“I’m not a kid,” she said.

“Fair enough. No offense meant.”

She let it go and changed subjects. “That boar was a zom.”

“Yup,” agreed Joe.

“How?”

“Darned if I know,” he admitted. “Only seen a few of those critters around these last few months, and I don’t mind saying that it scares the bejesus out of me.”

“You’ve seen this before?”

“Yup. First one I saw was around Jericho Junction over in Utah. Then last week I saw a small pack of them chasing a bunch of other hogs. There’s been a population explosion of wild boars down south, all uninfected, at least as far as I know; but these were definitely walkers. Haven’t had a really good night’s sleep since. The thought that this plague has crossed the species barrier is . . . ” He shook his head, unable or unwilling to quantify the potential danger.

Lilah nodded. “It doesn’t make sense. Zoms are zoms. They’re people. The plague was never in the animals.”

“It is now.” He rubbed his eyes. “The plague’s been changing. Diseases do that. They’ve always done that. Before First Night there were new viruses every year, some of which were new strains of diseases we thought we’d beaten. It was simply good luck that most of the diseases of animals didn’t jump to humans, and that most human diseases didn’t jump to animals. That’s all past tense, though. The zombie plague, whatever it was, wiped out humanity, and now it’s moving into animals.”

“Other animals?”

He shrugged. “Let’s hope not. So far it’s only a small percentage of the boar population, and pig biology is pretty close to humans. That might account for it. If it gets into flies or insects, or birds, then we’re really screwed. We can’t build a fence to keep them out. Even so, those pigs . . . man, they give me the creeps.”

Lilah could tell that he was trying to keep his tone light, but the horror was in his eyes. “That’s not the only thing that’s changed,” she said. “Some of the zoms are faster.”

“Yeah, that’s old news. I’ve seen some real Olympic sprinters in the last year. Mostly in the Pacific Northwest. Not so much here, though.”

“We saw some today.”

He narrowed his blue eyes. “You’re sure?”

“I killed two of them today. One of them picked up a stick and tried to hit me with it.”

That news seemed to jolt Joe, and he stared at her for a moment. Several times his mouth began to form questions, but he left them unsaid. They ate their soup in silence, each of them contemplating the implications of faster and perhaps smarter zoms.

Lilah held out her cup for more soup. “You haven’t asked me my name.”