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through their crap, finding lots of ammunition, watches, walkie-talkie looking radios, and other sundries. I had appropriated a small black automatic pistol with two clips (I would later learn from Ship that they are called magazines, and the pistol was a Glock 23) and a chrome .357 magnum with two speed loaders. The Glock was in a shoulder holster and the .357 was on my right hip. Now I was a badass. I just needed to learn to hit something with my freakin’ bullets.
    I also got a chance to read what Ship had written in his notebook when he found out about my immunity. There were many questions. The easy questions were things like when/where was I bitten and did I get sick. The difficult questions were longer, but they all asked me if I had taken any combination of odd drugs, a lot of antibiotics, or if I had taken part in any medical studies. Ship had no idea that two weeks ago, I was in a six-by-eight concrete box with bars for a door.
    The big guy woke up while I was cooking rice and beans on the stove and reading Sign Language Made Simple, a book I had borrowed from his shelf. He sat up and looked quizzically at the cord around his ankle and then at me. I just shrugged, and he smiled and nodded. I made the sign for head and he made a sign back. I searched the book for what he had done with his hand, but I couldn’t find it, and I told him so. He leaned over to remove my clever orange restraint, then thought better of it and sat up straight. I brought him the notebook and pen, and he shockingly wrote just one word:  Hurts .
    I told him it wasn’t bad, just a graze, and he wrote that it felt like somebody hit him with a sledge hammer.
    So I did what anyone would do in that situation. I called him a baby, and untied the cord.
    He asked me about the tree house, and I told him that it had kept us warm for a while, and in fact some of it was burning merrily in the stove right now, but I hadn’t been outside since the redneck zombie slaughter. He stood, and once again I marveled at his gigantic frame. He moved to the work bench and flipped on the computer monitor. I was amazed there was still power, but his solar panels and mini wind farm must still have been doing the trick. When the monitor came to life, it was divided into quarters, each portion showing a different area outside the shed. Captain Survival had struck again, with little surveillance monitors strategically hidden throughout his small plot of land. This guy had been prepared .
    One of the monitors showed the smoldering ruin of his house, and he nodded in acceptance. He took the loss way better than I had, and I had only been there overnight. Immediately, he pulled out a black military-looking backpack and began shoving choice items in it. The pack was huge, and I was thankful that he would be the one humping it should we have to leave. When he finished packing it, he passed it to me with one hand. I accepted it with one hand and it crashed to the floor. It had to weigh eighty pounds. He pointed to a shelf and I placed this pack next to another pack that had already been prepared.
    Ship took stock of the weapons and gear I had procured from the bad guys, and he turned at me and winked, holding up one of the walkie talkies. He switched it on, something I had not even thought to do, and we were subjected to redneck radio. The news was on, and it wasn’t good.
    “…elve hours. Repeat, Jed still ain’t checked in, and it’s goin’ on twelve hours.” A woman’s voice.
    “Him and his crew o’ idjits is prolly chow by now, but I’ll take my guys and run a sweep of the area up north o’ Wilson’s Farm.” This guy had his mouth full of something while he was talking. It was kind of gross, and difficult to decipher, but the woman who had originally spoken seemed to have no trouble with it.
    “Roger that. I’ll let Hugh know, but I can tell you he’s gonna want you to check in every fifteen minutes now that Jed ain’t been heard from.”
    The guy with