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the windows to the house and kept to themselves. They had a well-stocked emergency supply kit and cupboards filled with non-perishables. Careful rationing sustained them for almost two months.
    Things outside were bad. More than once they had to defend themselves from looters. Worse were the infected. They wandered the streets, attacking everything that moved and or made too much noise. Casey and Anton watched helplessly as a horde pushed its way into their neighbor’s home, breaking windows and pushing down doors. She will never forget the screaming.
    She and Anton listened to the radio every day. It was just emergency broadcasts with no real information, nothing about what the disease was, or how it spread. Still, they clung to hope, staying quiet and hidden. Eventually, the radio transmissions stopped and they lost all contact with the outside world. It became clear help was not coming.
    As a strategy to keep their sanity, and their lives, they began working on a plan for a more sustainable set-up and better protection. The world became a new frontier they could conquer together. Despite daily horrors, they felt they could triumph. They thought they could create a new Eden. The world had gone to shit, but at least they had each other—it was almost romantic.
    They started with limited trips away from the property to collect supplies. When Anton scraped his arm badly on a nail they didn’t think much of it. They’d been raiding a neighborhood garden for tomatoes and the rusty little dagger was jutting out of a fence. Casey had been keeping an eye out for the infected and heard him swear. Later, when they got home she cleaned and bandaged it, concerned about infection.
    The wound was healing nicely when Anton began experiencing lockjaw. After that the tetanus progressed quickly, soon affecting every muscle. Anton hadn’t been up-to-date on his vaccinations. She didn’t realize it at the time but she would beat herself up for that fact every day for the rest of her life. She was a paramedic, for God’s sake, she should have been on top of that kind of stuff.
    There was nothing she could do. No medications could help him, no doctor could have saved him, and the worst part wasn’t even watching her husband suffer and die of a preventable disease right before her eyes. The worst part was watching it alone.
    No one else was with her as he laid on the bed screaming in pain. No one else was there when she covered his mouth to stifle the screams. No one else cared when his muscles spasmed, breaking his back and tearing his tendons, or while he fought for air, unable to breathe through the attacks. No one else was there when the last convulsion subsided, taking Anton with it, and no one else was there when she used Anton’s autographed baseball bat to defend herself from him when he rose again. That was the day she came to understand what the “infected” truly were.
    Casey wipes away tears, the dark memories getting the better of her and she’s surprised to feel Danny’s awkward hand pat her shoulder. He doesn’t ask why she’s crying, just uncomfortably thumps her back.
    A chuckle escapes her lips. “You don’t do this much, do you—comfort people?”
    “No, I guess not.”
    She smiles and he smiles back briefly.
    Casey feels Alex slide his small hand into hers and squeeze. Just when she thinks the kid has totally shut off, or that maybe she only imagines the connection between them, he goes and does something so lucid, so touching—so needed, that it bowls her over in surprise.
    “Thanks, Alex.”
     
    ***
     
    Lot sits behind a large, polished oak desk in an opulent office. It’s one of the few rooms in the hotel that remains essentially unchanged from its glory days. There’s a fireplace set deep into a sidewall, but no fire burns there today. Candles and lamp oil are becoming scarcer by the day, but despite this, Lot works by candlelight.
    Search parties rarely return with much anymore and trade routes are