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apparently Will and Frank’s secret, for Will led us down to a cross street very close to the greenbelt. It was dark and the streets were lit only by starlight. I could see very little, but I could hear the zombies moaning, and they were getting closer every minute.
    Will leaned down and whispered into Guthrie’s ear.
    For the dog this was clearly some kind of game. It began to bark and spin around in a circle, like it was chasing its own tail, sending the music of bells into the night.
    The bells were answered by a chorus of moans that seemed to come from all around us at once.
    “ What in the world are you - ”
    But I didn’t get to finish my objection. Will put up a hand and motioned at the dog. Guthrie sprinted forty yards or so down the street, right into the face of a growing crowd of zombies, and began to bark.
    “ What’s he - ”
    “ Shhh,” Will said. “Don’t make a sound.”
    Zombies poured out of the buildings, so many in fact that for a moment I lost sight of Guthrie. But then he reappeared, still barking furiously, the bells on his harness like Christmas music in the cold night air, and he sprinted away.
    My pulse quickened. The zombies were actually following him. This just might work.
    But then he stopped. He turned and watched the zombies, almost like he was waiting for them to catch up.
    “ Go,” I whispered. “Come on you stupid dog. Run!”
    “ No,” Will said. He turned his palm toward me without moving his arms. “No sudden movements. They key on movement and noise. Just wait. Guthrie knows what to do.”
    And he was right.
    The dog was good at what he did, and I began to see why Weimar had the reputation that it did. Within a few minutes, Guthrie had managed to lead all the zombies away from our position with an air of practiced efficiency that would have been the envy of any Border collie. I heard him barking in the distance, apparently happy as a clam.
    “ He’ll be okay?” I asked.
    “ He’s a dog,” Will said. “Why wouldn’t he be?”
    I couldn’t deny the sense in that.
    When the zombies were gone, Will led us down to the bottom of the greenbelt and began pulling away vegetation. I looked over at Jessica, hoping maybe to catch a glimpse of what was going through her mind. She had grown quiet since we left the campsite, and that bothered me. But she neither returned my glance nor gave any indication that she was anxiously waiting on Will’s next move. She just stood there, patient as a saint, a strange, almost vacant acceptance on her face. She seemed to have gone robotic, much as she had been in the truck with Jake and the two brothers.
    “ This is it,” Will said. He stepped back to reveal an open standpipe, a gigantic open maw, like the opening to a cave. “Go through here. When you come up on the other side, you’ll be in Free America.”
    “ Just like that?” I asked.
    “ Yep. Pretty much.”
    Again I looked at Jessica. I wanted some indication that she was okay with this, but all I got was a blank stare. She turned away from me, ducked her head, and slipped into the standpipe.
    “ Jessica, wait,” I said.
    Only then did she turn to look at me.
    “ What?”
    “ You’re okay with this?”
    She shrugged. I’ll never forget that. There was no expression, just a vacant shrug. She turned into the darkness of the tunnel and started walking. Will gave me an encouraging nod, and the next instant I walked into the tunnel, trying to catch Jessica.
    The crossing itself was anticlimactic.
    We entered a pipe about five feet in diameter, so I had to duck slightly to move through it, and began to feel our way forward.
    There was about an inch of standing water in the bottom of the pipe, and every step made a splash that echoed down the length of the tube. It was dark, too. Even though Jessica was only an arm’s length ahead of me, I couldn’t see her.
    It would have been the perfect setting for something scary, for every sound really did send reverberations away from