Instinctively bringing her daggers up in front of her head, she blocked the machete that would have gouged a chunk out of her face, immediately throwing herself back from the onslaught of swings that Mark threw at her. Her adrenaline rush was fading; the strain in her arms aching as she attempted to parry his blows.

With the last of her energy, she ducked a wild swing and darted past Mark, kicking out at his ribs as they passed. He lost his balance and she kicked again at his groin, letting out a yell that echoed through the darkened halls. Her kick missed, catching him instead in the hip. The hit sent him staggering back a few steps, but he caught himself, raised his machete overhead, and rushed her again.

“No!”

The scream was nearly as deafening as the gunshot that followed, and Mark staggered, arms still raised, before he collapsed to the ground, unmoving.

Maria stood behind him, her arm out, frozen, before dropping the gun with a clatter. She let out a sob and fell to the floor. Dropping her own weapon, Rachael gathered the girl into her arms.

“I . . . I wanted to . . . to be brave.” Rachael could make out the words between Maria’s broken sobs, and she hugged the girl against her, holding her tightly.

“You are brave,” Rachael countered quietly. “Even the brave can be afraid or sad. But your mom and Eden would want you to keep going. They would be so proud of you. You are the real hero. You are the real Wonder Woman.”

Maria didn’t speak, but her sobs shook her body as she cried for her mom, and Eden, and for herself. For everything she’d lost, the life she’d had before. A life with cellphones and friends and crushes and school. For the lost innocence of a teen forced to grow up before her time.

This was their world now, Rachael realized. They all had to grow up too fast. But, she would do everything she could to change this world, to make it a place where children could be children. Where heroes could exist and bring hope.

— 6 —

“What next?” Brett asked quietly. They sat on the edge of the low roof of one of the hospital buildings, under the late summer full moon. Rachael leaned her head against his shoulder, her fingers entwined with his, watching her fighters, her warriors, her army, practicing in the moonlight. “We took back our home . . . so, seriously, Rachael, what’s next?”

She was silent for a moment, considering, weighing her options.

“Next? We take back our world.”

PART FOUR

STILL OF NIGHT

JONATHAN MABERRY AND RACHAEL LAVIN

SIX MONTHS AFTER THE OUTBREAK

— 1 —

THE SOLDIER AND THE DOG

The dead rose. We fell. That’s the short version of current events.

Well . . . not so current. We’re still falling. It’s a long damn way down to nowhere.

I’ve spent months going from one side of the country to the other. Me and my dog, Baskerville. There are no planes, no trains, no automobiles. At least none that work. Some geniuses in the military decided that nukes were the only proportional response to the armies of the dead. They dropped a lot of them. Huge sections of North America are gone, buried under ash that glows in the dark. The radiation is probably going to kill more people than the zombies will. And the electromagnetic pulses fried all of the electronics. Which means any chance there was of driving somewhere safe is gone. The power is out, taking with it the controls for water, sewage, and every other damn useful thing.