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of me, leaning right up against the windshield, and me sitting behind him. When I realized that I didn’t have any dog goggles and the wind would be bad, I figured I’d put him in front of the windshield, at least for now.
    And all the while, Mojo growled softly, fur raised on his back as groaning noises and shuffling sounds came from the driveway in front of us.
    I squatted down to look at Mojo. I know my urgency translated to him because he looked intently at me like he would do anything in the world that I asked him. “Mojo,” I said, “come.” And I stood on the other side of the bike, holding it steady as hard as I could and bracing myself. Because a German shepherd was going to try to land on a motorcycle and I didn’t want to have to pick it up off the floor afterward.
    And I snapped my fingers over the motorcycle’s seat.
    Mojo leaped carefully at the bike, landing awkwardly on the seat and looking quizzically at me as if to say, so, how are we going to fix this, boss? I snapped my fingers again toward the front end of the bike and he scooted up. I got on the bike behind him, my arms around him and my hands gripping the handlebars. “It’s going to be okay,” I said to him. But my voice wasn’t quite as strong as I wanted it to be and I wasn’t sure it provided much comfort.
    I started the bike in the garage with the door down, which is definitely not standard safety procedure but better than being eaten by zombies. I putt-putted over to face the garage door. “It’s going to be okay,” I said again to Mojo, but this time my voice was firmer and I was starting to believe it myself. I was on a bike that was fully gassed up. Those things were slow . Very scary, yes. But slow. And they were hopefully going to get the surprise of their zombie lives.
    I hit the garage door button. The only bad thing about this garage door is that it goes up and down very, very slowly.
    As it was going up, I heard those things snarling. And the snarling was edging closer.
    Mojo snarled, too. His whole body was poised to spring, which is not what I wanted. I whispered soothingly to him in a soft voice.
    As soon as the garage door was up enough for Mojo and me to go through without ducking, I revved the bike motor. At that same moment, the creatures shuffled into the garage, lurching toward Mojo and me with mouths agape.
    I shot past them on the bike, arms tight around Mojo, murmuring to him as we went, hitting one of the zombies square on as we raced out of the garage. Sent him flying.
    The neighborhood already looked infested with those things. Or, I guess I should say, my neighbors were infested. Besides the creatures that had been in my garage and driveway, there were a handful down at the end of the street. These must have been neighbors who were trying to leave for work or come in from the grocery store and were surprised by these things. Or maybe they were outside because they were trying to provide assistance to other neighbors. Either way, the infection rate, as I’d seen for myself in the ambulance, was very fast. Too fast. I didn’t feel bad about not trying to take provisions with me before I left.
    But I needed to get them soon. I needed to get food, water, and some clothes soon before everyone else started scavenging and everything ran out. There was a grocery store close to the edge of town. The only thing was that there wasn’t a whole lot that was going to fit in the backpack I was wearing. This was the one place where a motorcycle was something of a pain——no backseats to store goods.
    It made more sense for me to get tools to provide myself with the things I needed. Water purification equipment. A knife. A gun and ammunition. A collapsible shovel. Seed packets maybe. I had this terrible feeling that I needed to be thinking long-term with this. Anyway, if I was prepared for long-term problems, maybe I wouldn’t need to end up using them.
    Clearly, I needed to head out of town where the population