When Dan finally reached his home, he knew he had to go out there himself. So, he took Jennie’s scooter, and he—
A sound pulls Dan out of this train of thoughts. He looks to the side and sees a police car coming at him fast from an adjacent gravel road.
Dan yells out and squeezes the brake hard, causing the scooter to slide sideways and almost throw him off.
The police car veers to the side at the last second and narrowly avoids hitting him. But the driver doesn’t seem to pay any notice, because the car doesn’t slow down; it simply makes a sharp turn, the tires screaming against the hot asphalt, and then it races off in the direction towards town where Dan has just come from. Less than two hundred yards down the road, it slams on its brakes, turns sharply again, disappearing into the forest.
Holy shit, Dan thinks, feeling his heart under his chin. Wonder if that had anything to do with …
He doesn’t need to finish the thought, because he already knows the answer. He had a brief glimpse of the driver of the car—a young man in a police uniform—and the pale face with the wide eyes told Dan everything he needed to know about what the guy had seen.
He looks around and notices the mailbox by the side of the gravel road from which the police car came. Number 214. The house where it all began was number 216. This is the neighbor, then. And that means Jennie probably—
Dan sees the girl running up the gravel road. For one terrible second he takes it to be Jennie. The girl does look a little like his late sister; around same age, same height and build. The hair is a little shorter and darker, but that’s not readily apparent from this far away, and the only thing keeping Dan from twisting the gas handle and getting the heck out of Dodge is the way the girl moves. She’s way too fast and steady on her legs to be a zombie. And now she raises one arm and waves at him.
Dan pulls off the helmet.
The girl reaches him and slows down, panting. “Did you … did you see … where he went?”
“That way,” Dan says, pointing in the direction without taking his eyes off of the girl. “He drove into the forest.”
The girl places her hands on her knees, heaving for breath, sweat beading on her forehead. Dan scans her quickly for any signs of blood or wounds, but doesn’t see anything.
“What happened?” he asks.
“I need to borrow your scooter. I don’t have time to explain, but I need to follow that guy.”
“Why? Who was he?”
“I said, I don’t have time.” The girl grabs the handlebars.
“No!” Dan objects. “You can’t have it. I need it.”
“It’s very important!” the girl says earnestly. “You’d never believe me, but the future of the world might depend on it.”
Dan stares at her for a moment, as something falls into place. “I believe you,” he says. “I’ve seen them.”
The girl’s eyes grow big. “Oh, no … does that mean they already …?”
“No, I don’t think they’ve spread very far. As far as I know, it all began in the next house down the road from here. Only one of them escaped. It was—”
“Jennie Nygaard?” the girl interrupts.
Hearing his sister’s names forms a lump in Dan’s throat. He nods.
“She came to our house,” the girl says, talking fast. “She killed one of the kids, and the officer shot her, then … then he got bitten, and then he ran. That’s why I need to find him. I think I can talk him into his senses before he dies and infects anyone else.”
“So … Jennie is dead?” Dan asks hoarsely.
“Yes. The officer is the last one, at least from what I’ve seen. That’s why you need to lend me your scooter!”
Dan pulls his helmet back on. “Get on. I’ll drive.”
The girl looks at him with surprise for a second. Then, she jumps on and grabs him around the waist. Dan turns the scooter around and takes off down the road.
“Did Jennie bite anyone else?” he asks over his shoulder.
“Yes, another officer and a small girl. She was …” She doesn’t seem to want to finish the sentence.
“They both dead?” Dan asks.
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Allan shot them.”
“Is Allan the guy we’re after?”
“Yes.”
“Did he shoot them through their heads?”
“Yes.”
“How about Jennie?”
“Same.”
Dan feels his stomach tighten up thinking about Jennie being really dead. But at the same time, strangely, he also feels a fair amount of relief.
He slows down as they reach the place the police car turned into the forest. There’s a narrow forest road, and as they turn and head in between the trees, the air becomes slightly cooler and more pleasant. The girl tightens her grip around Dan. The feeling of her arms around him combined with the faint smell of her perfume gives Dan a brief flutter of butterflies in his stomach. Odd how his brain is even capable of registering something like that given the situation. Dan has always been shy around girls, and even though he’s almost fifteen, he still has never kissed a girl.
“Do you know where this road leads?” she asks him.
“No idea,” Dan replies. “I don’t live out here, I was just doing a paper route.”
“I just moved here, so I don’t know the area either. I’m Selina, by the way.”
“My name’s Dan.”
The road makes a sudden left turn and reveals the police car on the side of the road, its front up against a tree. Dan’s first impression is that the driver has intentionally parked the car in a weird, crooked way—but then he notices the crunched hood of the car and the white smoke rising up from it.
“He has crashed it,” Selina says, jumping off the scooter before it comes to a complete stop. “He might be dead.”
Dan wants to tell
