The Shot

"You're him, aren't you? You are." Her fingers rested softly on his shoulder, familiar but respectful, and she was standing close enough that he could smell her perfume: expensive and subtle.

"Excuse me?"

She pointed to the ceiling. The part of him that used to look up when they did that was long dead. "From the meteor thing. I recognize you from television."

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean," he said, pleasantly, finishing his scotch and set the empty tumbler back down on the bar.

He felt her considering him with her eyes, making a decision. She said, "My mistake," but she slid onto the bar stool next to him, brushing against his arm. She gestured to the bartender, who seemed to know her, because he brought her a drink she never ordered aloud.

"I've always liked this hotel. Nice rooms. Nice bar. Quiet. I like a quiet bar without football games on the television. And when the conventioneers start to get lousy drunk, they send them upstairs before it gets out of hand."

He'd seen it happen, here. "It's just good policy."

"Cheers to that." She held out her drink, and he clinked his empty against it as a matter of form. The bartender, seeing this, stepped over and poured another two fingers of scotch into his glass; when Mike reached for his wallet, the man waved him off and retreated back to the end of the bar.

"I suppose," she said conspiratorially, "It's been a while since you actually had to pay for a drink."

"A couple years." He nodded. "A couple years."

"Easy to let it get out of hand with that kind of free pass."

"I've never been a big drinker. Wife doesn't really let me drink at home. Only on the road, and not much then."

"I remember her being pretty. From the television."

"She is."

He hadn't really looked at her, before, but now he managed to catch an impression in his peripheral vision: little black cocktail dress; blonde hair; lips a gash of red, too red, a red that drew the eye; maybe a little older than she wanted to be thought.

She put a name to the impression. "I'm Greta."

"Mike." There was no sense giving her a fake name that she would know to be fake.

"You're not here for the convention." It was rhetorical, she was trying to read him. "Oh, you're speaking, aren't you? You go around giving speeches. I bet there's a slide show and everything."

"There's even music." He downed the second scotch. "It's from that movie with the four guys on the river. The little guy dies? That one. I asked them if I could use it, and they said 'sure, no charge'. They like having the bragging rights."

"I'll bet. What's the speech about? Saving the world?"

He didn't answer, just shrugged.

"I'll bet you have ten speeches and they only ever want to hear the one."

"There's only two other speeches."

"But they only ever want to hear the one."

"Well, in fairness, it is a corker."

She laughed and flipped her hair in a way that told him everything a woman talking to a stranger in a bar needed to say. He feigned not to notice. About this time Kristen would be putting the boys to bed, then she would fix herself dinner, and then she would call. Half an hour?

Greta was talking. "I was at the beach with two girlfriends. We all thought it was over. We got wasted and cried a lot. Watched the whole thing on television, all the way to the end. We passed out after that. I don't think I really even believed it until I woke up the next afternoon and everything was all right."

"Still sounds like it was still a better weekend for you."

She laughed. "What are they about, the other speeches?"

"One's the war, the other's applying for the Program and getting in and the training."

"You should write a book."

"Bill already wrote the book."

"You should write yours."

"He didn't get anything wrong. I wouldn't want to compete."

Her eyebrows crunched up and her forehead furrowed. "Why not?"

"He's the skipper."

"You've been back for years; why does that still matter? Why not get yours?"

He shrugged: free drinks, free music, women at hotel bars who never would have noticed him before the Shot and who would go upstairs without hesitation if artlessly asked afterward. He didn't say any of that.

"What was it like?"

"Come listen to the speech."

"I'll probably be working."

"Are you working now?" He regretted it immediately.

She didn't say anything, just looked at the drink in her hand.

"I'm sorry. That was rude. I never did learn how to talk to girls. Forgive me? Maybe I am a little drunk—"

"Don't worry about it. What does your wife do?"

"She writes for a magazine. She can do it from home, so she can be with the boys when I'm out of town."

"You're out of town a lot." She didn't bother framing it as a question.

"Often enough. You live here?"

"Born and raised. Never even been to the coast. Either coast. Windy city girl."

"Nothing wrong with that."

She smiled. They let the bartender pour them one more. Mike didn't reach for his wallet this time.

"So, you love your wife, and you're not going to ask me upstairs, and that's OK. Don't feel like you're being rude. You're just sick of freebies."

"That's very understanding of you."

"But, I think you're sad."

"Oh?"

"I do. I think you're sad. Not pathetic sad, just sad." She waited, didn't continue. She was inviting him to feign indifference, and not ask.

He couldn't help it. "Why am I sad?"

"I think you were one of the best and the brightest, you busted your ass to get up there, you drew the straw that meant 'save the world, or not', and now it's over. I think the whole time you were just afraid of screwing it up, and when it worked you just felt relief, and then it was over. And now you're drinking free drinks and giving the same speech forty times a year—"

"Fifty, easy."

"—and wondering if everything you'll ever do that will ever matter to anyone has already happened. You're that grad student with the cancer cure."

The science part of his brain switched on instinctively. "Rabanipol. It's not really a cure, per sé, but it—"

"You know what I mean. He's in rehab now, did you know that? It was on TMZ. Tried to drink himself to death. And he's only what, two years out from his thing? You've been back five years."

"You might be right."

"You going to call your wife when you get upstairs?"

"She'll be calling me in about twenty minutes."

Greta smiled. "You know when she's going to be calling you? You know her schedule. OK. So when she calls, you ask her... what's her name? I remember what she looks like, but I don't remember her name."

"Kristen."

"So you say, 'Kristen, do you think I'm sad?' And see what she says. And if she says, 'yes, honey, I think you're a little, sad, maybe', because she wants to soften the blow, then you ask her what she thinks you should do about it."

He finished his scotch and turned and looked at her. "So why the head shrink? I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just asking. You're not from the agency..."

She got up from the stool, brushing against him again as she slid away from the bar. "People are always giving you free stuff for saving the world, but it's never the stuff you actually need, is it? Figuring people out is at least half of what I do. And since you weren't going to be interested in the other half," she grinned, "I figured a little analysis might do the trick."

"Thanks."

"No problem. Tell Kristen hello for me."

"I'll do that." He probably would: Kristen's sense of humor bordered on the perverse, though it didn't come out as often since her days had become filled with bottles and diapers and bereft of sleep.

Greta walked gracefully out of the bar. She'd sat with him too long to approach someone else, maybe. Maybe she'd had an appointment upstairs all along and was just killing time. It didn't really matter.

The bartender returned, but Mike put his palm over the glass. "I think I'm done, chief."

"That Greta, she's a hell of a number, isn't she? I'll bet that if—"

"She seems very nice." Mike laid a tip on the bar, pretended not to notice the bartender wave refusal. "But I'm married. Have a good night."

The bartender was effusive. "You too, man. A real honor having you in here."

Mike headed unsteadily out into the more brightly-lit lobby, found his way to the elevator bank. Greta was already long gone, if she had even come that way.

He'd be in his room, relaxing on the bed in his Christmas pajamas, before Kristen called. She'd know. She'd know if he was sad. She'd have been waiting for him to say something, because that was their dynamic after eleven years. Maybe she'd even know what to do about it.

Last Requests

The first two houses had been mostly taken by fire, only ruined shells and foundation left. The third was pristine, untouched. There were no other structures within sight: they were well out of town here.

Mickey said, in a low voice, "Check it out or wait for the others?"

"Wait." There was a car parked on the street in front of the first house, and Ron put his shotgun down on the hood and leaned against the grill. "You know this area at all?"

"Not really. Used to come out to the shopping center back there some when there was still a video store. Only place you could get porn, local." He grinned. "Been years, though."

It was a distractingly pleasant day, clear, not too hot. Ron could see the others — all six of them — coming up the road on foot, excepting of course the old lady in the wheelchair, whose head lolled to one side as the only other man in the group pushed her along.

"Mrs. Willis is asleep again."

"Yeah."

"At least she ain't talking. I think she's wearing on Dwayne's nerves."

Ron waited until the group was close enough that he could be head without shouting. "We're going to check the house for food."

Dwayne nodded and locked off the chair's wheels; Mrs. Willis didn't wake. The others, seemingly grateful for the break, sat along the curb or laid in the grass between the road and the sidewalk.

The front door was unlocked, and Ron locked eyes with Mickey for a good long second before stepping in, silent, gun at the ready. Mickey followed in kind.

"Smell that?" Ron whispered.

Mickey nodded.

They proceeded as they always did. Ground floor first: there was no basement. It took less than a minute, a house this size. Mickey saw boxes of food in the open pantry, but didn't stop to look closely. They met back at the bottom of the stairs. "Clear."

"Clear."

Ron started up first, since he had the shotgun. Mickey waited at the bottom until Ron could see around the corners, then followed. The smell was stronger at the top of the stairs; the air was warmer as well. They took each bedroom in turn.

A little boy's bedroom, race car bed, planets hanging from the ceiling: empty. A teenaged girl's bedroom, canopy bed, three posters of pop stars and one of a kitten licking a puppy's ear: also empty.

The master bedroom. Laid out on the bed were the corpses of the little boy and the teenaged girl. They were too far decomposed for the cause of death to be obvious. Probably the only reason the stench was bearable was the pair of open windows.

Mickey was holding his shirt up over his nose. Through it, he said, "Bathroom."

Ron went around the foot of the bed and looked into the master bath. He heard the stirring before he saw it: a zombie, sitting in the bathtub. One wrist was handcuffed to the bottom fixture. Resting on the edge of the tub was a small pistol, likely a twenty-two. The zombie hissed and reached ineffectually for Ron with its free hand.

Mickey was behind him. "Should we kill it?"

"What's the point?" Ron considered trying to get the pistol, but decided against it. "Back up."

Ron locked the door from the inside and stepped out, closing the door behind him. "Help me with the dresser." It was heavy, but they had little trouble moving it to block the door.

"And them?" Mickey gestured to the bodies on the bed with the barrel of his rifle.

"Not our job."

They sent the women in for the food in the pantry, after warning them about what was upstairs. Dwayne was sat on the curb by Mrs. Willis. "Anything good?"

"Some cans, a boxes of dry goods, crackers, you know."

Mrs. Willis' head moved; she looked around. "Boys?"

"Yes ma'am."

"Anyone in there?"

"A couple bodies and a handcuffed zombie."

"How on Earth did that happen?"

"Who knows? Maybe they were all sick, and he did the kids but chickened out when it was his turn. Maybe the wife was immune, and handcuffed him but couldn't bear to leave the kids like that."

"We should bury them."

Ron and Mickey exchanged a glance. Mickey said, "Ma'am, that's really not our job."

"It's the right thing to do—"

Ron interrupted, "Mrs. Willis, there are bodies in half the houses we search, or zombies we turn into bodies. If we buried them all, we'd spend all our time digging." His voice had finality to it, and Mickey nodded in agreement. "We're not the coroner. It's not going to happen."

The old lady fell silent; the other women were coming back out of the house carrying now-full backpacks.

"I understand how you feel, but we've got to keep moving."

Her reply was icy. "Fine."

Dwayne, behind her, shrugged as if to say: there'll be no convincing her, best to leave it.

They moved on. The sun was well down, the glow on the horizon almost gone when they found the service station. Three entrances, even without the garage doors, still some food on the shelves of the convenience store, and empty of the dead.

They laid bedrolls and sleeping bags in the aisles between displays. Ron rolled Mrs. Willis behind the counter, and brought her a blanket.

"I want you to promise me something, Ronny."

"Yes, ma'am?"

"When I go, I need you to take the time to put me in the ground."

He shook his head. "Now, don't talk like that, it's not going to come to—"

"I'm eighty-three years old, Ronny. And Dwayne has more sense than to let himself get bit trying to push me out of harm's way. I'm going to go, one of these days, one way or the other. I need you to promise me."

He sighed and looked her in the eyes.

She offered, "It doesn't have to be deep. Just enough that some varmint won't dig me up. You can say some words and be on your way in no time. Promise me, dear."

The others would probably insist on it anyway. "I promise, Mrs. Willis. We'll bury you. I don't know what words to say, though. I'm not good with—"

She produced a small Bible from one of the chair pockets, held it out so he could see it, and then returned it to its place. "There, now, that's decided. You sleep tight, dear."

He smiled. "I have first watch. But I'll see you in the morning, ma'am."

"Good night, Ronny."

Service stations always had a ladder laying around somewhere. He made his way up to the roof. There was already a folding chair set up by some previous occupant, and he settled into it.

They'd have to look for a garden supply store, or a hardware store. Someone would have to carry the shovel. Or they could tie it to the back of Mrs. Willis' chair: Dwayne wouldn't mind the extra weight, as long as it was on wheels.

The Monthall Five

Start out by sneaking into Monthall School for Girls. Down the stairs from the kitchen, past the laundry and the storage, into the furnace room, pull up the grate, shimmy down through the hole, crawl on hands and knees through the grime and the spiders, out into the old drainage system, West through the main pipe to the ladder, and then climb. The room where you emerge is cut off from the surface: the building of which it was once the sub-basement is gone, torn down and the hole filled in.

We found the thing that lived in that room after it started taking children from the parish for purposes I will not describe. It got Jimmy Peoll, but Chick — who the next day we started calling ‘Charles’ — put some digging tool he had picked up in a panic through its torso. We cut it up and ‘buried’ it downstream in the sewer. We were heroes. We told no one.

By the next year Charles was spending a lot of time in that room. Jose never went down there again, but me and Walt used to go down looking for Charles and finding him, doing god knows what.

Charles had a lot of absences senior year, and didn’t come to graduation. His parents have the diploma, though. I went down one last time and found he’d cleaned the whole place up and managed to get a cot and a lantern and his comic book collection in there.

It’s been three years. Two months ago children from the Parish started disappearing again.

I’m not going back down there to get him. We already lost two people to that room.

A Boy And His God

Adam peered up through the waving leaves at the bright thing peeking out from behind the clouds. He squinted, as it hurt his eyes, and presently looked away. When he blinked, the afterimage of the light-point remained imprinted on his retina.

“What is the bright thing called again?”

A rumbling voice which he felt in his bowels answered, “It's a star. Or you can call it 'the sun'. Now don't bother me, I'm very busy creating the emu.”

“Didn't you create that yesterday?”

“No,” boomed the voice, “that was the gnu. I'm working on things which end with the letter 'u'. Which reminds me, what's your waist size?”

“I have no idea. Shouldn't you know?” Adam stared down at his paunch, and then back up at nothing in particular, because the booming voice was disembodied. “And anyway, that's knowledge, and I'm supposed to avoid that stuff, right?” After all, this might be another test.

“It's not a test. I just don't have my notes handy. Now quit bothering me. Don't you have frolicking to do or something?”

Adam looked around at the rolling hills, the bubbling streams, and the various and sundry flora and fauna. “Frolicking gets boring after a while. Anyway, I feel like an idiot running and dancing willy-nilly through the landscape. It's not like there's music or anything.”

“How do you know about music?” the booming voice seemed annoyed.

“You were talking about creating it the other day. I asked what it was for, and you said, and I quote, 'dancing, mostly', you said. So if music is for dancing, then it follows that—”

“Never mind. I haven't perfected music yet, so you can't have any. Find something else to do.”

“Like what?”

The booming voice sighed, and then muttered, “I knew I shouldn't have made the brain so big. Not so easy to keep entertained. All right, fine. I'll cook up something to keep you occupied. Should have gotten around to it days ago. Just give me a little while.”

“That would be very much appreciated,” Adam said, very grateful to the booming voice that he felt in his bowels, and he went off to frolic with the fauna amidst the flora. After that, he took a while to lie warmly under the bright thing, finally falling asleep on the moss under a huge gnarled tree. Moss was cool and soft, and definitely one of the booming voice's better inventions.

When he awoke a faun was staring at him.

“Go away.” Adam stretched and yawned. “I think I'll take a dip in the stream. Clear my head.” The faun nodded, as if to indicate that she thought that would be a capital idea, and when Adam got up to saunter in the direction of the stream, she followed.

Adam had just about reached the bank of the stream when he heard the booming voice in his bowels again. “Adam.”

“Present,” Adam responded as the faun bolted away, suddenly fearful.

“Don't be smart. I think I have an idea on that whole boredom solution project, but I need something from you.” The booming voice sounded pensive, which was unusual.

“From me?” Adam looked down at his paunch again. “I don't have anything, nothing at all, I'm naked as a jaybird here. No pockets.”

“It's... somewhat more complicated than that. I need a body part. Also, why single out the jaybird? Everything in the Garden is naked. It's kind of an experiment.”

Adam felt a twinge of fear, which he'd only ever felt once before, at the very beginning of his existence. “Never mind that. What body part were you thinking of appropriating? I'm pretty attached to some of them.”

The great booming voice laughed. “You're attached to all of them. Though you're fonder of some of them than others, apparently.”

“You were watching?”

“Oh, don't sound so surprised. In any case, that's not the part I need, so stop worrying. I was thinking something more structural. A bone, and one you can easily do without. Let's see...”

Adam felt a warm comforting glow in his chest, which faded presently. He didn't feel any different, so he prodded and groped himself until he discovered a discrepancy. “Hey, one of the curvy hard things in my chest is gone!”

“It's a rib. Now, I have a lot of work to do, so go back to whatever it was you were doing.”

“But now I'll be lopsided! Asymmetrical!” Adam protested mightily.

“You weren't symmetrical before: one of your ears is bigger than the other, and your nose is crooked. It's part of the whole design philosophy. Makes it easier to differentiate,” the great booking voice explained, exasperated.

“Differentiate between what and what??” Adam shook his fist at the sky, though he didn't really understand why, as the deep booming voice was disembodied and came from no direction in particular. “I'm the only one here!”

“ADAM!” The great deep booming voice was as thunder, shaking the leaves from the trees and lifting Adam off his feet. “LEAVE ME TO MY WORK!”

Hours later, Adam was lying in the grass by the bubbling stream, still recovering from the great booming voice's rebuke, when the faun once again came over to pensively investigate him. He stared at her for a moment while she sniffed at his toes. “Got a temper, doesn't he?”

The faun nodded knowingly.

“Well, I suppose it's to be expected, what with all that responsibility. Maybe I can get him to take a day off.”

The faun nodded approvingly.

Adam decided to get back to what he had been doing in the first place, which was getting ready to take a dip in the bubbling stream. It was a nice little stream, winding its way through the trees and hills of the Garden. He sat on a large stone and washed his feet while the faun drank — quite wisely, Adam thought — a few yards upstream.

He was still in the process of washing his lower half when the faun's head shot up, her ears perked, and her nostrils flared.

“What is it,” Adam inquired, but the faun was wasting no time with explanations: she bounded off into the brush between the trees, moving quicker than anything Adam had ever seen. He was still looking in that direction when he heard a voice. Oddly, it wasn't the great booming voice he felt in his bowels, but an exquisitely different voice.

“Friend of yours?”

Adam looked up at the sky. “Sure. The faun and I frolic together sometimes. But she's kind of jumpy.”

“Why are you looking at the sky,” the new dulcet-toned voice asked.

“Why not? It's where I usually look when I'm being talked to.”

“Well, it's polite to look someone in the eye when you talk to them. Or didn't the big guy get around to that yet,” the new, glorious, musical voice pointed out.

Adam looked down, and around, and his gaze eventually came to rest on what could only be described as a person, sort of. A person, definitely, he decided after a moment, but a person different. “I guess not. What exactly are you?”

The person-different laughed, which caused several areas on its body to jiggle slightly, which both alarmed and intrigued Adam. “I'm a woman. God made me out of your rib.”

“Nice work, that. Who's God?”

“That great booming voice you feel in your bowels? That's him. Prime mover, maker, mover and shaker. God.”

“That's his name? I've been wondering.” Adam was still fascinated by the formerly jiggling areas, and was concentrating on figuring out their purpose while he conversed with the woman.

“It's more of a title. We couldn't pronounce his actual name. And you're still not looking me in the eye.”

Adam blushed. “Oh... sorry.”

“Eh, s'okay. He said I'd better get used to that. Just try to keep a lid on it. Which might take practice.”

“I promise. But... what are they for?”

“You don't want to know yet, trust me. It's very complicated.” The woman sat next to him on the large stone and dangled her own feet in the water. “So what do you do for fun around here?”

“Search me.”

“Wouldn't take long: you're naked.”

Adam laughed. “Well, so are you. So's everything around here. The great booming... God said that it was sort of an experiment. Personally I'd just as soon he went ahead and invented clothes. I'm forever skinning my knees on rocks and things. And my feet are killing me.”

“Well, when he does this sort of thing, he likes to tweak it every which way, see what will happen, you know. It's sort of a hobby.” The woman reached down, hands cupped, and captured some water in her palms, splashing it on herself.

“You mean he's done this before?” Adam was incredulous.

The woman laughed. “Sure, creating existence is kind of an art form for his people. Come on, you really thought you were the first Adam? There's been hundreds of Adams, and hundreds of Eves. Eve, that's me. There was even,” she added, conspiratorially, “a Lillith. But don't ask him about her, he gets pissy; I think it ended badly.”

“Wow.” Adam stared out across the hills and between the trees, to where the Garden ended and began again. He squinted, trying to look far enough to see himself again, but his eyes weren't good enough.

“Thanks for the rib, by the way.”

“Don't mention it. I have spares, apparently.”

“Even so.” Eve looked over at him, sizing him up literally and figuratively. “So. You never did say what you do for fun.”

“Well, there's your general frolicking, and warming yourself under the bright thing, and washing in the stream, and worshiping the great booming voice you feel in your bowels, and...”

“And what?”

“Well, you're not exactly built to do the other thing I've figured out.” Adam pointed to his lap, and Eve nodded knowingly.

“I think I can figure something out along those lines. And also something else we can do together. Don't ask me how I know, I have no idea. But I think it's set up so that I have to be in charge.”

“Fine with me,” Adam said, and meant it. “Hungry?”

“Sure.”

they rose naked and unashamed from beside the bubbling stream, and went off in search of something to eat. As they were walking, Adam thought about what Eve had said, about the hundreds of Adams, Eves, Gardens, and the odd Lillith.

“So, how will this end?”

“Don't ask me, I only just got here.”

Patient Zero

When Doctor Washburne awoke, there was still no food tray.

He pushed his weakened frame up off the cot and shuffled to the intercom box which protruded from the wall of his isolation room. Pressing the button, he said, “Come on, guys, this is ridiculous, it's been since Sunday night. I need food.”

He waited a bit, and when there was no answer, he pressed the button again. “I'm supposed to get three full meals a day in here.” Still there was no answer. “Is anyone even on duty out there?”

He pounded on the observation glass and yelled until he ran out of energy, which was not long. He had fought off the infection, but he was still weak, and not having eaten for two days wasn't helping.

He wasn't even sure what time it was.

He pressed the button. “This is Doctor Washburne. I'm in iso-room three. Can anyone hear me?” Again he waited, before adding, “I just need to know what's going on. And I need food. No one has brought me a food tray in two days.”

He shuffled back over to the cot and laid down.

He had been in isolation almost a week. The spill had happened here in the lab at CDC, but it hadn't been that big, and nobody even thought he had been exposed until two days later when he had started showing symptoms. By then he had exposed Marcia and the kids. Their symptoms seemed to be a little worse than his, but it was nothing to worry about. He'd pulled through all right, and whatever it was would only be weaker in them. They were somewhere here, in other isolation rooms. The other staff had been good about carrying messages, though.

Of course, that was when the staff could be trusted to show up.

The kids would be hating being out of school this long. He could only imagine the hell they would be giving Ling and the others at their checkups. Marcia would be annoyed, frustrated, but would forbear: it was her nature. She was a good little soldier, that one.

He closed his eyes. Someone would come eventually.

When he awoke, there was still no food tray. Oddly, the outer door of the observation room was slightly ajar; he could see a sliver of hall.

He got up out of the cot, even weaker than before — and a bit dizzy — and shuffled again to the intercom button.

“I know you're out there, I don't know who it is, but I know you can hear me. This is Doctor Washburne in iso three. Will someone please bring me some goddamn food, I'm starving to death in here. You're going to have a dead man locked in a room. I know what the protocols are, I helped write them. Isolation patients are supposed to get three full meals a day. Let's get it together out there.”

He let go of the button, and leaned against the glass partition, head down, eyes closed, waiting for someone to answer. Still: nothing. What disturbed him even more than the lack of a response was the possibility that there was no one on duty.

Something had to have gone seriously wrong. If there had been another spill, something more serious, they might have had to evacuate the building. But then who had opened the observation room door? And why the hell wouldn't they have woken him up?

He had to conserve his energy. He could hold out until they came back, until the cleanup teams showed. It might take a few days for that, but he was already a couple days into it. He could hold out.

He went back and laid down on the cot. He stared through observation room glass and through the sliver of open door to the hallway beyond, watching for movement in the shadows on the wall.

He wasn't sure how long he had slept, but it was the gnawing hunger in his gut that woke him. He had turned over in the night, so he twisted his neck around to look up and over his own shoulder at the door.

There was a new shadow on the wall outside, in the hall, and it was moving. Only slightly — a slow, swaying motion — but it was moving. He swung out of the bed fast, fast enough in fact that he became dizzy and fell, slapping his hands on the cold tile floor. He pushed himself up onto his knees and crawled over to push himself up against the wall where he could reach the intercom box.

“Hey! Hey! Out there, it's Washburne in isolation room three! Hey! Come get me out! Come on! I'm starving. Hey!”

The shadow moved out of sight, as if moving down the hall towards the nurse's station. “Hey!” he yelled.

He let go of the button and began pounding on the thick partition glass, as hard as he still could in his weakened state. “Hey! Heeeeey! Come on let... me... out!” he punctuated the three words with blows of his fist.

The shadow reappeared, and then a shoulder pushed the door further open.

It was Doctor Ling. His skin was a sickly gray mottled by splotches of blue and purple bruising, and his eyes were clouded and seemingly fixed. He lumbered into the room.

“Oh, God.” Washburne backed up, or tried to, tripping over his own feet and falling down again. He watched Ling make his way to the partition and crash bodily against it. Smears of rot were left behind where his exposed flesh touched the glass.

Washburne slid himself back against the cot, grasping the metal frame for dear life. Ling didn't seem to understand why he couldn't move any further, why he couldn't reach Washburne. He pushed against the glass, pushing himself away, only to step back against it again with a resonant thud.

He was safe for now. If Marcia and the kids were still in their isolation rooms, they were safe, too. Or maybe they'd evacuated them before it got out of hand. If whatever the infection was had originated here, then...

What if his spill was the infection vector? He had gotten pretty sick, after all. But it would surely have been weaker after being transmitted to other—

He yelled at the corpse of Doctor Ling, still battering itself against the now-heavily-smeared glass, “Where are they? Where's my wife? Where are my kids!? Where are they, goddammit!?”

Washburne, mind racing, watched Ling's futile attempt to get through the partition for a while. Eventually he pulled himself slowly up onto the cot. The muffled sounds of Ling's struggle were loud enough to keep him from going to sleep, so Washburne put the pillow between his arm and his head to muffle the sound.

He wouldn't have to put up with it much longer.

Equilibrium

“We're still here.”

He was only half awake. “Huh? What?”

Amy rolled over towards him, mouth close to his ear, breasts mushed against his arm and shoulder, and she whispered, “We're still here.” With his eyes still closed, he felt her push away and swing her legs to the floor to get out of bed. Then he heard her bare feet pad across the carpet to the window.

“Why wouldn't we be?” He stretched and looked around the room: Frank's room, with stuff strewn around haphazardly from the guy having packed in such a hurry to get wherever it was he was going.

“Oh, don't try to play it off like you didn't sort of believe it.” She laughed nervously, two fingers pushing an opening in the blinds for her to peek out. “Looks pretty normal.”

“No burning atmosphere, no walls of water rushing at us.” He yawned. “No army of killer angels.”

“Exactly.” Her tone of voice was pensive, almost disbelieving.

“You're really surprised?”

“You're not?” She came back, sat on the edge of the bed. “I thought you were just... you know, just playing it cool, tough. Acting like you didn't care or whatever.”

“Of course I care. I just didn't really believe the world was going to end.”

Amy laid back down, nestled against his side. “I did. I mean, I really did.”

“I sort of did too. Not much, but, a little. Mostly because of my mother—”

“Oh, god, your mother. What are you going to say to your mother?”

“Nothing, probably. She won't bring it up if I don't.”

They lay there for a while, not saying anything. He thought she had gone back to sleep, or he had, but then she said, “So what now?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, Theoduce... he was wrong.”

“I'm sure he's already on TV making up some more horseshit about how he just got the date wrong. Bad math. Like that guy does math.”

“You think he just made it all up? That it was all a... a lie?”

He turned onto his side, looked into her eyes. “You don't?”

“He was so convincing. I mean, everybody believed it. The President even did. He wouldn't say so, because it would cause panic, but I could tell. I mean, he went home to Montana two days ago—”

“I guess he'll have to come back now.”

Amy grinned. “Oh, god, three more years of that guy. Why couldn't the world have ended!”

He chuckled, kissed her. She stared at him blankly. He asked, “Are you sorry? Not that we're all still here, that we didn't burn up in some holocaust of judgment; I mean, sorry you slept with me.”

“No.” She didn't look at him, but she was still smiling. “I'm not sorry. I'm hungry though. Are you hungry?”

“There's no food here, I looked. Frank threw most of it away before he left. We ate the last of it last night.”

“Let's get dressed and see what's open.”

*****

They walked down the street, awkwardly holding hands. There were few people out and about, most looking exhausted or embarrassed or both. There were some far-off sounds of emergency sirens that ebbed and surged and never seemed to entirely go away. They passed a few hard-looking men standing around a car, solemnly shaking hands.

“I wonder what their night was like...”

“I don't want to know. Let's try Roger's.”

It was a 24/7 breakfast place, pancakes and eggs and bottomless coffee, and it was closed. They kept walking. They came to a McDonalds, and it was open, but there was a raucous party in progress, that had spilled out to include the parking lot, and they decided they wanted somewhere more sedate.

Eventually they found a Chinese restaurant open: Hunan Flower, only a few people inside. They sat down, and eventually an older Chinese woman came over to the table. “Only one cook show up... but we make whatever. You want water?”

Amy answered, “Yes please.”

They held hands while they looked at the menu. When the woman came back with the water, they ordered: beef and broccoli, and eggrolls, to share. He added fries, because Chinese restaurant fries are always good. “Ten minutes.”

Amy said, “Can I also have an iced tea?” The lady smiled and nodded as she headed back to the kitchen, and then they sat in silence for a while.

“You were saying you weren't sorry.”

“No. I mean, I know it was impulsive, and I wouldn't before, but, I mean, I thought we were all going to die.”

“But we didn't. We're not going to. So, what now? I mean, are we dating?”

“I'm holding your hand, aren't I?”

“I wasn't going to say anything because I was afraid you'd take it back...”

Amy grinned, but then took her hand away, because she had started crying and needed to unroll her napkin to daub at her cheeks.

The old lady returned at that moment with the iced tea. “You all right? Why are you crying? Are you sad?”

“No, I'm happy! I'm happy.”

“Can I ask,” he interjected, while the lady was standing there. “Did you believe the end-of-the-world stuff? Did you think it was all going to end?”

The lady laughed. “What? No, don't be silly. World no end. World keep going. We live, we die, kids live and die, their kids, world goes on.”

“So the Earth goes on forever?” Amy asked, wiping the last of the tears away.

“Not forever. Sun gets old, gets big, swallows Earth up.” She made a grabbing gesture and a slurping sound with her mouth, to punctuate the idea. “Long time from now. Billions of years. Why you not know science?” She shook her finger at them disapprovingly before heading back towards the kitchen for their food.

He locked eyes with Amy. At the same moment, they burst out laughing.

And Eat It, Too

They returned to the compound cold, dirty, and tired, but thankfully in the same numbers with which they had departed. They hadn't found much — Francis had siphoned a can and a half of gas, and Paco and Wilbur had scrounged maybe two bags of still-good canned food — but they'd cleared the approaches of danger, silently dispatching a dozen zombies with now-practiced ease.

The only surprise on the day was the smell that greeted them at camp.
Francis followed it into one of the walled-off houses the group occupied and found Emily, sitting in a chair placed a few feet from the oven, staring into it. He asked, incredulous, “Are you baking?”

“There was cake mix in the cupboard. Those eggs you found the other day were still good, so, why not.” It wasn't a question.

The smell was intoxicating. “What flavor?”

“Chocolate of course.”

He saw the empty cake-mix box lying discarded on the counter, and he picked it up and read the back. Half an hour at three-fifty... “You're using up a lot of power—”

“It was sunny today. And there was hardly anyone here to use electricity all day. I figure we had it to spare.” She glanced at him. “What.”

He shook his head slowly. “I dunno, Em, it just seems a little weird...”

She turned to look at him, spoke as if annoyed at having to explain the self-evident. “It's the end of the world. I wanted cake.”

Francis stood quietly for a minute, taking in the smell, before laying his guns and backpack on the empty kitchen table. He came back over to Emily and kissed on the top of the head. “Is there frosting?”

She pointed at a small can on the counter. “Also chocolate. We don't dare plug in the fridge so there's no way to chill it, make it solidify. Maybe if we leave it out back overnight. It's been getting down near forty.”

“Sure.” The back patio was enclosed, a sun room like you find in the south. Probably nothing would get in. “Maybe there's an open-top box we can put it in, just to be safe—”

“There's some banker's boxes upstairs.”

Paco pulled the door open and stuck his head in. “Do I smell cake?”

“Yeah.”

He was distracted, smiling, but then remembered his original purpose. “Hey, you gotta come, man. Some zombies coming up the road, must've followed us back, man. Guess we didn't get 'em all.”

“I'll be right there.”

Paco ducked back out, pulling the door shut behind him. For a long moment, Francis watched Emily watch the oven. “I'll be back.”

“I'll be here.”

“Keep the door closed.”

She leaned in closer, trying to make out detail through the cloudy stove-front window. “...Sure.”

He grabbed his guns and the backpack, and let himself out. He had the scent of chocolate cake in his nostrils the rest of the afternoon, even when he and Paco and Wilbur were burying the zombies that had happened upon the compound in a relentless search for a living meal.