Lilah bent forward onto all fours and studied the ground. In some spots, like this one, there were many footprints, and they varied. Several men, a few women. From the spacing and gait, it was clear that these were humans. Most of the shoes, even the crudely made ones, were in good repair, and there was none of the aimless shambling typical of zoms.

Not that she didn’t find signs of wandering zoms. They were out here too.

Lilah straightened, eyes alert.

So far they had seen no zoms on this side of the ravine, but the footprints didn’t lie.

She turned and glanced back the way she’d come as if she could see little Eve sitting there with Nix and the others. The girl must be charmed, she thought, to have made it safely from where her parents were camped to where Benny had rescued her. She had no bites on her, no marks to indicate that zoms had tried to hurt her.

That was a great relief to Lilah, one she had not shared with Chong. If Eve had been bitten . . .

If she was infected and needed to be quieted . . .

Lilah did not know if she could do that.

Not to a little girl who looked so much like Annie.

Not again.

She adjusted her grip on the spear and moved on.

A few minutes later she stopped again and knelt down by a different set of tracks. Not human footprints, and not the scuffling marks of zoms. No, these were straight lines of serrated tracks, like wheel marks.

But . . . wheels belonging to what? If they were made by a cart or wagon, then there was no sign of what pulled it.

She cleared away some loose debris and studied the patterns. The impressions were cut deep into the ground. Whatever made them was heavy, and it had four wheels. She thought of the many abandoned cars and trucks she’d seen over the years, and these marks didn’t fit. For one thing, the wheels were too close together.

It was a mystery.

Lilah moved on.

The ground became increasingly moist. Soon she smelled water on the breeze, and then within a few minutes she heard the soft burble of a stream. The footprints and the wheel marks all came from that way.

Five minutes later Lilah stepped out onto the banks of a narrow, shallow stream that ran out of the northeast and jagged off due south. The water was clear and clean, with the kind of mineral taste that confirmed her suspicion that the source was an underground river. She drank handfuls of it and refilled her canteen.