We watched the bees. A doe stepped out of the woods forty yards away, moving with such delicacy that it made me want to cry. She looked around, saw us, watched for a long time, then moved farther into the sunlight. A pair of fawns followed on spindly legs. They couldn’t have been more than a month old. Alive, despite all the hungry people and hungry things in the woods. I caught Abdul nodding at that, too. It was an affirmation of a kind. We were both going to die; him today, me sometime after . . . but the world was going to go on. It would be quiet and lush and beautiful when we were gone. Eventually even the hungry dead would starve and waste and turn to mulch. Life would continue, and after a few hundred years the forests would have reclaimed every inch of paved ground, turning cities into gardens. I knew that Abdul was thinking something along those lines, too. There was a strange peacefulness in his eyes. Acceptance, perhaps.

Abdul was already looking bad. His color had shifted from a healthy olive to a gray-green and greasy sweat ran down his cheeks. He shivered and sitting that close I could feel the heat of the fever that was igniting beneath his skin.

Damn.

After a while he began speaking quietly, telling me his story. And I think he did that because it matters that someone knows your story once you’re gone. We all want to be remembered, as if being forgotten meant that our wandering souls might not be as immortal as we hope. Dez Fox told me that she spoke aloud the name of every zombie she killed, even if she had to pick their pockets afterward. A ritual of our shared humanity, as important—or perhaps more important—than anything I’ve ever heard said in church.

As I thought that, I heard the word “church” spoken aloud, and it snapped me out of my reverie.

I said, “Wait . . . what? What was it you just said?”

He paused, half-smiling. “I must be a riveting storyteller, Joe. You were miles away.”

“I’m here now. What did you say about a church?”

“Huh? Oh . . . no, I was talking about the old guy. The one who was gathering up the survivors.”

“Go back and tell me that part again,” I insisted. “What old guy?”

“Just an old guy. Maybe ex-military or something, because people I know who met him said he was tough as nails. Like a general. Giving smart orders, seeing to details.” Abdul wiped sweat from his eyes, looked at it and wiped it on his shirt. “I never met him, but I heard he was working through this whole area, looking for anyone left alive, giving them food and shelter, and teaching them how to be out here, you know?”

I nodded. “And . . . ?”