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claimed it. A lantern flickered at her feet, casting light eerily across the front of Doc and Mei. They were standing over a duffel bag, which had been emptied of its contents.
    It took Harrison and me a whole two steps to join them in assessing our newfound wealth. As we did this, Doc listed the inventory, which was disappointingly brief. “Two flashlights, a roll of duct tape, a box of matches, a screwdriver…Phillips head.”
    “And an energy bar,” Mei added, holding out the remainder of it, a piece no bigger than a quarter. I took it, chewed, and swallowed before instantly regretting it. That little piece awakened my stomach to the fact that it had only had two small cupcakes in the last twenty-four hours, and it wanted more.
    “Sorry, buddy,” Doc said glancing at Harrison. “No raw meat.”
    He shrugged offhandedly and stooped down. “I think that’s going to be hard to come by.” Switching subjects, he said, “This is a good find. Sparse, but helpful.”
    Beverly snorted. We glanced at her. She ignored us.
    “Yeah,” Doc replied. “Yeah, helpful for sure.” He then stood awkwardly waiting for Harrison to elucidate.
    “We can get a fire going with it, at least.”
    Doc and Mei continued to stare blankly at him.
    As he left the halo of light to pull the manuals off the shelf, Mei caught on and muttered, “Right…Right…”
    Only then did I notice the puff of air coming from her lips as she spoke.
    Before long, Mei and I had torn the pages from the manuals and crumpled them into a pile on the floor. Doc had opened the window at the ceiling and Harrison had broken apart the wooden chair. Beverly frowned at having to give up her seat but that was the extent of her participation.
    The fire provided warmth, light, and a feeling of security. In fact, in the scant minutes I allowed myself to forget what was outside that door, I almost convinced myself we were a group of friends just camping out. Then I realized if that were true, we’d be outside staring at the stars from under the tree bows instead of harboring ourselves inside four brick walls.
    As the flames took hold, we sat, huddled around them, and stared into the colorful flashes, raising our hands to warm them every once in a while.
    “What team was that?” Doc asked, his concentration on the flames never wandering as he asked the question that apparently had been plaguing him.
    One fleeting glance at him was all it took to interpret his thoughts: Those Infected could have been his teammates, and one of them could have been him.
    Beverly didn’t bother to notice his discomfort, his concepts not applying to her, so she replied absentmindedly. “The Portage Huskies. Their quarterback’s mildly appealing.” She paused, frowned, and added, “Was…was mildly appealing. Not any longer, after what’s left of him out there.”
    “They were…They were big…” Doc muttered, shaking his head in quiet disbelief.
    Then the real question Doc had wanted to raise finally surfaced, but it was Mei who blurted it. “What are we doing here?” she asked, her tone steeped in irritation. “I mean we’ve just left a city where our families are looking for us…at least I’d like to think they are . We’re aimlessly walking down a highway with no destination, into areas that may or may not be infested. We have no help, no true defense, nothing… Why are we doing this?”
    “You have a better idea?” Beverly asked snidely.
    “It just seems… I just want to know where we’re going, what we’re doing…”
    Harrison and I looked at each other, seeking a consensus. I nodded, knowing it was a fair question and the answer was something that we should have brought up long before this point. Harrison agreed and launched into an explanation, relaying the warning that Ms. Kremil had made in the last few minutes of her life and the plea that took the last of her breath. As he spoke, they listened, their faces altering from hesitant and curious to openly