“Afternoon, Mr. Mason. Have a good day out there?”

“The best, Jimmy,” I said, returning his smile. “You want to buzz me through?”

“Well, that depends, Mr. Mason. How do you feel about passing me your residency card and sticking your hand in my little box?”

“Pretty damn lousy, Jimmy,” I said. Digging out my wallet, I produced my residency card and dropped it into the guard station’s miniature air lock. It would be disinfected before James ever touched it, and he’d still wear Teflon-coated gloves when he picked it up to run it through his scanner. Protocol. Gotta love it, because anything else would lead to madness.

While James ran my card through his system and checked it for signs of tampering, I stuck my hand into the guard station’s built-in blood test unit, gritting my teeth as the needles unerringly managed to hit right on top of my freshest puncture wounds. The worst thing about going into the field isn’t the zombies or the driving. It’s all the damn blood tests.

“Well, Mr. Mason, everything looks to be in order,” James said, still cheerfully. He dropped my card back into the lockbox. “Welcome home.”

“Thanks, Jimmy,” I said, withdrawing my hand. His welcome was the only confirmation that I’d actually passed my blood test. Unlike the private units, which have to show you your results, business units often display only to the people who need to know—that is, the ones whose job it is to kill you if you fail.

Offering him a wave, which he amiably returned, I retrieved my card and drove on, leaving him to his comfortable Plexiglas box and his  p**n ography.

Building underground in California isn’t strictly safe, but neither is walking on the streets. That’s the brilliant logic that led to the construction of underground tunnels connecting the community structures to their associated buildings. Our building’s tunnel is about the length of a football field. As I walked along it, I amused myself by pondering just how many zombies would be able to pack themselves inside if there were ever a lapse in security. I had just reached the conclusion that the tunnel could hold somewhere around two hundred infected bodies, assuming they were all of average size, when I reached the door, swiped my residency card through the scanner, and was home.

The building consists of three floors and ten apartments: two on the first floor, four each on the second and third. My staff has three of the four third-floor apartments, and the fourth belongs to old Mrs. Hagar, who’s so deaf that she probably wouldn’t notice if we started holding weekly raves on the roof. Becks calls her “an old dear” and brings her cookies. In exchange, Mrs. Hagar no longer threatens to lob grenades at us every time we run into each other in the downstairs lobby. A few chocolate chips are a small price to pay to avoid getting vaporized while you’re picking up the mail.

The manager has one of the first-floor apartments. He’s almost never there, and we’re all pretty sure he has another residence somewhere outside of the city. Someplace safer. A lot of people think they’re safer in the country because there aren’t as many bodies capable of amplification. Not as many bodies means not as many guns, as George used to say. I’ll take my chances with the cities.

The other first-floor apartment is mine. It’s not much distance from the staff apartments, but it’s enough to let me feel like I have a little privacy. A little privacy can make all the difference in the world. I pressed my palm to the test pad for yet another blood test, unlocked the front door, and stepped inside, alone at last.

Alone? asked George, sounding dryly amused.

“My apologies.” Closing my eyes, I let my head tilt backward until it hit the door. “Apartment, give me lights in the living room, news scroll on mute on the main monitor, and prep the shower for a decontamination.”

“Acknowledged,” said the polite voice of the apartment’s computer system, following the word with a series of muted beeps as it activated the various requested utilities. I stayed where I was for a few more seconds, stretching out the moment. I could be anywhere in that moment. I could be in my apartment. Or I could be back in my bedroom in my parents’ house, the room that was connected to Georgia’s room, waiting for my turn at the shower. I could be anywhere.

I opened my eyes.

My apartment is never going to win any beautiful-home competitions. It consists of a living room full of boxes, computer equipment, and racks of weaponry; a bedroom full of boxes, computer equipment, and racks of weaponry; an office full of boxes, computer equipment, and racks of weaponry; and a bathroom where the floor space is almost completely consumed by a top-of-the-line shower and decontamination unit. No weaponry in there, at least—just ammunition. Bullets are waterproof enough these days that I could probably take them in the shower with me, if I were feeling particularly weird that day.

The air in the apartment always smells like stale pizza, gun oil, and bleach. Several people have said it doesn’t feel like anybody lives there, and what they don’t seem to understand is that I like it that way. As long as I’m not really living there, I never have to think about the fact that I’m living there alone.

It took me fifteen minutes to complete standard decontamination procedures and get myself into some clean clothes, leaving the old ones in a biohazard-secure bin for later sterilization. I checked the GPS readout on my watch. According to the van’s tracking coordinates, the rest of the team was just now reaching the guard station and getting their chance to check out Jimmy’s substandard taste in  p**n . Good. That meant I still had time to square myself away. Grabbing a clean jacket off a stack of survivalist magazines, I started for the door, swerving almost as an afterthought to pass through the kitchen and snag a Coke from the fridge.