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down in the smoking car but clearly alive after all, trying to get out of her seat belt.
    I should go and help her…
    But then Alice saw the pack of Undead scurrying toward the overturned vehicle. She couldn’t get there and help the woman before the Undead reached her. Suppressing a sob, and feeling a hot stab of shame, Alice closed and locked the door before she would have to see the Undead overwhelm the young woman who’d just tried to help.
    Alice took a long breath and turned away from the door.
    Focus on right now.
    On survival.
    On Becky.
    “Upstairs,” she signed. They climbed the carpeted stairs. When they branched, she turned left, up stairs with a wooden banister, leading them to the second floor.
    There Alice looked in each room they came to. Extensive, perfectly matching furnishings—showing the hand of an interior decorator. No sign of human beings, though. In a bedroom was a dresser with most of its drawers pulled out, as if someone had packed as fast as they could.
    At the end of the hallway Alice found a nursery, unoccupied, a rumpled blanket in an empty crib. Becky seemed attracted to the little room, and walked into it as if in a trance. Alice followed her in, looking around. It was a nursery for a baby girl, judging from the decorations, the pink curtains.
    They closed the door behind them, thinking that the Undead who’d gone after Rain might’ve seen them go into the house. They had to hide, and soon. Somewhere Becky might feel safe.
    Then Alice froze, listening. She’d heard a thump from the front of the house—and another. The sound of someone breaking down a door.
    Downstairs.
    She went to the louver doors of the closet, and slid them open, turned to Becky and signed.
    “Inside—quick!”
    Becky walked into the closet, still moving like a ghost, and Alice slipped in beside her, closing the doors. A little light angled through the tiny slat between the two halves, but otherwise they were in a darkness that smelled of old clothes, carpeting and dust. A few items of toddler clothing, perhaps left over from another child, were hung on plastic hangers overhead. On the floor was a folded pink comforter.
    Alice and Becky sat down, and Alice leaned back against the wall, clasping her daughter to her. At least she didn’t have to tell her not to speak.
    They waited. She could feel Becky’s heart racing, under her hands.
    A shudder seemed to go through the house—then silence, for ten distinct heartbeats.
    The quiet was broken by shuffling footsteps, the sound of someone making a slobbering growl.
    A piece of furniture overturning, the crash of glass breaking.
    They were coming.
    Alice fought with herself to remain motionless, perfectly still. Maybe the Undead wouldn’t find them; maybe the creatures would simply give up and go away. But then she heard one of them fumbling at the doorknob to the nursery. Pulling the door open.
    Through the slats in the louver doors, Alice saw a shadow darken the room—and an Undead walked stiffly in, its movements lizardlike. It had once been a young man, a burly, broad-shouldered college student, still wearing the blue-and-white team jacket with a football insignia. The lower half of its face was finger-painted with blood, and its hair was slicked back with red gore.
    Becky whimpered.
    Alice put her hand over the girl’s mouth.
    The Undead looked around, sniffing the air. Angrily, it upended a table of toys, scattering them across the floor. A toy monkey rolled, and came to a stop on its back, clashing its cymbals together.
    The Undead shook itself, as if it had a bad chill, and turned toward the door. It was going away.
    Alice felt a long shudder of relief.
    Then the creature stopped on the threshold. Turned its head—and opened its mouth, wide. Wider… and wider still, till it split its face unnaturally. Something was forcing its way out of its mouth, as if being born—something like mandibles, each one about seven inches long. Four in all, shaped almost