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supplied and moving unseen.”
    Duncan piped up. “If it isn’t a rogue group, and I don’t think it is, then a contagion seems more likely. But here’s the problem with that. Wouldn’t a large contagion attract attention from someone, and get reported?”
    I hadn’t thought of that, and it made sense. If a large outbreak had happened, someone would have had the presence of mind to flee and report it to the nearest town which would have some form of communication. If it was a contagion, then it was something new, something that wiped out populations very quickly. A new thought occurred to me.
    “What if it’s airborne now?” I asked quietly. That was our worst fear. A virus contained within bodily fluids can be protected against, but an airborne one was nearly impossible to escape.
    Everyone went dead silent as the implications of this possibility sunk in. In this part of the world, the winds typically brought the weather from the west to the east. Looking at the map, the contagion, if that’s what it was, was spreading from west to east, so it made a horrific kind of sense.
    Charlie spoke first. “I don’t think so. We’ve had heard of it by now, for the same reasons Duncan mentioned. Someone would have figured it out and reported it. Last I knew, there were medical teams out and about, and they would have said something.”
    I had to agree with Charlie, and was glad to do so. Disease, both old and new, was a constant threat, and now people were spread so far apart. As president, I had implemented a plan to have roving teams of medically trained personnel tour the country in big RVs, servicing communities, delivering babies, and reviving the tradition of house calls. If someone needed major surgery, they were brought into the capital, which had the only surgery center in the area.
    “Okay, then we’ve eliminated the likelihood of a major new contagion. Then what do we have out there?” Sarah asked. “It has to be something that can take out the communications of a town, and be able to silence three teams of hard-core zombie killers.”
    We all looked at the map and wondered the same thing. What the hell was out there?
    Tommy spoke up last. “Since we are looking at possibilities, here’s one to consider. We’ve looked at this from the virus point of view and the living point of view. What about the zombie point of view? We’ve seen them get a little more intelligent since the Upheaval, with some being able to open doors and others being able to execute a kind of ambush. What if they’ve evolved further? What if they have become just a little bit smarter? Old style defenses are now useless, because they can just outthink them. That closed door is no longer an obstacle, and that ladder can help them now.
    “Jesus,” I said, thinking about what that might mean. It would change the nature of how we attack them and adding caution to our side while increasing the deadliness of theirs.
    “But it begs the question again. Wouldn’t someone have reported it?” Sarah asked.
    Rebecca took the question. “Not necessarily. There’s a lot of isolated farms in the area, and the communities are fairly spread out as well.” She looked at the map. “It would have been nice to know when these towns had lost communication.”
    “Why?” Charlie asked.
    “Because if it was a live group, then there would be a short amount of time between towns losing communication. A walking group of zombies would have taken longer.”
    Duncan shook his head. “What’s next? Are they going to start shooting back, too?”
    We all chuckled a bit, grateful for the release of the tension that had been building up.
    “All right. So we can figure on preparing for a live problem, that’s not too bad. And we have to figure on a dead one, but just something with a new twist,” I said. “So the next question is how many and who will be going out on this one. I will be honest. I am nervous, simply because of who and how many have already