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snuff into the
inside of his lower lip and thought for a moment.  “Everett’s
overrun.  I barely got out.”  He pointed to the south.  “See
that smoke?  It’s the prison.   A helicopter went down right on
top of it. Roads are blocked once you cross the river just after Marysville.
There are wrecks everywhere, and these bastards are eating on people left and
right.”  He shook his head solemnly.
    “Any ideas on where to head?”
asked Boggs.
    “I’d suggest heading north, away
from the populated areas,” said Gus. “I have a survivalist uncle just outside
of Bellingham.  We can see about staying up there awhile.”
    “Zoe, you okay with that?” asked
Boggs, looking back at me.  I shrugged, not
really feeling qualified to decide our fate.
    “Does she talk?” asked the cowboy.
    “Too much,” joked my friend. 
I rolled my eyes when I knew he was looking at me in the rearview mirror. 
I rolled my window the rest of the way down and dropped my old t-shirt to the
ground, where it landed in a heap.  The rain was still falling hard. The
car lurched forward as we began our trek north.

Chapter
3
     
    No one spoke for a good mile or
two, the tension in the car being intense.
    Boggs finally broke the
silence.  “Gus, we haven’t been able to get any news.  What the hell
is going on out there?” 
    Gus cleared his throat before
answering.  “The news came on late last night.  Like
fucking H.G. Wells.”   He spit into a paper cup.  “The dead rising and eating the living.”   He shook his
head.  “No one knows exactly, just that reports came in from Europe,
Australia, here, and Central America first.  No obvious pattern. 
Just like in the fucking movies. The news stopped broadcasting early this
morning.”  Several more minutes of silence passed before he
continued.  “You probably noticed you have to get them in the head or they
just keep coming after you.”
    “Ya,” Boggs answered simply.
    “Just like in the goddamn movies,”
Gus said quietly.
    “We’ve seen them eating animals,” I said.  “Cats, cows.”
    “They seem to eat anything they
can kill,” said Gus.  “Back in town a group of them was eating on a dog
carcass.  I even saw one of ‘em chewing on a rat.  Not to mention all
the people…” his voice trailed off.  
    After a long moment of silence he
spoke again.  “Just before everything went off-air there were reports
about containment.  The government authorizing lethal
force.   None of it made much sense, but that’s when I decided to
get the hell out of Dodge.  The hitch hiker I picked up said he heard
rumors of a terrorist attack.  His cousin at Fort Lewis had called and
said there had been reports of an unknown agent being dropped from the air, but
his cell went dead.  He never heard back.”
    The first town we came upon was
small and boasted old homes from mining days.  Many of them were vacant
and boarded up.  We saw a scraggly mutt running down a side street, headed
away from us.  Aside from the dog, the town was relatively still.  We
coasted through, always watching for danger.  Several nearly identical
scenes passed us as miles were added to the SUV.  The types of houses
changed, as did the landscape, but they seemed to all tell the same story of
abandonment.
    It was in one of the larger towns
that we noticed the first activity.  It was vague at first, a shadow out
of place here, a streak of movement behind a glass store front there.
    “I think we might have company,”
said Gus calmly.  I thought he must have strong character to be able to
keep his cool.
    “Think we should change our
route?” asked Boggs, just as matter-of-factly.
    “Nah.   I think we should just keep straight, get through
the town.  Nothing’s coming after us in the open,” answered Gus.
    “Not yet,” I mumbled from the back
seat.  My gut was screaming danger and I wanted to be far away from
this place.  “I don’t like it here.”
    “Me either,”