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was Dan’s reasoning, or was he truly just as crazy as we’d heard?
     
    Dan straightened his coat and lifted an eyebrow at us then nodded slowly. “If you can make it to my place, I’ll let you have a weapon, but this is Mother Nature’s way of weeding out the weak. Only the strong will survive this, and that’s how it should be. To tell you the truth, I came here to take what you had and add it to my stores. But you were still here, still alive. Mores the pity.”
     
    We stared at him in disbelief, the reality of the situation hitting us both at the same time.
     
    The door clicked softly as he left without even saying goodbye, or better, good luck. I wondered if he meant for us to mend our fences around the property, or the proverbial ones between us. I looked over to Sebastian, took in his drawn face and worried eyes. My heart gave a thump and I put Nero down before I all but threw myself into Sebastian’s arms.
     
    Between sobs and I’m sorry on both sides, our lips met and we caught the edge of a mania that perhaps other survivors were feeling. Glad to be alive we stripped each other out of our clothes and stumbled upstairs to the bathroom. The water still ran, we hadn’t lost power yet, and we drained the hot water tank showering off the sweat and remnants of blood, wrapping ourselves around each other, washing the fear away for a moment or two.
     
    We made love in the shower and then again in the bedroom, our frantic need to touch and feel overwhelming any common sense—like locking the doors.
     
    Lying in each other’s arms we dozed off, dreaming perhaps that this was all a nightmare, a shared fear come to life in the night, but gone when the light of day streamed through the windows. Not so much.
     
    The bedroom door creaked, the knob clicking against something; perhaps nails, or perhaps what we later learned was skin hardening into a hide like leather. I woke, chills rippling over my body, the sensation of being watched heightened by a disorientation of time and place.
     
    “ Bastian,” I whispered, my eyes picking out a figure silhouetted in the doorway.
     
    “ Hmm,” he grunted.
     
    I place my hand lightly over his lips and whispered into his ear. “We didn’t lock the doors.”
     
    Sebastian’s eyes popped open and he slowly moved my hand from his lips. Keeping as still as possible, I franticly searched the room with my eyes, seeking a weapon of any sort.
     
    “ Help me.” Her voice was raspy and though she didn’t move I knew we didn’t have much time.
     
    I jumped up out of bed, recognizing the voice as our neighbour’s teenage daughter.
     
    “ Jessica?”
     
    “ Help me, please,” she said, her body twitching. I flicked on the overhead light and Sebastian cursed.
     
    “ We’re naked here, woman,” he said as he yanked on some clothes. I did the same, keeping an eye on Jessica the whole time, her eyes were semi-glazed and she didn’t seem to notice that we were naked. Thank goodness for small blessings.
     
    “ Honey,” I said slipping a t-shirt over my head, “Your parents, where are they?”
     
    “ Gone, they turned into monsters.”
     
    I froze in mid zip.
     
    “ Shit.”
     
    “ My thoughts exactly, wife.”
     
    I moved towards Jessica and wondered again why she had taken Nevermore. Thin as a rail, pretty, and yet she’d had the shot, as had her mother and father. Her Caribbean-blue eyes were still human, not yet sliding into the realm of the feral horde outside. How long would it be before they turned colour and she became one of the monsters?
     
    I touched her arm and she flinched. “It’s okay, let’s go downstairs and see what we can do.”
     
    “ The TV said there isn’t a cure,” she said, her voice breaking up with a sob.
     
    I nodded. “I know, but that could change. I’m sure they’re working on a cure right now.”
     
    Sebastian made a rude noise and I shushed him. I knew when to tell a white lie. This was a teenage girl who was