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we know is dead.”
    “Except us,” Reagan added with some
conviction- like she needed to remind herself.
    “Except us,” Haley whispered.
    That pain in my chest was back and I knew I
wouldn’t let these girls leave in the morning. This, right here. I
needed to keep them safe. Possibly, I had a hero-complex. Or
possibly, Reagan had shown up and unearthed some great piece of
humanity that had been missing in me since humanity went missing.
They had survived this long, but it didn’t mean they would continue
to survive. They were carrying the weight of the world on their
shoulders and I knew exactly how heavy that burden was. I would do
anything to hold it for them, to give them a little more room to
breathe.
    “How did you girls survive? How have you
survived this long?” Nelson asked. I wondered if his thoughts went
in the exact same direction as mine.
    “We got kind of lucky. Everything fell apart
for us in three days. When Reagan’s boyfriend tried to eat her we
decided it was time to skip town and head south.”
    Reagan’s boyfriend tried to eat her?
    Too much anger- too late- burned inside my
blood, hot like lava and more dangerous than was acceptable.
    “Where are you from?” Vaughan asked.
    “Iowa,” Haley answered.
    But that was not the question or answer I
wanted to hear.
    “What do you mean your boyfriend tried to eat
you?” I demanded.
    Reagan looked up at me with lost, helpless
eyes and then explained, “In two days, we’d both lost our parents.
We hadn’t really taken the Zombie threat seriously until then. I
mean, honestly, who could have known Zombies turned out to be real;
they were supposed to just be this thing in movies. Our parents got
off easy. They were in a town assembly, with most of the other
adults, trying to figure out what to make of the military and news
reports and the assembly was attacked. Some were turned into
Feeders, but a lot of them were just slaughtered. Our parents were
the lucky ones.” She paused and we all took in the meaning of that
admission. She meant they died- on the spot. A quick death was by
far the better way to go in this world. It was definitely the way I
hoped my parents went. “We thought about sticking around, making a
haven of the place we’d lived our whole lives, but when Chris came
over to stay with me….”
    She trailed off as the name “Chris” traveled
like acid through my veins. What was with this outdated jealousy?
Obviously she’d made it out just fine.
    Still.
    Haley continued for Reagan, where she’d left
off, “He tried to gobble her up. So she stabbed him in the face
with a butcher knife and then practiced parallel parking on his
body until his head wasn’t attached to his neck anymore.”
    Holy shit!
    No wonder these girls had survived this long.
They could do what it took to survive. That was the hardest part-
putting your humanity aside and finding a way to commit unspeakable
acts of violence.
    “Impressive,” my older brother whistled.
    Reagan bristled a little, uncomfortable with
the compliment. “Necessary,” she said instead.
    “Definitely,” I assured her.
    “And then you guys just booked it?” Nelson
asked.
    “First we confirmed that neither of us had
added brains to our daily food pyramid and then we packed up the
still bloody Escalade and drove it till there wasn’t any gas left,”
Reagan answered.
    Haley added, “Which wasn’t very long. We’d
only had a half tank to begin with and by the time we needed to
fill up, the gas stations were war zones. We ditched the car and
started walking.”
    “Smart of you not to risk gas,” Vaughan
sounded impressed.
    And I had to admit, I was impressed too. Gas
stations were some of the most dangerous places when the outbreak
first happened. Man killing man, insane Zombie playgrounds in which
people didn’t stand a chance, and then the wild animals after the
carnage.
    “What’s your ultimate plan?” I asked,
mentally daring Reagan to look at me again. She