the house, at its dead, dark windows. Is someone in there, watching her with their own dead eyes?

Another quick count to ten and she slips into the garage and shuts the door. The lock, she’s relieved to see, is intact and she twists it home. Then she carefully inspects the darkness around her, using the penlight she also keeps on her belt.

Evidence of small critters in the corners and the musky scent of old urine remains. Something sits shrouded in a corner and she pulls back a tarp to see a motorcycle gleaming in her shaking beam. She wishes she knew how to ride one but knows it would be like a clarion-call to them. Better it stays in this empty garage next to the dead house. Perhaps another survivor will find it of use.

If there are any survivors left in the world.

She looked newly turned, her mind reminds her. She pushes that thought away and settles down in a corner, her suitcase open to reveal the shiny MREs, her backpack open to pull free a small travel pillow, the sleeping bag released from its fastenings under the pack and spread beneath her.

She opens a package and chews without joy, without tasting. A bit dribbles onto her shirt and she roots in the bag to find a wet wipe. Her fingers close around something metallic and cold. Shaky breath out, shaky breath in. She lets the metal fall away, pushes aside the emotions that well, and pulls a wet wipe free. It’s cold on her skin, the wet paper scratchy. Nothing worse than cheap wipes, hadn’t she said that to Lana when the boys were little?

Pain hits her, grief uncoiling in her chest and ripping her apart as it goes. She stifles her sobs in her jacket, rocking silently as the terrible, empty loneliness leaves her helpless for some time. She’s learned to stay quiet at all costs even if it means holding in what should be set free.

She promises herself she’ll deal with it later. It’s not a lie. She wants to deal with it. Anything would be better than this silent agony, but she knows the likelihood of her surviving to have a later is slim to none.

Why don’t you just kill yourself?

She wipes her cheeks, wipes her nose, hyper-focuses on her food, and keeps her mind carefully turned away from that insidious whispering. No good will come of listening to it, of giving into it.

She clings to the last thin filament of hope that her boys are alive and she won’t let go until the line is cut, until she sees their dead bodies with her own eyes, until she holds their lifeless forms in her arms. They’re all she has left, and she must cling tight.

After a restless sleep, she gathers her belongings and waits out the night. She’s learned that moving in the cover of night, while comforting, is dangerous. They don’t sleep and while they don’t see well, they hear perfectly. A lesson learned the hard way and so she waits until she has a slight advantage over them.

Dawn comes and goes, winter’s mid-morning sun bright but not warm. She opens the door by inches, taking minutes to ease it the barest crack and spends minutes more surveying the area, watching the windows, listening.

Bird song despite the chill.

Her feet will be terribly loud in the snow, but she has wrapped them with a couple shirts each and hopes it’s enough to muffle her movements. Everything on her pack and body has been tied down to keep from clinking, clanking, swishing, or otherwise making noise.

She pulls her knife and eases out the door, going slow, murmuring the boys’ names over and over again in her head. Like the countdown, saying their names helps bolster her courage, helps her move forward when all the terror and teeth threaten to keep her crouched and hiding.

The world is quiet. No cars going by, no distant crashes of train cars banging together. No shouts, calls, no music. A few brave winter birds and the swish of her feet in the snow.

The silence is terrifying.

She pauses at the edge of the fence banding the property, searching for movement, for peculiar shadows, for people standing stock still waiting for their next meal to stumble by. She doesn’t want to be anything’s next meal and so she watches long after her feet go cold and numb in her boots. When she is finally satisfied she isn’t being observed, she runs across the wide-open field, heart hammering in her throat. There are houses about half a mile away and a row of trees on their southern side. She will hide in the trees to scope things out, look for a car.

God, she’s so exposed right now.

When she gets to the trees, she struggles to keep her panting quiet as she scans her surroundings for danger. The knife in her hand trembles. She’s used it before. It still haunts her. The sounds. The feel.

Tucker. Jackson. “Remember why you’re doing this,” she whispers under her breath.

Another ten minutes of watching reveals nothing, no movement, no silent watchers. She ghosts through the trees to the closest house, sliding along the outer wall to the back door. A careful check of the doorknob tells her it’s locked. She goes to the next house and the next until she finds one with an open window. More waiting, more watching and then she uses her knife to slice the screen.

“Ten, nine, eight, seven …” When she gets to one, she eases her backpack into the house and follows it, grunting when her coat slides up and her belly scrapes along the metal. She checks her skin, thanking the gods that don’t exist she isn’t bleeding.

Nothing brings them faster than fresh, warm blood.

She checks the house methodically, room by room, listening, stepping carefully, making sure she is as quiet as she can be. An old brown stain in the upstairs bathroom tells a grim tale about happened to the people

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