“Daddy?” Zoe said. The fear in her voice was real. Something I wanted to shield her from until the world wouldn’t let me anymore. I couldn’t shield her from this; hell was raining down all around us.

My hands shook as I tried to shove the key in the door to unlock it.

“Daddy?” Zoe said again.

“Just a second, baby,” I said, cursing at my trembling hands under my breath. Finally the key entered the slit and I turned it. In the same second, Zoe squeezed my hand.

“Daddy!”

I turned, seeing a police officer approach. He was shuffling slowly in our direction, his jaw relaxed, letting his mouth lie open. A low moan emanated from his throat. I picked up the bat that I’d propped against the car while trying to unlock the door, and then I stepped in front of Zoe.

“Stop right there,” I said. The police officer kept walking. I held the bat in front of me.

“If you can understand what I’m saying, please stop. I am going to hit you with this bat if you come closer.”

Zoe gripped the back of my pants, and I gripped the aluminum. “Close your eyes, Zoe.”

My daughter’s tiny hands left the fabric of my pants, and I pulled the bat back and to the side, in perfect position to swing. Before I could, a shot rang out. The police officer went down. I froze, and then saw Lyle Edson standing a few feet to my left.

“Thank you,” I said with a nod.

“Better grab his sidearm and get that little girl outta here,” Lyle said.

“You want to come?”

Lyle shook his head. “My wife’s inside. She’s been bit. I’m going to stay with her.”

I nodded and then leaned down, unsnapping the officer’s holster and removing his sidearm. I grabbed his radio, too, and then decided to take his whole belt.

Zoe opened the driver’s side door and crawled over the console to her side. We both buckled our seatbelts, and I started the car. The gas tank showed three quarters left. I wasn’t sure how close to safety we could get on three-quarters of a tank, but we had to leave town.

Zoe reached up to lock her door.

“Better lock the back door, too,” I said, doing the same. I backed out of the drive and went in the same direction as the ambulance. I figured I should get away from whatever they were driving away from in such a hurry.

Chapter Five

Scarlet

The last rays of sun unceremoniously fell behind the horizon. Shaking with fear, I slowly stepped out of the Jeep. My tennis shoes, still a little wet from the morning rain, sunk into thick mud. Clutching the tire iron to my chest, I took a step into the woods. The night was quiet—so quiet that every movement I made seemed like a boom echoing through the trees.

Every sound made my body freeze. Could they see in the dark? Did they rely on smell like an animal? Only when I thought of my girls waiting for me did I find enough courage to take another step.

About an hour later, a dragging noise startled me enough to make me cling to a tree. I hugged it to me and closed my eyes, trying to listen for danger over the pounding in my heart and gasping breath.

Just when I thought I might hyperventilate, my eyes popped open wide to try to pull in enough light to penetrate the darkness. Something darker than the dark and about as tall as a man crossed from one tree to another, only twenty yards or so from me. I closed my eyes tight one last time, and then broke into a sprint, refusing to stop until I slipped in the culvert beside the main highway in and out of town.

My knees hit hard, and then my stomach, chest, and face shortly after. Face and palms down in the mud, I quickly tuned in to the sounds around me, and then flipped over, searching in a panic for whatever was hunting me.

My chest heaved as my lungs tried to keep up with the constant adrenaline pumping through my body. A scream welled up in my chest, but recognition choked back the noise. Drawing anyone’s attention—alive or dead—could end my rescue mission before it started.

A man walked toward me, his arms out, trying to wave away the scream he could see was about to echo throughout the east side of Anderson.

The fear in his dark eyes was highlighted by the amount of white surrounding them. “Ssssh! I’m not going to hurt you!” he said in a loud whisper.

He slid in next to me, his clothes and skin already soiled with mud, spattered in some places, saturated in others. He looked like he’d been crawling on his belly through the woods for days.

I pressed my lips together to stifle a yelp, my entire body shaking involuntarily.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said again, panting. He didn’t need the mud. His skin was dark enough to keep him hidden, even if he was well over six feet tall. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m just trying to get into town. Same as you.”

I nodded, unable to form a proper response.

“My name’s Tobin. You . . . you okay?”

I took a deep breath, trying to settle my nerves. “Scarlet.”

Tobin took a quick scan of our surroundings. “Are you from Anderson?”

“I used to be.”

Tobin nodded. “You got family in there, don’t you?”

“My little girls,” I said, feeling salty tears fill my eyes. For the first time since I’d left the Jeep, I felt cold. My body hadn’t stopped shaking, and I was already exhausted.

Tobin pressed his lips together. “My sister and her kids live here. She ain’t got nobody.”

The knowledge that I wasn’t totally alone gave me enough strength to focus on my plan. I pointed across the highway to another patch of woods. “Across the road is a valley that runs alongside the river. There’s an old bridge maybe three blocks south of here.”

Tobin frowned. “There are soldiers at every entrance, and they’re walking the streets. Anderson is some type of military state now.”

“The governor is in there somewhere. He was visiting today. My daughters were supposed to meet him.”

Tobin shook his head. “That explains it, then. I’m not sure whether I should be glad or sick to my stomach. I mean . . . who gives a shit about his title when the whole world is going to hell, right?”

I laughed once without humor. “It’s a good time to throw his rank around. At least he’s not crawling through the mud.”

Tobin offered a small smile. “We better get going. They could do another sweep of the woods soon.”

“Another?”

Tobin looked at his mud-covered front and then back at me. “A word of advice: If you see a dead person walking, run the other way. If you see a soldier, hide. They were shooting the bodies lying in the road earlier. Just making sure, I guess.”

Tobin waited as I darted across the highway. My legs seemed to be moving in slow motion, but before I knew it, I was across the lit four lanes and hidden once again on the other side. A few seconds later, Tobin joined me.

I had never felt so much comfort from being around a complete stranger. That was just one more thing you didn’t learn from the zombie movies.

Keeping to the overgrown foliage around the river, Tobin and I trudged through the mud to the looming Blackwell Street Bridge. An army truck passed over slowly, and we had to leap under the steel and asphalt to escape the spotlight they were shining on the river. I held my hands over my mouth. A body was floating facedown on the surface of the water, not two feet from where Tobin and I had walked just moments before. Shots rang out, the body convulsed as it was showered with bullets, and then the truck moved on, the spotlight parallel to its path.

Tobin reached out and touched my arm. “It’s okay. They’re gone. I need to take a piss, and then we’ll keep going.”

His words struck me as odd. I had to wait and take stock of my bodily functions, to figure out if I even had to take a bathroom break. All of a sudden, my bladder felt like it was going to burst, and it was all I could do to get my scrub pants untied and my panties around my ankles fast enough to keep from urinating all over myself.

Tobin met me at the edge of the water. It was dark, and it didn’t seem like a good idea to swim, but we couldn’t risk taking the bridge across, either.

“Did you think this far ahead?” Tobin asked, staring at the flowing river. The rain earlier had made the current stronger, and the water level higher.

“Not really, but we can’t get caught on that bridge. They’ll take one look at us and know we snuck in. They’ll shoot us on sight.”

“Agreed. You used to live here. What do you think we should do?”

“We can either try to find a shallower place downstream, try to cross here, or use the rope swing on the other side of the bridge.”

“The rope swing?” Tobin said, dubious.

“There’s been one on that tree over there as long as I can remember. They keep one there for the kids that live around here.”

Tobin stared at me blankly.

I shrugged. “The city pool is on the other side of town.”

Tobin blinked. “What kind of backward redneck village did my sister move to?”

Nathan

“Lyle shot a cop, Daddy.”

“I saw that,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

“What’s happening?” Zoe said. “Why is everyone fighting?”

“Some of the people are sick,” I said, turning on the police radio. “I think.”

Reports were coming in that the virus had affected all counties. After a while, the dispatcher stopped talking, so I turned up the car radio. Thirty-two of the forty-eight contiguous states reported casualties and illness. The East Coast reported that those who had chosen not to receive the flu vaccination were not showing symptoms as quickly as those who had. Some reports said that those who had had the flu shot didn’t necessarily need to get bitten or attacked before they caught the virus. They would reanimate no matter how they died. I glanced over at Zoe. She had an egg allergy like I did. People with egg allergies were advised against the shot unless they stayed under the supervision of a doctor post-inoculation. Even though my allergy wasn’t severe, Aubrey and I decided the benefit didn’t outweigh the risk, for me or for Zoe. Well, I did . . . Aubrey left the decision to me. I let a small sigh of relief escape my lips. If I only did one thing right, I’m glad it was that.

All roads proved to be an obstacle course. If I wasn’t jerking the wheel to the left, I was yanking it to the right, dodging people, other cars, and general debris left behind by the pandemonium. Aubrey used to always bitch about my driving, but we were almost out of town, and I’d yet to crash into anything. Even if it were a small miracle, even she couldn’t complain about my driving skills now.

Zoe pointed ahead. We were on one of the few roads out of town that I thought would still be open. It was paved, but just a few miles ahead it would turn to dirt. Halfway between was a railroad crossing. A train was visible a little less than a half-mile away, and soon the lights would blink red, and the crossing rails would lower. There were cars behind me, and God knows what else. We couldn’t get caught behind that train. The sedan’s nearly bald tires wouldn’t be able to forge through the wheat fields between us and the next road.

I pressed on the gas.

“Daddy, slow down!”

“I can’t, Zoe. We can’t wait for the train.” I reached over and yanked up her seatbelt to be sure it was tight, and then I put both hands on the wheel. The crossing rails began their descent. The horn of the train wailed, drawn out and sad. I used to think that sound was romantic. Now it was what was keeping me from getting my daughter to someplace safe.

My foot grinded against the gas pedal, slamming it to the floor.

“Daddy, no!”

The first crossing rail just grazed the paint on the top of the car, but we took the second rail out, easily snapping it in half. Zoe flipped around, covering her mouth. I looked in the rearview mirror. The wine-colored Lincoln Town Car behind us must have had the same idea, but was a second too slow. The train clipped its back bumper and sent it into a spin. The front end of the car whipped around, crashing into the train a few times before it was spit out a bit farther down into the wheat field. If they weren’t badly hurt, they were going to have to walk.

“We should go back!”

I shook my head. “We’re going to Uncle Skeeter and Aunt Jill’s.” Skeeter McGee was Aubrey’s little brother. Aubrey’s obvious disdain for me made Skeeter like me that much more. They lived in a tiny two-bedroom dump of a house just on this side of Fairview. The town was small. Small enough not to have to worry about a herd of the undead surrounding us.

Zoe’s lips turned up in the tiniest hint of a grin. Skeeter and Jill hadn’t been married but a couple of years, and had no children. Skeeter was in love with Zoe like she was his own, and Jill was just as crazy about her.

One more reason to make a beeline for Fairview was that Skeeter was a hunting enthusiast, and had several pistols and hunting rifles with plenty of ammo. It would be the perfect place to hole up and wait out the end of the world.

The two-lane road didn’t have the congestion I expected. A few times I had to steer around a two- or three-car pileup, most likely from the initial panic and worried drivers not paying attention, but for the most part the cars on the road were driving along at moderate speeds. Zoe pointed out her window when we arrived at Old Creek Bridge. A man was bent over, vomiting next to his ’76 Buick LeSabre while his wife touched his back. Her expression was more than worry or fear; the residual lines on her face were deepened by resignation.

“Is he one of the sick people, Daddy?” Zoe asked as we drove slowly past them.

The woman looked up, hopelessness in her eyes, and then she helped her husband to the passenger side of their car.

“I don’t know, baby.”

“Maybe we should stop and help them.”

“I don’t think we can,” I said, pulling my cell phone from my pocket. I tried to dial Skeeter’s number to warn him we were coming, but all I heard was a busy signal. Of course the phone lines would be down.