****
Theresa and Liz stood in the foyer of the ranger station, a small, eight-foot by twelve-foot room that had little in the way of furniture. What furniture there was had been stacked up against the door. The two lovers sat on the floor in front of the furniture, adding their own weight to the barricade. With each thump at the door, they could feel the vibrations in their spine. They held spears in their hands, and their rifles sat propped up against the far wall.
Theresa was not very good with the rifle. She trusted the spear more. Her back ached, and her bladder felt full; it frequently did now. The baby inside her had been restless all evening, perhaps responding to the cries of the other child in the other room.
"I wish someone would shut that baby up," Liz said.
Theresa thought about admonishing her for her callous thought, but she had had the same thought quite a few times in the last day. The first day had been fine. It's just a baby, she had thought. The second and third day, she had been able to hold onto that idea. But this was the fourth day, and she absolutely wanted that baby to be quiet. She didn't like to think about the ways this could be accomplished. They weren't good. But after four days… well, Theresa didn't think Tammy was going to wake up anyway, and unless one of them gave birth first, then that baby wasn't going to survive. It was at death's door as it was… but death was at the door for them, and something needed to be done.
She leaned her head back against the ancient oak desk that kept the dead from breaking inside. "I don't think it will last much longer," Theresa said.
"But then it will turn," Liz said, a note of horror in her voice.
"We don't know that."
"If it was your child, would you want to let it turn?"
Theresa turned and looked at Liz. She didn't see the mole on her face anymore. She only saw a woman she cared for deeply. "Could you drive a spear through that baby?"
Liz looked away from her, ashamed. "No."
Theresa patted her on the arm. "Neither could I."
****
Katie started across the room, cold determination in her heart.
Dez locked eyes with her. "I'm not going to stop you," Dez said.
"You couldn't if you wanted to."
Katie moved around the end of the bed. She went to the cold place, the place she had lived for months after the death of her family. In the cold place, she didn't feel anything. She was someone else. In the cold place, she could do what needed to be done.
She saw Dez turn her head. A look of shock and horror took root on her face. Katie turned as well, spotting movement out of the corner of her eye. She raised the spear, reared back, and prepared to kill whatever was moving.
"My baby," a weak voice said.
Katie corrected her spear in mid-thrust, plunging it into the bed's headboard, inches from Tammy's wide-eyed face.
She sagged to her knees, and the cold place melted away. Shame hit her like a tidal wave, and she sat there, gasping, thankful that things had not gone the way she had expected.
Dez stood up and brought the baby over to Tammy. "He's starving," she said.
Tammy, too weak to hold her baby, let Dez hold the child up to her breast. After a few encouraging words from Tammy, it finally latched on and began feeding. Tammy tried to keep her eyes open, but then she passed out again. The baby continued to feed… and Katie looked on, terrified that Tammy would die at any moment with her newborn child suckling at her breast. She gripped her spear and silently hoped that Tammy would pull through.
At least it was quiet now.
****
Liz and Theresa made dinner. It was the last of their food, except for the bear meat buried in the snow, an army of the dead between them and a good meal. They dumped cans of peas and beans into a cast-iron pot. They cooked it over the fire, taking turns stirring the food in silence. When the concoction began to bubble, they pulled it from the fire to let it cool.
When it was cool enough, they carried the pot into the room where Tammy and her baby lay. They took turns eating with the same spoon they had used to stir the mix with, passing the spoon around in a circle as they each took a bite. Katie stood in the doorway, looking down the hall to the front of the ranger station, should the dead manage to break through. But the onslaught of the dead had quieted some now that Tammy's baby wasn't crying nonstop.
With each mouthful, they watched the food in the pot disappear. It would be gone soon, and then there was a good chance that they would follow soon after. As the last of the beans and peas disappeared into Liz's mouth, Theresa cleared her throat and said, "I don't want to die here."
The room was quiet, but all of their thoughts echoed with Liz's words.
"I don't wanna die here either," Mort said.
"None of us do," added Joan.
"So, what do we do?" Dez asked. She sat in the corner, the baby, full and content, resting in her arms.
"We have to leave," Katie said. "We either leave or we die. Those are our only two options."
"We could fight them," Mort added.
"If we fight, we die," Theresa said.
Mort nodded. He knew that as well as they did. There were too many of them out there. The house
