They were exactly what you’d expect them to be, and there were a whole lot of the bastards. They were ranging through the woods and farms, gathering up women and children. Rape and every other kind of vile abuse you can imagine. Women and kids.

Naturally Dez and I took some umbrage at this and sternly disabused them of the notion that they had permission to act like total parasites. We had some help from a young woman, early twenties, who was dressed like some kind of Viking or Asgardian or something. A cosplayer who used to do the comic convention circuit and after the dead rose decided to embrace the characters she played. A little crazy, sure, but tough as fuck. The three of us, and my armored mutt, stood up to the whole NKK army.

We walked away. They did not.

The warrior woman, Rachael Elle, went east. Dez went off to find Trout, using a map I gave her. And I kept wandering. Kept looking for the family I knew I’d never find.

Days lost their meaning after a while. Most things did.

I found some pockets of the NKK and vented on them in very bad ways. Found some wanderers and helped them out of some scrapes and sent them on toward Asheville. Stayed alone, for the most part. Me and Baskerville.

One cold spring morning, though, I heard people. I heard screams and yells. And moans. It was a mélange of sounds I’d heard so often that even before I got there I could paint the picture—one or more of the living caught by a group of the dead. In a field or farmhouse, in a forest or on the banks of a stream. That kind of drama was probably playing out all over the country. Probably all of the world, in cities and in the woods, maybe even in the arctic and on remote islands. Wherever the disease was, and last I heard it was everywhere.

The screams were male. Two or three voices. And a lot of moans. Baskerville froze and stared. His armor prevented me from seeing the hairs rise along his spine, but his body language told me.

We broke into a run.

Even though we are a formidable team—big SpecOps guy with guns and a damn samurai sword and a hundred-fifty pounds of armored killer dog—we never acted like we could just blunder in and solve everything. Caution kept us alive, so we only ran as fast as safety allowed.