Colin hunched over, resting his hands on his knees and coughed until his throat turned hot and ragged. Jason leaned back against a gray Ford Taurus sitting along the curb on four flat tires and slid down the side onto the street. Rosie glanced at them from inside the sling, held her arms out from her side and scanned their surroundings.

  A large lucid bib of sweat spread across the front of his tee-shirt, pressed it against his chest and soaked the back of Rosie’s onesie. She was too busy gawking at Colin to protest it.

  “Where the hell are we?”

  “You tell me.” Colin said. “How’s that working out for you?”

  Jason sidled up next to him, the straps of the baby sling cinched tightly across the tops of his shoulders. Rosie kicked up a small racket and nothing more. Colin slipped his hand across the nape of Jason’s neck and eased him over.

  “I’m sorry.” He said. “You know what you got to do, right?”

  He nodded, his face sagging with sadness. “It’s your turn to take care of your little sister like she would expect you to.”

  He slid his hand onto the crown of Jason’s shoulders and glanced down at Rosie’s bright red cheeks.

  “I will.” He said. “I’m all she’s got left.”

  A thought occurred to him. He shot him up from his feet, slapped his hands across his hips and chest. When he was finished, he clamped his left hand across his mouth, cursed under his breath and knelt beside of the Escort.

  “Oh, shit.”

  “What?”

  Colin rose up on his feet, raked a hand through his hair and drew a long deep breath. He peered down at a crumpled soda can, sighed and kicked it. Rosie watched in childish fascination as the pop can tumbled end over end and threw her arms and legs out like she were cheering him on.

  “I left the duffel bag behind.”

  “The one with Rosie’s–”

  “Yes.” Colin said.

  “Oh, that’s fucking great.” Jason said. “Now we don’t have any food or water or any diapers at all.”

  “We’ll find something.” He said. “Don’t worry.”

  A pink toothless grin spread across Rosie’s chubby pink face and tugged at her cheeks. She gave a playful gurgle, stretched out her left arm and clutched Colin’s right thumb inside of her tiny pink fist. A sense of warmth spread across his chest, taming the acidic aftertaste of guilt swirling along the back of his throat.

  Jason glanced past the store’s faded yellow sign and pointed at the street.

  “Let’s go this way.” He said. “The college isn’t too far away.”

  “What’s so important about that place?”

  “If we get there, we’ll be halfway across town.”

  Colin shrugged his shoulders and used the Escort’s trunk to pull himself up.

  He rolled his eyes, gave Jason a reassuring pat on the back and followed him. One and two-story clapboard and stucco houses sat on yellow postage stamp lawns. As they crossed the second four-way intersection, they passed a tall three-story red brick building sitting on the crest of a tall grassy incline; the sidewalk branched off and stretched toward the front of the school, streaked by a waist-high black-iron railing.

  Shattered windows flashed their jagged teeth in the dying sun; pools of dried blood glistened like unripen fruit. MILTON’S RIDGE MIDDLE SCHOOL was stamped across a wide alabaster-white sign in bold purple letters next to the same large purple tomahawk they’d seen on Dora and Timmy’s tee-shirts. Muddy tire marks zigzagged up and across the hill only to stop at the back of a bright blue pickup jutting out from the front of the building.

  It was just another grotesque scene no different than the last one and the one before it and the next; each one told a different story every time he saw one. Panic and terror can drive the human mind to commit foolish acts; the driver of the pickup had probably clipped a few people on the way up there.

  “I hope the kids are okay.” Jason said.

  “I’m sure they are.” Colin said.

  They reached the end of the street when something collided against his left hip and nearly knocked him off balance. He spun around and reared back his right arm, his hand bunched into a tight knuckled fist. Jason cast an annoyed glance at him and lowered his arms.

  His face twisted with anger, he said, “What the—”

  “Fuck you, man.” He said. “What the hell is your problem?”

  “I was about to ask you the same thing.”

  “Where the fuck is your fucking compassion?”

  He braced his hands on his hips and sighed, his cheeks flushing. Hadn’t he shown enough compassion to Jason while breaking the news about his big sister’s demise? What did he expect him to do?

  “I don’t have any left and I never will.” He said. “These people are—”

  “They’re still human beings, Colin.”

  “These people are dead and there’s nothing we can do about it now.”

  “They were just like us but now you’re acting like it doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “I’m not going to apologize for something that was beyond my control. I know that we could’ve saved them if we really wanted to but it is what it is. We can’t change anything that’s already happened.” Colin said. “If you don’t like what I’m saying, then fine. You don’t have to agree with me, but we do need to stick together if we plan on getting the hell out of here.”

  Colin heard the sound of broken twigs and stepped back, eyes widened. His skin prickling with fear, he followed the sound toward the left side of the street.

  A female zombie with long red hair wearing a long white nightgown stumbled around a rank of evergreen bushes lined against the curb and clawed at the air. Two more crept out from across the street wearing expensive ragged shirts and plaid golf pants; the road dead-ended on the left trapping them.

  “Come on, Jason.”

  Colin snatched the boy’s right wrist out of the air, flashed him an infuriated gaze, and hauled him down the street. He was hoping that the baby sling would stay intact with all the moving around they were doing.

  He shrugged his shoulders and ran toward the two golfers. Three more appeared: a heavyset bald man in diapers (a long brown stripe streaking down his bony gray leg), an old woman in a blood-stained dress with her hair in a tight gray bun (her left arm had been gnawed down to the elbow) and a blonde teenager in a frilly pink dress with a gaping bite wound in her left shoulder.

  Colin winced through tightly clenched teeth, exhaled and drove his right boot hard against the first golfer’s chest. The zombie heaved as he flailed back, tumbled into the bushes and sank to the ground as if they’d engulfed him. He spun around on the ball of his right foot, clenched his teeth together, held another quick breath and drove his forearm into the second golfer’s face.

  The soft squish of mangled flesh rang in his ears as he drilled the zombie’s nose straight into its brain. The thing’s head whipped back, emitted a loud bone-jarring crunch and slumped back onto the pavement.

  “Don’t stop.” He said.

  Jason led him through a cluster of gnarled trees and onto a small set of cracked cement steps. They took them two at a time and ran out onto a long cement walkway stretching across a massive concrete culvert; small patches of withered yellow weeds sprouted through the jagged cracks etched along the riverbed.

  He sensed movement from the corner of his eye and peered over his left shoulder. A red mountain bike lay on its side, its back tire spinning in the breeze. The corpse lying under it gazed up at him with a blank motionless stare on its skinless pink face; the front of its tight black bicycle shirt had been torn apart to expose a large gaping black hole in his stomach.

  He pulled his eyes away, his heart tickling against the back of his throat, and followed Jason. When they reached the end of the walkway, they descended a second set of broken concrete stairs and scurried across another dirt trail lined with gnarled oaks.

  They cut across a narrow dirt trail lined with dry grass and faded green bushes. They arrived at a block of more one and two story middle-class housing and jogged past an old red brick building sitting away from a faded-yellow curb on a wide pebbled lot. Colin squinted through the film of sweat obscuring his vision and tried to read the four letters stamped along the side of the building. T-E-R-S.

  Maybe the place wasn’t as far as they thought.

  “What the fuck are you looking at?” Jason said.

  He rubbed the sweat from his eyes with the back of his right hand and mumbled the right word. He sighed, his joy fading away like a teen turned down for the prom, and shook his head. LESTER’S CHICKEN was printed across the side in large white font; a sign of a chicken wearing bright green shades and a wide happy grin was perched on the crown of a tall metallic pole in the far-left corner of the parking lot.

  “Dad and I used to go in there on Sundays after we went fishing.” Jason said. “We ordered the same thing every time.”

  Colin ignored him and walked ahead, his eyes gazing down the street.

  Over the months after the zombies arrived, Colin had grown a backbone stronger than those of the people he’d met. He felt no sympathy for those who didn’t grow one of their own.

  He braced his hips with both hands and felt his cheeks flush. It felt odd without Stacey being here.

  There was plenty of time to grieve once they could find someplace to go for the night. He swiped his hands across his eyes once more and waved Jason over with an urgent wave of his hand.

  “Where does this street take us?”

  “This’ll take us to Union Avenue.” Jason said.

  Colin nodded. They were halfway across the street when he tapped the crown of Jason’s right shoulder with his left hand.

  “Whatever we’ve got to do,” Colin added. “We need to do it quickly because it’s going to get dark pretty soon.”

  They ran down the street, their shoes scraping across the pavement.

  Colin blamed an onslaught of hunger and fatigue for distorting the letters on the side of the building. He opened his mouth to speak when he stopped and stared down the road; something glinted in the distance.

  He cupped his hands around his eyes again and peered down the street.

  “Is that what I think that is?” Jason said.

  He glanced in the same direction and clapped his hands, his face beaming with joy; Rosie repeated his actions and gave a playful giggle. Their hands falling to their sides, Colin shook off the pain still flaring in his hip and lead them across the overpass.

  On his left, a spacious parking lot was spread out in front of a two-story apartment building cluttered with more discarded vehicles; a few window shutters hung onto the side of the building by a single hinge and flapped lazily in the breeze. The dry riverbed they crossed a few minutes ago stretched out to their right before disappearing toward the east side of town.

  Once they cleared the overpass, a block of two story homes flanked an old brick street with a bright-yellow curb. Up ahead, the road connected to a four-way intersection; a pizza place sat on the far right and another block of houses sat to the left. A black and white cop car was parked across the street at an angle, its rear bumper sitting flush against the curb; the station emblem was plastered across the driver side door and the “to protect and serve” slogan was located above the rear quarter panel.

  “Is there any gas in it?” Jason asked as they slowed down.

  “We’ll just have to find out, won’t we?”

  Jason slid into the passenger seat and sighed with elation when he felt his hot sweaty skin pressing onto the cool leather seat. He wrapped his right fist around both of Rosie’s chubby pink digits and used his free hand to shut the door.

  Colin slid in behind the wheel.

  He reached down to pull the compartment open when a shadow bled across the carpet of light spread across the steering wheel and along the dashboard like a cloud blotting out the sun. Jason froze and raised his hands, fingers spaced apart.

  He heard a loud CA-CHUNK sound rattle in his left ear and froze. It was a familiar sound, the sound of a pump-action shotgun being racked. Something round and cold pressed against the nape of his neck, drawing the middle of his shoulders tightly together until a long line creased the back of his tee-shirt.

  A river of stark-white terror cascaded down his back, chilling his bones. He took a risk and swallowed the lump of terror that built inside of his throat and waited for the inevitable.

  “If you flinch,” said a strong confident voice. “you die.”

  His skin prickling with fear, Colin slid his thick sweaty palms away from the steering wheel and placed them on his lap. Jason sighed, his nostrils flaring with anger, and slumped back onto the seat.

  “Step out very slow and put your hands up.”

  He craned his head around, peered at the gunman and did as they were asked.

  She was tall and slender, about five nine. Her khaki brown uniform looked snug against her flat stomach and molded nicely against her wide curvy hips; the patch on her right shoulder was torn. Her black ball cap—the letters RPD emblazoned across in white capital letters—shaded the top half of her face down to the bridge of her nose; a pair of almond-shaped brown eyes peered out at him from under the cap.

  The nametag pinned above her left front pocket said T. QUINTERO.

  “You got balls running around this place.” She said. “Who are you?”

  Although he detected a note of hostility in it, she had a smooth Spanish accent.

  “I was about to ask you the very same thing, Officer.”

  “I’m a deputy.”

  “Well then we don’t have to listen to you, do we?”

  “You want to say that before or after you start shitting buckshot.”

  Jason took a tentative step toward the officer and said, “We’re just trying to—”

  “You’re trying to get yourself killed is what you’re doing. This isn’t exactly the best place to be right now.”

  “You’re telling me.”

  She squinted at the bundle of joy cradled inside of the sling and sighed.

  “We’re just trying to get out of here.” Colin said.

  She tapped the side of her left boot against the front quarter panel.

  “You’re not gonna be able to do that unless the battery works.”

  “What are we going to do now?” Jason said.

  The street lights flickered on one at a time, spreading pools of soft purple light across the curbs and sidewalks. A few stars appeared in the bottle-gas blue sky.

  “If you just let us—”

  Her gun belt shimmying with the gyroscope of her hips across the street toward the right corner of the block, she led them away from the cruiser and said, “I’m not letting you run around here with two children. You’re coming me with me if I have to drag you kicking and screaming.”

  They stepped onto the curb and followed a long concrete walkway toward a two-story white clapboard house. It had a green-shingled roof and a wide cement porch. The windows along the first and second stories were boarded up nice and tight with large thick planks of plywood; two leafy oak trees spread a pair of tree shadows across the sidewalk and a jungle of dry brown weeds sat tangled inside of the flowerbed under the front porch railing.

  They climbed the steps and onto the porch. She spun around and shook her head her head in fascination.

  “Congratulations.” She said. “You passed the test with flying colors.”

  “Wha?”

  They shared an uncomfortable glance. Rosie stirred inside of the baby sling, pursed her lips and gave a loud wet blubbering sound. Jason flicked his gaze from Colin and back to the cop.

  “What?” Jason said.

  “She set the shotgun on her shoulder and walked in front of us to see if I would try to take it from her.”

  “If you did,” She said. “I’d have to pull my spare and drill you.”

  When she flung her right arm out from her side, they heard a loud click. A thin metallic arm slid out from under her sleeve; a nickel-plated .22 pistol slid into her hand. Rosie gazed at the pistol with wide amusing eyes, slipped her right fist into her mouth and spat a generous amount of drool across her knuckles.

  “And since you didn’t attack me when you had the chance.” She said. “I guess we’re now on the same page, aren’t we?”

  She slipped the pistol back under her sleeve and extended her hand. “Deputy Teresa Quintero.”

  Colin shrugged and shook her hand. After she introduced herself to Jason and Rosie, she opened the pebbled glass door, stepped inside and held the door open. She jerked her head over her right shoulder and waved them inside.

  Colin perched his hand on the doorknob and scanned the place from left to right. A long wooden staircase rose along the right-side wall, descending toward the top floor. The main foyer branched off into the living room on the far left, the dining room on the far right and the kitchen in the middle; a long, lengthy hallway stretched past the kitchen towards a scarred wooden door he assumed led out to a back porch of some kind.

  The walls were egg-shell white; long colorful rugs laid across the sleek hardwood floor. A glossy oak table and matching chairs sat below a cheap gold chandelier; it’d long been decorated with three white-ceramic bowls sitting on large ceramic plates with polished silverware sitting neatly beside of them. An overstuffed brown couch sat against the wall facing the hallway in front of a knitted green rug.

  An overhead light fixture poured a carpet of light across the end of the corridor. Something hit them from out of nowhere; a smell that—in all this time—they’d forgot had even existed. His eyes wide, Jason drew a cloud of piping hot food deep into his lungs and sighed.

  Teresa stepped around them and shut the door behind them. She retrieved a thick wooden slat from behind the door and wedged it inside two heavy-duty wall hooks fixed onto the wall on each side; this side of the glass had been obscured by a second and much thicker slab of wood. Colin was impressed about how they managed to keep the place going.