Chapters (91)
- Author’s Foreword
- Part One: Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight
- DURING THE OUTBREAK
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- Part Two: Fat Girl with a knife
- DURING THE OUTBREAK
- — 1 —
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- Part Three: Orc Night
- — 1 —
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- Part Four: Still of Night
- — 1 —: THE SOLDIER AND THE DOG
- — 2 —: THE WARRIOR WOMAN
- — 3 —: DAHLIA AND THE PACK
- — 4 —: THE SOLDIER AND THE DOG
- — 5 —: DAHLIA AND THE PACK
- — 6 —: THE WARRIOR WOMAN
- — 7 —: THE SOLDIER AND THE DOG
- — 8 —: DAHLIA AND THE PACK
- — 9 —: THE WARRIOR WOMAN
- — 10 —: THE SOLDIER AND THE DOG
- — 11 —: DAHLIA AND THE PACK
- — 12 —: THE WARRIOR WOMAN
- — 13 —: THE SOLDIER AND THE DOG
- — 14 —: DAHLIA AND THE PACK
- — 15 —: THE WARRIOR WOMAN
- — 16 —: THE SOLDIER AND THE DOG
- — 17 —: DAHLIA AND THE PACK
- — 18 —: THE WARRIOR WOMAN
- — 19 —: THE SOLDIER AND THE DOG
- — 20 —: DAHLIA AND THE PACK
- — 21 —: THE WARRIOR WOMAN
- — 22 —: THE SOLDIER AND THE DOG
- — 23 —: DAHLIA AND THE PACK
- — 24 —: THE WARRIOR WOMAN
- — 25 —: THE SOLDIER AND THE DOG
- — 26 —: DAHLIA AND THE PACK
- — 27 —: THE WARRIOR WOMAN
- — 28 —: THE SOLDIER AND THE DOG
- — 29 —: DAHLIA AND THE PACK
- — 30 —: THE WARRIOR WOMAN
- — 31 —: THE SOLDIER AND THE DOG
- — 32 —: DAHLIA AND THE PACK
- — 33 —: THE WARRIOR WOMAN
- — 34 —: DAHLIA AND THE PACK
- — 35 —: THE WARRIOR WOMAN
- — 36 —: HAPPY VALLEY
- — 37 —: THE SOLDIER AND THE DOG
- — 38 —: THE SIEGE OF HAPPY VALLEY
- — 39 —: THE WARRIOR WOMAN, THE SOLDIER, AND THE DOG
- — 40 —: THE SIEGE OF HAPPY VALLEY
- — 41 —: THE WARRIOR WOMAN, THE SOLDIER, AND THE DOG
- — 42 —: HAPPY VALLEY
- — 43 —: THE WARRIOR WOMAN, THE SOLDIER, AND THE DOG
- — 44 —: HAPPY VALLEY
- — 45 —: THE WARRIOR WOMAN, THE SOLDIER, AND THE DOG
- — 46 —: HAPPY VALLEY
- — 47 —: THE WARRIOR WOMAN, THE SOLDIER, AND THE DOG
- — 48 —: THE SIEGE OF HAPPY VALLEY
- — 49 —: THE WAR
- EPILOGUE
- — 1 —
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- The Zombie Apocalypse Chronology
In the cold starlight I saw a mix of emotions in her eyes. Some hope and some humor, some tolerance and some despair. Sadness, too, because any conversation about survival carries with it the memory of who has not survived. Seeing her pain, knowing it was tied to that kind of memory, made my own inner eye look at the empty places in my life. It twisted a knife with practiced, delicate precision.
We walked back to the camp, and she told me where she thought Happy Valley might be. Then we went to our bedrolls. Baskerville spooned with me for warmth. The night passed. In the morning I went my way and they went theirs. I hugged Abigail and told her that I hoped we’d see each other again. She said that would be nice.
We both knew that we wouldn’t. But lies are cheap and they sound good.
— 14 —: DAHLIA AND THE PACK
— 14 —
DAHLIA AND THE PACK
Life became strange for Dahlia. Surreal. That was the word, she decided. That said it all.
She had always loved that word. Before. It had been a vocabulary word in tenth grade, and she liked the description in one of the dictionaries she read. Perception marked by the intense irrational reality of a dream. That was fun, though she understood at the time that “irrational” did not necessarily mean “bad.” It meant that it made no logical sense. That seemed to apply to a lot of things in her world. The whole concept of physical beauty—a lucky happenstance of genetics—being the yardstick by which people were judged made no sense at all. That was irrational. She was so much smarter than pretty much all of the “in crowd,” the preps, the whatevers. Dahlia had been one of the smartest kids in her class, but because she’d always been fat the others discounted her intelligence. Waistlines mattered more than IQ or GPA. Which was nuts. That was surreal in a bad way. The fact that she knew that her brains would matter ten times more when they all graduated was another kind of surreal. Her ability to dive into literary worlds and become lost in them as if what lay between the pages was more real than anything in school . . . yeah, that was surreal. It was an escape hatch that kept her sane and made her smile when nothing else did.