It was maybe a week before I even organized my brain enough to wonder how Top and Bunny were doing. After the cluster fuck that was our so-called “mission to rescue the president” and the subsequent helicopter crash, we split up. Bunny had a lot of family in Orange County; Top had people in Georgia. We each wanted to be there for the others, but we couldn’t. We parted ways with an agreement to meet at an off-the-books base we all knew of in Nevada. It was fortified and had a hardened facility with a full laboratory, hospital, and room for hundreds of refugees. We’d each try to bring our families there. Parting was tough, though. It was a bitch, and we held each other and wept because none of us had much hope left. Not much at all. The thing driving us was fear. And need. But not hope.

Robinwood nearly destroyed me. Sandra’s farm pushed me all the way to the edge and the only thing in the world that looked like it would offer a shred of comfort was the big fall into the welcoming black.

I wandered like a ghost, haunting a dead landscape, waiting until I dropped my body and drifted on as a spirit. Then, maybe, dissolve like mist and become nothing. If that meant there were no more memories, then I wanted it. Craved it. Needed it to be true.

Then something changed one day, and maybe changed me. Like a slap when you’re on the edge of hysteria.

It was a dog barking.

Terrified, angry. A deep-chested sound. It reminded me of Ghost, though he was long dead. Old age. He’d run through hell with me all over the world. Wish to fuck I’d had him with me now. He could track anyone or anything. Ghost could have found my family. One way or another, he would have found them. Given me an answer. Not closure, though, because the mouths of some wounds stay open so they can scream at you day and night.

This dog wasn’t Ghost. I knew that.

But it was alive. The first living thing other than squirrels and birds that I’d seen since I reached my uncle’s farm.

And so I ran toward the sound of the barking. Blocks away. I was dressed in farmer’s coveralls and a Pittsburgh Penguins T-shirt that was several sizes too small, and boat shoes that were too big. No weapons at all. My mind hadn’t recovered enough for that to have been a thing. Barehanded. Stupid with shock. Running toward the sound of a frightened dog and endless hungry moans.

When I rounded a corner by the Antietam Tractor and Equipment store in Hagerstown, I nearly ran into a shambler. In life this person had been a cop of some kind—deputy or state trooper—but now there were only rags left of a tan uniform. He wore a gunbelt, though, but no gun. A rubber baton, the kind with the handle jutting out at a right angle, based on the old Okinawan tonfa, was looped through his belt. I skidded to a stop. Beyond him was a throng of dead ones all clustered around an overturned Ram Mega-cab four-wheel-drive pickup. The dog stood on the top, on the passenger door, just out of reach of the grasping hands.