Sixty-seven in all. Most of them kids. A few lost adults. No one over twenty-four, though. A lot of them were tough as fuck. Trash was twice her size and could probably bench press her entire weight. But the one time he tried something, Dahlia had gotten a lucky shot in and damn near kicked his nuts off. The weird thing was that he seemed almost relieved. It meant that he didn’t have to make any real decisions. Not for himself or the few people he’d been leading when he met her. He was happy to be her muscle, her enforcer. The knight to her queen.

Yeah, the world was that broken.

Sometimes Trash shared her tent and they filled the night air with growls and cries and screams and sighs. Most times she slept alone. There was a seventeen-year old black girl, though . . . and Dahlia spent a lot of time wondering how to open the right kind of conversation with her. Not as queen, but girl to girl.

Sex was one problem. Love was another. Most of the time, though, it was all about survival. Staying away from the biters, feeding her people, finding a good place, knowing when to fight, knowing when to run.

Dahlia kept it all running right. And she still carried the knife she’d used to escape the outbreak at her high school. The same knife she’d used to hush her family. It was sheathed on her thigh, the handle angled to where her hand fell. Ready. Always ready.

Each time she picked a camp for the Pack, she walked the area to look at how it could be defended, and how they could escape if a swarm of the dead came out of nowhere. There were sentries in the trees, trip wires and weapons stashed along escape routes. Her tent was always positioned against a wall, a wrecked car, or some other structure so that threats could only come at her along her line of sight. None of the Pack asked where she’d learned all that, which is good because didn’t want to admit it was all from video games and those doomsday prepper shows on cable. Who knew those bearded fuckers would be right?

She sat on a folding chair next to an overturned equipment box, halfway through a game of solitaire when Trash brought Neeko to her to give a report on the failed scouting run. Neeko was young and skinny and scared of his own shadow. He was also scared of Trash, who liked to hit things. The dead, people—whatever.

“Go ahead, Neeks,” said Dahlia, “tell me what happened.”

Neeko licked his lips—a flicker of a tongue, fast as a lizard. He told her what he’d told Trash, though he stuttered, skipped words out of nervousness, and made a mess of it.