubber gloves to keep their shit from getting impacted, but that was before he’d been left for dead like a stuck pig in a parking lot and accepted Jesus Christ as his personal savior.

Years earlier, he would have laughed and dismissed the holy rollers and high priests he saw on the television. He would have dismissed the hundreds of cars crammed into the megachurch parking lots that he passed every Sunday on his chopper. If there was a God, Bear had believed back then, then that man was a pussy for letting everything get out of hand. Now Bear understood otherwise.

No more drinking; no more fighting. Bear found new ways to relieve his aggressive impulses. Powerlifting. He’d always admired the look of body builders but thought them too prissy, too into their bodies. Besides, dieting wasn’t much his thing. Bear joined a gym and started to hit the weights, learning from those around him that the form he had learned in the big house wasn’t necessarily the best way to lift. He’d always been naturally muscular, but also heavy, and when he began lifting he gained more muscle fast. People who met him thought Bear was a linebacker or, like Bam Bam, a pro wrestler.

He watched a group of powerlifters in his gym doing their thing and he was immediately hooked. Bear asked if he could train with them and they took him under their wing. He learned correct technique and before he knew it, his squat, bench press, and dead lift skyrocketed. Bear began to accompany the gym’s powerlifting crew to meets and competed in the super heavyweight class. His first competition, in Tribes Hill in upstate New York, he squatted nearly 800 pounds raw, without a squat suit, and people’s jaws just dropped.

At home, or on the job as he watched over a snoring patient, Bear considered how he’d stumbled onto something at which he might be conceivably great at exactly the same time his spiritual awakening bloomed. Coincidence? He thought not. God intended him as a witness to His salvation, of this Bear was convinced.

The lifts continued to go up, and soon everyone in the powerlifting world knew Bear by the name his parents had given him. He was squatting over one thousand pounds in competition, benching in the mid-eights with a bench shirt, and was poised to possibly be the strongest man on Earth. Every chance he got, every interview, every appearance, he plugged his God and how he believed everything he did stemmed from His goodness.

The outbreak began and Bear survived, having to revert to his old ways somewhat. The killing scared him this time around because it still came so easily, but it allowed him to make it through those first few weeks, allowed him to keep others alive. Early on, he wondered if killing these things trying to eat him and everyone else was wrong. But Bear figured if God didn’t want him to be able to do it, he wouldn’t be able to do it. His facility with violence allowed him to save who knows how many people. God wanted him to do that, just like God had wanted him to squat half a ton for the greater glory.

For some reason God led him to Eden. When Bear arrived, he couldn’t believe it, that this place was called Eden. Bear wasn’t a fundamentalist. He didn’t buy the Bible hook, line, and sinker. But he thought that this too, was more than a coincidence, another of the serendipities in his life that spoke to something greater than the flesh and the blood. Of course, there were assholes like Graham and Markowski, but Bear hoped he would be able to serve as an example to these men, to show them the correct way. And if the Lord ever revealed to him the need for it, Bear could easily utilize his baser skills to remove the two men from the planet.

So Bear wasn’t afraid as he raised the manhole cover and peered out onto the street. But he wasn’t stupid either. As much as they needed certain supplies, if the street they had chosen was filled with the undead, they wouldn’t embark here. His God would let him know when it was his time. He didn’t need to take added risks.

There were several zombies on the street, but none had noticed him. Bear looked down the ladder at Markowski, Harris, and the others.

“We’re good here.”

“Then move your big ass,” snarled Markowski, “and remember to keep it quiet.”

Bear had to believe that there was hope even for the soul of a man like Markowski.

He shifted the cover out of the way and squeezed himself through onto the street. The steel pipe he carried clattered a little on the street as he rolled over and got up, and some of the undead turned to look. They started over, one of them running.

The booker reached him first. Half of its upper body was clothed and the other half exposed. The exposed half was denuded of skin and its rib cage and spine were clearly visible. Its condition didn’t seem to slow it down.

“Here!” Bear called, attracting the booker as it closed in on the manhole where Bobby Evers struggled out onto the street and Markowski only now gained his feet.

Bear wore thick leather gloves, similar to the ones he used to ride with, though the fingers on these were intact. The zombies couldn’t bite through these gloves.

The booker ran into the former biker and abruptly stopped like it had hit a brick wall. Bear’s massive gloved hands wrapped around its throat. Keeping it at arm’s length, ignoring the swiping hands and gnashing teeth, Bear looked with pity upon the thing and brought his steel pipe down on its skull. A single blow brained it.

The other zombies, shamblers, were almost upon them. Markowski, Bobby and Stephanie Evers, Al Gold, Davon, Harris, and Buddy were all up on the street. They carried an assortment of clubs, machetes, knives, and other blunt instruments in addition to the holstered pistols, shotguns, and assault rifles slung over their backs with the empty knapsacks and duffel bags they’d brought along.

Buddy handed Bear his chain saw by its sling and Bear slung it across his broad back; he would never have been able to squeeze out onto the street with it.

“What now?” Harris asked Markowski. It was Harris’s first time outside of Eden since he and Buddy had arrived, and he didn’t feel safe out on the street as eight or ten zombies bore down on them.

“Watch and learn,” Markowski muttered, shifting his baseball bat and stepping forward to meet the first of the undead.

“Close it up,” Buddy spoke down to Panas, “and keep an ear out on that radio.”

Markowski swung and connected with the first zombie’s head, knocking it down. It struggled to sit up.

“Fore.” Markowski swung the aluminum bat like a golf club, catching the thing on the chin. It lay in the street and didn’t move.

“There.” Al Gold pointed to the store. “Pharmacy.”

Harris felt the machete in his hand and watched as Markowski and Bear dispatched the zombies. Bear went about it with determination, treating it as something that needed doing. Markowski seemed to be enjoying the task, relishing each swing.

“Hey, Buddy.” Markowski pointed into the sky like Babe Ruth, got into his stance, and swung. The head of the half-rotten zombie he’d chosen popped off its body and rolled down the street.

Markowski laughed. “Aw shit, you seen that? Home run! Barry Bonds ain’t got shit on me.”

Davon clipped the locks of the riot gates over the entrance to the pharmacy store. The locks lay broken and useless on the sidewalk, and he rolled the gate up.

“Open the door, Buddy.”

Buddy leveled the Striker shotgun and fired once. The lock mechanism and most of the door’s glass disappeared. Davon pushed it open and entered the store.

“Here they come to play,” said Markowski. “Look at them, Harris.”

The shotgun blast had drawn the undead, dozens of them coming from seemingly everywhere.

“Harris, let’s go.” Bear took his arm. “Get what we came for.”

They filed into the drugstore, everyone except Markowski.

“You coming?” Buddy called out the door.

“Don’t go getting any ideas, locking me out here with these things,” Markowski said, and clubbed a zombie over the head repeatedly. “Not that I wouldn’t enjoy it.”

“Then let’s go.”

“Let me get a few more licks in.”

“I’m closing this gate, Markowski.”

The big Pole glared at Buddy but turned and entered the store, muttering under his breath. Buddy pulled the riot gate down behind them.

“How do we secure this?”

“I got it,” said Al Gold, preparing an acetylene torch. Gold went about welding the gate closed.

Stephanie Evers took a look around. No electricity meant the alarm hadn’t gone off, but there were no lights either. The store was huge and eerie, even disquieting. She had been in other stores like this before and had a general idea as to their layout.

“Okay,” said Markowski. “Get your shopping lists out.”

Without another word, he stalked off down an aisle by himself.

“Best thing is to pair up, stick together,” Bobby Evers told Harris and Buddy.

“Come on, Harris.” Bear motioned to him, and the other man followed.

Buddy walked off in the opposite direction with Davon.

“Al,” Bobby said, “you keep an eye on things up here.”

“No problem.” Al popped himself up onto the counter between two cash registers. He leaned back and looked behind the counter, made sure nothing lurked there. And not a thing did. When Bobby and Stephanie disappeared down another aisle, Al reached into his coat and pulled out his flask.

Goddamn, that whiskey tasted good.

Stephanie followed Bobby past an aisle of greeting cards, gift wrap, and bows.

Harris and Bear moved their flashlights back and forth as they walked.

“Look at that,” said Bear.

At the end of the aisle they were in, where another intersected, boxes of female hygiene products were scattered across the floor. Some of the boxes were open. Tampons and pads lay all over. Many of the pads were soaked with blood, as if someone had tried to stanch a wound with them.

Bear whistled. “Let’s keep our eyes open.”

Markowski’s flashlight beam fell on the zombie at the end of the aisle. He saw it standing alone next to a display of batteries. Batteries were on his list anyway, so he walked toward the zombie, making as little noise as he could.

In life she must have been hot. She had her back turned to Markowski, so he got a good view of the low-cut jeans, the whale tail thong peeping out. Her skin was ashy and gray, but he could still make out the tramp stamp tattoo. Some kind of bullshit sunrise, the rays radiating across her waist and up her lower back.

“Hey, sexy.”

It turned and moaned at him.

“Oh, baby, you’ve seen better days.”

Its halter top was torn open, revealing the remains of a mutilated breast. Someone had done a number on its face as well. One eye was missing and most of the teeth were knocked out. Looked like it’d had its head stepped on a few times.

Markowski didn’t wait for the zombie to stagger toward him. He moved in, grabbed it by a shoulder, and spun the thing around. He reached down, grasped the thong at its lower back, and tore the underwear up and out, ripping it free.

“Goddamn, I always wanted to do that!”

As the zombie turned to face him again, Markowski thrust the baseball bat like a pool stick, cracking it hard in the forehead. The thing went down and started to shake on the floor.

“Believe me, darling . . .” Markowski unzipped his pants and pulled out his cock. “I ain’t taking any pleasure in this.”

He relieved himself on the seizing zombie.

Al Gold worked at keeping his buzz going. He didn’t buy all that shit people said about alcoholism being a disease. No one chose cancer, but he chose to drink. He’d stop drinking when and if he was ever goddamn ready, or when the alcohol ran out. No one was making it anymore. Like insulin. Al wondered how many people had died because they couldn’t get that or other medications they needed.

He got the shakes in the morning until he took that first slug of whiskey, but he had long since stopped caring that the others would notice. His housemate, Davon, he didn’t say anything about Al’s drinking, and Al didn’t say anything about Davon’s pot smoking and porn watching.

Al popped himself up off the counter and panned his flashlight up and down the bank of registers. The candy bars and chewing gum all looked intact. He thought how everyone could go for some chocolate once in a while and decided to fill his knapsack with candy. The others would be stocking up on the vitals.

Hope they like Hershey’s. Al dumped boxes of plain chocolate bars, chocolate with almonds, and peanut butter cups into his bag. Some of the stuff had a shelf life of two to three years, so he figured it was all still good to eat.

He spotted the box of peanut chews under the licorice and knew he was in luck. He’d enjoyed peanut chews since he was a kid. As he dumped the contents of the box into his bag with the others, Al spied a spiral notebook closed on the counter.

“What’s that about?” he asked aloud.

Davon was jittery. “You hear something?”

“It’s all that weed you be smoking,” said Buddy. “Making you paranoid.”

“Being paranoid has kept me alive up to now.”

“Can’t argue with that. Just keep an eye open and let’s fill up on these cans.”

Buddy and Davon had found the grocery aisle of the pharmacy. There were several shelves of canned items and packaged foods. They steered clear of the wrapped breads and boxes of moldy cookies and cakes and instead tossed cans of vegetables, soups, and meats into their bags.

“SPAM,” said Buddy. “I never thought I’d be eating this stuff.”

“What’s wrong with SPAM?”

Stephanie Evers looked back at her husband as she knelt, rummaging through her pack, trying to make room for more toilet paper. Bobby was an aisle down, loading up on over-the-counter pain medications, his flashlight aimed in the opposite direction so nothing could sneak up on him. Stephanie thought about how it would be easier if they could just take a truck or van, fill it up with all the stuff they needed, and drive it back into Eden. They had been able to do that once or twice, until the streets began to swell with all those zombies. The last van expedition that’d gone out hadn’t come back.

She wondered what had happened to those people. They were probably dead. No way they could survive for long without shelter on these streets. Stephanie imagined there were hundreds of zombies pressed against the riot gate they’d come in through. Getting into stores was the easy part. Getting out required a distraction.

What was that?

Stephanie jerked her head to the left and stared toward the end of the aisle, bringing her flashlight up at the same time. As the beam lit it up, she thought she saw an arm pass, swinging like someone walking might do.

She trained the beam there and listened. Nothing. The only sounds came from her husband working down the aisle.

Still . . .

Stephanie wrapped her hand around her pistol. It was a .380 and she’d had plenty of practice with it. She stood with the pistol and the flashlight and looked back at Bobby, but he wasn’t paying attention.

“Bobby!” She whispered to him but he didn’t hear her. She didn’t want to call out in case there really was something there.

Stephanie started forward slowly, carefully, the pistol extended ahead of her, ready to shoot anything that popped around the corner.

“Bingo,” said Bear.

Harris had climbed over the pharmacy counter and opened the door to allow the larger man in. Around them loomed shelf after shelf of prescription items.

“You got that list?” Harris asked.

Bear produced it from under his leather vest, unfolded it, and shined his light on it.

“Harris, you keep an eye open. I’ll find this stuff.”

Harris walked the aisles behind the pharmacy counter, bathing each with light from the flashlight. There was no one to be seen. Nothing to be heard either, aside from the rattle of a pill bottle as Bear picked it up and examined it.

Al Gold opened the faux marble notebook and examined it. Someone had written Journal of My Life and their name on the first page. There was a month and a date, both coming after the outbreak. He leafed through it. There were only twelve or fifteen pages written in, but the person who’d kept it wrote small and neat in cursive.

This should be interesting, he thought.

He looked around and then opened to the first entry.

December 2

I’m going to keep this journal or diary or whatever the hell it is for as long as I can. Whether I make it or not, those things don’t eat books, so maybe someday people will find this and use it to make some sense of just what the hell has happened to us.

I really don’t know where to begin. There are twenty-five of us hiding out here. The news said to stay put, but there hasn’t been any news in a few days. We pulled the gates and locked them from the inside—they don’t seem to be able to break the locks, thank goodness for us—and have been holed up in here since.

Al yawned. Boring. He took another swig from his flask and turned to the last page of writing to see how this story ended.

Harris shined the light on the closed metal door. There was a dead bolt on his side of it.

He had agreed to accompany Markowski and Bear on this foraging mission only when Buddy had said he’d go. The more he got to know the men, the more he thought he’d misjudged Bear. The man had badass written all over him, but he wasn’t made of the same stuff as Markowski. Or, if he had been, he wasn’t any longer.

Bear didn’t laugh at Markowski’s crude jokes the way others did. The others—like Bianaculli or Bert or even that young guy, Thompson—they laughed at Markowski’s garbage because they were afraid of him. Bear didn’t laugh. Harris thought it was because Bear didn’t find Markowski humorous or frightening.

Markowski seemed to have a hard-on for Buddy. The little comments and looks, busting his chops, jig-this and jig-that. Buddy did a good job ignoring it for the most part, but he and Harris had talked. Harris wondered where Bear would stand when things went down. Whose side? He’d hate to have the big, tattooed biker to contend with.

Harris pressed his ear to the door and listened.

Where did it lead? Outside? Maybe a basement?

He shifted the Colt Python to his left hand and took the flashlight in his right. It looked like the door opened toward him on the left, and he’d want to shine the light down the stairs or wherever it was he was going to be opening it up onto.

He used the thumb and forefinger of his right hand to twist the dead bolt and tried the door again.

Stephanie reached the end of the aisle and moved the light as far to the left and as far to the right as she could. Dust motes fluttered in the light.

She stepped out of the aisle. There was a film-processing counter in front of her, stretching down to the pharmacy. She thought she could see some light in that direction.

No zombies. Just to be sure, she walked around the end of the aisle she had just stepped from, giving herself a wide berth, and shined the light up the adjacent aisle. Empty.

Now I’m seeing things, she thought and went back to her knapsack, setting the .380 down on the floor, picking up a four-pack of Charmin Ultra Soft, thinking of the old Mr. Whipple commercial, hearing her husband coming up behind her—

“You know, Bobby—”

She turned, but the thing upon her was not her husband.

February 7

I don’t know what is going to happen now. First they got through the door down in the basement and then one of them bit Cheryl. Mark got bit too, but no one is going to fuck with him. He’s got a gun, the only gun in this goddamn place. He already shot the store manager, dumb-ass was stupid enough to go near him when he said not to, tried to get the gun away from him. This place is insane.

We did what we could for Cheryl but when it looked like she was dead we opened the door and tossed her down into the basement with all the others. Thing is, she wasn’t dead. We had to listen to her scream and cry as those things in the basement got her. With that door to the outside open there’s no telling how many of them are down there. Christ, we should have just done what Burns said, wait for her to come back, bash her fucking brains in.

Somewhere in the dark store, Stephanie screamed.

“Oh shit,” muttered Al Gold, tossing the notebook down and hauling ass up an aisle, yelling for Markowski as he ran, for Bear and for Buddy, for anybody and everybody.

•   •   •

The door slammed into Harris, flying open under the weight from the other side. He lost the pistol and fell backward, dumped on his rear. He managed to hold onto the flashlight and directed it upward—

Zombies avalanched through the doorway, a tangle of arms and legs, massed at the top of a stairwell, with more behind them. Harris braced his feet against the metal door and pushed, fighting the weight pressing against it.

“Bear!” he yelled, losing the battle, the door inching open.

Stephanie Evers brought her arms up to protect her face as the zombie jumped on her, howling like a banshee.

Bobby Evers ran toward his wife, the beam from his flashlight jolting up and down. Fear coursed through him. Steph’s light rolled about on the aisle floor and all he could make out was a struggle, an undead thing on top of her.

“No!” Bobby screamed, reaching the two of them, not thinking, leveling the .30-.30 hunting rifle he carried and firing it.

The zombie reared up and turned, its mouth bloody. Bobby shot again, and the bullet punched out the back of the beast’s head in a shower that streaked the cartons of plastic-wrapped toilet paper.

“Stephanie . . .” Bobby dropped his rifle and knelt with his wife. She was wheezing and there was a hole in her throat from which blood bubbled and squirted. She was trying to say something to him, and as he watched and held her the color in her face waned and her life seeped out between his fingers.

“No, baby, don’t die on me,” begged Bobby, trying to stanch the blood with his fingers, “Don’t die! Don’t die! I’m sorry, baby. I’m sorry.”

The wound in her neck had been caused by his first round.

“Oh-Christ-Oh-Jesus-Oh-Mary-Mother-of-God-I’m-sorry-I’m-sorry-I’m-sorry . . .”

Bobby failed to notice the bites on his wife’s hands.

Harris lost his battle with the door at the same moment Bear materialized behind him. The door flew open, spilling zombies out onto the floor, while others staggered through the opening, a decomposing booker leaping into the air, intent on landing on Harris.

Bear grabbed the thing by its throat in midair and slammed it into a wall of shelves, hundreds of pill bottles scattering over the tiled floor. His hand still around its neck, Bear whipped it against the next wall of shelves like a child’s doll. He squeezed his hand, the muscles in his forearm tensing, and Harris watched in disbelief as the man tore the thing’s head from its neck.

Harris scrambled, found his Python, and fired from his back, aiming around Bear’s legs—the man-mountain was standing there, blocking the aisle, swinging his pipe in the enclosed area, and busting heads—at the faces of the zombies thrashing on the floor, at the heads of the ones appearing at the top of the stairs.

“Let’s go, Harris.” Bear threw the cylinder with all his might and the pipe caught a zombie across the chest like a clothesline, knocking it from its feet.

Bear reached down and dragged Harris up with one hand, freeing his Mini-Uzi at the same time. The Mini-Uzi looked like a toy pistol in Bear’s big paw, and he fired it in crisp, controlled bursts, ripping holes in the necks and faces of the nearest undead as he backed away from the door, pulling Harris with him.

Bear let him down and Harris holstered the Python, cross-drawing his twin-9s and following the big man.

“Get my bag!” Bear shouted, opening the door to the pharmacy section.

Harris scrambled behind the pharmacy counter, finding Bear’s bag, aware that the undead were pouring out of the basement as if someone had loosed a faucet of them. He pulled the zipper closed and launched himself headfirst over the counter, knocking down a display with pamphlets on health insurance plans.

Bear pulled the door to the pharmacy closed behind them. It had a waist-high glass window, and the zombies started to rattle against it as he reloaded the Mini-Uzi with a fresh stick.

Harris considered himself lucky that he didn’t break his neck as he lay splayed on the floor, scrambling to get up. Zombies started to try to pull the same move he’d just made, albeit much more slowly and even less gracefully. As they clambered over the counter from the other side, Harris fired his 9-millimeters. The limp zombies were pushed out of the way, dragged down by the ones behind as groans filled the air.

“Oh shit,” Markowski said, reaching Harris and Bear. “You guys throw a party and didn’t invite me?”

“Markowski! Bear!” Al Gold reached them, out of breath.

“One minute, Al.” Markowski picked his targets with his FAMAS bullpup assault rifle and blasted them as Harris reloaded his pistols.

“No, Markowski, there’s too many of them . . .” Gold nearly stumbled over his words as he tried to get them out.

Buddy and Davon reached the group and dropped their sacks, bringing their weapons up and firing.

For a moment it looked like the humans would be successful in repelling the undead. The rips of Bear’s Mini-Uzi, the pops of pistols, and cracks of assault rifles fired on semi-auto, seemed like they might drive the beasts back. But the supply of zombies wasn’t dwindling. If anything, there were more moving about in the shadows of the pharmacy. The glass portion of the door broke and a dozen arms reached through.

“Let’s go!” Buddy snatched up his saddlebags, slinging them over his shoulder, and jetting down an aisle.

The others shouldered their packs and followed, reloading on the run.

Markowski pulled the pin on a thermite grenade and handed it to one of the reaching arms. The zombie took it, its arm disappearing inside the doorframe.

“Oh shit!” Markowski half laughed as he turned and ran. The explosion knocked him off his feet, and halfway down the aisle. He brushed himself off, found the FAMAS assault rifle and flashlight, and shined the halogen lamp back the way he’d come.

The blast had taken the door off the frame and zombies poured through onto the main floor, burning and bellowing as they came.

“Oh, we’re in some shit now!” yelled Davon. “Stick near me, roommate!”

Al Gold looked over his shoulder and decided that’s exactly what he would do: stick to the younger, bigger guy like glue.

“Markowski!” Buddy drew their attention to a side door.

“Where’s that lead?”

“Let’s find out!”

Buddy blew the lock off the door with one barrel, and Bear followed up with a kick when they reached it. Bright sunlight poured in. The six of them shielded their eyes from the sudden change in light and burst out into a deserted alleyway. Davon pushed the door closed behind them and leaned against it.

The passage ran between the drugstore and another building. At one end there was a brick wall, at the other a green fence. There was a space of about six inches under the fence and they could see that the fence bordered the boulevard fronting the burning store.

“That way,” said Markowski.

“Wait,” said Harris. “Where’s Bobby and Stephanie?”

They looked at one another and then at the door.

“Ah, shit.” Al Gold shook his head.

“They’re dead.” Markowski spat like that was that.

“Not yet, they’re not,” Davon almost whispered.

“This is some bullshit.” Buddy summed up their situation.

“Come on, we don’t have time for this shit,” protested Markowski.

Bear didn’t say anything. He reloaded his Mini-Uzi, unslung the chain saw, and cranked it up.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Markowski’s words were half drowned out in the roar.

Bear placed one giant hand on Davon’s shoulder and moved him out of the way. The door swung open and the huge man disappeared inside the building. Al Gold shrugged and slammed it shut again, leaning against it.

“Buddy, you’ve got the walkie-talkie.” Harris slammed a fresh magazine into one of his guns. “Don’t let him leave without us!”

Before Buddy could object, Harris pulled Al out of the way and followed after Bear.

“Well, fuck me.”

“Shut up, Markowski,” Buddy growled.

“Wa ta dah, then, Pootie Tang.”

“Uh, guys.” Al Gold pointed down the alley. The green fence was mounted on hinges, and it swung back as zombies stumbled their way.

“Come on, bitches.” Markowski shouldered the FAMAS. “I’ve got something for all of you! I’m Tony Montana, baby!”

He heard gunfire, a lot of it. But Bobby Evers ignored it.

Stephanie gurgled one last time and then went limp.

“Oh Jesus, no . . .” Bobby pressed his wife’s head to his chest.

He sat there holding her, sobbing. He’d shot her. Shot his own wife. Hadn’t aimed good and he’d blown a hole in her neck. Stephanie had died because her husband—the man who’d sworn to love and cherish and protect her for always—had shot her.

There was no more gunfire inside but he could hear . . . something. He smelled smoke.

Bobby wiped the tears out of his eyes and followed the beam of light cast by Stephanie’s flashlight. At the end of the aisle there were legs moving his way. He didn’t recognize any of them.

Stephanie moved in his arms and he pushed her away involuntarily.

She sat up and hissed at him.

Bobby started to stand, slipping in the blood that had puddled on the floor, fighting to keep his body from freezing on him.

Stephanie stood first and lurched his way. The aisle behind her was a wall of zombies.

He took up his .30-.30 and leaned against a shelf in a crouching position.

“God help me!” Bobby cried and aimed at his wife’s head, but he couldn’t pull the trigger.

He only hoped his own end would be quick.

“Stephanie!”

Bobby screamed as his wife’s body shook, gouts of blood spouting from her shoulders and chest, jolting her back. He turned around and Harris came walking down the aisle, firing both of his 9-millimeters over Bobby where he sat.

Bobby turned back around in time to see Stephanie’s corpse catch one in the upper lip, and then he was firing his hunting rifle at the undead that stepped on and over her body.

“Let’s go, Bobby!”

Harris motioned behind them. Evers followed the other man as they ran in the dark. A glow emanated from one end of the building where the fires were spreading. Around them were the sounds of things moving and knocking into shelves, of things searching.

Harris found his flashlight where he had jammed it into his jeans and flicked it on. They were cornered. At either end of their aisle the zombies gathered. Damn, thought Harris, they move fast for things that move slow.

This is it, Bobby, he thought of saying as he reloaded his 9-millimeters one last time, jacking fresh rounds into the chambers. He didn’t say it, though. Bobby had just seen his wife die, and they would both be dead soon enough.

Harris and Bobby waited, letting the undead get closer. They hissed and spat and moaned as they came. The first group was nearly on them when lightning exploded, a stream of lead ripping down into the zombies, skulls popping, bodies dropping.

“Bear!” Harris yelled, adding his 9-mils to the mix. Bobby swallowed whatever was in his throat and followed suit, sending rounds through the undead.

“Praise Him!”

The Mini-Uzi fired out. Bear was cloaked in shadows where he crouched atop the shelves. There was the sound of an engine firing up, almost catching; then again, this time catching. Bear launched himself from the ceiling, chain saw swinging.

He landed amid the swarm, his sheer size bowling many down. Bear regained his feet and howled at them, an insane beast of a man, brandishing the chain saw, cutting through limbs, torsos, and heads. Blood gushed and he felt it splash across his face and chest and arms and he was lost in the fury.

Harris fired out the 9-millimeters and reloaded.

The zombies around them were down but dozens more advanced.

The chain saw revved mightily once more and then idled.

Harris shone his light on Bear. The man looked like something borne of a slaughterhouse, covered from head to toe with gore. Blood and pieces of flesh still dripped from the chain saw in his hands. Zombies—and parts of zombies—lay around him, some limbs still kicking.

Bear sawed through the shelves on one side of the aisle, plastic and wood chips flying, clearing a path into the next.

“Harris. Bobby. Go.”

“You too, Bear,” said Harris.

“Not today.”

Harris looked at Bear. Crimson dripped from his brow and glistened on his shaven dome. He was awash with gore. Harris couldn’t tell how much of it, if any, was Bear’s. The look in the man’s eyes was something from another planet, something beyond intense, maybe insane.

“I know my path,” Bear said, as if to himself. He turned, cranked up the chain saw and waded into the zombies.

“Now, Bobby!” Harris pushed Evers through the sawed-off shelves into the next aisle. He squeezed himself through and didn’t look back.

They hustled up the aisle and reached the intersection where another crossed.

“This way!” Harris coughed, smoke and noise all around them, the shuffling sounds in the darkness, the crackle of greedy flames, the chain saw’s muffled drone. Then Bear roaring at the undead in tongues, his words indecipherable.

A square of light opened up before them with Al Gold and Davon peering through.

Harris pushed Bobby ahead into the alley, into the light. The chain saw buzzed behind them, silenced only as he pushed the door closed.

“Where’s Buddy?” Harris asked.

“In the street with Markowski,” said Al Gold, fumbling with his acetylene torch.

“Not now,” Harris said. “Let’s just go!”

“Where’s Stephanie and Bear?” Al asked on the run.

Harris shook his head.

In the street in front of the store, Buddy and Markowski stood back-to-back in a circle of zombies. Markowski swung his aluminum bat, cracking skulls, cursing at the undead. Buddy steadied one hand with the other, squeezing off rounds from the 9-millimeter. Markowski was roaring lines from Scarface at the undead.

“You want to go to war? We’ll take you to war!”

“Down!” Harris swung his M-16 up into play.

“Hey, assholes!” Davon called at the zombies.

Buddy looked at Markowski with his bloody bat, thought otherwise, and hit the deck.

Harris opened fire with the M-16. Davon and Al Gold joined him in a fusillade that peppered the street.

When their weapons emptied, Markowski stood in a circle of unmoving zombies, the blood-streaked baseball bat in his hands. The Pole looked down at himself, and then at Buddy, who shrugged as he reloaded the Striker shotgun, and finally at the three men on the street, smoke rising from the barrels of their weapons.

“You pussies. You could have shot me.”

“He did say ‘get down,’” noted Davon.

The street on either end was alive with zombies.

“There!” Al Gold pointed out a manhole cover a few buildings down.

Everyone ran toward it except Markowski. He stood there muttering to himself, reloading the FAMAS, the baseball bat resting against his leg.

There was a sound of rending metal. Sparks flew, and the front gate of the drugstore cleaved in two. Roiling plumes of black smoke rolled out onto the boulevard as something big and bloody in a leather vest with a chain saw stepped out onto the street.

“Nice of you to fucking join us again,” Markowski spat between rounds from the FAMAS.

“Bear!” Harris yelled to the man from down the block where they were clambering into the sewers.

“You bit?” demanded Markowski.

“No.”

“How do I know?”

“You bite anyone? You’ll have to take my word for it.” Bear walked off up the block toward the others. Zombies were reeling out of the smoke-filled pharmacy, the one in the lead shorn of both arms. Several were aflame.

“Goddamn frog piece of shit.” The FAMAS was empty and Markowski threw it down. He took his own sweet time walking up the block, stopping along the way to brain zombies with the bat.

“Let’s go, Markowski!” yelled Buddy, the street filling with zombies.

“Yeah, yeah. I’m coming!”

34.

Graham sent them into the sewer as an advance squad meant to infiltrate Jericho, to cow its inhabitants into complaisance through an overwhelming show of force and, if need be, to overcome any resistance. “Time for the empire to expand,” he had only half joked.

Unbeknownst to Graham, there had been a change in plans.

Buddy fell to the back of the line as they slogged their way through the subterranean channels; Harris was up ahead, second from the front. The men moved quietly, the route second nature from their previous travels.

As always, the underground was dissonantly still, the only sounds their own, the only light their flashlights and the beams of weak sunlight coming through the perforations in the random manhole covers overhead. It had rained the day before, and water dripped down onto them from drainage pipes. Some tunnels were already flooded, inaccessible. No maintenance, no upkeep, no passage.

Harris looked back in the gloom, and it looked to him like Buddy chin-nodded. He hoped he’d seen right.

“Hold up.” Harris leveled the M-16 with the M-203 grenade launcher mounted under the barrel at Bianaculli ahead of him. The assault rifle was taut on its sling, the .357 filling his right hand, covering the men behind him. It was an awkward position, and he hoped not to be tested in it.

“What the fuck is this?” asked an incredulous Bert.

“This is that time when shit don’t go according to plan.” Buddy jostled Paul and Markowski forward, the muzzle of the Striker shotgun threatening.

“Okay, all together now,” Buddy continued coolly, “put your firearms down, nice and slow.”

Markowski, caught off guard, looked pissed, the barrel of his AKS-74 lowered. Buddy watched him. With the stock of his Kalashnikov folded, it would only take Markowski a moment to bring the weapon up into firing position. But a moment was all Buddy needed to blow the man in two.

“Go for it, Markowski. You know you want to.”

Bianaculli placed his assault rifle on the wet ground, but Bert and Ralph searched the dark for Markowski’s eyes. The big Pole growled and did not acknowledge them.

“Lay ’em down,” Harris ordered, the .357 holstered, both hands on the M-16.

Harris and Buddy covered the remaining three men as they placed their assault rifles and shotguns on the cement floor. Their pistols were still holstered and their knives were sheathed.

“What the hell, Harris?” Ralph asked.

“Like the man said, Ralph, change of plans. Sal, get back there with the others.”

“I ain’t with these guys, Harris. You know what I mean.”

“We look like we give a good goddamn fuck?” growled Buddy. “Get back in line.”

Markowski snickered. “You can take the nigger outta the jungle, but—”

Buddy slammed him in the face with the barrel of the Striker and Markowski staggered back but didn’t go down. He regained his footing, brushed a hand across his nose, and looked at the blood there. His tongue darted out and tasted it. “Mmmm.” Markowski laughed again, stepping back to his original position.

“First blood drawn, Buddy,” said the big Pole. “Won’t be the last.”

“Can we just shoot this son of a bitch right here, right now?” asked Harris.

Markowski glared at him.

“Wait,” was all Buddy said to Harris. Then to Bert, Sal, and Ralph, “Now, look. Graham’s been running Eden like he’s some goddamn liege lord. That shit’s about to end. What ya’ll four need to do is think on this. You want to leave with Graham when he leaves, or you want to change your ways, try and fit in with the new Eden?”

“Shit, man,” said Bianaculli. “You don’t got to convince me.”

“Pussy,” spat Markowski. “I’m going to kill you right after I kill the nigger.”

“It’s about staying alive, man,” Bianaculli pleaded.

“Up here, Sal, do them for me.” Buddy extended a handful of plastic handcuffs.

“Oh, you got to be kidding,” said Ralph. “What the fuck are you two planning?”

“We’re gonna go back to Eden,” said Buddy, the barrel of the Striker and his eyes never leaving Markowski, “have a little talk with Graham.”

“Do it, Sal.” Harris gestured with the M-16.

Mumbling apologies, Bianaculli fastened the hands of Bert, then Ralph, behind their backs.

“Use two pairs each,” said Harris.

“Two?” Bert asked. “Goddamn, Harris.”

Buddy and Harris kept their flashlights and their firearms aimed at the men as Bianaculli bound them.

“Get behind that asshole when you handcuff him,” Buddy told Sal, referring to Markowski. “He tries to use you as a human shield, I will kill you both.”

“You reading my mind with those voodoo jig powers or something?” Markowski smiled.

Sal stepped around Markowski and took the Pole’s wrists, securing them behind his lower back.

“That’s right, Sal,” said Markowski. “Leave a little slack, just like that.”

“I ain’t leaving any slack, Buddy!” Sal sounded worried that Buddy would believe Markowski.

Markowski mimicked him, a high-pitched whine, the contempt clear in his voice.

“Now you . . .” Harris said to Bianaculli when he’d finished cuffing the others.

“You’re kidding, right, Harris?” pleaded Bianaculli. “Look, I said I’m not down with these guys’ program.”

“That’s all good,” said Buddy, “but you still need to shut your mouth the fuck up and listen to the man.”

Bianaculli turned around with his hands behind his back. Harris used two pairs of the heavy-duty plastic cuffs to immobilize his arms.

Harris and Buddy moved quickly from that point, stripping the men of their sidearms and knives, their grenades, and anything else that could be used as a weapon.

“So that’s it, then?” spat Markowski. “You’re gonna leave us down here while you go and talk it out with Graham?”

Talk it out. Buddy seemed to mull this over.

“I’d suggest you guys just sit here and wait. We’ll be back,” said Harris, stuffing two pistols in the waistband of his jeans, slinging Ralph’s AK-47 over his shoulder.

“Directly,” added Buddy.

“Sit here with no weapons?” Panic crept into Ralph’s voice.

“Oh, come on, man,” Markowski said to Buddy, “we both know how this is gonna end.”

“Tell us how’s it going to end, then.” Harris buried the muzzle of his M-16 in Markowski’s jaw.

The Pole turned his eyes to look at Harris, then focused them on Buddy, moving his head to get the muzzle out of the side of his cheek so he could talk.

“Me and your buddy here—the nigger—we’re gonna go toe-to-toe. One of us isn’t going to walk away.”

“Bullshit,” said Harris. “If you don’t shut up, I’m going to end it for you right here.”

“Don’t kid yourself, Harris.” Markowski’s eyes never left Buddy. “You don’t have it in you.”

“Harris.” He looked over and Buddy was stripping off all his weapons—the Striker, the pistol, and grenades—laying them all on top of his saddlebags away from the water that pooled down the center of the sewer pipe.

“What are you doing, Buddy?” demanded Harris.

“Me and Markowski going to go do just like he said.”

“Buddy, come on.”

There was anticipation in Markowski’s eyes.

“Buddy, you’re crazy.”

Buddy bent down and retrieved his blade, then went over to Markowski’s gear and found the Pole’s knife.

“When we’re finished,” Buddy told Markowski, “I’m going to cut your head off with your own knife. And then I am going to bring it back here and give it to these men.”

The Pole laughed derisively.

“When we’re finished,” Markowski cackled, “I’m gonna pop your eye out and skull-fuck ya. Fuck, I’m gonna cut your head off and stump-fuck ya. How’s that sound?”

“Get up,” Buddy told him.

“When I’m finished, I’m gonna hang you from a fuckin’ tree in Eden. Goddamn Mississippi wind chime.”

“Buddy—”

“Harris, wait here. I’m not back in ten minutes, means I won’t be. He comes back here, kill him. Kill him dead.”

“When I win,” said Markowski, “I will not be coming back here. Fuck all of you, and fuck Eden, too. Buncha pussies.”

“Move.” Buddy prodded Markowski with the flat of his blade, angling the halogen bulb ahead of them.

Harris and his three captives listened as the steps of the other two men receded, the light disappearing around a bend. Soon they heard nothing.

“Harris, come on, man,” said Sal. “Untie me, man.”

“Sit tight, Sal.”

“I’m not with them, man, you know that. I went along pretty much just so they wouldn’t mess with me and Camille.”

“Markowski always had his doubts about you, Bianaculli,” said Bert. “Said we had to watch that Italian nigger. That’s what he called you.”

“Shut up, Bert.”

“No, you shut up, Sal. Markowski told me day came we made you disappear, I could have Camille.”

“Fuck you, you piece of—”

“Idiots!” hissed Harris. “You keep carrying on, the zombies are going to hear you and they will find a way down here. And I will not stick around to keep them off your sorry asses.”

The thought seemed to sober both men and they were silent.

“Who do you think will win?” Ralph asked nervously sometime later.

“Markowski’s a goddamn animal,” opined Bert.

“Yeah, but Buddy’s no joke either,” proffered Sal.

“But Markowski is a fuckin’ maniac.” Ralph shook his head.

“Has it been ten minutes yet?”

“Shut . . . up,” warned Harris, a pause between the two words. “Listen.”

Someone was coming toward them. They could hear him before they saw him, and then they saw his light reflecting off the corner up ahead.

“Damn,” said Sal. “Untie me, Harris! If it’s Markowski he’s going to kill me as soon as he kills you!”

Harris had the M-16 raised to his shoulder, sighting down the barrel.

The man rounded the bend and spoke as he came, “Mucka lucka hi . . .”

“Mucka hiney ho,” Harris finished, and raised the light and shined it on his friend. He let out his breath and lowered the M-16, and breathed hard.

Buddy came to them and tossed something that landed in the dark by Bert’s sneakered feet.

“What the hell is—”

Harris shined his light on Markowski’s severed head. The eyes lolled in their sockets.

“Christ, Buddy,” sputtered Sal. “You keep your word.”

Ralph retched off to the side.

Harris didn’t know what to say, so he said, “You da man.”

“You da man,” Buddy shot back with a short laugh, like he hadn’t just finished sawing off someone’s head.

“What’s next?” Harris asked Buddy as the other man retrieved his gear.

“Let’s secure these guys to some of these pipes, take their stuff, and go get Graham.”

“You guys can’t leave us here!” Bert immediately protested.

“Shut up, idiot!” Sal told him. “Be glad they’re not killing us. We make too much noise, we’re fucked. You will come back for us, right, Buddy?”

Buddy looked at him, nodded.

Beneath Eden, Buddy grunted as he shoved the manhole cover aside.

It was midday and most of the people who called Eden home were on the street. Several eyebrows raised at the sight of the two men; people were wondering what was going on.

Bobby Evers looked at Harris. Harris nodded. Evers nodded back.

Graham made his way toward them, a look of disbelief on his face, and Buddy spoke his name.

“What’s this all about, Buddy? Where’s the rest of them, then?”

Harris scanned the gathering crowd, watching what was transpiring before him. The M-16 was in both his hands, the barrel slightly below hip level, ready to come into the mix. He wasn’t one hundred percent sure how this was going to go down, and there were a few among the crowd he wanted to keep an eye on.

“I said what’s this all—” Graham reached Buddy, and lightning-fast Buddy drove his booted foot into the man’s crotch, hard. Graham’s face turned beet red as he doubled over and vomited on the street. Buddy took the man by the ears and brought his head down onto his knee. Graham rolled over onto the street, his shirt riding up, his stomach jiggling.

“Afternoon, Bear,” Harris said to the big biker.

“Afternoon, Harris,” responded the bald man. “If it’s all the same to the two of you, I’ll just head over there, mind my own business.”

“That’s fine by me,” Harris said, relieved.

Pistol-whipping Graham with his snub-nosed .38, Buddy dragged the bloody man up to his knees and pressed the muzzle of the revolver to his split head. “Things are gonna be different around here from now on,” he said to the people gathered around. “No more fat man here telling ya’ll how to live.”

Graham expelled blood and a few teeth. He rasped, “Don’t listen to him. Who’s going to protect you?”

“Harris, where’s Sal?” asked Camille.

“He’s fine, Camille.”

“We’re all going to protect our own selves now,” said Buddy. “We’re all going to make decisions together. Not no one man by himself for everyone else. Together, that means all of us.”

“Democracy,” someone in the crowd offered.

“That’s goddamn right,” affirmed Buddy.

“They’re fucking crazy,” Graham spluttered, a line of blood dripping from his mouth to the asphalt. “They can’t protect you.”

“Always the bully,” said Harris. “That’s how you been working Eden, Graham? Make these people think they need your ass to protect them? Why don’t you tell them how you were sending us over to Jericho to take over the place, to kill whoever stood in your way?”

“What the fuck would you two know?” whined Graham. “You just got here. Fuck Jericho and fuck the two of you.”

“I know tyranny when I fucking see it,” said Buddy.

“Where’s my husband, Harris?” Camille had a pistol leveled at him and Harris damned himself for not paying close enough attention.

“Camille, be a good girl and put the gun down.” Bobby Evers was sighting down the barrel of his .30-.30 hunting rifle.

“Blow his goddamn brains out,” Graham said to Camille. Buddy had a hand in the fat man’s hair and he twisted mercilessly, pressing the .38 deep into the man’s temple. “That hurt? Does that hurt? Good.”

“Where’s my husband?” Camille demanded. “Where’s Sal?”

“He’s okay . . .” Harris kept the M-16 lowered, thinking there was no way he’d be able to twist and knock Camille down before she plugged him at least a couple of times. “He’s down there with the others. We had to tie them up, but they’re okay.”

“He had a conversion experience,” added Buddy, twisting Graham’s hair again, forcing the fat man to grunt and spit out another tooth.

“Graham was going to have Sal killed, Cam. Give you to his men.”

“Bullshit!” Camille shouted.

“No, it’s not,” said Harris. “Bobby, you do me a favor, take Camille down to Sal. Ask him yourself, Cam.”

“If he’s dead, Harris . . .”

“He’s not, Cam.”

“You telling me the truth, Harris?” she asked, trying to hold back sobs. “My Sal’s all right?”

“Camille, I wouldn’t lie to you.”

“I believe him,” Al Gold said from among the spectators.

Various murmurs of agreement followed.

“Jew fuck,” Graham rasped and Buddy rubbed his face in the vomit on the stone.

“Okay . . .” Camille sounded unsure, but she slowly squatted and placed the pistol on the ground. “Go with me, Bobby?”

“Aye, lass.” Evers lowered the hunting rifle.

“Okay, now what do we do with Graham?” someone in the crowd asked.

“Cap that bitch,” said Davon.

“Let’s put him outside with those things,” offered another.

“You motherfuckers,” whispered Graham. “All of you. I’ll get you for this, all of you. Each and every single one of you. All of you.”

“If we let him go,” Harris explained to the crowd, “he might come back later with more like him. He might try to overthrow Eden, just like he wanted with Jericho.”

“That is, if his fat ass can outrun them zombies,” said Brenner.

“Well, shit,” Isabel said, “I don’t want him living here with us.”

“Me neither,” agreed Panas.

“Fuckers. All of you.”

“Shut up.” Buddy smacked Graham on the head with the .38, not hard enough to knock him out, just enough to instill more pain and open up his scalp in another area.

“I’m gonna say it again, kill this son of a bitch!” shouted Davon.

“If we kill him, we’re no better’n he is,” pointed out Larry Chen.

“Amen,” chimed seventy-four-year-old Siobhan McAllister.

“Nah, the kid’s right,” said Diaz. “This maricón get out of here, he gonna come back, fuck us all again.”

The crowd was louder now, debating what to do with the dictator. Graham looked angry and ready to kill someone if only he could wrestle free from Buddy, but he never looked scared. Hurt, but not afraid.

“Yo, listen up.” Harris watched as Buddy spoke. “Way I see it, we got three choices of what we can do here.”

“Listen to yourselves.” There was contempt in Graham’s voice. “You can’t even reach a decision by yourselves. Talking and arguing. Have your democracy, cocksuckers.”

“Democracy ain’t nice and quiet, Graham,” said Panas.

“One”—Buddy ignored the side comments and spoke as loudly as he could, his voice booming in the afternoon—“we can let him go, put him over the wall, let him fare his way with them outside.”

A few nods in favor of this.

Davon said, “He’d come back.”

“Bet your asses I’ll be back,” hissed Graham.

Buddy pistol-whipped him again, blood spattering the asphalt. “Two,” he continued calmly, almost detached, “we can kill him. End it right here.”

A few more murmurs greeted this suggestion but there were also some skeptical voices raised.

“Or three,” added Harris, “we could continue this discussion. We don’t have to decide right now.”

“Let’s vote,” said Panas.

“Yeah, let’s vote right now,” Fred Turner said, nodding.

“Okay.” Buddy looked at the man he held at arm’s length by the hair. “Show of hands, all right? All those in favor of letting Graham go?”

Some hands went up immediately, among them Siobhan McAllister’s. One or two more ascended in the next few seconds. Fred Turner was the last one to raise his hand, casting a look over at his son John.

“Two, we end this shit right here.” Buddy spelled it out for them. “We kill this man now.”

A majority of the hands went up. John Turner raised his.

“You seen that, right, Graham?” Buddy asked matter-of-factly.

“Hey, wait a second,” someone said, “we got a couple people here voted twice.”

“Fucking cocksuckers,” fumed Graham, “every last one of you.”

“Three!” Harris yelled out quickly. “We lock him up, talk about it some more.”

Harris raised his hand, as did some others, including people who had already raised theirs.

“Look, again, dammit!” the same person cried. “You get to vote once, one choice, get it?”

“Still choice two, Graham.” Buddy let go of the man’s head, splayed his palm at arm’s length to guard against the blowback, placed the barrel of the .38 two inches from Graham’s bloody head, and fired. Graham collapsed, a chunk of the back of his skull gleaming white among his hair.

“Holy shit,” whispered Al Gold.

People looked at Buddy, astonished, afraid.

“What about the third fucking option?” said Davon. “You know, the ‘Let’s-talk-about-this-some-more’? I seen a lot of goddamn hands up for that one.”

Buddy wiped the blood that had splattered across his palm on Graham’s shirt.

“Listen to you, man,” said Brenner, “talking one minute about let’s ice this motherfucker, now getting all third option up in here.”

“Yeah,” said Panas, “you raised your hand for the death penalty, man.”

“Yeah, I did,” said Davon. “But shit, I raised for the third part, too.”

“One man, one vote,” said someone.

Siobhan McAllister looked at Buddy. She said nothing but her silence said it all. Buddy met and held her eye.

It had to be done, Harris figured. A guy like Graham wasn’t going to just disappear. What Buddy had just done wouldn’t go down well with some of these people, and in other circumstances he himself would have been one of them, but . . . people respected action, and this was a time to act.

“Okay, listen up,” Harris called out. “Now, I know some of you aren’t going to be cool with what you just saw. And that’s okay. If you want out, no one will think the less of you for it. You’re free to leave anytime you want. The only thing you’re not free to do is lord it over everyone else and try and rule Eden the way Graham did.”

“What about Camille and Bobby?” someone asked. “They didn’t get to vote.”

“We got things to do around here, people.” Bear sidled up.

“Like what?” asked Henderson.

“For one thing,” said Harris “we’ve got to send some people to Jericho to let them know things are different here now, that relations are going to be a lot friendlier.”

“We stand together out here,” said Buddy, “or we don’t stand at all.” He looked toward the wall keeping the zombies out.

“What we gonna do with Graham’s body?” asked Larry Chen.

“Anybody want to volunteer to lug him out back and burn him?” asked Buddy.

“Flop his fat ass over the wall and let them feast on it,” said Davon.

There were one or two smiles, but most people looked uneasy.

“You want to feed them now?” Panas asked, half joking.

“No, this is how we gonna do.” Buddy looked at Siobhan MacAllister but she wasn’t looking at him. “Two or three of ya’ll carry him around back. We’re gonna burn him like we do the rest. It’s what’s right.”

35.

How we going to get across?” asked Harris. He and Buddy were looking beyond the East River at the subdued Manhattan skyline. Whole buildings and blocks remained dim.

“Well, we’re not going to swim,” Buddy said, looking around. “That’s for sure.”

The moon passed in and out behind ominous rain clouds.

The streets in Queens had been mostly quiet. Occasionally they’d passed another car, a desperate-looking family inside, searching for a place to go, a way out. They’d avoided those wobbling and lurching along, the ones starting toward their own car.

Manhattan, Staten Island, even Brooklyn and Queens were all islands or parts of islands. The boroughs were connected with bridges, but the bridges had been closed and the soldiers guarding them fired first and asked questions later.

Only the Bronx was connected directly to the rest of the landmass forming New York State, but Harris knew he’d been lucky to get out of the Bronx and into Queens days earlier. He doubted his luck would hold in a reverse attempt, so he wondered what he would do if and when he found Raquel—where they would go, where they could go. He hadn’t heard anything about the expressways or parkways leading east farther out onto Long Island being shut down, so there was that possibility. Who knew?

Raquel. Harris looked across the river into Manhattan. He and Buddy were in someone’s backyard and couldn’t see much of the city from this distance in the night. Just the skyscrapers, the lights of vehicles moving back and forth, the size of ants from their vantage point.

The gunfire and explosions were muffled but audible. The canyons of Manhattan acted as an echo chamber, the steady clip of a machine gun firing full-out reverberated back to them, faint yet discernible. There was an occasional whump! as some ordnance detonated. For all that, neither man could see any explosions. Everything—buildings, skyscrapers, the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building—all still stood where they should be and always had been.

“How badly you want to get across there?” asked Buddy.

“I’m going,” replied Harris, “one way or another. Does that answer your question?”

“You see that?”

Harris followed Buddy’s pointing finger out onto the water. At first he saw nothing, but then he discerned it. There was a boat not too far from shore. It appeared anchored and bobbed gently in the river.

“Let’s go,” Buddy said, hitching his saddlebags back onto his shoulders, gripping the sawed-off shotgun around the barrel with one hand as he made his way through the backyard to the property line, following the fence, looking for an opening.

Fifteen minutes later they were down where the land dropped off into the river. They’d made their way through the empty spaces between barren, desolate factories. They had not run across anyone. Still, Harris felt jumpy, like it was only a matter of time. He reached down and touched the cold steel of the Colt .357 for reassurance.

The boat was closer, clearer. It reminded Harris of the fishing boat his grandfather had had when he was a kid. Not a huge affair, just big enough to seat two or three people inside the cabin.

“You see anybody on board?” Harris asked. It was still dark and he couldn’t see anyone on the deck.

Buddy scanned it with the binoculars, said he did not either.

The binoculars had come from the saddlebags, and Harris wondered if there wasn’t anything the big man didn’t have in those bags. Kind of like Mary Poppins pulling what she needed from her carpetbag when she’d arrived at the Bankses’ house.

“I don’t know, Harris. I still don’t see anything. Have a look.”

Buddy passed Harris the binoculars and Harris focused in on the boat.

“You know how to operate a boat, Buddy?”

“No, man. You?” Buddy took the binoculars back and panned the island of Manhattan.

“No.”

“How hard can it be, right?” Buddy put the binoculars down and rubbed his eyes.

Buddy looked around. It was creepy on the wharf fronting an industrial area. “Question is, how do we get out to that boat?”

“Those saddlebags don’t float?” quipped Harris.

“Man, I ain’t in a rush to ruin my leather.”

“I’m only kidding. We don’t want to swim in the river anyway. Currents. I’m not changing my mind, Buddy.”

“I’m not asking you to.”

“Then make it fast.”

“What do you expect we’re going to find over there, man? I mean, besides your wife, if we’re lucky.”

“Nothing but a load of trouble. Death. Lots of that. Probably our own.”

“But that’s not going to slow us down one lick,” said Buddy, and Harris wasn’t sure if it was a question or a comment, and if it was a comment, how it was meant. He was exhausted and on the verge of collapse and couldn’t really care at the moment.

“Look there,” Harris said and pointed into a darkness that was just beginning to hint at breaking, the sky to the east purpling.

Buddy stared off down at the water to their right.

“What’s—” Then he saw it also, a dinghy tethered farther up. “Oh, you got a good eye, Harris. You da man.”

They came around the front of the small fishing boat, lest anyone exit the small aft cabin and see them. The dinghy was a yellow rubber life raft, durable enough to get them across to the other boat, but not something either man would want to try and float out to the ocean in.

They climbed onto the boat, stowing their belongings in the meager space, and headed toward the fishing boat. There were no oars, and they had nothing suitable on board to paddle with, so they paddled with their hands.

Buddy looked uneasy, and Harris wondered if he was seasick.

“You all right?”

“My grandmother took me to see Jaws when I was thirteen or fourteen years old,” explained Buddy. “I was afraid to swim in a pool afterwards. It’s irrational, I know, but I can’t help it.”

Buddy shook his head. “Sharks, man. I hate sharks.”

“There aren’t any sharks in the East River.”

“Bullshit,” said Buddy. “There are sharks everywhere. And this boat ain’t much of anything to keep one out.”

The echoes of automatic weapons fire were clearer and cleaner out on the river.

“That’s going on over there.” Harris nodded toward Manhattan. “And you’re worried about Bruce the mechanical shark?”

“Now why’d you have to go and name him, Harris?” asked Buddy, a serious look on his face. Harris couldn’t tell if he was for real or pulling his leg. He decided to say nothing, to just continue paddling with his palms toward the other boat. He was running on adrenaline again and he was lit up.

“Damn,” Buddy laughed nervously.

“Back on shore we got dead people coming back to life. You’re not worried about them. But Jaws bothers you?”

“Damn it, Harris,” said Buddy, “I know what to do against a zombie, but a twenty-four-foot shark?”

“That’s what they are then, zombies?”

“What else would you call them?”

“I wouldn’t worry about any aquatic life, Buddy. We’re good here. I saw this interview with Rob Zombie on VH1, some show about the scariest movie moments. Zombie said he saw Jaws as a little boy, then went to Denny’s to eat. He’s in the bathroom peeing, and he’s scared the whole time the shark was going to get him there in that bathroom.”

“Okay, Harris, so you all tough and whatnot. Ain’t afraid of nothing, right?”

“I didn’t say that, man. Heights do it for me. I can’t stand them.”

“See then, we both got somethin’.”

“But honestly, these zombies have me freaked.”

“Let’s be quiet,” Buddy said a moment later. “Try not to make too much noise the closer we get. If there’s anybody aboard, we don’t want to spook them into gunning the engine and leaving us.”

Or worse, Harris thought, noting how Buddy propped the sawed-off within easy reach.

Another fifteen minutes of paddling and they were alongside the boat.

Harris wondered if they should yell out something, as this was private property. If there was someone alive inside and he was armed, he might think he was being pirated, but Buddy had already left the dinghy, swinging his saddlebags over the side of the fishing boat, where they thumped on the deck. The big buccaneer stepped foot on the ship, the sawed-off leveled in one hand, directed at the cabin door.

Harris followed, fastening the rope from the dinghy to a stern cleat. He followed the other man’s lead and produced his own revolver.

Buddy held up a hand, and signaled Harris to take the left side of the door. Harris pressed himself there, the .357 trained on the door, as Buddy reached out with his left hand, the shotgun held steady with his right, turning the knob. It gave way and opened.

Curtains drawn over windows blocked the new light creeping over the horizon with the coming of day, but a single bare bulb hung from the ceiling. Harris could see the place was small and that it was a mess amid the shadows.

Thunder rumbled overhead.

Buddy nodded at Harris and stepped into the cabin.

A drunken roar met them. “What the hell?”

“Easy, pops.” Buddy’s voice was loud and clear.

Harris followed. The cabin itself was cramped and small, with a hammock hanging along the starboard side. An old man with a week’s worth of white stubble on his face was floundering in the hammock, trying unsuccessfully to extricate himself from it. A bottle of whiskey lay on the floor beside his berth, empty and on its side.

“Take it easy, old man,” said Buddy. “Here, let me help you up.”

“Help me?” the old man sputtered, flummoxed. “You board my ship and you want to help me? The nerve of sons of bitches these days.”

The boat’s captain was wearing an unbuttoned flannel shirt over a sleeveless white T-shirt and a pair of boxer shorts. The man and the room reeked of drink, and when he finally managed to get out of his hammock, he had difficulty keeping his feet.

“Goddamn ocean swells,” he cursed.

“Mister-mister-mister,” tried Harris. “We aren’t going to hurt you. We need your help.”

“My help?” said the old man. “Well, let me help get both of you the hell off of my boat, goddammit!”

He was obstreperous but he wasn’t swinging yet.

“Sir, listen to my friend,” smooth-talked Buddy. “We just came aboard to inquire if your boat is for charter, that’s all.”

The old man cocked one eye at Buddy.

“We were calling from outside but no one answered,” offered Harris.

“No one answered because no one wanted to be bothered,” spat the old man, but then his look softened up. “You fellas want to know if my boat’s for charter?”

Buddy smiled, showing his pearly whites. “Yeah.”

“Has either of you dimwits noticed what in the hell is going on around this city?” There was a look of drunken disbelief bordering on disgust on the old man’s face. “And you nimrods ask me if you can charter my boat.”

“Yeah, we know what’s going on out there.” Harris tried to remain calm. He needed to get across the river.

“Young man,” the old man said, and it had been awhile since Harris had thought of himself as a young man. “I may be drunk, but I’m not stupid. Okay?”

“We know that, pops,” Buddy said. “We just really got to get across that river.”

“Do you men know what is going on over there? Listen!” Inside the cabin the thumps and tat-tat-tats sounded like fireworks.

“Yeah, we know,” said Buddy.

“Why’n the hell would you want to get across to that?” The old man looked at them like they were the drunk ones.

Harris didn’t say anything.

“My man here,” Buddy laid it out, “his wife is down in that mess.”

Buddy thought the old man was going to go and say something stupid to Harris, something like, “Young man, I got some news for you. Your wife ain’t alive over there,” or something truthful about a lot of people being over in that mess. He wondered how Harris would handle it if the old man did. Harris seemed cool, but Buddy knew something about having his buttons pushed, knew what it could do to a man, the conditions being right.

The old man looked Harris up and down, appraising him, stopping at his eyes, looking thoughtful.

“You say your wife is across that river?” the codger said clearly, the drunk gone out of his voice.

“Yes sir.”

“Well, then . . . oh what the hell.” The old man threw his hands up. He’d made his decision. “Let’s get this voyage under way, gentlemen. The sooner I get you both across this river, the sooner I can go back to old number seven.”

Harris looked at Buddy, who grinned at him.

“Seagram’s Seven, son.” The old man winked.

“You da man,” Harris mouthed so that the boat’s owner, who was now busying himself around the cabin, could not hear.

Buddy pointed to himself and mouthed back, “Me?” Then he made an exaggerated face and shook his head slowly.

“Okay, listen to me, you two.” The old man was in his element. “If I’m going to pilot this craft, then you two are going to help me out.”

“Whatever you need,” Buddy said.

“First off, where are my pants? Someone needs to help me find my goddamn pants.”

“Shiver me timbers and all that shit, Harris, those pants are all you,” said Buddy. “I’ma be outside, pitching masts and whatnot.”

“Yeah, you better get a harpoon ready in case a shark attacks the boat.”

Harris shook his head and helped the old man find and get into his pants.

The old man, Harris, and Buddy stood atop the cabin at the steering berth. Although he was coming off a drunk, the grizzled old man was able to manage a pretty clear course through the river. At least he looked like someone who knew what he was doing.

As they drew closer to the Manhattan shoreline, the reverberations of helicopter rotors challenged the occasional boom of thunder for dominance. They didn’t see any helicopters and it was getting too dark again to see clearly, the dawn occluded by black rain clouds.

“Harris, you see that? People!”

Buddy pointed at the far shore. Harris could make them out, little specks, human beings, gathering along the pier and the side of the highway. He couldn’t hear them, but he knew they all wanted to get out of Manhattan.

Lightning flashed and lit everything up for an instant.

“Whirlybirds,” the old man announced. Harris and Buddy looked up to see first one, then a second and a third helicopter lifting off from between the skyscrapers and tall buildings, hovering in the sky and making a beeline for the west side of the island.

“Those are military,” said Buddy.

Dozens of them were about, a crescendo of rotor blades crashing down on them.

“They were flying those around in the streets of the city?” Harris asked, trying to imagine it.

“Yeah.”

The helicopters became distant specks in the sky and disappeared over the horizon.

“Looks like they’re heading over to Jersey,” Harris noted.

“Yeah, looks like,” agreed Buddy.

“Wonder why they’re leaving?”

The people on the shore became clearer.

“Here, look at this.” Buddy handed Harris the binoculars.

It took his eyes a moment to adjust, then Harris could see them well enough. People, men and women in business clothes, construction workers, women in dresses, jeans, too numerous to count, massed on the lip of the highway along the piers. Many of them waved at their boat as it came closer. Even more had their backs to them and were fighting.

They were being attacked, Harris saw between the heads and shoulders of the desperate people. Those human beings who somehow weren’t anymore, the zombies, they attacked the people, and the people fought back. Harris watched a police officer firing a service revolver, a longshoreman bashing a head in with a hammer, a uniformed female soldier firing an M-16.

“Here, let me see.” Buddy took back the binoculars.

Harris thought about the people over there fighting for their lives, waiting to be rescued. But the helicopters had flown off. Why had they flown off? Were they full? Couldn’t they have taken some more people with them? Had this been going on all night? Couldn’t they have fired a missile or something into the zombies? His brain was jumbled with questions and fears and exhaustion and he couldn’t think straight.

Buddy was saying something to him.

“What?”

“We can’t dock there.”

“Why the fuck not?” Harris rarely cursed, and when he did the emotion was up in him.

“They’ll swarm the boat.” Buddy was talking about the screaming and gesticulating people and the things running and stumbling after them. Dozens of the living had already jumped into the water and were swimming for the boat. Their faces were clear when the lightning flashed but they still seemed so far away.

“So what? Let them.” Harris was disgusted. He only cared about one thing. “Let as many of them as they can get on this boat, and let the captain take them the fuck out of here.”

“You don’t get it, do you?” Buddy looked at Harris. He did his best to keep calm. “It ain’t like we’re gonna get over there and there’s gonna be a nice straight fucking line, like in the fucking post office, everyone waiting their goddamn turn. You ever seen people in desperate situations? Look at them now. Everyone’s out for themselves.”

Harris looked and saw and heard people screaming at the boat, droves of them jumping into the water, some surfacing and starting to swim, others surfacing then floundering, going under, appearing again once or twice, many not again.

“Listen, Harris,” said Buddy, “we’re gonna get there, all right? But not here. Even if we do manage to get ashore in that spot, you do see they’re bein’ attacked, right? So after we claw our way through that crowd all coming in the opposite direction, we still gonna have to battle it out with those things, man. Think about it.”

Harris counted to ten in his head. He pictured her struggling through the crowd, screaming his name, leaping into the river, swimming for the boat, for him.

Buddy was right. He was overreacting. For a moment there all he could think about was Raquel and getting to her, and it had seemed that the big man was axing that plan. But Buddy was right.

“Hear that?” the old man barked.

They listened to something from the sky in the distance, not thunder. Some artifact of man drew nigh.

The lightning flashed and Buddy saw clearly and gave them name. “Jets!”

Little dots moved on the horizon, coming in over the island from the north, growing larger and more discernible with each bolt of lightning. The thunder boomed, but was soon lost in the roar of their engines.

Buddy watched the people on the ground with his binoculars as best he could in the dark. Muzzle flashes lit up the gloom there. They were fighting for their lives, staring at the sky, and the looks on the faces of the ones he could see were not looks of relief.

“Oh my God,” breathed Harris.

As the jets came in over Midtown, Buddy counted at least eight of them. They fired missiles from under their wings that screamed down into the city, disappearing from view between the buildings, lightning illuminating their vapor trails.

“No-no-no-no—” Harris steadied himself for the coming blasts, wondering why in the hell the United States military would be bombing New York City. How bad had things gotten down on the ground?

But there were no explosions.

The jets headed south past the island and wound their way back for another run, firing a second volley of missiles as they passed.

Harris followed the trail of one missile streaking down from the sky, over the heads of the people below, smashing into the side of a building. He had seen enough movies and watched enough History Channel to know that there should have been some mammoth explosions as high-explosive or incendiary rounds detonated. The missile disappeared into the side of the building traveling fast, yet there was no visible detonation. The building continued to stand.

As a matter of fact, the skyline hadn’t changed at all, they noticed.

“What the . . .” Buddy’s words trailed off.

The jets banked and disappeared north from where they’d come. Harris squinted through the darkness at the people but didn’t understand at first what he was witnessing.

Buddy had lowered the binoculars. Harris reached over and took them from him.

“You might not want to see this, Harris.”

When the lightning flashed again, Harris focused in on a man on the street, ignoring all the others. The man stood tall, shirt ripped, his tie hanging undone from his shoulders. There was a gash on his forehead. The man wielded what looked like a support for the portable railings found in banks and government buildings, bludgeoning an attacker with the flat, weighted end.

Thunder and darkness and shadows reigned. When the lightning came again the thing—the zombie, Harris thought—was down.

Three successive bolts from the sky, and Harris watched as the man dropped his improvised club, took a step back, and twisted to face the water. His silhouette struggled, grabbing at his tie, tearing it off his shoulders, clutching at his neck.

Lightning again, and Harris saw that the guy couldn’t breathe. He watched the man reel forward, choking, gasping, his face going from pink to purple to bright red in succeeding flashes. The man went down on one knee, gripping his throat, eyes bulging out of his head.

Then the thunder was on top of them, and Harris felt little spatters of rain start to pelt his hands and face, but still he watched through the binoculars.

The man was on his knees and one hand, clawing at the sidewalk with his other hand, foamy slobber trailing from his mouth. Harris watched as a zombie with one arm, dressed in a bloodstained brown delivery uniform, pounced on the man from behind, dragged him up by his hair, back to his knees, and jerked his head back.

Lightning rent the sky in time for Harris to view the zombie—severely burned on one half of its face and missing an ear—as it reached around from behind, sinking its teeth into the choking man’s neck, tearing free his throat amid a crimson torrent. The lightning did not discharge again for some time and the man’s end came to him in the dark.

Harris panned with the binoculars. They were perishing, all of them. Those that had fought off the zombies collapsed, apparently unable to breathe. Some, already dying, faces bloated and discolored, fell prey to the approaching zombies. Others writhed and twisted by themselves or in twos and threes on the streets, some pitching desperately into the water.

The men and women swimming toward the boat went under, choking and gurgling, grasping at their faces and throats, sinking into the murky depths and the darkness.

In time, Harris became aware that their boat was moving away from Manhattan, back toward Queens.

“What’s going on over there, Buddy?”

“I don’t know. Neutron bomb maybe?”

“Gas.” The old man sounded like he knew what he was talking about.

“Poison gas?” Harris asked no one in particular, and no one replied.

As their boat headed back toward the Queens side of the city, only the undead moved on the streets and piers they’d left behind, feasting on the fallen.

The jets returned once, firing another salvo of missiles into the shadows and canyons of downtown Manhattan.

36.

Harris grimaced as the fire shot up through his abdomen. Hunkered low on the toilet bowl, he felt the liquid that expelled from him splatter the sides of the bowl. The bloody runs, one of the signs someone had been bitten. He refused to look down and see what he knew would be there.

The Porta-Potty door was closed and Harris was thankful no one could see him. When his stomach started getting queasy, he had thought about using the bathroom in his and Julie’s house. But the thing didn’t flush any longer and he wouldn’t leave that mess there for two reasons. One, Julie might find the bowl full of it, and, aside from being disgusting, that would tip her right off as to what was happening to her boyfriend. Two, even if his plan went off without a hitch, Julie’d still be left with that mess to clean from their commode.

There were only a few situations in which Harris felt vulnerable. Sitting on a toilet had always been one of them. He thought it stemmed from his elementary school days. Harris remembered using the toilet as a first- or second-grader, sitting there in a stall in his parochial school’s bathroom. He’d heard laughter and looked up at three older boys, sixth-graders, looking down on him. They’d pulled themselves up the sides of the stalls sandwiching his and giggled as they hung there watching the little boy inside go potty.

Maybe that was the reason. Or maybe it was the fact that in Catholic school Harris had been taught that God watched you all the time. Normally this was a very comforting thought for the little Harris, like when he’d lie in bed at night next to his brother James, afraid about what was in their closet, and then think God has it covered so they were okay. But to think that God could see everything . . . that God was watching him as he did number two and wiped his heinie . . . that, well that was just terrible. God didn’t need to see that.

His other boyhood bathroom phobia did not spring from parochial school. Up until he was thirteen or fourteen, Harris wouldn’t bring a magazine or newspaper into the bathroom with him. He knew the people in the pictures couldn’t see him going to the bathroom, but some part of him thought they might be able to. He’d known then that it was an unreasonable supposition, but that hadn’t made him feel any better.

As a married man he always closed the door when he did “number two.” Raquel used to joke with him that they shared everything, but he wouldn’t leave the door open when he took a shit. She did, but since she usually used the bathroom in their master bedroom, he wasn’t in the room when she was going. For himself, he was too embarrassed by his sounds and smell. He didn’t want her to hear that.

The basic fact that he shit just like everyone else proved he was an animal just like everyone else. Not that Harris ever thought he was some transcendent entity. Like most people who spent a good part of their lives overlooking their mortality, for some reason taking a dump was just another reminder that he, too, was like everyone else, and as such, fated to an end.

Harris thought about all this as he farted and shot blood about the inside of the bowl. He frowned. A light, clammy sweat was starting to break on his forehead. He’d seen enough people bitten to know that this—the shits—wouldn’t last much longer, that he’d be able to walk out of here and go about his business. He was also aware that this presaged the beginning of a quick end. Maybe a couple of hours were left to him.

Harris wondered if there was a God watching him now. He figured it wasn’t worth mulling over, that he’d know soon enough, and thought about something else.

The Love Boat. It was one of his favorite shows as a kid. It used to come on at nine on Saturday nights, and Harris loved to watch that show. Thing was, his brother James wanted to be doing whatever his older brother was doing. However, there was a three-year difference in their ages and James’s bedtime was eight o’clock. Harris’s mother used to cut a deal with him: lie down in bed with your little brother, and when he falls asleep you can come downstairs and watch The Love Boat.

Harris would get in bed next to James and lie there faking it, listening to his brother’s breathing, waiting. Sometimes James fell asleep and Harris was downstairs at nine watching Isaac and Captain Stubing and Gopher; and then Mr. Roarke and Tattoo on Fantasy Island after. At other times, Harris fell asleep waiting for James to fall asleep, and then he woke up the next morning mad at himself—but not for too long because his dad had picked up bagels, which were still warm, and he wanted to read the comics in the fat Sunday paper.

His parents had been good people, hardworking people. They’d given him and James better lives than they’d had. Harris had lost both his parents when he was in his thirties. First his mother, then his father. It had been tough, but now he was glad they went when they did, and didn’t survive to see all this, to know the fate of their world. In a way now, he was glad that he and Raquel had been unable to have children.

Harris realized he’d been sitting there for a while and nothing was happening. His legs were getting cold and numb. He leaned forward and wiped, and it was all mess and muck on the tissue. He had to mop up with what seemed half a roll of toilet paper, but when he was good and clean enough he stood and pulled up his drawers and jeans.

The sun would be going down soon. Around Eden, people were cooking on their grills and lounging around in small groups. There was a volleyball game going on at the net and Julie was there.

Harris wondered what it would have been like to have known her in the regular world, before all this. Of course, he’d been happily married to Raquel then, so he wouldn’t have given Julie a second look. Well, that was a lie. After all, he was a man, and he might have spared a second look, but that’s all it would ever have been, just an admiring look. Considering the things he had to do, Harris took comfort in the knowledge that most everything was in place. Maybe he should go over to Julie and say something, hold her. He’d already held her close to him after this morning and smelled her head. The whole time she had not realized he’d been fatally wounded, dying.

If he went over to her at this moment, Harris thought he might get all mawkish and break down, cry, bawl like a child, beg her for things beyond her power to grant, ask her not to leave him, not to let him die. It would be a humiliating spectacle that would place a godawful and undeserved stress on her.

Instead, he concentrated on focusing his anger. Though her back was to him, and she was serving, he smiled in Julie’s direction, then walked over to the house Thompson shared with Diaz.

“Where’s your roommate?” Harris asked the Dominican.

Diaz was stretched in a hammock he’d tied between a tree on the sidewalk and the railing of the porch. He’d just gone and strung it up there like that, blocking the whole sidewalk for anyone who wanted to walk past. Thoughtless son of a bitch, Harris condemned him silently.

Diaz took the joint out of his mouth long enough to say, “He’s inside.”

Harris called in through the open window. “Hey, Thompson!” He tried his best to sound his usual, polite self, when what he thought inside was come out here and die mother—

“Yeah? Hey, Harris, what’s up?”

“I was wondering if maybe you could give me a hand?”

“Why? What’s going on?”

“Over at my house, some stuff I need help moving.”

Thompson looked at Harris through the window and Harris thought Thompson looked suspicious. He had to be. After all, Thompson had set it up so Harris and Julie would die violent, horrific deaths, but it hadn’t worked. The kid was probably quaking in his boots, waiting to be found out, but he probably didn’t want to act strange and tip his hand. Harris believed this. He had to believe this.

“I would have asked someone else but . . .” Harris nodded his head toward an oblivious Diaz, a confidential gesture meant to disarm Thompson. “Julie’s kind of freaked about going back in the house after this morning.”

“Give me a second.” Thompson disappeared from the window.

“Sure. No problem.”

But Harris immediately started wondering if there was a problem. Was Thompson really suspicious? Had he gone to get a gun? Harris took a few steps back, angled his body, and leaned on the top of the hammock, made it look like he was talking with Diaz. Instead he had turned his body to give Thompson as little a target as possible, hoping if the kid came out firing he’d hesitate just a moment, seeing Diaz in the way like that. A second would be enough time for Harris to clear the .45 at his waist, even in the state he was in.

I don’t want it to end that way, though, he thought.

Diaz opened an eye, saw Harris standing there above him, and gave off something between a laugh and a giggle.

“What’s so funny, Diaz?”

“You, man. You just don’t get it, do you?”

Who knew what the zonked-out Diaz meant? Harris wasn’t about to try to figure him out, nor did he want to engage the man in conversation. If Thompson burst out of the house firing, Harris figured he could flip the hammock and overturn Diaz into the line of fire. Nobody would miss the man.

Harris was still sweating.

He wondered if Diaz would step up when he was gone, try and flex his muscles around Eden. Who would stand up to him? Bobby Evers might try, but Harris worried about Bobby being tough enough. Bobby Evers might be too good to be tough enough, a gentleman and a gentle man. But Bear could keep Diaz in line. The thought gave Harris reassurance.

“What do I need?” Thompson came down the steps, catching Harris unawares, his pistol in his belt, fastening a button-down shirt.

“Nothing,” Harris said. “Come on.”

Thompson walked beside Harris. As they passed the volleyball game Julie looked up and smiled. Whether the smile was for Harris alone or Harris and Thompson, Harris did not know, but he smiled back and gave a little wave.

Harris felt he had to say something to Thompson. “Hope you’re ready for a little heavy lifting.”

37.

William Richardson stood outside the door to Janis’s room. His little girl was asleep under the sheets. Maggy was on the bed next to her, stroking her hair.

Janis had been getting worse throughout the day. His little girl was hurt, possibly dying, and there didn’t seem to be a whole lot William could do about it. He again considered trying to get her to a hospital. Hospitals must still be safe. At a time like this, hospitals would be getting a lot of use, they’d be well guarded, people coming in all the time.

Flushing General was only a mile from his house.

Maggy’s car was still in the garage, and the garage could be accessed from the basement.

“William,” Harris called from the bottom of the stairs.

Richardson looked again at his wife and daughter, turned, and went downstairs.

Harris appeared better than he had when he’d come in. Less bedraggled. William’s jeans and flannel shirt fit the man well. He looked more alert too, having slept a few hours in the spare bedroom.

“I’ll have to be leaving, William. I want to thank you and your family for your hospitality.”

“It’s fine, it’s okay.” William didn’t want Harris to leave. He felt safer with him around.

“I also want to ask you, do you think you have a spare kitchen knife or something you can lend me?” Harris felt funny asking, as the man had given him his own clothes already, but the warm look on William Richardson’s face dispelled any discomfort.

“Yeah, let’s take a look.”

Billy and Sarah sat around the TV in the living room watching a DVD, some Disney animated movie they’d seen a dozen times before.

The Richardsons had a fine array of cutlery in their kitchen drawers.

“Help yourself.”

Harris picked up and weighed several knives.

“You know what you’re doing with those things?” asked William.

“Not really. I carve a pretty mean turkey, though.”

He settled on one of the larger utensils. It looked like something a killer in a slasher movie might wield.

“Thing is, about those things outside,” Harris said as he stowed the knife away in his duffel bag with the spare rounds for the revolver and some food he had, “the only thing that puts them down for good are blows to the head.”

“Yeah, they said that on the TV.

“Listen, Harris. I know what I said before, but you’re free to stay for as long as you want. Even until this thing blows over.”

Harris looked at William, and William worried he was going to say something like, until this thing blows over? You’ve got to be kidding me, Will. This thing isn’t going to just blow over. But Harris didn’t. In fact, the thought never crossed his mind. He hoped beyond hope that this thing would just blow over, that he’d get into Manhattan and find Raquel.

Reaching out, Harris put a hand on Richardson’s shoulder. “I can never thank you enough for what you’ve done for me, William. If you’d left me out there, they’d have gotten me. They were chasing me and they would have found me.”

“I don’t know, Harris, you made it up to this point. I don’t know how you crossed into Queens. That alone is pretty amazing.”

“Luck.”

“Well, I hope it continues for you. But I’ve got to ask you—you think it’s a good idea going out there?”

“No. It’s not a good idea. But my wife is out there somewhere, William.”

Thinking of Maggy and the kids, William Richardson could understand and appreciate the sentiment. Sarah laughed at the movie in the living room.

“Truth is, Harris, I feel better here with you with us. Safer.”

Harris smiled. “You’re okay, William. You’ve got this place boarded up pretty well. When I run into people out there”—he would have said “rescue teams” but the last Harris had seen some of the rescue teams needed rescuing—“I’ll let them know you guys are here.”

“Thanks. I bet we’re not the only ones like this.”

“Yeah, but you know, you’re the only ones that let me in. Thank you for that.”

“You’re welcome.” William thought of running the idea of taking Janis to the hospital past Harris, then thought better of it. The man was on a mission of his own and had to be moving before the sun went down.

“If you don’t mind, I’ll make my exit the same way I came in.”

Harris followed William from the kitchen to the living room, stopping briefly to say goodbye to Billy and Sarah. The revolver was snug against his belly inside his jeans.

William stuck his head in Janis’s door, said something quietly, and Maggy joined them in the hall.

Harris looked as far as he could in all directions, craning his neck. He slid the window up as quietly as possible, though nothing appeared near enough to hear it, then leaned out the window and looked some more.

“Okay.” He came back into the hallway, facing the Richardsons. “I already thanked your husband, Maggy, and I’d like to thank you, too.”

“You’re welcome. You can’t stay?”

“Believe me, I would if I could, but I can’t,” Harris said. William and Maggy both knew he meant it.

“Okay, then.”

William ducked and followed Harris out the window onto the roof of the first floor. The Richardsons’ roof, like all of their neighbors’, was sloped such that the view from the street and their view of the street were obstructed.

Harris lowered the ladder slowly and carefully with a minimum of noise.

He looked up at William, who said “Luck,” and then he was down, trotting across the backyard, reaching the fence separating William’s property from the house in the rear. Without looking back, Harris scaled the fence and dropped noiselessly to the other side.

William pulled the ladder up, resting it on the roof as Harris had. As he climbed back in his window, he caught sight of Harris emerging from between the properties of the house behind his and the one on its right, reaching the street and disappearing from view in a slow jog.

He locked the window and looked in on Maggy and Janis. He stood in the doorway for a minute, wondering if Harris would survive, hoping the man would make it. He went downstairs and sat on the couch next to Billy and Sarah.

Sarah got up and moved over to her father’s other side, where he could wrap an arm around her. Billy was in his early teens, getting too cool for Mom and Dad, but these were trying times, and William didn’t give a good goddamn. He put his other arm around his son’s shoulders and held them both there as they watched the movie.

It was an old one, one of his favorites from when he was younger, The Wind in the Willows. Mr. Toad. Damn shame they closed that ride at Disney World, William thought. It had been one of their best, and his kids had never gotten the chance to ride it.

After a few minutes Sarah went upstairs to “check on Mommy.”

William did not remove his arm from around Billy, and the boy didn’t seem to mind.

Mr. Toad was jumping rope on top of his horse with his buggy whip, saying, “We’ll go for a jolly ride!” when Sarah’s voice cried to her father from atop the stairs. “Daddy, come up, Daddy! Janis . . .”

William sprang to his feet, his son looking, wondering if he should follow his father, who was already up the stairs.

Maggy was sobbing, cradling Janis’s head. The girl’s eyes were closed.

William Richardson knew then that his youngest child was dead.

He nearly reeled, but he looked at Maggy, then at Sarah and Billy in the doorway, and he knew somebody needed to be strong for them. He sat down next to his wife and held her tight.

“Oh, Maggy, I’m so-so-so sorry. Shhh-shhh-shhh, it’s okay, it’s okay.”

She cried, her face a mess, and suddenly, inexplicably, William just wanted to get away from all this. He had to get out of the room where his dead daughter lay or else . . .

He stood and walked out, saying to Billy, “Go sit with your mom a minute.”

The lights in the bathroom went on when he flicked the switch and the water came from the spigot on the sink. William laid the Glock .40 caliber on the vanity and cupped both hands, letting them fill with water, which he splashed on his face.

It’s not right, it’s just not right. His throat tightened up on him.

William stood there, bent over the sink, on the brink of tears himself, his breath short—

“Dad!” There was panic in Billy’s voice, Maggy screamed for him—“Will! Will!”—and then he heard the snarl of some animal.

William Richardson lunged from the bathroom, forgetting the pistol on the sink, making it down the hall to Janis’s room in seconds. He didn’t know what to make of what he saw there at first.

His Janis was alive! She was up and on top of Maggy and they looked like they were play wrestling, but Billy was trying to pull Janis off their mother and Sarah was in a corner frantically crying, her face flushed red.

It only took him a second to understand. Blood was all over Janis’s face, mouth, and chin—blood from Maggy’s right shoulder, and his wife was gasping as she struggled with their daughter. There was a look in Janis’s eyes . . . a look that told William Richardson in no uncertain terms that this was not his daughter any longer. Her bloody mouth, teeth gnashing, snapped for Maggy’s face.

“Dad!” Billy cried hysterically.

William took Janis by the shoulders and tore her from Maggy, pressing her up against the wall. His six-year-old daughter was a small girl, not even fifty pounds, but she was twisting and slippery and he dropped her. She hit the ground, landed on her feet, and immediately surged forward, sinking her teeth into his hand. The pain was unreal. Without thinking William backhanded her with his other, sending her spinning away, a chunk of him in her mouth.

His daughter staggered against the wall and regained her balance. She looked at them through half-lidded eyes as she chewed, a low growl emanating from her.

“Janis, honey . . .” Maggy cried, clutching her own shoulder.

Janis swallowed what was in her mouth and bared her teeth.

“Shit!” William cursed in front of his kids and didn’t think anything of it because Janis or whatever the hell the thing was came back at him, the look in its eyes demented and gone.

When she was a foot away from her father, Janis launched herself at him, aiming for his throat, but William got both arms up in time to defend himself. He lost his footing when she collided with him, and the two of them went down. Maggy stared in shock. Sarah cried tearless sobs. Billy lunged back and forth in one spot, wondering what he could do. William used his superior body weight to roll his daughter over and wrestle her to a position where he sat astride her chest, pinning her arms at her sides under his legs. He incurred several deep bites in the process and blood flowed freely from his hands and forearms. The thing beneath him was finally secured.

“Billy, go downstairs to the basement. Get me the rope we keep down there. You know what I’m talking about?”

“Y-y-yes, Dad.”

“Good. Now go.”

The boy left the room in a hurry.

“Maggy? Maggy, are you okay?” William couldn’t risk turning around to look. He feared losing grip of his daughter and having to wrestle her down again, feared having to deal with those teeth.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll be okay, William . . .” came her reply, and William felt some measure of relief. It sounded like his wife was holding herself together even as waves of agony coursed through his own hands and arms.

“Daddy, what’s wrong with Janis? Why did she hurt you and Mommy?” Sarah sounded so much like a little girl it made William want to bawl, but the thing under him thrashed and howled, gnashing its teeth as it tried to get at his legs. William had it by the hair and had its head pulled back.

“Sarah, okay . . . Mommy and Daddy need you to go into the bathroom and get as many clean towels from under the sink as you can carry, okay?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

William stared down into the face that had been his daughter’s. Blood masked it and pink spit bubbles frothed from the sides of its mouth. The thing snarled at him and there was a chunk of his bloody red meat between the two front teeth.

Sarah returned with the towels.

Maggy took one and pressed it to her shoulder, stanching her wound. She felt dizzy and nauseous.

“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do . . .” William explained after Billy returned with the rope. “Sarah, take Mommy . . . downstairs to the garage. Wait for me and Billy . . . in the car. Open the trunk for us, okay?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

“Okay, go on now.”

The girl led her mother out of the room by the hand.

“Billy, listen to me. We’re going to tie your sister up and take her to the hospital.”

Billy thought it was a crazy idea but he was too scared to say anything. Everything was crazy about the last two days.

“Okay . . . help me . . . first you’re going to bind her feet.” William told him how he wanted it done and Billy did as his dad directed, tying his sister’s feet together tightly. It was a struggle at first because she was kicking with her legs, but then his dad leaned forward a bit and then back really fast, digging the tops of his feet into Janis’s little thighs, further pinning her to the floor. The carpet in Janis’s room was a coagulated morass.

Billy worked his way up and bound his sister tightly as his father instructed. The arms and hands were the trickiest part, and she got free for a second and bit her father again, the meaty part of his left hand between the thumb and forefinger disappearing into her mouth. Billy watched his father punch his sister in the face like he would punch a man.

The blow bounced Janis’s head off the floor and stunned her long enough for them to finish the job of securing her.

“Give me a pillowcase, please.” William took it from his son and unceremoniously stuffed as much of it as he could in Janis’s mouth without losing any fingers as her teeth gnawed at the cotton.

William used another pillowcase to tie the one in her mouth in place, looping it around her head and tightening it.

“Don’t make it too tight, Dad,” Billy pleaded. “Janis won’t be able to breathe.”

“Okay.” Disoriented, William stood and had to reach out to the dresser to steady himself. Billy came to him with the fresh towels Sarah had left.

They wiped at the worst bites on his hands and forearms. The thing had torn a mouthful from the underside of William’s left forearm. The wound gaped back at him all bloody, looking like meat, nasty.

“Goddamn,” he said, and winced, the pain like a fire burning its way up his arms.

William folded the smaller hand towels and pressed them to the ugliest wounds, and Billy helped him secure them by knotting blood-soaked pillowcases in place. When they were finished, William looked like some kind of half-assed mummy.

“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do . . .” He told his son to go and get the gun out of the bathroom, to be very careful with it, to point the barrel at the floor. He met Billy in the hallway a few seconds after, the thing bound and slung over his shoulder—a pulsing, squirming, blood-dripping cocoon.

“Let’s go.” William went first, afraid he might black out and come crashing down the stairs on top of his boy. He wasn’t doing so hot, and he knew it. He had to get his family to the goddamn hospital fast and hope for the best.

Maggy wasn’t looking too good either. She sat in the front passenger seat, a dreamy look in her eyes as she stared at the ceiling of the car. Sarah watched from the back as her father and brother stowed Janis in the trunk and slammed it shut.

William leaned against the door, letting Billy climb into the back next to his sister. He felt light-headed and for a moment he wondered if he was standing at all. William imagined he was floating, then snapped out of it, the burning sensation seizing him through his shoulders and chest, bringing him back to his senses.

“The gun, dad.” Billy handed it up to his father. The pistol was hard for William to hold because his hands were all bandaged up with pillowcases and washcloths, because of all the blood, because of the sting from his wounds. He used his thumb and forefinger to place the weapon on the seat between his legs.

“Okay.” William reached up to the visor and fumbled with it for a few seconds, coughing, finding the automatic garage door opener and, out of habit, enjoining his kids to put on their seat belts.

The garage door started up with a mechanical hum and they could see legs outside on the street turning toward them.

Billy looked to his mother. She was breathing shallowly as she focused on the ceiling. His father was a disgusting mess as he put the car into drive and eased it slowly from the garage.

The things on the street wheeled, some limping, taking clumsy steps toward them. One pitched over beside the car and plunged to the driveway, out of view.

Billy made sure the locks on all the doors were down, then grabbed his sister Sarah and pressed her face to his chest so she wouldn’t have to see this.

William steered around one slow-moving thing, got the car out onto the street, and then passed out. The vehicle rolled forward in drive and stopped when it rammed a parked car on the opposite side of the street.

“Billy . . .” William regained consciousness, a heavy feeling in his throat, something welling up there, something his body wanted to vomit out, “Billy . . .” Fumbling with the pistol between his legs, he dropped it somewhere on the floorboard at his feet, blacking out again.

Billy clutched his sister close. Sarah started each time one of the things outside thumped on their car. They’d encircled the vehicle, some of them mangled and chewed up, some shot to pieces, others more natural looking, as if this were just some crazy spoof: an elaborate hoax perpetrated on the Richardson family.

Mrs. Lynch, the cat lady from down the block, was trying to get through the windshield. She clutched the severed tail of one of her felines.

Billy hyperventilated, not knowing what to do. His father slumped forward. His mother looked like she had stopped breathing but her eyes still gazed upward. Neither moved. Sarah sobbed against his chest as he sat there. The things outside seemed unable to crack the glass and get to them, incessantly banging at their car. Mrs. Lynch squalled at him.

Paralyzed by fear, Billy closed his eyes and listened, and felt as though he were on the inside of a drum.

38.

Julie was in their bedroom getting ready for sleep. Harris went about his evening routine in the bathroom. Routines, that’s what it was all about. Habits and schedules helped keep one’s sanity within the four walls of Eden, within this dead world.

He flossed, working the floss between his teeth, pulling up and out, tooth by tooth, checking them in the mirror. Listerine followed. Original flavor, which burned his mouth and really let him know it was in there working, doing something.

He gargled, spat into the bucket, squeezed paste onto a toothbrush. His mouth was still stinging, and he went to work on his uppers and then his lowers, the back of his mouth, up under the fronts and then the bottoms. He spat into the bucket again, used a coffee mug to draw water from another bucket and rinsed out his mouth and spit. He put the spit bucket in the shower they didn’t use. He’d empty it in the morning, like he did every morning.

Teeth are important, thought Harris. Since he’d been living here, a couple of people in Eden had come down with infections from abscessed teeth. One had actually died. The other had to be held down while Bobby Evers—no dentist—went to work with a pair of pliers.

Harris dropped his drawers, squeezed a weak stream of urine out into a third bucket and was glad he did so, not wanting to wake up in the middle of the night to go again. He shook himself, pulled his boxers back on, and looked at himself in the mirror. His beard had lost its disheveled look, was no longer shaggy and messy looking, like “the wild man of the forest” as Julie quipped. He hadn’t shaved since this whole thing had begun, which would mean he hadn’t shaved . . . for a long time.

Some people in Eden were obsessed with time, with the keeping of it, even arguing as to what day of the week it was. Harris paid it little mind. He changed clothes with each new day and the coming of the seasons.

He flicked the switch, killed the light in the bathroom, and stepped into the master bedroom. After fluffing the goose-down pillows, Julie had drawn the blinds, shutting out any light from Eden’s streets. People were still awake outside.

Summer was gone and there was no need for the window-mounted air-conditioner that would have lulled him to sleep. Harris grabbed his earplugs, rolled them up one at a time, and popped them into place.

He could still hear Julie.

He closed the door to their bedroom, slipped out of his shoulder holster, and rested the dual-9s on the chair at the foot of their bed.

Julie checked the load on the Mossberg as he had taught her and passed him the 12-gauge with the muzzle and bayonet pointing away from them. He thanked her and propped it up against the wall on his side of the bed. Julie did the same with the AR on her side.

Harris pulled off his T-shirt and put it in the hamper, extinguished the light in the bedroom, and got into bed. He leaned over to the nightstand, flicked the indicator on the clock radio to set the alarm, and rolled over onto his back.

Julie turned and put her head on his shoulder and wrapped an arm around his chest. Harris brushed her hair out of his nose where it tickled him, cradling her with one arm.

He lay there staring into the dark.

Mr. Vittles appeared out of the shadows and nested himself on the bed at their feet.

Julie said something to him but it was muffled by the earplugs.

“What’s that, sweetie?” Harris popped out the plug in his right ear, the side closer to Julie.

“Good night, Harris.”

“Good night.”

Maybe he should tell her he loved her?

She said it before he could.

He told her he loved her as well and she nuzzled a bit closer, relaxed, and lay still.

Harris felt her breathing, the rise and fall of her chest next to his torso.

After about ten minutes, he was pretty sure she was asleep, just like he had been pretty sure James was asleep in the bed next to him when they were little.

Harris couldn’t sleep. He moved his big toe and felt Vittles go for it, batting it with a paw.

Nighttime was always the worst. All the dead people, the memories, they all came back. Funny thing, Harris didn’t think so much of Raquel, of his brother James, of Daffy, of people and loved ones he couldn’t be sure were gone forever. He found himself haunted by the same ghosts that had visited him before all this.

Like his Uncle Pete, a big Ukrainian mug of a man. Harris remembered the holiday dinners at his Aunt Edna’s apartment on Jackson Street in Brooklyn. Uncle Pete talked with a lisp, and Harris grew up assuming his old uncle had a speech impediment. It took him awhile to figure out that the man’s speech was slurred from holiday drinking. Uncle Pete dropped dead from a heart attack when Harris was in the seventh grade.

He was the first person close to Harris to go.

Max, their family dog, died next. His parents had adopted Max, a spunky little Jack Russell terrier, when Harris was five years old, and he’d grown up with Max as a permanent part of their family. One day in his junior year of high school, Harris came home from his after-school job and Max was in his father’s arms, on his way to the vet, his old legs gone out on him for the last time.

Max licked Harris’s hand before his parents got in the car, and his mother asked Harris to look after James. They took his dog and had it put down.

Others, many others, after that. Aunts, uncles, a grandmother, distant cousins he’d only met once or twice when he was too young to remember them. When Harris got into his thirties, people his age—friends from college, people he had worked with, high school chums—started dropping dead from heart attacks, cancer, car accidents, one with AIDS, another a suicide.

Max’s death bothered him more than all of those. Max had been more than a dog to Harris and his family. Max was like the third son, another brother, a little hairy sibling who sometimes yapped too much. Some people could never understand, could never decipher how other people could feel so close to an animal.

Max had been there when he and James had dragged blankets over the sofas in the living room and called them forts, when they beat each other silly in improvised battles with the cardboard wrapping paper rolls. Max was there to give him a look when he snuck girls into his room when his parents were out for the night. Max had been a permanent fixture, a seminal figure in his emotional life. Aunts, uncles, even his grandparents, they weren’t around all the time, so when they died Harris didn’t feel it like he did the day the nine-pound terrier never returned from the vet.

He’d had pets since. Other dogs, Daffy. Mr. Vittles. They were all cool in their own way, but Max had left something within him that loomed forever large, something indelible. Maybe it was the little guy’s unconditional love and the wag of his stumpy little tail. Maybe it was because he’d been there with Harris from an early age, his constant companion. Harris thought it was a little bit of both.

He wondered what had become of Daffy dog. Harris decided thinking about her wasn’t a good thing, because it drew up a whole host of other thoughts, of others missing and possibly dead. They had to be dead. Maybe they were walking around out there somewhere.

He prodded Julie and she rolled over. Each night started out with her head on his shoulder and Harris flat on his back, but ended up with his leg wrapped around her, their torsos melded together, feet entwined. Their nightly routine. Routines and habits were important in Eden.

Harris lay still and breathed her in.

The earplugs muffled sounds. He couldn’t hear the purr machine at his feet. Not everyone went to bed at a decent hour in Eden, and if the windows were open he’d be able to hear them outside. Between that and the occasional wail and moan, the lament of the undead reaching them from beyond the wall, it all added up to reasons Harris gladly wore the earplugs.

Harris wondered if he loved Julie enough. He told her he loved her and he meant it. He thought she knew he did. But sometimes Harris felt like he wasn’t capable of loving her the way he’d been able to love Raquel. The way he still loved Raquel.

Did he still love Raquel? If asked, Harris wouldn’t hesitate. Yes. But his feelings were fading in some way, like they belonged to another person somewhere else, from some time long since past.

Harris didn’t want to be unfair to Julie. He’d told her from the start that given their situation he wasn’t looking to start a relationship. He’d been very blunt: he had seen a lot of people, some very close to him, die very badly. She’d reminded him she had also.

He was glad she was in his life. What Harris would have done once Buddy disappeared, what he’d have done without Julie, he honestly didn’t know. Harris hoped the big man was okay somewhere, yet, as with Daffy, he decided it was best not to dwell on Buddy’s fate.

Harris kissed the back of Julie’s head, pulled her close, and closed his eyes.

Mr. Vittles smacked his big toe, and was still.

39.

Glad you guys can stay awhile.” Dom smiled.

“Thanks for having us,” replied Harris.

“Yeah, it’s not like we’re going anyplace,” added Buddy.

They were on Dom’s roof. Dom was a tall, obese man, though he didn’t seem as tall on account of his extra weight.

Dom’s house stood out on his block because it was detached on both sides. His roof and those of his neighbors on each side were separated by five-foot gaps, empty spaces above little cement walkways dividing their homes. The walkways led to backyards and the yards were separated from each another with wooden fences.

Dom fixed filet mignon on a Viking grill. Harris had no idea how the big, sweaty man had gotten the grill up here on his roof, or the Porta-Potty either, for that matter. Maybe he’d brought them up before everything? But then surely he’d have been in violation of a city code of some sort, and some department or other would have come and issued him a citation.

Harris couldn’t figure it.

Sheb Wooley was singing on the combination CD player/radio about a one-eyed one-horned flying purple people eater. Harris remembered the song from when he was a kid. Sha Na Na had covered it on their old show.

“Where are you guys coming from?”

“Manhattan,” Buddy said, kind of quiet-like.

“Mmmm.” Dom nodded. “I sorta saw what happened there.”

From the roof Dom had a clear view of Manhattan’s skyline. It was a long way off, but there were no signs of life on the island. Buddy confirmed as much with his binoculars.

Harris wondered what had become of the old man and his boat.

“My wife worked in the city,” said Dom. Sensing he might have made it awkward for the two men he’d spotted in the street and invited up twenty minutes earlier, he added, “She got out. Of the city, that is.”

“Thank God for that.” Buddy thought of Harris, and of Harris’s wife, and the probable fate that had befallen her. He thought of all those people they’d seen die, of the things roaming the city streets beneath them.

“You’ve got a generator here?” Harris had heard a dull hum from behind a closed door after Dom opened the front door to them.

“Yeah. Generator, bottled water, enough meat for a couple weeks.” Dom looked proud of himself. “Gonna ride this storm out.”

“You think this will pass?” Buddy wasn’t challenging him. He wished the other man had some information for them, some way of knowing when and how this whole situation was going to cease, when things would go back to the ways they’d been beforehand. But not exactly as they’d been, thought Buddy.

“Doesn’t everything?”

Harris put Dom’s age somewhere between his own and Buddy’s, but closer to Buddy’s. Could be wrong, though. It didn’t look like the man took very good care of himself—he was smoking another cigarette—so maybe he was one of those people who looked older than he was.

“What if it goes longer than a couple of weeks?” Again, it wasn’t a challenge, Buddy just wanted to see what the other man would say.

“Shit. My doctor is always getting on my ass to lose weight as it is. And quit smoking too. The food will run out in two weeks.” Dom took the smoke out of his mouth and looked at it contemplatively. “Cigarettes before that.”

Harris had never been into smoking cigarettes. When he was younger, when he would go to the bars and have a few drinks, maybe he’d have a cigarette then. When he’d met Raquel she’d smoked. She quit when they were getting ready to try and have a kid. The baby never came but she never went back to the habit. Still, they made it a point, in every country they visited on vacation, to buy a pack of the local smokes, to see what they were about.

The moon would be coming out soon. The skyline behind them slowly disappeared into the evening. Allan Sherman was singing a letter home to his parents from Camp Granada.

“I been up here a week already,” explained Dom. “First few days, lots of people were out in the street, just wandering. Then the dead. Until you guys came.”

“What about your neighbors?” asked Harris.

Dom pointed. “Jack next door, he packed the wife and kids in the minivan and got out just as soon as shit went sour. Riley, over there, well he and his family holed up for a few days, nailed themselves in like I done here.”

“Heard from them lately?” Buddy wanted to know.

“No.” Dom shook his head sadly. “Two days ago a group of them things were pounding on the doors of the houses on this block. ’Course, they couldn’t get in here.”

’Course, thought Harris. It had taken Dom ten minutes to pry the boards from the inside of the door after he’d seen them on the street below and called out to them. Those ten minutes had been ten unnerving ones for Harris, as he stood around with Buddy, waiting for the man to let them in, waiting for a zombie to come wandering down the street, wondering which would happen first.

“But Riley,” huffed Dom, “they got into his place. I heard them carrying on over there. Wasn’t much I could do. I shot down on them, killed twelve or fifteen. They were going at it in there for a long time. Had to listen to Riley and his kids screaming and fighting. Sounded like they were throwing everything that wasn’t nailed down at them too. Riley didn’t keep a gun in the house.”

Dom, on the other hand, did, and lots of them. Three of his rifles and a shotgun were resting against the lip of the roof. He had a pistol on the side of the grill. He had boxes of ammunition stacked neatly next to the rifles.

“Noise brings them,” observed Buddy.

The radio was only loud enough for their ears.

“Yeah. When I shot the first five down, fifty more came. Some runnin’, too. Those are the ones bother me most. The slow ones, they aren’t so bad. But those fast ones . . .”

Harris thought of the zombies he had been forced to outrun in the last several days. God, how long was it now? How many times had he sprinted for his life? How long could he keep running? He’d met Buddy when he stopped running once, but that was just plain dumb luck, like happening upon Dom here.

“You think there’s more people in their houses around here?” Buddy asked.

“Yeah. I watched those things on the street. They couldn’t get into all the houses. If you look, you can see two houses over there, across from us with the windows all covered up. There’s people inside there.”

The steaks sizzled on the grill and Dom turned them.

“How about you?” asked Harris. “Why you up here?”

“I got everything I need.” Dom motioned to the grill, his portable toilet, the two thirty-six-quart red Igloo coolers he’d pulled beer and soda out of.

“Some of them make a lot of noise,” Buddy said of the undead. “Doesn’t it get to you? You being up here, them being down there screaming and carrying on . . .”

“Yeah, it’d get to me if I let it, but it beats being locked up inside a cage. And so long as they’re down there and I’m up here, it’s not all bad.”

The sweaty man had a point there, thought Harris.

“And there’s one more thing, something I’ll tell you about after we eat. Hope you boys like your steaks medium-well.”

They ate their steaks and corn on the cob. Dom and Buddy drank beer, and caught a slight buzz, and for the first time in what seemed like forever, Harris was able to relax somewhat. He did not feel he had to be afraid of letting his guard down.

“That hit the spot,” pronounced Buddy.

Something dead down on the street beckoned in the dark, and they stiffened.

It didn’t do it again right away, but Johnny Preston’s song about Little White Dove and Running Bear somehow didn’t sound the same.

“Christ, I hate when they do that,” Dom murmured and Buddy agreed.

The zombie howled again soon thereafter.

“Think they’re trying to communicate?” Harris asked.

“Not with each other,” said Dom. “Not with us either. They don’t seem organized, lucky for us.”

It happened again, leaving Harris visibly agitated.

“Bastard,” he spat. “Damn things going to do that all night, right?”

“Maybe it smelled our steaks,” offered Buddy.

Dom got up from where he sat in his folding chair, selected one of the hunting rifles from the three next to the shotgun, and leaned over the lip of the roof. He remained motionless for a moment.

Down below the dead thing screamed a fourth time as Dom sighted along the barrel of his rifle. Harris and Buddy joined him on the edge of the roof, Harris staying a good three feet from the lip, wary of the drop. The zombie looked up at them with its hands out at its sides. In life it had been a Roman Catholic nun and it still wore the traditional habit. It stared at Dom like it expected to be invited up.

Before a fifth shriek came, the echoing crack of the rifle sounded.

“She won’t be bothering us anymore.” With satisfaction in his voice, Dom put the rifle down and popped open a fresh beer.

“Won’t that just attract a whole lot more of ’em?” asked Buddy.

“Yeah, but if we keep low up here they’ll just wander past eventually. They’re not that bright, you know. Nothing to see, ain’t no reason for them to hang around.”

The moon came up full in the sky as they talked into the night, and listened to the things pass in the streets.

The witch doctor said: “Ooo eee, ooo ah ah ting tang. Walla walla, bing bang. Ooo eee ooo ah ah ting tang. Walla walla, bing bang.”

“What are we listening to here?” Harris asked.

“Some CDs I lugged up from downstairs,” explained Dom. “Novelty hits. They don’t make many of them anymore.”

“Yeah, I remember this stuff from when I was a kid,” said Harris.

“You guys never heard of Afroman?” Buddy asked.

They both looked at him.

“‘Because I Got High’?”

Neither had.

“Big song with some of the younger brothers inside. Forget it.”

After a while Dom spoke. “You guys must be pretty tired by now.”

Harris had circles under his eyes. Buddy nodded.

“Well, help yourselves to some sleeping blankets. This roof’s not the most comfortable in the world, but it’s not the worst, either.”

“Thanks, Dom,” said Buddy, “for everything.”

“Yeah,” seconded Harris.

“Listen, before you fellas get to bed. There’s something I need to talk to you about.”

“Go ahead.” Buddy sat down in front of the man and Harris did likewise.

“My wife—remember I told you about her? She made it out of Manhattan on the first day, you know.”

Harris watched Buddy from the corner of his eye. Buddy was quiet, with a calm look to him, a reassuring look, one that prompted the heavy man to keep talking. Whatever was coming, Harris knew it couldn’t be good. He stayed silent and let Dom tell it.

“I was so happy to see her. I mean, you guys . . . we all have loved ones who didn’t make it and. . . .”

“Take your time,” encouraged Buddy.

After a while Dom sighed and got himself together.

“Lenore made it home. She crossed the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge on foot because there weren’t any buses or trains running. Lenore made it home, but she was hurt. I swear the bite wasn’t too bad. I’d heard what they said on TV.”

Oh brother, thought Harris, hypervigilant again, eyes scanning the rooftop. Where was the wife?

“I put her downstairs, in the basement. We finished it years ago, made it into a family room. I looked after her as best I could, but she faded. She didn’t understand what was happening to her. I couldn’t tell her, I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t have the heart.”

What a horrible, terrible situation. Harris shook his head.

“When she was asleep, almost like in a coma, I knew it was too late for her. She was barely breathing and she’d been soiling herself, but it was all blood and . . . so . . . so I locked her down there in the basement and boarded up the door.

“She’s down there now . . . like one of them things on the street. Don’t worry, she can’t get out. She’s not Lenore no more. I know that. But I won’t go down there. I can’t. Nothing I need is down in that basement anyway.”

They sat around for some time, looking at each other and out into the nighttime, none feeling the need to speak.

And then Harris said, “Dom, my wife was in Manhattan too. That’s where me and Buddy were coming from, just trying to stay alive up until now. For all I know she’s still over there.”

“It’s a rotten situation, isn’t it?” asked Dom.

Harris wondered which was worse, to know or not to know the fate of the one you loved. Was Raquel alive or dead? Dead and walking around? Nerve-gassed by his own country? Would it be worse, if she were dead, to know where she was and what she had become?

“Yeah, it’s bad,” he agreed several minutes later. “It is.”

“You know . . .” Buddy chose his words carefully, “you know Lenore isn’t going to get better, don’t you, Dom?”

“Yeah, that I do. I just couldn’t bring myself . . . I know what needs doing. I just thought maybe, maybe I’d ask you guys.”

“Let’s talk about this tomorrow, Dom,” Buddy said in a soothing tone, and Harris could imagine the older man talking to his children or grandchildren this way. Thinking so made him realize just how little he actually knew about his traveling companion.

“You said she’s locked up good and tight right now?”

“It’s locked up good and tight,” corrected Dom. “That thing in the basement, that’s not my Lenore.”

Buddy nodded.

They sat around a few more minutes until Dom said, “Aw shit, you guys get to bed. We’re okay up here. I been up here a long time.”

Buddy and Harris retrieved sleeping blankets from the other end of the roof and spread them out opposite the grill.

Harris took off his shirt and jeans, folded them, and set them under his head as a pillow. He could use a change of clothes and a shower. Dom had electricity and Harris wondered if that generator could power a washing machine. Water couldn’t be running any longer, though. The washing machine was probably down in the basement with what had been Dom’s wife.

He couldn’t sleep. Off in the distance the zombies protested, not close, but close enough to hear. They sounded by turns angry and sorrowful. Harris thought about it, and decided it must really suck to be dead.

Dom sat in his lawn chair in the dark, an unmoving shadowy hulk against the sky, the glowing tip of a cigarette his only giveaway.

A car alarm went off a block over and didn’t stop for over three minutes, and when it did stop, it soon kicked back on, the siren all the more piercing after the short respite.

Harris looked over at Buddy who was dead asleep, oblivious to all.

The alarm blared again. Harris could imagine some undead standing next to the car, thwacking it with its hand, setting off the alarm over and over again.

He got back up, pulled on his jeans, and went over to sit by Dom. The man wasn’t asleep and smoked a fresh Marlboro, tapping the ashes out into an empty beer can. He was listening to the Beach Boys and had the volume turned so only he could hear them.

“Can’t sleep?”

“They’re loud.”

“If you want, you can go downstairs and sleep in a bed. Two bedrooms down there.”

“No, that’s okay.” Harris resigned himself to another sleepless night. He didn’t really want to be any closer to Lenore, to whatever that thing in the basement was.

“I got a package of earplugs down in the bathroom medicine closet. You can help yourself to those.”

Harris thought about it. Sounded like a good idea.

Dom told him where they were, and to take them all because he had no need for them.

Harris descended the ladder into the linen closet and emerged in the upstairs hall. He passed the bedroom doors and went down to the first floor. The door Dom had let them in through was boarded and sealed again.

He flicked a switch and fluorescent light flooded the room. Gotta love that generator.

Harris was in a large open area—part kitchen, part dining room. A bay window on the other side of the dining room table was planked-over completely. A small window above the kitchen sink was similarly encumbered. Nothing outside was getting in here.

Harris spied the open door to the bathroom. Another door, which must have led downstairs, was crisscrossed with wooden boards, the contents of Dom’s toolbox strewn around the floor.

A thin beam of light shone from beneath the basement door. The basement light must be on, Harris realized. He did his best to avert his eyes from the door as he made his way into the bathroom, opened the medicine cabinet behind the mirror, and found the earplugs in a sealed box.

Peas and carrots. That’s what his mother had told him and James she was looking for when she took the cotton swabs to their ears when they were kids.

He closed the bathroom cabinet and looked himself over in the mirror. A mess stared back at him. The stubble on his face had started to sprout into a full-on beard, and there was no more itching. Big dark circles ringed his eyes and his hair was matted.

Harris checked out the fridge. Dom had it stocked. So long as the generator held out, he’d have enough food just like he said.

On one wall were framed family photos, and Harris walked over and checked them out. Pictures of Dom and his family. A younger and thinner Dom in a tux with his wife in her wedding gown, a pleasant-looking woman. Dom and Lenore, and Dom with his arm around a young girl, the three of them standing at the Grand Canyon. The same girl at her first communion ceremony. Dom with three other rough-and handy-looking men, all with beards and flannels and potbellies in bright orange hunting vests, cradling rifles in the woods.

Harris suddenly felt he was being watched.

He turned about slowly, eyeing the two doors he hadn’t paid much attention to when he’d come in. They led into other parts of the house but were closed. The generator hummed behind one of them.

No, not there. The basement steps.

A shadow interrupted the light from the crack. Something was on the other side of the door, something that knew he was there, something that could hear him in the kitchen.

Harris wondered why he’d left the .357 on the roof and tried to calm himself. The door to the basement was sealed.

He took a tentative step toward it, keeping his eyes on the shadow there. The outline shifted and the tips of three mottled fingers squeezed through underneath the door, gray and swollen, one nail black.

“Jesus!”

There wasn’t much room for the fingers and they just fluttered a little, searching the linoleum. Noises came from the other side of the door, grunts and shuffling, like a pig in a trough.

Harris thought about the fingers and considered crushing them, stomping them into the kitchen floor. The notion soon passed. Crushing its fingers wouldn’t hurt the thing on the other side of the door, not in any way that could meaningfully incapacitate it. And it wouldn’t do for Dom to come down and find his dead wife’s severed digits smeared on the kitchen linoleum.

Harris held himself—and his revulsion—back and exited the kitchen slowly, watching the drumming fingers the whole time, shutting off the kitchen light behind him.

Back on the roof, he thanked Dom, made no mention of what he’d seen, took his clothes off and folded them up into a pillow again. He lay down flat on his back and looked to the sky, but there were no answers coming.

These earplugs weren’t his favorites. They were made of wax. He placed one in each ear and pushed them into position. He preferred the ones you rolled up and stuck in your ear canal. Then again, he’d prefer being in bed at home with Raquel and he wasn’t going to get that either.

The car alarm had ceased but Harris lay there with his heart going a mile a minute waiting for it to start up again, a hand resting on the .357 beside him, thinking he’d never be able to doze off. As he waited for the car alarm to resume, he passed over into a world of nightmares he could wake from.

The sunlight woke Buddy. He blinked and sat up, yawned, and scratched himself.

“Morning.” Dom squatted beside the grill.

“How do.” Buddy saw Harris was still asleep. The man had his head buried in his clothes.

Buddy stood and stretched, shook his leg, cracked his elbows and fingers, and pulled on his clothes. It was past sunrise and he felt good. Finally, a solid night’s sleep.

Dom cracked eggs in a pan, mixing them.

“Hope you like scrambled.” Buddy said that he did.

While the eggs cooked, Buddy surveyed the neighborhood. The streets below were deserted. There were no people coming out of their houses to get in their cars and head for work or to wait on the corner for the bus.

“Let’s eat.” Dom had a thermos full of fresh coffee. It was strong and good. The eggs went down and they were the best eggs Buddy had ever had. Dom said they’d cook some up for Harris when he woke, to let him sleep some more.

“Yeah, he’s been needing a good night’s sleep,” Buddy agreed.

“How’d you two hook up?”

Buddy told him, starting his story from their initial meeting at the school building, leaving out where he’d come from, what he’d seen, what he’d done.

“Your kids?” Dom nodded.

Buddy looked down at the tattoos on his upper arms. The sleeves on his T-shirt had ridden up so his ink was showing. On his left arm was a little girl angel with the name Monique in fancy script. On his right, a cherubic boy with the name Henry.

“Yeah.”

Dom saw how his question made the big man falter. He apologized and said he wasn’t trying to be nosy.

“No, it’s okay.” Buddy meant it. He said he just didn’t want to talk about them.

Dom sipped his coffee and lit another cigarette, thought how he’d like to ask Buddy if that’s where he was going, if his ultimate destination was to find his kids. But he didn’t, because a man’s business is his own and Dom had the feeling that there was more to Buddy than the man let on, and it might not all be worth resurrecting.

Instead, Dom said to the man seated across from him, “You know, I was wondering, that little situation downstairs I was telling you about . . .”

Buddy knew what Dom was getting at and spared the man the necessity of asking.

“I can help you with that.”

“Thanks.” Relief washed over Dom’s face.

He finished his cigarette and stubbed it out on the roof.

“If it’s any consolation,” offered Dom, “I know that . . . thing down there . . . it’s not Lenore.”

“It’s hard, Dom, I know. You couldn’t imagine how many people I seen didn’t make it. They broke down, just couldn’t go on anymore. It’s not like you could hang around with them, wait for them to snap out of it—not if you want to live yourself.”

“Yeah. I’ve been spared most of that up here.” Dom indicated the roof.

“If it’s okay by you, I’ll go down there and take care of it myself. Let Harris sleep.”

“That’s fine.” Dom poured himself another cup of coffee.

When Buddy stood outside the door to the basement, the only sound was the low hum of the generator from the next room.

The crack under the door was dark, but Buddy spied the scratches on the linoleum. He put his ear to the boards and listened, but there was nothing.

The thing was down there, maybe waiting right behind this door. If she was a fast one she could pop right out on him the minute he got the door unfastened.

Buddy considered the 9-millimeter in his left hand. He had the silencer threaded on, figuring it was best if Dom didn’t hear. He lay the pistol on the floor next to the electric lantern and started pulling nails out of boards with the back of a hammer.

He worked silently, listening for noise from the other side of the door, but hearing nothing. He deposited the nails on the kitchen floor as he pulled them out, figuring he’d have to pick them up later. It’d be a real bitch if someone stepped on one and needed to get a tetanus shot.

When the last board had half its nails pried free, Buddy picked up the pistol, steadying it at the door, and used one hand to pull the remaining nails out. The board gave with one nail left, the plank falling, swinging once and then hanging.

Buddy kept an eye on the door and put the hammer down. He reached out with his free hand and grasped the knob. He listened. Nothing at all.

The door opened inward at the top of a set of stairs. Buddy peered at the short landing. The light from the kitchen spilled over into the stairwell, casting its glow all the way down to the bottom where the stairs let out into a little passageway.

Buddy picked up the electric torch, flicked it on, and cast its beam upon the stairs, around the exposed side of the stairwell beyond the banister.

He stepped down onto the landing to the top step. He checked to see if there were spaces between the steps where someone or something could reach through and trip him up, drag him down.

Four steps down Buddy heard something from behind and spun around.

“Don’t shoot.” Harris looked like he had just risen.

“Nice of you to join me.”

“I would have been here earlier, but I woke with morning wood and didn’t want to parade it around Dom.”

“The old tent pole.” Buddy laughed, but not too loudly. “Well, you here now.”

“And you’re in the dark.” Harris reached out along the side of the wall, found the light switch, and flicked it on. Buddy wondered why he hadn’t done that himself.

“This light was on last night when I came down here.” Harris had the Colt Python in his hand.

“Let’s do this, then,” said Buddy, and Harris followed him down the stairs.

The stairway let out onto a passageway into a main room. Like Dom had said, it was a finished basement with walls and ceiling added. It was carpeted and furnished with a big sectional couch, an entertainment center with an enormous flat-screen plasma television, DVD/VCR home theater, stereo system, speakers everywhere, more framed photos. Buddy and Harris looked around the room, but there was nothing behind the couch or the recliner.

Buddy nodded toward the sole door at the end of the family room. It was closed.

Harris motioned to himself, indicating that he’d open it. Buddy set himself in front of the door, braced the 9-millimeter in one hand with the other. Harris pulled the door open to reveal an empty hallway.

“Damn, Buddy.”

“You’re starting to sweat like Dom now.”

“I always sweat a lot.”

“I’ve noticed, Harris.”

“Maybe we should just call her, wait for her to come out?”

Buddy shook his head.

There were four doors off the hallway and they took them one at a time, Buddy opening, Harris watching the others to make certain Lenore didn’t emerge.

The first door led into a boiler room. It looked like the pilot light was still burning and nothing was out of place amid the dusty pipes.

The second door let into a laundry room. A washer and dryer, a shelf to fold laundry. There was a laundry basket half full of folded clothes. Buddy pulled out an enormous pair of men’s underwear. They had to be Dom’s. He showed them to Harris and they both smiled. Buddy put them back.

Behind door number three was a room where Dom had kept all his tools.

Harris and Buddy stood looking at the fourth door, knowing this was it.

“Can we just call her out?” Harris asked.

“Shit, okay. Go ahead.”

Harris spoke to the door. “Lenore.”

They waited expectantly, but there was no reply.

“Lenore.” Again, louder.

“Hey, Lenore!” Buddy shouted.

“This isn’t cool,” said Harris.

“Ah, fuck it.” Buddy pushed the door open and there was the thing that had been Lenore.

It didn’t look up at them from where it knelt on the floor. Around it were photo albums and shoe boxes, their contents—mostly pictures and papers—scattered around the room. The dead thing was looking at an upside-down photo album, trying to turn a page, not having much luck, just going through the motions.

Harris was glad that he hadn’t mashed its fingers last night.

“Lenore.” Buddy’s voice was low and firm.

It ignored him.

Harris and Buddy looked at one another.

“Lenore.” Buddy said it again. This time it looked up at them but it was like it didn’t see them and went back to its photo album.

“I know this is going to sound stupid,” Harris said a little louder than a whisper, “but do you think anything can be done for them?”

Lenore looked up at them, as if noticing them for the first time. Its mouth cracked open and it hissed, slobber spilling over its chin.

“No, Harris. I don’t think anything can be done for them.”

Harris raised the revolver.

“Nah.” Buddy brushed his arm aside, gesturing with the silenced 9-mil. Harris nodded.

Buddy took a step into the room. The dead woman was focused on its photo album, not in the least bit interested in his existence. Buddy didn’t get too close to it. He extended the pistol and squeezed the trigger.

“We should clean this up, Buddy. I’ll go see if I can find some paper towels.”

They cleaned the room up as best they could, wrapping Lenore’s body in giant black plastic garbage bags meant for leaves. They picked up the photos and papers and put them back in shoe boxes, unsure what belonged where. Harris got down and scrubbed at the fluid and gray matter splattered on the floor and wall, and he didn’t stop until he was satisfied that everything was as clean as it was going to get. They stacked the shoe boxes and photo albums on the shelves they’d been pulled from.

Later that day, Harris and Buddy carried the remains of Dom’s wife out into the backyard. Dom smoked a cigarette on the other side of the roof, keeping watch on the street. He refused to see Lenore before the two men buried her. He didn’t want to. He’d remember her the way she’d been.

40.

Ho-ho-ho!” The National Guardsman waved the barrel of his M-16 at the approaching Ford pickup truck. Behind him, the survivors from his regiment—only a handful of their original number—fanned out in a line on the avenue, covering the Ford, the silent stores on either side of the block, and the deserted road behind them.

Buddy stopped the truck several yards from the men.

“Let’s play this cool,” Buddy said, noting that Harris had his hand on the grip of that big revolver he was lugging around.

Harris nodded, letting go of the Python.

Just to be safe, Buddy had the sawed-off shotgun next to him on the seat and a Smith & Wesson 9-millimeter on his lap within easy reach.

The lead guardsman trotted up to the pickup, lowering the assault rifle as he came, a reassuring signal to the two men seated inside.

“Hello,” Buddy said as the man leaned down outside the driver’s side.

“Yeah, hi.” The guy was gruff but not unfriendly.

“Where you guys coming from?” Harris asked.

The guardsman pointed back down the avenue toward the Queensboro Bridge into Manhattan.

“The city.”

“Shit, nobody getting off that island,” murmured Buddy. He and Harris had seen what went down there with the boat captain.

“They bombed it, didn’t they?”

“You’re asking us? They sure as hell did,” Buddy affirmed. “How’d you guys survive?”

“Most of us didn’t,” the man explained. “We were at the Mid-Manhattan Library, attached to a Marine heavy armor unit, and we got overrun. Tanks can’t fight those fucking things.”

“It’s true, then?” Harris asked, knowing it was, having seen it with his own eyes. “They are eating people?”

“They’re eating people, and then some of them people are getting up and eating more people.” The guardsman sighed. “We hoofed it down into the subway tunnels—trains weren’t running by then—and we hauled ass to the next station.”

“Grand Central and Forty-second?” Buddy asked, the first inkling Harris had that the big man knew about the city, that he might have been from around here. Up until this point, Harris had this image of Buddy passing through on a motorcycle, and not some crotch rocket, either. Definitely a Harley. Maybe it was the saddlebags.

“Right,” the guardsman continued. Three of his men were standing near the truck, their weapons poking down toward the macadam, and Harris didn’t think they were going to try anything. “We came up onto the street from there and they were all over the place. Fucking everywhere.”

One of the other guardsmen affirmed this with a nod and sad eyes, then turned away.

“Anyway, we got back into the tunnel just about the time we heard the jets coming in and we hauled ass. Now here we are.”

“You guys need a ride?” Buddy asked.

“Yeah, that would help.” The man was nodding. “Name’s Edmond, and these here are Gill, Brophy, Shapiro, Annunziata, Hernan, Burdett—”

“What’s up with that guy?”

“Koster’s injured.”

“Well, get him in back, then,” Buddy invited. “All you guys pile in. Where we headed?”

Harris moved over on the bucket seat, allowing Edmond to slide onto the front bench with them. The other guardsmen clambered into the bed and settled down, alert. They had ditched a good deal of their equipment and were laden only with their weaponry and ammunition. The one named Brophy carried an M-60 machine gun and Harris couldn’t imagine toting that thing while running in an underground tunnel.

“Just drive,” suggested Edmond. “I think the best thing right now is to just try and get out of here.”

Buddy put the pickup in gear and started down the avenue, veering off at the first corner.

“I had a hell of a time getting in here from the Bronx,” said Harris, “and that was a couple of days ago. I doubt they’re letting anyone over the bridges.”

“You guys haven’t heard, have you?” Edmond shook his head. “Of course you haven’t. Television and cable are out, and most of the radio stations are done.”

“Heard what?” asked Buddy.

“The whole city is gone.” Edmond puffed up his cheeks and let the breath out. “It’s fallen. Done. Pretty crazy right now.

“It happened so goddamned fast,” he continued, his voice sad. “Containment didn’t work.”

The streets were deserted save for some abandoned cars scattered at random.

“So this crap is going on everywhere, right?” asked Buddy.

“Whole fucking world from what we hear.”

“Sarge, two o’clock!” came the call from the back of the flatbed.

“Slow down . . .” Edmond cautioned and Buddy brought the Ford to a halt.

A woman rushed down the street at them, dressed in a bathrobe that was untied and trailed open behind her. Her flesh was filthy and ensanguined, and she cried as she came, a look of sheer terror in her eyes. She held a swaddled infant clutched to her bosom.

“Hey lady, wait!” A couple of the guardsmen were standing in the back of the Ford looking to make room where there already was not enough, but the woman rushed past them in her bare bloody feet, never looking at them.

“Here they come!” cried Brophy.

A zombie lurched into view at the end of the block. This one wore the uniform of a bank security guard. It turned slowly and took first one step and then another, heading in their direction.

After the first, came three more like it, one dragging behind itself a limp foot from an ankle that had been nearly chewed through.

“How you wanna play this, Sarge?” Gill asked, anxious.

“Fuck them, we engage when we gotta,” yelled Edmond to his men in the back. “Settle in there, boys.” To Buddy and Harris he said, “Noise attracts them. Get us the hell out of here.”

Buddy put the truck in reverse and made a three-point turn, aiming them in the opposite direction. He drove carefully through the streets though there were no other cars coming or going.

“Everyone can’t be dead already,” Buddy wagered.

“No,” answered Edmond. “I figure a lot of them got out of the city early on. And I figure a whole bunch more are holed up inside their homes, waiting it out.”

“Waiting it out . . .” Harris repeated. Whatever this nightmare was, it didn’t seem to be letting up.

“That’s what they were told to do,” said Edmond. “Government came on the TV and radio stations and said stay in your house, we’re taking care of it. Now look at us. They ain’t taking care of shit.”

“Any idea what Uncle Sam’s planning next?” asked Harris.

“There is no government anymore.”

As they talked, Buddy drove the truck up and down streets and avenues, avoiding arteries and drags where the homes and stores and buildings were engulfed in raging conflagrations.

“What about the evacuation centers?” Harris wanted to know.

“Ah, Christ,” Edmond said, a hand to his forehead. “Sure, people flocked there early on. Before they sent us over to Midtown, we were stationed at one. Then we started receiving reports that they were being overrun by those friggin’ things. People were showing up at the refugee stations and just walking into warehouses full of them.”

“Listen, guys,” said Buddy, “here’s what I’m thinking we should do.”

“Let’s hear it,” Edmond said. “I’m open to suggestions at this point.”

“One, we drive this thing to a highway and see if we can’t get out onto Long Island. Manhattan isn’t an option and I have a feeling the other crossings won’t be cakewalks.”

“Yeah, last we heard the Throgs Neck Bridge was swarmed with them,” confirmed Edmond. “And they blew the Whitestone and Verrazano.”

“Damn . . .” Harris thought about it. “They blew the Whitestone.”

“Thing is,” Buddy continued, “we’ve got about half a tank of gas left in this truck, so eventually we’re going to have to find a gas station and hope the electricity isn’t turned off. If we can’t pump gas, we’re going to have to go and get ourselves another vehicle.”

“You mean this isn’t your own ride?” Edmond raised an eyebrow, bemused.

“Or two, we find a place for ourselves to hole up. Wait it out. See what happens. You said these things eat people, right?”

“Fuckin’ A. I seen it myself. Thirteen of our men, including the lieutenant, in front of my very own eyes. When we shot those fuckers around McGillicutty, there wasn’t much left to him.”

“So eventually these things are going to run out of a food source and starve to death, right?” Buddy glanced at Edmond and Harris, seeking confirmation.

“I sure as shit hope so,” Edmond said, but the sergeant didn’t sound like that was likely.

“So, we find ourselves a place to chill,” Buddy decided. “That sound okay with you fellas?”

“Fine by me.”

“How’s that gonna fly with your boys in back?” Harris asked.

“At this point, they’re just feeling lucky to be alive. Sure everyone wants to get back to their families, but first we gotta look after ourselves, get Koster someplace he can rest.”

“Okay,” Buddy said. “It’s settled, then.”

“So what kind of place you thinking we can find? House? Apartment building?”

“Supermarket,” said Harris. “Let’s find a supermarket. Hang there.”

“Sounds like a plan,” agreed Buddy.

41.

From two blocks away the zombie spied Harris and took off after him, running, its arms pumping. Harris considered letting it get close enough to shoot its head off, but the noise would attract more of the things and his Colt only had six shots before he’d have to reload it.

He ran. It was almost completely dark out and Harris didn’t bother to stop at any houses where lights burned inside. As he ran, he thought it was no small wonder that there was still electricity, still streetlamps burning. Harris kept to the wider avenues and boulevards, skirting the slower-moving monsters he came upon. When he passed them they would hobble forward after him, cawing and gawking.

The booker was still on his tail, about a block away. It ran with its arms and legs splayed, bellowing dementedly: a spastic beast let loose from the blackest hell.

Harris started to think he could outrun the freak. All he needed was a straightaway wide enough that he could get up some speed and not run headlong into another one staggering about, yet narrow enough that he could make a quick turn here and there and shake the thing. In the meantime, he monitored his breathing and kept an eye open. His nasal passages loosened, and he hocked and expelled a gob of mucus in the road. The sun had mostly bowed out, leaving only residual light. This was not good.

Harris hoped he wouldn’t encounter another of the running ones.

Seven more blocks of running pretty much flat-out and Harris was getting tired. His throat was dry, his lungs were raw, and he had a throb in his side he was doing his best to ignore. When he saw the school, he decided he’d do his thing there. Schools were places he’d spent a lot of his life in; he’d feel comfortable there.

The running aberration in hot pursuit was half a block behind him when Harris crashed through the front doors, relieved to find them open, wondering for half a second what he would do if he was heading right into a hallway or building crowded with the things. He was relieved to find the corridor empty. Harris skidded to a stop on the slick floor about ten feet inside the entrance, reached into his duffel bag, and pulled out the big-ass kitchen knife William Richardson had given him.

“Come on . . .”

It took a few seconds more and then the thing was up the steps after him, the front door booming against the wall behind it; the freak loping after Harris, a baneful perseverance in its eyes, its arms extended as it came for him, teeth flashing, spittle—

Thwack!

The knife made a wet sound as Harris buried it in the creature’s face, the blade disappearing up to the haft just to the side of its nose. The thing drooped to the floor, down for the count. Harris breathed heavily.

He went to the front door and found it easy to lock. Just a twist of a screw located under the bar you pushed to open it. It was similar to the door at Hillcrest. Harris used a penny in his pocket to turn it, wondering why people didn’t save their pennies anymore. He’d seen people—mostly younger ones—toss their pennies into the street or leave the register without gathering their change when it was less than a nickel.

See a penny, pick it up, his father used to say.

Satisfied the door was as secure as it was going to be, Harris moved away from it, not wanting any of the slow-moving things outside working their way toward it to see him. He reached down and gripped his knife where it was implanted, stepped on the body’s neck and yanked the blade free. The blade had gone all the way through to poke out the other side.

It was a big knife.

Harris kept his noise to a minimum as he traversed the halls. The lights were off but there was enough natural illumination from the faded day outside to see by. That, and the red glow of the illuminated exit signs.

He looked into the classrooms and offices he passed, not seeing anyone or anything. There might be people hiding in some of them, maybe huddled in a coat closet or under a desk, and Harris thought about calling out as he went by but decided against it.

There could be more of those things in here, too.

The hallway branched off to the left and the right and Harris went right, making sure nothing was behind him down the left first.

All the classrooms appeared vacant.

He passed a set of doors behind which the gloom of a darkened stairwell beckoned, and dared not tread near it.

Harris proceeded cautiously, paranoid, turning often to look back the way he’d come. He had this feeling that they’d come pouring out of the classrooms all at once, surround him, bring him down.

Another hallway branched off this one, unlit. Harris peered into the inky depths, into their daunting shadows and baleful promises, and then moved on.

At the end of the hall, he reached a set of double doors with another illuminated exit sign above them.

This would be a gym or assembly hall or something of the like. Harris had been in enough schools to be familiar with their layouts.

Opening the door, he smelled the wax from the hardwood floor and he knew it was a gymnasium.

There was a light switch beside the door and Harris flicked it, immediately wishing he hadn’t.

At the far end of the gym, one of those undead things looked up from where it knelt, chewing on the bowels of some teenage girl in what had once been a pristine green and white basketball uniform. The undead moaned at Harris and worked its way, slowly, almost arthritically, to its feet, a loop of bowel still clutched in its hand, trailing from the girl.

From the way it was dressed, it looked like it had been the basketball team coach. The nightmare staggered toward him, arms akimbo, like some spastic inebriate.

Not today, thought Harris, turning and pushing through the double doors to the hallway, disturbed to find the passage barred by a trio of undead that hadn’t been there before. They gasped and cawed when they saw him, and started his way.

“Right.” Harris closed the doors and made a beeline for the other side of the gymnasium, keeping well clear of the basketball coach, spying another set of double doors, figuring they probably let out onto the schoolyard or street. He hadn’t been paying much attention as he’d run up to the building.

Harris reached the doors as two more of the undead emerged from the boys’ locker room.

He pushed against the double doors but they didn’t budge.

Great.

Harris put his shoulder to them to no avail.

He looked around, thinking fast. Six shots in the pistol. The knife in his hand. Loose rounds in his bag and pockets. Bleachers. The locker rooms. The basketball hoops on fiberglass backboards attached to the wall via metal tubing. Maybe he could climb up onto one of them, get above these things.

Instead, Harris jetted over to three vending machines set side by side. He tossed the knife on top of one and hauled himself up after it, rolling atop two of them. He sat there, his feet drawn up as far away from the edge as possible, the .357 aimed between his legs, and waited for the first of the undead to reach the machines. It stared up at him and emitted an apoplectic screech.

There were eight undead in the gymnasium, and one by one, they circled the vending machines, staring up at Harris expectantly. Some moaned and others rasped incoherently, but most stood silently in place, staring, waiting. The basketball coach walked bent over, still holding four feet of intestine, craning its neck to see the man on top of the soda machine. A woman in a dress with both hands chewed off thumped her stubs against the display window, streaking the plastic red.

Marvelous. The zombies didn’t seem able to climb, and although a few punched and pawed weakly at the vending machines and tried to shake them, that didn’t seem like it was going to work for them either. Harris knew he was relatively safe where he was, barely out of their reach.

They couldn’t get to him and he could pick them off one by one anytime he wanted.

Thing was, they weren’t going anywhere.

And neither was he.

His sweat and clothes had dried on him, leaving a sour smell. He wrinkled his nose at the odor. In time, Harris drifted off.

“Yo, boss. Whatta ya guarding them things for?”

Harris and the fifteen dead things massed against the vending machines on which he drowsed all looked together as a large black man strode into the gym. The man had a pair of worn black leather saddlebags over his shoulders and a sawed-off shotgun in his hands.

The guy didn’t wait for an answer.

“Let me do this.” He made eye contact with Harris as he fiddled around in his saddlebags. “We want to keep this quiet.”

The stranger had set the sawed-off aside on the bleachers and had a pistol with an attached silencer in his hands. The things surrounding the vending machines sauntered away from them in the new arrival’s direction.

“Be my guest,” said Harris.

Harris had never heard a silenced shot in real life before, but he thought it sounded much like the ones heard in movies. Thhhp! Thhhp! Muffled but not silent, though still much quieter than the crack an unsilenced shot made. And he’d heard a lot of those reverberating through the streets he’d trekked.

One by one, the things dropped. After downing eight of them, the man reloaded and put the gun on the bleachers next to his saddlebags. He moved in on the nearest ones with some kind of military blade, coaxing the zombies toward him, circling around each and taking it down with quick thrusts through their skulls.

“Gotta conserve ammo,” he offered by way of explanation, wiping the blade off on the skirt of the thing with no hands.

The undead hadn’t even gotten close to the guy. He was a damn good shot too. Harris was impressed. Eight rounds, eight of the things dead.

Still, Harris wondered, what next? He kept the Colt Python close.

“Come on down from there,” said the big man, sheathing the knife and putting the scabbard in the saddlebags.

“My legs are asleep.” Harris lowered himself down off the vending machines, which meant turning his back on the other man. When he put his full body weight down on his feet, he nearly crumpled, but managed to keep his balance. Harris had the .357 in one hand and made sure to keep it down, not threatening with it, already knowing the other man was a better shot than he was.

“How long you been up there?” The black guy was sitting on the bleachers, one elbow on his knee, relaxing.

“Few hours. Tried massaging them as much as I could up there. I didn’t really want to stand up and stretch them out.”

“I’d come over here if I were you, get away from them doors.”

“Why’s that?”

“I was being followed, that’s why I came in here. Some of these things, whatever they are, they’re not sneaky.”

Harris walked over to the bleachers, avoiding the carcasses, careful not to get between the door and the man with the silenced pistol.

“Call me Buddy.” The man extended his free hand. Harris took it, noting how it enfolded his own like his was a kid’s. Harris was a hair under six feet himself and not a slight man, but this guy was a bruiser. He noted the saddlebags in which the man had stored the sawed-off; pegged the guy for a biker or some other roughneck.

“Harris.”

“So, Harris. Just how long were you going to chill out up there?”

Harris couldn’t help himself. He broke into a smile. He liked this guy Buddy, a man who had probably saved his life. “I was waiting for them to take the Pepsi challenge.”

Buddy’s laugh was deep and throaty. Harris thought he detected a slight Southern accent but couldn’t tell for sure. He knew a lot of black folk with accents that sounded slightly Southern to his white ears and a lot of them weren’t Southerners at all, so what did he know?

“I saw the lights in the gym from outside. Figured I’d check this place out. No kids in here?”

“Didn’t see any living ones. But I didn’t really look into any of the rooms too closely.”

Harris was rank, his clothes damp, and he could smell himself.

“It’s gotten worse out there?” he asked.

Buddy shook his head. “It’s bad, man, it’s bad. More and more of them things, less and less soldiers and cops. The curfew. No one’s supposed to be outside on the street.”

The big man paused.

“Wait a second, Harris. You hear that?”

“Hear what?”

The doors to the gym opened from the other side and a Marine in fatigues burst in, screeching and beelining it for Harris and Buddy.

Thhhp! A geyser of blood burst from the man’s upper chest, unbalancing it momentarily but it rushed on—Thhhp!—its head snapped back, the side of it fragmenting, and yet the creature still—Thhhp!—the head jerked back again and it collapsed to its knees, then ignominiously pitched forward onto the mess that was left of its face, and was still.

“Damn,” said Harris. “You think it was alone?”

“It was when it was tailing me in the streets.”

“Right.” Harris cinched his knapsack tighter. “Buddy, thanks, man. I think you saved my life. But I gotta be going.”

“Hold up a second.” Buddy held up a hand. “What’s the hurry?”

“Manhattan.”

“Manhattan?”

It was the way Buddy said it. He didn’t say it like what-are-you-some-kind-of-asshole? He said it as if it was a perfectly legitimate destination given the circumstances, just not one he’d expected to hear.

“Yeah, Manhattan.”

“Oh, you got someone there, huh?”

“Yep.”

“I hate to sound like that goddamn donkey from Shrek,” said Buddy, and Harris sensed the man was working something over in his mind, “but mind if I tag along?”

Buddy was planning something and Harris wondered what it was. If he’d wanted Harris dead he could have just left him for the things, or he could have killed him himself by now.

“Just so long as you don’t slow me down,” Harris said, realizing as he said it just how stupid it sounded, breaking into a short self-conscious laugh.

The big man must have had a good sense of humor, because he was chuckling too. “Yeah,” Buddy observed, “you looked like you were going places when I waltzed in here. I’ll try not to get underfoot.”

Harris waited while Buddy searched the body of the dead Marine.

“You ever handled one of these before?” Harris caught what Buddy tossed him.

“This is a hand grenade, isn’t it?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“No, man, I’ve only seen them used in movies. Here, I might blow us both up.”

Harris opened the doors, pistol up. The coast appeared clear.

“Hey, what you got there? That big ol’ hog leg?” Buddy was referring to Harris’s revolver.

“This is a Colt Python, .357 Magnum.”

“Mighty fine-looking weapon. How’s it shoot?”

“Devastating. And when I learn to handle it like you do that silenced pistol of yours, I’ll be dangerous.”

“You’re going to get your chance out there on that street in, oh, about two seconds, Harris. Ventilated rib on that thing. Nice. So, why are we going to Manhattan, again?”

Harris looked away.

“She got a sister?”

“Mister,” sighed Harris, “you are kind of like that donkey with all that noise you make.”

“Right.” Buddy let out his best Eddie Murphy laugh.

42.

Nighttime was proving to be an increasingly treacherous time to move about. During the day, Harris or Buddy could usually spot the undead before they ran into them, especially if they stuck to wide, open streets and avenues. Even then, there were other undead that seemed adept at hiding, at waiting for someone to get close or—worse yet—to pass their hiding spot, and then they’d attack from behind.

Harris hadn’t been a religious man in a long time, but he considered it nothing short of a minor miracle that he’d made it this far. The Hillcrest School seemed so long ago. Had it really been less than a week? He and the big man who called himself Buddy moved through the night, a full moon lighting their route. Armed soldiers in personnel carriers came and they hid when they heard them, neither man trusting that the militia and the hardcore troops would be casting a discerning eye at potential targets. In the distance they heard the sounds of machine guns.

More than once they passed areas where battles had been waged. There would be dozens of inert bodies, some in soldiers’ gear, many others obviously civilian. Several of the bodies were blown to pieces. The ones that weren’t were all head-shot. Then there were the wholly and partially eaten bodies, various chewed-through limbs, unidentifiable innards and remnants, the lower half of a man here, the upper portion of a woman there. Thousands of shell casings littered the streets.

They walked by buildings with whole sides blown out, charred and covered with rubble, looking like some devastated town from the European theater in the Second World War.

Once they saw five living human beings ahead of them. Harris yelled out to them but they ran off. When he and Buddy reached where the group had been, the people were long gone, with no indication of where that might be.

Eventually Buddy suggested they find a place to hunker down.

Harris wanted to keep going, but he knew Buddy was right. They weren’t getting into Manhattan tonight. Raquel was either okay or she was . . . he refused to entertain the alternative.

They found a six-story condominium building on a residential block. The doors to the entrance hallway and elevator yawned open. Buddy led their way up the stairs, a flashlight taped to the barrel of the sawed-off shotgun. Harris had a second flashlight Buddy had produced from the saddlebags. The electricity was out and the gloom in the stairwell was deep.

On the first landing, Buddy cracked the door to the hallway, and listened.

“You hear that?” he mouthed to Harris, and Harris leaned forward. Banging, somewhere down the murky passage in one of the apartments.

Up, Buddy motioned and they mounted the stairs again, deciding against the second floor as well, only stopping when they reached the landing for the third. Again the big man cracked the door and listened but there wasn’t anything to hear.

Harris followed Buddy’s lead, trying the knobs on the doors they passed. The first few were locked, and Harris wondered where the people had gone. Were they inside, hiding? Was something else inside? A building this size shouldn’t be so silent.

They could knock, but that didn’t mean anyone would let them in, and it might bring out something worse.

The shadows in the hallway seemed to play tricks before Harris’s fatigued eyes when a door opened for Buddy.

Buddy held up his index finger. Harris sidled closer with the flashlight in one hand, his revolver in the other. He knew what they were going to have to do next: check the apartment, make sure it was clear.

Buddy moved in first, the sawed-off held at shoulder level, the beam of light splaying across a short hallway that led into an eat-in kitchen on the right, a living area straight ahead. He swiveled into the kitchen, panning the light back and forth over the counter and cabinets, under the table, around the chairs. Harris closed the door behind them and slipped the chain into place but didn’t secure the dead bolt. They would get out fast if they had to.

The living room was empty save for some furniture: a sectional, a coffee table, an entertainment center. Two short halls led off the room.

Harris motioned to one passage, indicating he’d check it, but Buddy shook his head. “Together,” he mouthed.

They investigated the corridor on the left first. A full bathroom and a bedroom—no people, living or otherwise. They checked the closets, under the bed, anyplace something nasty could be lurking and waiting.

The hall on the right had three doors: An empty closet. A master bedroom with another full bath attached. Harris drew back the shower curtain and checked the tub. A dried-out washcloth was draped on the hot water spigot. The third door opened into an office with a desk and computer, bookshelves and a filing cabinet.

“I always knew I should have invested in a condo.”

“Yeah,” said Harris. “They’re all right, but then you gotta follow the rules of the co-op.”

“That a bad thing?”

“Well, not necessarily, but some people might have a problem if you want to leave your shoes in the hallway outside your door, something like that.”

“Huh.” Buddy nodded and they returned to the living room. Harris secured the front door with the dead bolt.

“Give me a hand,” Harris said to Buddy, and together they moved a piece of the sectional, the table from the kitchen, and a recliner, piling them against the door.

Reasonably assured that they were safe, Harris finally started to calm down. He noticed then how weary he was, thinking he hadn’t slept in days, just those few hours at Richardson’s house. What the hell had happened to William and his family anyway? He’d just been outrunning those things all day, hiding like a trapped animal. His face was stubbly and itched him something awful.

Buddy rummaged through the fridge.

“See if you can find some candles,” Buddy called, pulling Tupperware containers out of the refrigerator, checking their contents, smelling them. He withdrew a half gallon of orange juice, felt it was still somewhat cold—the power must have gone out earlier that day then—and drank from it. He offered it to Harris when he was done.

Harris took it and drank without wiping the top.

“We’ve got some candles.” Harris had found a package of six-inch white candles.

Several of the candles glowed, shedding their iridescence over the framed family portraits adorning the living room walls. Harris thought about the Richardsons again, about their daughter being bitten and how he now knew if you got bit, you died—and then you came back.

Buddy sprawled out on another part of the sectional.

“So. Harris. Manhattan, huh?”

Harris was tired and not much in a talking mood. But felt he owed the other man something.

“Yeah, Raquel’s there. My wife.”

“Um-hm.”

“And you? You got anybody?”

“In this city, no.” The sawed-off was propped up against the cushion within easy reach. “No, my people moved away from here long time ago.”

“You lose anybody?” asked Harris, wondering if there was a better way to put it.

Buddy was contemplative for a few seconds. “Yeah, guess I have.”

Harris wondered about Daffy. Was the dog okay? He had left her out in the backyard. She could hide under the deck in inclement weather but food would be a problem. She was probably hungry and lonely. Was Westchester County also like this place?

“When was the last time you got some sleep?” Buddy asked.

“Oh, a while ago.”

“Here’s how we’re gonna do it. We sleep in shifts, okay? Why don’t you go first, catch yourself some z’s. I wake you in a few hours, then you keep an eye and an ear out while I do likewise.”

“Sounds good. But how about you sleep first?”

“Nah, I’m cool. I got some thinking I want to do anyway. And you look like you could use it a lot worse than me.”

Harris stood, taking his flashlight and gun, deciding he’d sleep in the master bedroom.

“Hey, Buddy.” He stopped on his way. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

Buddy listened to Harris enter the master bedroom and settle down. He sat alone in the dark listening to the sounds of the condominium.

After a while he pulled a chair over to the screened window. The moon was still full, so he had a good view of the street below. There was a glow in the distance as a mammoth fire raged. Buddy figured it for a block or two of houses, hell, maybe even a whole neighborhood. How would such a fire start? People setting fire to those things? The military burning homes? A couple hours before he’d met Harris, Buddy had watched a tank spew flame from its turret, lighting up a group of stores where the dead attacked the living, indiscriminately burning all.

He watched the street and listened. In the distance he heard sporadic gunfire. Several minutes would pass between bursts. Once a treaded military vehicle rumbled by at the end of the block.

Motion below caught Buddy’s eye. Across the street, a figure emerged from an alley, bent forward, moving slowly, looking both ways. It was followed by another, then a third. In all, ten people scampered down the block like wet rats looking to get out of a storm.

Buddy considered calling out to them but wondered what he would say. What he could say. Instead he remained silent and watched them until they rounded a corner.

He wondered where they were going.

43.

Yell and I’ll kill you right here.”

“Harris, what the—”

“Shut up.”

The 9-millimeter pressed roughly into Thompson’s neck.

“Harris, I don’t—”

“I said shut up.”

Thompson had no idea what was going on, but he was frightened because he knew Harris wasn’t kidding and he had never seen the man like this. As soon as they’d descended the stairs to the basement of Harris and Julie’s house and turned on the lights, alarm bells had started to sound in the back of Thompson’s skull. But instead of reacting to them immediately he chose to ignore them, doubting himself, telling himself he had no reason to fear Harris. Why would the other man want to harm him?

He thought he was helping Harris move some stuff. Things Julie couldn’t help with, either because they were too heavy or because she was still freaked out by the attack that morning. Maybe she didn’t even want to venture into the house. Thompson cursed himself for being naïve enough to think that Harris’s asking him was Harris’s way of letting Thompson know all was copacetic between them. That everything was okay after what’d happened that night those weeks back. That maybe they could be friends again.

Nothing in the basement needed to be moved. A solitary lightbulb hanging from the ceiling revealed the basement was bare except for two iron poles cemented into the floor, chains strewn around the poles.

“You know what Markowski used those poles for, Thompson? You know. He used to tie zombies to them, shoot them, cut them up . . . probably did other stuff to them too. You used to do that stuff with him, huh?”

Thompson didn’t say anything—Harris had told him to shut up—just concentrated on the pressure from the pistol bore. Harris’s hand reached around him and took the pistol Thompson kept at his waist. Thompson heard it clatter against the floor somewhere in the stygian depths beyond the light. He feared he had lost his last chance along with it. But Thompson told himself Harris could be reasoned with.

“Move.” Harris herded him forward to one of the iron posts.

Mr. Vittles came into the light.

The poles were both waist high, embedded in the cement of the basement floor, a few feet apart from each other.

The blow to the back of his head knocked Thompson down and he reeled, saw stars, gasped. The skin under his hair opened and the side of his face was wet.

The cat gave Harris a look.

“Sit with your back against that pole.”

“Harris—Harris, p-please—” Thompson begged from his hands and knees. Harris kicked him savagely, like he was trying to score a field goal, and Thompson flopped over onto his back.

“How’s that feel? That feel good?”

Thompson got his breath back, wincing from the pain in his trunk. “Harris, please, I don’t want to die like this—”

“You don’t want to die like this. Like this. Back up against the pole. Put your back against the pole.”

Thompson cringed from the agony in his midsection as he hauled himself up onto his elbows and then his rear. Harris stood over him with the 9-millimeter aimed at his head.

Harris had moved around behind, where Thompson couldn’t see him. This terrified Thompson even further. He thought that this was his chance, act now or never, but before he could make a move, a wallop from the pistol butt opened yet another fissure in his scalp. Thompson buckled forward and Harris had him from behind, taking one of his hands, then the other, securing them with plastic restraints.

Mr. Vittles made a noise deep down in his throat and slouched away from the men.

“Then go on, then,” Harris yelled after the cat.

“Help! Help!” Thompson started to shriek but Harris began kicking him viciously about the head and face, pummeling him into the stake, snarling, “Shut up shut up shut up!”

Thompson was barely aware when Harris threaded one of the three-eighth-inch chains through his arms and around his lap.

“Try to move,” Harris said a couple minutes later when it looked like Thompson wasn’t going to black out. Petrified, the bound man said nothing.

Harris kicked him in the shoulder and Thompson fell forward, his sprawl arrested by the chains between his arms.

“H-Harris—Harris,” he managed between split lips and broken teeth. “Wh-what’s going on, man?”

“You tell me, Thompson.” There was spite in Harris’s voice. Spite and malice.

Harris went around and squatted down across from Thompson, placing the 9-millimeter on the basement floor.

“Ha-Harris, look, look, ho-honestly man, I-I-I do-don’t know what the fuck—I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, man. Just tell me.”

Harris looked at him and smirked, shaking his head derisively.

“Then just shut up.” Harris stuffed a wadded cloth into Thompson’s mouth while the other man protested futilely.

Harris stood none too steadily, leaving the 9-millimeter on the floor. He ignored Thompson, unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it off. Thompson saw his upper arm was bandaged, the skin around it black and dead, the veins pronounced, varicose, Harris’s entire upper body discolored.

Thompson shook his head in bewilderment, his eyes tearing.

“I’m going to want to take that rag out of your mouth to talk to you. But when I do, I don’t need you screaming for help. Okay? So, if you scream like that, this is what you’re going to get.”

Harris kicked Thompson’s arm repeatedly until he was satisfied it was broken.

“Don’t pass out on me, Thompson. We’re just getting started.” Harris had the second length of chain from the floor, a metal collar attached at one end. The other end was already secured to the second pole.

“Harris, Jaysis, what’s got into ya?”

Bobby Evers stood at the bottom of the stairs, his hunting rifle slung on his back.

“Bobby,” Harris muttered to himself.

“Thompson—Oh, Christ almighty, lad. What’s the man done to ya?”

“Bobby, listen to me—”

“You better bleedin’ well get started, mate, because I am listen’ to ya. What the fook is the meanin’ a’this?”

“Bobby. Bobby. This morning, the gate. It was Thompson, Bobby . . .” Thompson was seated on the floor, shaking his head vehemently. “Thompson opened the gate, Bobby. Thompson let them into Eden. Thompson broke into my house and Thompson left the door open so they could get in.”

“Jesus Christ, Harris, what’s a matta’ with ya’? Your skin, man . . . oh.” Bobby realized. “Ya been bit.”

While they were talking, Bobby had moved forward, closer to Harris and Thompson. Spying the bandage on Harris’s shoulder, a sad look crossed his face and he brought his lower lip up over his upper. The rifle was still slung across his back.

“Harris, first thing we gotta get Thompson here untied, get him some—” Bobby stepped toward Thompson seated on the floor, ignoring Harris, meaning to unbind the young man.

The metal collar attached to the end of the chain caught Bobby in the side of the face and he went down. Evers hit his knees and held out a hand, unable to see from one eye, the collar hitting his hand as Harris jerked it back and forward like a wet towel, snapping back three of Bobby’s fingers. Evers let out a final “Jaysis” and rolled onto his left side, shrugging off the .30-.30, but Harris was upon him from behind, wrapping a forearm around his neck and pulling back on it with everything he had.

“Just fucking don’t move, Bobby,” spat Harris, straining. “Just be still, damn you.”

Bobby flailed, trying to reach around and pry Harris from his neck, the hunting rifle sliding across the floor during their struggle.

“Damn you, Bobby, damn you . . .” Harris growled between bared teeth.

The last thing Bobby saw was Thompson straining at the pole, trying to scream through the gag in his mouth.

Harris choked Bobby out, and then kept the Irishman locked like that for some time because he needed to be certain. He felt incredibly weak and worried that if Bobby was bluffing and got up when he let go, he might not be able to take him down again.

Sweating profusely, Harris wobbled when he stood and had to hold out a hand to the pole to steady himself.

“Yeah, Thompson, I got bit. Surprised?” Harris took up the metal collar again from the floor and placed it around his own ankle, snapping it shut.

“So you want to tell me what happened now Thompson, or do I gotta tell you?”

Crying silently, Thompson looked away from Harris.

“Okay. I tell you. But we gotta make this quick . . . before someone else comes looking.”

Before Bobby woke up.

Harris made sure the fit was snug, that his foot could not slip out of the restraint.

“So this morning, I wake up, and I’m being chewed on by some dead Rastafarian motherfucker, right? So the zombies come into my house and up into my bedroom, and they bite me, and they almost eat my girlfriend, Thompson. They almost eat my girlfriend. But we woke up. They almost got my girlfriend, Thompson. Think about that. My girlfriend, Thompson. Julie. Is that what you were hoping? Sick fuck.”

Harris tugged on the chain, checking its connection to the stake. He left enough slack in it so he could easily reach Thompson’s position. Satisfied, he sat down across from the other man, resting his back against the cold pole.

“You know, Thompson, when she first came to Eden, you wouldn’t leave Julie alone. How’d it go? Let me guess. Oh yeah, first the initial attraction, that puppy dog crush. Then the friendly-guy, let-me-help-you-out-there—that whole act, seeing if maybe she’d take to this nice guy, this kind fellow looking out for her.”

Thompson whimpered.

“But she doesn’t show any romantic interest in Mr. Nice Guy, so Mr. Nice Guy starts obsessing in his mind, and all he can do is think about the leggy woman, the one who wants nothing to do with him romantically. So Mr. Nice Guy—that’s you, isn’t it, Thompson? Mr. Nice Guy goes and gets drunk off his ass one night and—in front of everyone else—declares his love for this girl who doesn’t care one whit about him, not the way he thinks she should. And what’s worse—you know what’s worse, Thompson?”

Harris picked up his 9-mil and waved it in Thompson’s direction.

“What’s worse is she’s got a boyfriend by then, and he’s there that night, and her boyfriend tries to calm you down . . . because by now you’re yelling and making a scene . . . and you’re yelling at the girl and making her feel uncomfortable. And you get stupid enough to take a swing at the boyfriend . . . and he has to lay you out like . . . like the punk motherfucking faggot that you are. And that’s humiliating, isn’t it, Thompson? That’s frustrating, right?

“Oh yeah, you can’t answer.”

Harris dropped the clip and started popping 9-millimeter rounds out of the magazine, tossing them over his shoulders.

“She loves you, she loves you not, she loves you . . . well, guess what, Thompson.” Harris held the final bullet up between his index finger and thumb and appraised it. “She doesn’t love you, motherfucker. So the next morning, you apologize to everyone involved . . . say it was the drink.

“But you know what, Thompson? I never bought that excuse. I been drunk before . . . and done stuff I regretted later . . . but the drink didn’t make me do it. I did it because . . . because I wanted to do it, Thompson . . . that’s how I felt. All the drink did was lower my inhibitions.

“But you, Thompson, you wake up . . . and you’re convinced Julie will never be yours because . . . well . . . because she doesn’t like you . . . matter of fact she’s probably feeling pretty repulsed by you.

“Uh . . . let me finish . . . we’re almost done here.”

Harris thumbed the last round back into the magazine.

“So you apologize . . . and everyone says it’s okay, but truth is . . . it’s not okay, not least of all by your way . . . and you can’t get her out of your mind . . . but you don’t want to be a stalker and you know . . . know how the community wouldn’t take too kindly to that. So you start to scheme and plot in your head, thinking maybe, maybe, if you can get the boyfriend out of the way . . . then you’d have a chance. Right?”

Thompson was saying something through the gag.

“And maybe you’d be the one leading the charge . . . leading the rescue . . . come guns blazing into the house.”

Harris popped the magazine back into the pistol. He pulled back on the slide and let it snap forward, chambering the round. He hit the release button and dumped the magazine again, tossing it away.

“Girl’s boyfriend is dead now . . . right, and what’s she gonna remember? She’s gonna remember you saving her ass from the same fate . . . and maybe she’d lighten up, and in time . . . as she got over the dead boyfriend . . . maybe she’d start to feel differently about you . . . maybe you two could have a future together, right?”

Thompson was protesting violently, shaking his head back and forth, pleading through the gag.

“Or maybe”—the color had gone out of Harris’s face—“just maybe, Thompson, maybe you’re so goddamn sick . . . in your fucking head . . . that you figure . . . if I can’t have her, no one can . . . and you expect she’d be killed . . . along with the boyfriend. Are you that sick, Thompson? Are you?” Each word was an effort now. “Because anyone who opens . . . opens the front fucking door . . . and lets those things into Eden . . . he’s gotta be.”

Harris looked at the pistol in his hand.

“No, Thompson. I hate you. I fucking hate you. And you know what I hate the most about you? I hate . . . the fact that I’m going to spend my last moments with you. With you of all people. That fact makes me . . . sick. I hate that you make me feel this way.”

Harris shook his head and a tear streaked down his cheek.

“. . . that because of you . . . I see that I can be this way to another human being. That I have this in me.”

Harris ignored whatever Thompson was babbling about, reached into his pocket, and found the lighter. He slid the Zippo across the small amount of floor that separated them.

“I found that outside this morning,” he said. “By the gate.”

Thompson looked at his Zippo and the look of disbelief on his face broke as more tears and bawls came. He sobbed and his face turned red as he begged Harris through the cloth to listen to him, to talk to him.

Harris ignored Thompson. He thought about Julie, and then Raquel. He flicked the safety off the pistol, pushed it against his own chest, and fired.

It was like getting hit harder than he could ever imagine being hit and it burned, it burned very badly.

The gunshot sobered Thompson up. He watched in shock as Harris collapsed from a seated position onto his side. The hand under Harris still clutched the pistol. His other arm was draped over his head, stretched out, the fingers of that hand twitching spasmodically.

Harris’s mouth opened as he gasped for breath. His hand let go of the pistol as he rolled onto his back, both hands going to his chest where the blood flowed.

Harris heard the muffled protests coming from Thompson as if from a distance. He couldn’t breathe. It was like someone had knocked the breath from him, like when he got hit in the chest with the dodgeball back in fifth-grade gym class. The floor felt hard and cold under him but it wasn’t a bad feeling.

The chain around Harris’s ankle lay slack, a loop of it running to the pole.

Harris’s head lolled to one side, his eyes staring at an empty wall, staring into the illimitable void. Someone was saying something somewhere, but he couldn’t make out the words.

The basement was still and Thompson watched as Harris’s panting lessened, subsided, ceased. Harris was facing away from him so Thompson couldn’t see the glassy look steal over his eyes.

Thompson beheld his lighter and wept. Harris was dead. Bobby wasn’t moving and looked dead as well. Thompson’s nose was running and he couldn’t wipe it, he was heaving with his sobs. He strained against the chains that were looped through his wrists and arms and lap, but they wouldn’t give. His arms, his ribs, most of his body screamed at him.

Stuck tight to the pole, Thompson cried until there were no tears left.

Harris was dead.

Thompson sat there, alone in the basement, chained to a pole, unable to move. A dead man was chained to a pole not two feet from him. Thompson could reach out with his foot and prod Harris’s body if he wanted, but what was the use?

Every time he moved even the slightest bit, Thompson’s midsection sent searing jolts of pain through his core. He figured his ribs were broken. His one arm was useless and blood oozed from the splits in his scalp.

As Thompson sat wondering how long it would take someone to find him down in the basement, Harris’s body shuddered and sat up. The zombie turned its head and stared as Thompson began to shriek through the gag.

44.

John Turner brushed the back of his hand across his forehead, wiping the perspiration away, and pushed his glasses back up his nose. The sun was out, but it wasn’t a hot day. Working outdoors, mixing concrete and fixing sidewalks and curbs with his father Fred, with Panas and Thompson, the sun high in the sky, it all brought out the sweat. The leather from the holstered .38 on his side chafed him.

“Let’s take a break, guys,” announced his father. “How’s about it?”

Things were vastly different in Eden after Graham’s ouster. Decisions were argued over and reached by everyone, not disseminated from on high. There were no leaders, though most tended to defer to or at least listen very carefully to what certain people had to say, people like Buddy or Harris, even Bobby Evers. People also tended to hold John’s father in high esteem, as he was a hard worker and one of the older men in Eden.

“Sounds good.” Panas had an American flag do-ragged on his head.

Not everyone in Eden accorded respect to John’s father and the other older men and women. Guys like Diaz were pretty much selfish bastards. The only thing that seemed to keep them in line was the approval or disdain of everyone else, and some days even that wasn’t enough. Not that Diaz was disrespectful toward John’s father—if he was, John would have had to do something about it—the guy just had a certain attitude that made him unpleasant to be around.

Diaz wouldn’t have been someone John would have hung out with before all this happened, before Eden. And John would have flipped if either of his sisters had brought a guy like Diaz home.

“Hey, John,” Laurie called from down the block.

Laurie was a cute girl, a couple of years younger than John at eighteen. She’d been in Eden when John and his father had arrived, but she was alone, no boyfriend or parents.

John waved to her, held up a finger, letting her know he’d be there in a sec. He looked over at his dad.

“Want to grab some lunch?” Fred Turner gestured toward the mess tent up the block. The Turners repaired the cracks and fissures in the cement while another group pulled kitchen duty, prepping meals for the day. These days everyone shared responsibility in Eden, and all were expected to pull their weight to the extent that they could.

“In a few, Pop. Let me go talk to Laurie for a minute, see what’s up.”

His father nodded and John walked over to Laurie.

Bobby Evers nudged the elder Turner’s arm, smiling in the direction of John and Laurie. Fred smiled back.

“Hey, how you doing?” John asked Laurie. She was an attractive girl. John would have been too nervous and shy to talk to her in the real world. But after all the crap he and his father had been through—from what happened to his mom and his sisters, to his kid brother Kyle—after all that he didn’t give a crap. He wasn’t nervous because he did not expect anything much out of life anymore. John’s main goal these days was to keep his father out of harm’s way.

“Come here and look at this.” Laurie grabbed his arm and led him off down an alleyway. It was the same alleyway in which John had come across Isabel a few nights earlier. His father referred to Isabel as a jezebel and a tramp, as well as other names he was familiar with, and some he wasn’t. His father told John to leave her alone, that she was no good. That night Isabel had been kneeling between Palmer and Diaz, servicing the two of them. The whole thing had kind of turned John on and disgusted him at the same time. He’d walked away before they’d seen him. He’d gone home and whacked off, then felt strangely guilty about it afterward.

The alleyway let out onto a community drive behind the row of homes. Most of the fences dividing the yards behind each house had been uprooted, allowing for the creation of a single long track of land where vegetables and fruit were grown. There were three or four people in a backyard a few houses over, pulling weeds.

Laurie led John up the stairs and into a backyard where tomatoes flourished on their stakes. He walked a step behind, admiring her form, the way her hips swayed as she moved. They watched their steps as they made their way to the back of the yard and the bulwark. This wall was a part of the original yard when the block had been designed decades ago. It was flush now with the greater wall that had been erected to guard them from the undead outside.

Laurie beckoned him up a small ladder onto the scaffolding next to her, and he climbed. John enjoyed their proximity, his arm and side brushing hers. Then Laurie pulled herself up on top of the wall itself, the lip of it wide enough for her to sit safely on and look over into the yards beyond.

John didn’t feel a need to go and look at the zombies that were probably standing around down there on the other side. He detested the undead for what they had done to his mother, his sisters, and Kyle. For what they had done to all those other people he and his father had had to watch die. John hated them, but he feared them more.

Eden’s walls kept the undead at bay, but they visited John in his nightmares.

“Come on,” Laurie summoned him. “It’s safe.”

John shrugged, stepped up the remaining rungs to the scaffold, got his grip, and hauled himself up the wall beside her. He smiled at her as he did so, self-conscious of the sweat beading his brow, wiping at it, his forefinger pushing his eyeglasses up the bridge of his nose.

“Look,” Laurie almost whispered.

Past the wall on which they sat was a backyard, another row of houses parallel to their own, similar to Eden’s, complete with a community drive and individual yards. The fences in these yards still stood because no one had torn them down. This particular yard was ringed on three sides by an eight-foot-tall wooden fence. A separate wire fence at the front overlooked the stairs that led down into the driveway.

There was a zombie on the stairs, standing there looking at the ground, seemingly oblivious to their presence. John had seen this particular corpse before. Some of the undead were transient, others stood around for days and even weeks on end in the same spot, like they had nowhere to go, which, John figured, they did not.

This one had been a man, as attested by its nakedness from the waist down. No pants, shoes, or socks. Its mottled cock hung limp between its legs. The thing had sustained some kind of damage down there and its penis hung lower than normal, attached to its groin by a strand of skin that had been stretched out. From the waist up it wore a collared shirt, stained and bloodied, ripped in places. Most of the epidermis on its face was peeled away. From the nose down, the white of the skull shone through, as its lips were gnawed off to reveal decayed gums, the muscles of the neck and cheeks clinging to the bone.

It wasn’t a pleasant sight.

“I don’t think it knows we’re here,” said John.

“No, not that,” Laurie whispered back, pointing. “That.”

There were two sheds in the yard. One was large with a boarded-up window. Its entrance was around in the front, which John and Laurie couldn’t see. Behind this shed, nearer to them, stood a smaller, corrugated shed, similar to the one John’s father had had at home to store their lawn mower.

Laurie pointed to the space—three feet, if that—between this second smaller shed and the wall that ringed Eden. A calico cat stared up at them, watching John and Laurie intently, not sure whether the humans meant her harm or not. The cat had three kittens nursing her teats, and from the looks of it, John figured the kittens were only five or six weeks old.

His family had had cats since he was a little boy, and the sight made him smile. Somehow, someway, this feline had survived to birth her brood. It was no small accomplishment given that the zombies devoured every animal and bird and living thing they could get their hands on, John knew. He had seen a zombie eat his family’s dog—and right after that his little brother, Kyle—before his father had brained it with a pry bar.

“Aren’t they cute?” Laurie beamed.

God, she’s lovely. John’s smile filled his face.

“How old do you think they are?” Laurie kept her voice low. The half-naked zombie on the steps was immobile. Occasionally it shifted its weight from one leg to another, its wang dangling.

John told her what he thought and she sighed.

“Shoot,” he said. “We can’t just leave them there, can we?”

Laurie cast a wary glance toward the half-naked zombie. It hadn’t changed position.

“They’ve made it this far okay,” she noted. “And as long as they stay where they are, maybe they’ll be okay.”

John thought about it. Holding on to where he was, making sure his perch atop the wall was stable, he turned and looked behind him. The gardeners were still doing their thing, an occasional laugh or snippet of conversation floating his and Laurie’s way.

Buddy was up on his roof. The big man had on shades, an unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt, and shorts. He was sitting low to the ground in a little lawn chair ridiculously small for his frame. He saw John and waved, and John reciprocated.

“What are you thinking?” Laurie asked him.

John was thinking that if he could lower himself down onto the roof of the smaller shed, from there he could easily drop to the ground between it and the wall. He could keep out of sight of the lone zombie, pass the kittens back up to Laurie, something like that. John wondered if the mother cat would stick around, or if she would run away, and he wished he could assure her that he didn’t want to harm her or her babies.

He told Laurie all this but he left out the other strand of his thought . . . the one in which he hoped that, should he rescue the cat and her kittens, Laurie might be impressed. That wouldn’t be a bad thing. No siree.

“I don’t know, John. It’s risky.”

“Yeah, but not too much,” John persuaded her. “I drop in, you keep an eye on that thing. It’ll take a minute tops.”

The wooden fence abutting the sheds stirred, as if from a breeze.

“I’ve got an idea,” Laurie said. “Let me go and get a basket and a rope. One of us will climb over, and the other will lower the basket.”

John understood where she was going with this and agreed. He looked one more time at the solo zombie—it had its back to them—and then climbed down the ladder onto the scaffold, holding out his hand as Laurie followed, marveling at the warmth of her touch. She squeezed his arm and went off in search of a basket.

He leaned back on the wall and looked around. From this vantage point, John could no longer see Buddy, but he could still see the gardeners. Julie was talking with them.

Julie was friggin’ hot. No two ways about it. Laurie was attractive in her own way too, kind of a younger Julie maybe, John thought, though Julie didn’t look that much older than Laurie.

John’s buddy Thompson liked Julie, but she wasn’t giving him the time of day. Matter of fact, Julie hadn’t shown an interest in any of the men in Eden since she’d arrived. Maybe watching all her companions die in front of her on the way in had killed her romantic drive. Possible. Then again, maybe aggressive assholes like Diaz—who had Shannon, for Christ’s sake—had a way of putting a girl off men in general.

He thought about Laurie. John had never really considered himself in the running, hadn’t even thought about sex or a relationship at all until recently when he’d started to spend more time around her. And Thompson, well Thompson was a nice enough guy in his own way, but he was also young, a year older than John, which made him younger than Julie, and Julie seemed like the type of woman who would go for a different kind of man, a more mature man.

Laurie was cute though, and how. Oh man. She didn’t dress provocatively like Isabel or anything but she looked great to John. Those jeans.

Eden had been a much better place since Buddy and Harris arrived. The two men had come in together and it seemed like they’d known each other for a long time, but John realized this might not be the case. This situation had thrust friendships upon many. One night when he was drunk, Diaz had wondered aloud if Harris and Buddy were “fruity for one another.” John’s father had told the man to shut up, that he was drunk and wasn’t saying anything other than garbage that would wind up provoking a confrontation, that he’d get his “ass handed to” him.

John thought about that. Harris and Buddy weren’t gay. They’d just been through a lot together. It wouldn’t bother him if they were. Larry Chen was. That was cool.

Diaz was tall and wiry, a scrappy type, who could probably hold his own in a fight. Could Diaz take Harris? John wasn’t so sure. Harris seemed tough enough even though he was low-key. John would be willing to bet money that Diaz couldn’t take Buddy out in a fair fight. Buddy had to be in his fifties and he was affable and talkative, which might put people at ease, but John knew there was also a tough as nails son of a bitch under all that.

The whole thing with Graham had proved it—the way Buddy had just executed the man. He hadn’t even hesitated, had just gone and blown the fat man away. And John had heard about the thing with Markowski. Not that the big prick hadn’t had it coming to him.

Before Eden, before all this, John would have thought all of that was wrong. But morality had changed since then—which was also why he couldn’t just dismiss Isabel as a promiscuous slut the way his father could, though he knew for a fact that she had slept with at least six men in Eden. Isabel had made eyes at him too, which had been confidence boosting at the time, because she was an older woman and all with great tits, and John hadn’t known then about her banging seemingly every guy in Eden. He’d thought he was special.

After a time, John understood that the way she was looking at him was the way you look at a piece of meat you’re sizing up. Nothing exceptional, just today’s meal. He did his best to steer clear of Isabel from then on, and had done a good job until he’d come across her blowing those guys the other night right out in the open.

John was trying not to pass judgment on people anymore, but he still thought it was wrong that Diaz was in that alley with Isabel, what with Shannon and all.

Laurie came back his way, grinning. She had a big wicker picnic basket in her hands.

“Think this’ll work?”

John looked it over. She had coiled a length of clothesline cord inside.

“Yeah, it’ll do.” He tied one end of the clothesline to the handles, leaving the knot loose so he could undo it when he had to. “Want to give this a try?”

John ascended the scaffold first and looked over the wall. The single zombie was alone there still, ignorant of their presence. John reached down and took the basket from Laurie, set it on the lip of the wall, and took her hand and pulled her up next to him. He was aware again of how close they were, how good that felt, and how good she looked and smelled. Of how good she made him feel inside.

“Okay.” John shimmied a few feet off to the right, putting himself out of view of the lone zombie should it look, placing himself in a position where he’d be between the small shed and their wall. John reached down to check the .38 in his holster and the speedloaders on his belt, just in case.

He looked over at Laurie. She looked back at him, and he liked how she looked at him. Admiration, in a woman-to-man way. Not the way he admired his father or Harris or Buddy. A way that carried hints, maybe future possibilities with it. Yeah, boy! John felt invincible.

From where he sat on the wall, he had something of a view of the houses and alley below. The zombie was out of his line of sight, the roof of the large shed blocking one from the other. Laurie could see the thing from where she sat and John knew she’d keep an eye on it. Aside from the one zombie, he could detect no others. Nothing in the community drive, nothing in the alley he could see. Of course, that didn’t mean they weren’t down there somewhere, but if they were he figured Laurie would let him know and he’d get back up over the wall before even the fast ones could make the yard.

The wooden fence separating the yard below from the one next to him creaked in the wind. What wind? John thought, but quickly dismissed from his mind.

He reached a foot out tentatively, finding the roof of the smaller corrugated shed, wondering if it could hold his weight. John shifted more weight to that foot, pushed with it, testing to see if the shed would sway. It held tight, steady.

Okay. John pushed off with his other leg, over the gap, coming to rest firmly on the roof of the little shed. It creaked a bit under him, but it held.

From this position John could see the cats below. The mother looked up with interest. The roof of the larger shed was within reach, puddles of water from the last downpour pooled atop it.

John turned to Laurie and saw the concern on her face disappear when she saw the look of confidence on his. He saw Buddy up on his roof, standing there, watching him intently, probably wondering what the hell John was doing.

He’d show the big man when he was done. Maybe even give him one of the kittens. John was a big believer that everyone could benefit from a pet in his life.

The drop to the yard below was shorter than John was tall, so he figured he’d be able to pull himself up when the time came. John dropped down and got his bearings.

He noticed that the lock on the shed was absent, that the shed itself had seen better days, all rusty and dented as it was. He scanned his eyes about, a little uneasy outside of Eden.

The mother cat hissed at him as he approached.

He motioned to Laurie and she let down the basket.

“Hey mommy . . .” John soothed, trying to sound as non-threatening as he could. “I’m not going to hurt you or your babies.”

The mother cat wasn’t going anywhere, even with this larger human animal looming over it. John figured if he tried to snatch a kitten its mom would claw the crap out of his hand. He decided to snag the mother first.

The basket hung at waist level. John got the mother cat’s attention with his left hand, snapping his fingers and waving it a foot from her face. The kittens were mewling, frightened. He reached in quick with his right hand, gripping the mom by the scruff of the neck. She hissed, going for his hand, but John had already twisted her up and away from him, pulling her from her babies, gripping her tight.

He flipped a lid on the picnic basket and unceremoniously dumped the struggling mother inside before she could draw blood. John slipped the lock into place and listened to her muffled growling from within.

Laurie smiled down at him.

Phew! That was the hard part, and it had gone off without a hitch. John paused to slide his glasses back up his nose before reaching down to the first of the kittens, an adorable black and white one. He took it by the neck like he knew he could without hurting it. The kitten went limp in his grasp as it did for its mother.

John opened the other side of the picnic basket, placed the kitten gently inside with its mom, keeping one hand on the lid in case the mother tried to barge out, reached down for a second kitten, this one all white, put it in the basket, and was reaching for the third kitten when a zombie that had been hiding in the little shed burst out and tackled him from behind.

John fell, surprised, twisting as he did so to avoid collapsing on the last kitten, Laurie screamed his name from above. A fast one, the zombie regained its balance quickly. In the enclosed space between the shed and the wall, its speed was lethal.

John was up, fumbling with the clasp on his holster at the same time that the zombie rushed him again. John’s hand went up to protect his neck, pushing at the zombie’s face as it grabbed him, and bodily lifted him off the ground and ran. It covered the five steps between the shed and the wall, slamming John against the wooden fence fronting the yard. The fence gave way slightly, undead hands reaching for John from that yard, clawing at his back.

He screamed as the hand he blocked with was bitten through, the attacking creature tearing his pinky and ring fingers, severing them. John cleared the .38 at the same time, firing into the zombie, one crack, two. The shots loosened its grip on him, and sent it back a couple of steps, just enough for him to fire a third round directly into its head. The bullet ricocheted inside the cranial cavity and blew out its jaw.

“Aw, shit!” John looked down at his bloody hand as he pulled back against the hands seizing him from the other yard. He fell forward onto his knees, striking his wounded hand on the dirt.

He’d lost his glasses somewhere in the struggle and all was a blur.

Laurie was on top of the wall, crying hysterically, clutching the clothesline attached to the picnic basket.

“Pull them up!” John yelled at her, turning at the sound of splintering wood, a gaggle of zombies tearing their way through the wooden fence behind which they had been massed waiting.

Bam! Bam! Bam! John emptied the revolver into the fence and the zombies behind it, but he was starting to panic, his aim was shaky and he couldn’t see or tell if he had scored any head shots.

Laurie pulled the basket up as John fumbled with a speedloader, cracking open the revolver, dumping the six empty shells, trying to fit the new ones, the gun and his hands bloody and slick.

Buddy tore ass from the roof down into the house, stopping only to grab the weapon closest at hand, a flamethrower in his living room.

Harris, hearing the commotion and gunshots, came charging through the yards, unmindful of the crops he trampled underfoot. He saw Laurie on the wall with a picnic basket, her face red, tears streaming from her eyes, pointing and screaming.

The fence behind him gave way. John extended the .38 and fired once, right into a zombie’s face.

Sweating like a pig, John reached out and took the third kitten in his wounded hand, never once considering throwing it up to Laurie, scrabbling for the roof of the corrugated shed. He placed the .38 there, set the kitten aside it, propped himself between the wall and the shed and tried to climb up. Somehow John made it, pulling himself to the top of the shed, even with his red-slicked hand, bolts of agony shooting through it. The kitten was mewing. Laurie was hysterical. The lid of the picnic basket was off, and the mother cat was looking out at them and hissing. Harris was on the wall next to Laurie. People inside Eden were yelling and calling out to each other, to John.

“Dad!”

The shed gave under his weight, collapsing inward, pitching the whole structure against the wall surrounding Eden. John banged his head against the barricade on the way down, seeing lights, shaking it out, somehow managing to keep the .38 in his good hand. But the kitten had slipped away from him, and was taking a few tentative steps on the ground.

More slats of the wooden fence parted and tore free as the zombies came through the gap. John lay on his back on the ground, firing the .38, punching a hole through the first thing’s chest, his second shot coring through its mouth and dropping it. The corpse collapsed on the corrugated roof that had crumpled in the small space. John fired repeatedly, missing once, scoring a neck shot with his next round. The zombie twisted around ninety degrees, righted itself, and propelled forward by the others behind it, a wall of them in the enclosed space, overcame the kitten. And overwhelmed John.

“No!” Fred Turner cried from atop the wall, firing a shotgun down into the horde blindly. Harris, his face grim, selected targets and fired first one 9-millimeter out, then the second, felling zombies where they stood. Bobby Evers eschewed his .30-.30 in favor of a pistol, capping zombies. All of them fired and reloaded and fired, but for all that, their efforts were to no avail.

In the huddle beneath, John screamed, as the zombies buried him, some of them dead, most not. There was one on his stomach and he fired a round into its head, but it was already dead. He felt them biting his legs and the pain was incredible. John did his best to sit up, but their weight pressed down upon him, and his last shot discharged blindly. He didn’t know if he hit anything. John reached for another speedloader with his good hand, wanting to live, to survive, scared shitless and in agony. Zombies wrestled his hand away from his belt and bit into his other forearm, teeth sinking into his hand between his thumb and fingers.

The mother cat leaped out of the picnic basket and stood atop the fence, back arched, hair on end, hissing down at the zombies eating the fallen man, the zombies that were dying as other humans shot them in the head, her kitten down there somewhere. The cat jumped from the fence into the fray, caught in midair by dead hands, passed around for a second above them all, her bites and scratches going unnoticed. She was finally pulled down to a waiting mouth, which rent her belly as she screamed.

An undead mouth bobbed down and when it reared back, John’s other hand was shorn three digits to the palm. He stared in disbelief at the deformed crimson club at the end of his wrist, as if it belonged to someone else.

“Get him off the fucking wall!” Harris shouted to the gathered, indicating Fred Turner. John’s father was trying to reload his gun, unable to do so as his tears blinded him

Worse, John was still down there, screaming in agony, calling for his dad. The zombies had torn his left hand free and were digging into his stomach.

Palmer and Kate Truman pulled Fred from the wall, but the older man struggled, wanting to get back up and save his doomed son.

Laurie had stopped screaming and just shook, watching the scene unfold.

It looked like dozens of zombies had gathered in the adjacent yard, and once the trap had been sprung by the one in the shed, they’d all surged forward.

Many of them were dead, but others were reaching into John’s belly as Julie looked on. He was still screaming when they yanked handfuls of steaming entrails free. Julie reached up and pulled Laurie off the wall, pressing the younger woman to her.

“Move!” Buddy made it to the wall, knowing it was too late. What the fuck had the Turner boy and that girl been doing on the wall to begin with? Shannon had the picnic basket and was crying, looking down at two little kittens.

People made way as Buddy, lugging the flamethrower, clambered up onto the wall with Harris and Evers.

There was a low moaning from the Turner boy. The sight of him, disemboweled, a leg chewed through and detached as Buddy watched, was heart wrenching. And the kid, Buddy saw, the kid was still alive, dying but holding on. The look in his eyes was somehow still coherent. He knew.

Buddy brought the muzzle of the flamethrower up and triggered it, a stream of fire belching forth, filling the gap below between the wall and the space where the corrugated shed had once stood. The undead went up like dry kindling, staggering around aflame, bouncing off the walls, howling. Buddy worked the spray around, jetting it into the others massed in the yard beyond, the ones waiting to get in and pick over the scraps.

Fuck them all to hell.

John Turner’s eyes were open but he wasn’t seeing anything.

Harris had left the wall to help Mickey, Bear, and Palmer restrain John’s dad.

Evers was next to Buddy with his .30-.30, firing into the burning zombies.

“No,” Buddy told him. “Let them burn. Fuck ’em.”

The noxious funk of burning flesh and fur filled the air. A few of the immolated zombies wailed, obviously in some kind of pain, and it brought Buddy some satisfaction to know they could feel pain. He wanted them to feel pain, as much of it as they could, and as much of it as he could visit upon them. No amount of pain would ever be enough for what they had done and for what the world had become.

Buddy doused them with the flame and watched them burn.

He surveyed it all, angry with himself. Why hadn’t he gotten up earlier and gone and seen what those stupid fucking kids were up to? What was left of John Turner was unrecognizable, steaming and blistering, conjoined with the molten remnants of the undead.

Harris approached the wicker picnic basket that lay discarded. When he opened it he shook his head, reached in, and pulled the kitten there out by its scruff.

“What are we going to do with you then?”

The kitten looked at him and mewed.

The lone zombie, sans pants, stood where it had been standing at the front of the yard. It watched its enkindled brethren, watched Buddy and Evers until the potency of the heat and stink drove them from their roost.

45.

Diaz thought he heard a gunshot, but, nah, it couldn’t have been, so he took another long drag from the spliff, shifted in his hammock, and closed his eyes.

Voices were behind him, but he ignored them.

“Bobby?” The concern in Gwen’s voice for her husband was bordering on hysteria.

Bear picked up a length of steel pipe and, after Julie, was the next person inside Harris’s house.

There was screaming down in the basement and a woman was crying as Bear rushed down the stairs, nearly tripping over his own feet. Harris’s cat hissed and bounded up the steps past him.

Bear stalked into the basement with the pipe in his hand, one of his eyes staring off into space.

Thompson let out a last scream, a bloodied rag hanging half out of his mouth, his cry petering into a strangled gargle. He lay on the floor, jackknifed, with his arms bound behind his back, secured to a pole. The zombie on top of him had chewed through his leg at the calf and ripped a couple of ribs from him. It reached within Thompson to pull what was inside out, then turned and faced a weeping Julie and Bear behind her.

“Harris,” said Bear.

Naked from the waist up, blood leaking from a chest wound, the zombie gave them both a look like they weren’t important, and resumed its consumption. Bear saw where the bandage on the upper arm had been loosed, flapping over a discolored bite.

Julie shuddered as she cried, and Bear wrapped an enormous arm around her, pulling her a step back. People were on the stairs behind them.

Thompson looked dead, but then his one foot that hadn’t been chewed off moved.

“Oh, Harris,” Bear sighed. He laid the pipe aside and took the .357 from its holster on Julie’s hip.

“Oh, Harris.” He said it again.

Bear fired once, the round entering the back of the zombie’s head, exiting the front, depositing the contents of its skull across the basement.

“Bobby!” Gwen was in the basement, crying. “My Bobby!”

Larry Chen looked up from where Evers lay and shook his head.

Gwen went berserk, screaming and wailing. She had to be carried back up the stairs.

“Get her out of here too,” Bear said of Julie and they took her from the place, leaving the bald man with the dead.

Bear squatted down onto the soles of his feet and cried. When he was done crying, he prayed.

A moan ended his supplication. He looked up. Thompson had rolled over onto his side to face him, the remainder of his stomach cavity slipping out onto the basement floor.

Bear stood and stuffed the Colt Python in his pants and took up the pipe. He went and stood over the thing that had been Thompson, the thing that was clawing toward him and moaning. Bear raised the pipe and brought it down, and then he brought it down again, and he continued to bring it down even when he needn’t have, until he was good and tired and flecked with gore.

46.

The manhole cover slid back and everyone immediately ceased what they were doing. The muzzles of a dozen pistols, shotguns, and assault rifles focused on the dark hole in the street.

With a grunt, a pair of saddlebags heaved up out of the opening, landing on the street.

“No fucking way,” Mickey breathed, lowering the barrel of his AR-15.

A man climbed out of the Earth, an older man. He was a big, black man with hair gone gray, but he was still one very tough-looking and very-much-alive motherfucker.

“Buddy?” someone asked as if it could be anyone but him.

Buddy stood up and looked around and saw faces he mostly knew and some he didn’t.

“Boo!” he said, but no one laughed.

A small crowd encircled him, incredulity and awe etched on their faces.

“Bear.” Buddy greeted those he knew by name. Some of them were reaching out to touch him, to verify his corporeality.

“Glad—glad to have you back, Buddy.” The biker, his one good eye red rimmed, turned and walked away.

Buddy looked them over, every one of them. He hugged some of the women. With the men he shook hands or shared a pound—or an elbow-to-chest-hand-on-the-back half hug with guys like Mickey and Larry.

Isabel’s UGGs were the extent of her winter weather garb. Her shirt was riding up, revealing her belly, and she had a baby in her arms, a little boy.

Buddy spied Julie sort of hanging back toward the rear of them all, and he waved to her. She gave a little smile. Like Bear, she then turned away, and Buddy knew with certainty something had happened to his boy Harris.

“Mickey, where is he?” With the question, most everyone else began to file away, going back to their midafternoon business. “Where’s Harris?”

“We should talk, Buddy.”

Buddy felt like he’d been hit in the stomach. He bowed his head and licked his upper lip. He’d come this far, he’d survived, he’d come to take Harris and Julie and Bobby and Gwen and all of them who wanted to go to a better place, a safer place.

He wanted to scream at Mickey, to grab him by the shoulders and shake the fate of his only true friend from him but he did not.

“Okay.” Buddy’s throat tightened.

“Buddy.” Fred Turner was the only other man standing there with them. “What about the others?”

“We all made it,” Buddy said, looking around Eden. It wasn’t any different, just another change of seasons, banks of shoveled dirty snow. “Except Sal.” He looked around for the man’s wife. “Where’s Camille?”

“She didn’t make it either,” said Mickey.

“Shit,” breathed Buddy. But that made it so much easier. He’d been dreading running into Bianaculli’s wife and having to tell her the fate that had befallen her husband. He had so much to tell them all, but he needed to know what had become of Harris and Bobby. Mickey tried to take Buddy’s arm. “Buddy, let’s go sit down somewhere and talk.”

“Give me a minute.” Buddy brushed him aside and went after Julie.

“Julie. Julie!”

She looked at him and gave a weak wave and entered her house and he could tell she was crying. Buddy swallowed hard and knew Harris was gone. At the same time he looked up and thought he saw someone—was it Diaz?—staring down at him from a window, but as soon as he looked, the guy drew back out of sight.

Buddy didn’t knock. He walked into Harris’s house and found Julie sitting on the couch.

“Julie.”

“Hi, Buddy.” She sniffled and wiped her hand across her nose.

Julie stood up and Buddy saw that as thin as she was, her belly protruded.

“Do you mind?”

“No, go ahead.” She did not make eye contact.

Buddy went to one knee and reached out and placed a big palm on her stomach, imaging the warmth under the sweater there, the life.

“My boy Harris,” he whispered.

Julie fell onto her own knees, weeping, and Buddy held her tight and felt the tears in his own eyes. He let them come and they cried together like that.

After a while he put his palm back on Julie’s tummy and felt the life inside her kick, and that made him smile through his tears.

“Yeah, Harris, you da man.”

Late that night, Buddy decamped from the house where Julie now lived alone.

The snow fell under a full moon. It would have been a beautiful night if not for the wailing and the stench.

The plans had been made. Those who needed to know knew and would be waiting on him. They were going to a better place, a place Buddy and the others had found.

Those who didn’t need to know, the ones Buddy could care less about, they had no idea. They would wake up in the morning and a few more people would be gone and they would go about their lives in Eden living off their stores, harvesting the next paltry crop in the spring, and hanging on as best they could.

Buddy moved fast and light without the saddlebags. He wore black jeans, black combat boots, and a black turtleneck sweater over a longsleeve black T-shirt. His only weapons were the silenced 9-millimeter in his right hand and the knife sheathed on his left ankle.

He passed through the night like a wraith. Fred Turner was on watch and seemed unaware as Buddy crossed the street behind him toward the homes there. The people inside were sleeping. Only one or two curtained windows had some light filtering through.

Buddy was a different man than he had once been, a better man, but he knew enough of his old self co-existed within that should Fred Turner or anyone else in Eden try to stop him from what he needed to do, he wouldn’t let them. He had no truck with most of the people in Eden, but he would not hesitate tonight to kill any one of them. All of them if he must. If they got in the way of his doing what was right.

Much like Fred’s life after John’s death, Diaz’s had been a downhill path since Shannon’s end. Where the elder Turner turned to silence with a glazed look, Diaz literally went to pot. He smoked day and night, drank like a fish, and, in the opinion of most, was slowly but surely killing himself. Julie had told Buddy all of this.

A fresh covering of snow fell about him, and when people awoke, his boot prints would be long gone.

Buddy reached Diaz’s house and went right up to the front door. There were no lights on in the house that he could discern. Buddy aimed the silenced 9-millimeter at the doorknob but reconsidered. He reached out, grasped the handle and turned, and it was open.

He entered Diaz’s house and pushed the door closed behind him, but not all the way. It was silent and dark in the vestibule. Buddy let himself into a living room that appeared unlived-in. He figured Diaz was upstairs in his bedroom.

The fact that the front door was unlocked could have signaled a warning; Diaz might be expecting him. He had seen Buddy with Mickey, and he’d seen Buddy go after Julie. No matter how stoned Diaz was, he must have thought they would talk to Buddy.

If it was a trap, if Diaz was waiting somewhere in the house, Buddy wished he’d bring it on. He knew only rage.

“Hello, Buddy.”

Diaz didn’t look surprised to see him. He was lying on his bed on the second floor, in his boxer shorts on top of his blankets. He looked like he had been waiting there all eternity for this moment to arrive and unfold. Diaz had a big paunch and a couple of chins that hadn’t been shaved in some time. There was a lethargic, resigned look to his face and eyes.

Candles burned on the table beside the bed. An assault rifle leaned against the far wall, well out of reach of his sprawl. The Dominican didn’t look like he had the inclination to go for it anytime soon.

Diaz took a pull from his blunt, breathed in deep and held it, then exhaled. He looked lazily at the silenced pistol staring at him.

“Want some?” Diaz gestured with the joint.

Buddy stood there.

“I know why you’re here, Buddy.”

The house creaked in the cold.

“Come on, man, say something,” Diaz pled lamely. “You’re bugging me out here, man.”

Buddy considered the knife or the gun.

“You ain’t afraid to die, are you?” Buddy asked, venom in his voice.

“This?” Diaz motioned to encompass much more than the room. “This ain’t life, what we got going on around here, man.”

The blunt burned down as they looked at one another, Buddy with contempt, Diaz listlessly.

“We never thought you’d come back, man. I told Mickey what I did, ’cause I’d hoped he’d be the one, do me the favor.”

Diaz took a last pull on the cigar, killing it. He held it in for as long as he could and exhaled.

“I just want to be with Shannon, man,” Diaz sighed almost to himself.

Buddy stepped up to the foot of the bed and extended his arm with the 9-millimeter.

“You want me to go for my gun, will that make it easier for you?” Diaz inquired languidly.

“Fuck you. I don’t need an excuse.”

“Just one favor—” Diaz was animated for a moment, propping himself up with his hands on the bed, his stomach spilling over the elastic of his boxers. “Not in the face, okay?”

Buddy fired and blood spurted from a puncture next to Diaz’s bellybutton. Diaz looked down in disbelief. His face spattered with blood as a second and then a third pock erupted in his abdomen and chest. He collapsed on his back staring at the ceiling, breathless.

The only noise in the room was the music from the iPod docking station beside him on the bed.

Buddy walked over and pressed the silencer between Diaz’s eyes. They bugged out—

“That’s right.”

—and he pulled the trigger until the slide locked open on an empty chamber.

He swabbed the silencer with Diaz’s blankets and wiped the blood from his own hands. Buddy reloaded the pistol, then went around and blew out all the candles in the room. He was calm again. There was no need to leave them burning. Might have an accident, burn down Eden.

Outside, the street was empty and silent. Buddy moved rapidly, a sense of release flooding over him.

“Buddy,” a voice hissed, but it was Bear’s voice and Buddy didn’t start. Bear materialized in the night, his chain saw strapped bladedown across his enormous back. Julie and Gwen and Mickey were behind him. All were dressed for the weather: boots, jeans, sweaters under jackets, hats, and gloves. All were loaded with backpacks that bulged with weapons and provisions, with whatever they’d considered worth bringing with them. Bear had Buddy’s leather jacket and saddlebags.

Buddy nodded, hugged Julie and Gwen quickly, then squatted down with Bear and slid the manhole cover out of the way.

Bear squeezed down first, a flashlight dangling from a lanyard around his neck. Buddy handed down the man’s pack, his saw, and his submachine gun; then leaned down with Julie’s gear, and Gwen’s. Gwen went down next, then Mickey. Julie took one last look around Eden as she tugged at the strap of the AR-15, the weapon across her back. She looked at the wall she’d come in over, then at the house she’d shared with the man she loved.

Julie shrugged and disappeared down the hole.

A lone, piercing cry from over the wall made Buddy look up.

Fred Turner was awake on the north wall, rocking back and forth slowly where he sat. He watched as Buddy handed his saddlebags down into the earth.

Buddy slipped his right arm into the sleeve of his jacket, then his left. He didn’t look around as Julie had. There was nothing for him here.

Instead he looked up at Turner on the wall, and he waved. The other man nodded and waved back.

Buddy stepped onto the ladder, climbed down a few rungs, reached up and heaved the manhole cover back into place.

47.

Diaz took a long pull from the bong, held it in, closed his eyes, and let it go.

“This is some good shit here,” he said for anyone who might be listening, “You want a hit off this?”

They weren’t really ignoring him, they were just talking about pop culture again, and Diaz wasn’t really in on the discussion, opting to get zooted instead.

“No, no, no, you’re thinking Dukes of Hazzard, Harris,” explained Mickey. “Denver Pyle was Uncle Jesse.”

“Yeah, I’m not arguing that with you,” said Harris, “But Denver Pyle was also on Grizzly Adams.”

“Grizzly Adams? That was what’s his name—that guy who looked like one of them shaggy seventies singers,” said Isabel. She sat between Diaz and Thompson, and every time she tried to make eye contact with Harris, he evaded it. Julie saw this and she knew him to be a man good and true.

“Dan Haggerty,” Mickey named the actor. “Wonder whatever happened to that guy?”

Thompson cast a thumb over his shoulder at the wall just as a deathly moan floated up and over.

“No, I think he died before all this crap.” Mickey tried to recall, not remembering which celebrities died when and how, always wondering if he was going to look over the wall one day and see someone he knew. A celebrity wouldn’t be so bad, but a family member or a friend, Christ.

“Pyle was Mad Jack on Grizzly Adams,” said Harris.

“Shit, I remember that show,” said Diaz. “What was the name of the bear?”

“Ben,” answered Harris, who usually ignored Diaz.

“Nah, Ben was that nerdy guy’s rat.”

“No,” said Mickey, “the bear’s name was Ben, too.”

Thompson reached into his flannel pocket, tapped on the bottom of a pack of Newports and popped one out. He put it in his mouth, flicked his Zippo, and put flame to the cigarette.

“Let me get one of those,” Diaz murmured and Thompson handed him one along with the lighter.

“Wasn’t Denver Pyle on that old show Richie Cunningham used to be on?” asked Julie, remembering her Nick at Night.

Mickey laughed. “Richie Cunningham. That was—”

“Ron Howard,” finished Isabel.

“Yeah, that’s him. He was a kid on The Andy Griffith Show. But no, the character’s name on the show was Gomer Pyle. But what was that actor’s name?” Mickey scrunched up his forehead and bit his tongue.

“You fools are ruining my high, man.” Diaz handed the lighter back to Thompson, the other absentmindedly placing it atop the pack of cigarettes beside his leg.

“Okay, Harris, you’ve got a good memory,” Mickey said, and Harris saw it coming, the friendly challenge. Mickey loved his movies, and since he’d lifted the portable DVD player from a corner drugstore everyone else had seen less and less of him. He spent his time with his obscure films.

“Hit me,” said Harris, wondering if it sounded funny with Thompson sitting there. Thompson didn’t seem to notice as he sat and smoked his Newport.

“Does the name Forrest Tucker ring a bell?” Mickey clasped his hands in front of his body like a small child.

“Forrest Tucker . . . Forrest Tucker.” Harris mulled it over. The name did sound like one he knew. Mickey was familiar with all these old movies and TV shows Harris had grown up watching, shows Mickey and the others—except maybe Isabel—were all too young to have seen outside of reruns. Mickey was a true cinephile and pop culture maniac. He’d rented and owned thousands of films in his life and watched as reruns a lot of the stuff Harris had seen coming up.

“Want a hint?” Mickey looked like he wanted to give Harris one.

“You don’t have to tell me. I got it. F Troop!”

“F Troop?” Julie knew that one from syndication. They used to play reruns at eleven o’clock at night when she was in high school.

“Larry Storch,” said Isabel.

“Right, Larry Storch was Corporal Agarn,” said Mickey, “And Forrest Tucker was—”

“Sergeant O’Rourke,” said Harris.

“Shit, didn’t none of you watch any shows with a brother in it?” asked Diaz, killing the blunt.

“Does Good Times count?” asked Julie.

“Shit, Jimmie Walker, bobolon.” Diaz laughed to himself, thinking of how Jimmie used to argue with Bookman, the super of the building. After a while, Diaz realized he was laughing alone and everyone else was looking at him. Shannon wasn’t with him and never would be again.

You motherfuckers could ruin a wet dream, Diaz thought to himself, but then realized he had said it out loud, which caused him another fit of laughter.

“Ever seen Abominable Snowman, Harris?” asked Mickey.

“Oh man, you’re going waaaay back there. Even I didn’t catch that one on the first go. Saw it on a Saturday morning Channel 11 horror festival or something.”

“The abominable snowman,” said Julie, “isn’t that the Sasquatch?”

“Sasquatch, Yeti, all the same,” affirmed Mickey.

Shannon was a hairy bitch, thought Diaz, had a bush like one of those seventies porn stars. He missed his Shannon.

“I seen a picture of one of them things once,” Thompson added favorably.

Harris asked, “Was it out of focus, big, manlike hairy thing walking along swinging an arm at its side?”

Diaz said something that no one understood and while he laughed to himself the others paid him no mind.

“That’s the one,” said Thompson, and Harris noted that whatever had been between them, if anything had been, it seemed to have gone, and he felt better that it had. Thompson wasn’t a bad kid. Just this place, these circumstances . . . it all had a way of bringing out the worst in them if they weren’t careful. Diaz, for instance. Diaz was cracked.

“I hate to tell you this, honey,” said Isabel, “but those photos were doctored.”

“Damn, looked real enough to me.” Thompson shrugged.

“What’s Abominable Snowman?” asked Julie.

Diaz kept looking over at Isabel’s tits. They were huge beneath her sweater. Shannon had had pretty big ones herself, and Diaz had forgotten what color Isabel’s areolas were, pink or brown.

“Forrest Tucker was in that, wasn’t he?” asked Harris.

“Right!” Mickey was enthused.

“And Peter Cushing.” The film was coming back to Harris.

“Peter Cushing was that British guy starred in all them horror movies, right?” asked Bear.

“Yeah.” Mickey nodded. “Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Vincent Price. Between them they must have starred in hundreds of horror films.”

“Pink or brown?” Diaz cackled, but no one understood one word of what he said.

“I remember it,” said Harris. “Peter Cushing is a scientist up in the Himalayas, living in a Tibetan monastery with the Dalai Lama—” He laughed, thinking of the actor playing the Lama.

Mickey continued for him. “Yeah, and Forrest Tucker plays an American adventurer, comes looking for the abominable snowman. Takes Cushing along with him, way up into the mountains.”

“I bet I can guess what happens next,” said Julie. “The abominable snowman gets them?”

“Not exactly,” said Mickey.

“Yeah, they find the yeti, but there’s a whole bunch of them,” said Harris. “Matter of fact, they shoot one of them and kill it, take the body. They’re planning to bring it back down to civilization with them, prove its existence. But then things start to happen.”

“They’re hearing voices and stuff,” Mickey took over. “It drives them insane, their guide runs off, and one of them goes climbing a mountain chasing voices, and falls off. Another gets a close encounter with the snowmen and dies of shock.”

“What, the yeti didn’t kill them?” asked Bear.

“That’s the thing,” said Harris. “The abominable snowmen never lay a hand on the humans. It’s the humans who go and screw things up, killing a yeti. Forrest Tucker freaks out, starts firing off his revolver, gets himself buried in an avalanche.”

“What happens to my boy Cushing?”

Mickey looked at Harris, and Harris nodded and let him tell it.

“Peter Cushing’s been hiding out in this cave where Tucker and the other guy had stashed the dead yeti, right?” Mickey reveled in telling the story. “He comes back to the cave and he’s confronted by two Yeti. They’re in there carting their dead brother off.”

“I know Cushing goes out like a ‘g’.”

“No, Bear, he doesn’t. Well, yes he does—kind of. One of the yeti approaches Cushing, gets up in his face real close-like. Cushing’s terrified, thinks the thing is gonna tear him limb from limb. He looks up into its face, sees an intelligence there. A sadness. Like the thing knows something he don’t.”

“What’s it know?” Isabel asked, sounding bored by the conversation because she had never seen the movie and was a fan of neither Peter Cushing nor Forrest Tucker.

“Harris?”

“Cushing figures it out,” said Harris. “The snowmen aren’t so abominable. It’s the humans who are. They’d capture one of the snowmen if they could, bring it back with them, set off the beginning of the end of the yeti race. And for what? Cushing realizes it’s the humans who are really the monsters in the film. And that snowman? Doesn’t harm him, doesn’t lay a finger on him.”

Bear nodded. “It doesn’t have to.”

“That’s it?” Thompson asked. “That’s how it ends?”

“No,” said Mickey. “Cushing goes back to the monastery, where him and his wife and his colleague live and work. Tells the Lama he’s going back to the West. And the Lama asks him if he found what he was looking for. Cushing lies, says there is no abominable snowman. And the Lama knows he’s lying, and he knows why he’s lying.”

“That Dalai Lama is one bright huevón,” spat Diaz.

“Some horror movie,” grunted Bear.

“Yeah,” admitted Mickey, “more sci-fi if you ask me.”

Julie gave Harris the look, and he knew it was time to turn in.

“Well, ladies and gentlemen,” Harris said, “gonna head back to the little ranch.”

“Always a pleasure, Harris,” said Mickey, “Julie.”

Thompson nodded, didn’t say anything. His ego was still bruised from when Harris had laid him out. He knew he’d deserved it, knew as well that he’d have to start being a man and take his lumps when he had them coming to him. Still, he didn’t watch Harris walk off with Julie.

“What’s on your agenda tonight?” Isabel asked Diaz. He was sitting there chewing something over.

“Nada,” Diaz said. “Bear, you got any more of that weed, man?”

“Shoot, got a whole pound back in the crib.” Bear loved him his occasional smoke.

“Cop some off you?”

“We cool enough, Diaz. But you need to slow down with that stuff and stop mixing it with that devil’s dust.” Bear stood and stretched. “Give me five. Meet me back at my place.”

“Gotta drain the vein.” Emery looked at Isabel. “You don’t suppose you want to help a brother out now, do you?”

Isabel laughed. She’d helped Emery once or twice before with his “vein.” The man wasn’t even average and to boot he was a two-minute brother. “I’ll pass.”

She looked over at Thompson. “Want to take a walk?”

Thompson was shocked that she would ask him. He was probably twenty years younger than she was and all. He tried to mask his surprise. Be a man. Go for a walk. Hit that shit. It didn’t matter to him if most every other guy in Eden had done it before. Isabel was cool like that.

“Yeah.” Thompson smiled, lost in her eyes. “Let’s go.”

When they were all gone, Mickey looked over at Diaz and thought about trying to start a conversation with the guy. Then he thought better of it. Mickey said “good night” to Diaz and headed toward his house.

“Good night,” Diaz replied two minutes after.

Diaz sat there a bit afterward, looking straight ahead at the wall. It ate him up, this whole thing, having to sit with Harris, having to watch the man who’d killed his Shannon, watch him sit there with Julie. Life was no way fucking fair.

He’d find the time, the place. Harris was gonna get what Harris had coming to him. He’d killed Shannon.

Bear was waiting for him, wasn’t he? Diaz got up, folded his chair, took it with him. He thought he’d better keep how he felt about Harris to himself, no way he could say anything about it to Bear, Bear would—

Something glinted in the moonlight, catching his eye. Diaz bent over and checked it out.

Thompson’s lighter.

“Dumb fuck.”

Diaz picked it up, pocketed it. He’d give it to Thompson later. No, fuck that shit. He’d always wanted a Zippo himself. If Thompson was thinking with his dick and left his property behind, well then, finders fucking keepers, losers fucking weepers, sticks and stones and all that shit.

As Diaz walked to Bear’s place, he toyed with the lighter in his pocket and thought how Harris had gone and popped Thompson in the mouth like that when he did. Harris was probably in his forties. Still tough, though. Diaz wondered if he could take Harris out. Well, maybe not fairly, but what the fuck was fair about a fight?

Diaz was right about to walk on through Bear’s door when a thought occurred to him. He fingered the lighter and stood on the porch. Diaz looked down the block at Harris’s house, right next to the wall. At the gate there.

Diaz pulled the lighter out of his pocket. He flicked it and watched the flame burn. Diaz had an idea. It might just work. Even if it didn’t, Thompson wasn’t none of his business anyway. Diaz had the clearest and most vivid thought he’d had in some time. He’d drop the lighter when he did it, and if Harris survived—and there was the off chance that motherfucker just might—he’d find the lighter. Yeah, maybe, just maybe. It might work that way.

Of course, once Diaz opened the gate, the zombies might come storming in, killing and eating everyone in Eden. Like they’d done over in Jericho. Diaz tried to give a fuck but couldn’t, and he didn’t feel bad about it. Since Shannon was gone . . . since Harris had killed her . . .

“I want to go to bed, Diaz,” Bear called through the screened window. “You gonna stand out there on that porch all damn night or you gonna come in here get some of this Dona Juanita?”

Diaz smirked. He put Thompson’s lighter back in his pocket for a later date and went inside to get some weed to take home and smoke.

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