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scratched off.”
    “That is the make, caliber, and serial number. Should be a lot more numbers? Wait a minute, a hidden space for storage, a handgun with a scratched off serial number, and a disposable cell phone…holy shit! Frank is a runner!”
    “What’s a runner?” Erica asked shyly.
    “I don’t know what he was running, but he didn’t want anyone to find it, for example, the police. Frank was carrying contraband. He gets…well, got…hired to transport materials that were probably illegal. Holy shit balls! Frank was a drug runner!”
    “He sure saved our asses back there. I just never knew he was in this line of work. Are there any rounds in that gun?” Devin asked.
    “I don’t know. What’s a round, and how do you figure that out?”
    “A round is another term for ‘bullet.’ You check it by…wait, point the gun at the dashboard. Safety first. Now on the left side there is a button that you should slide toward the barrel. The cylinder will open to the left.”
    “OK. There are six ‘rounds.’”
    “Did you find any in the back?”
    “No, but I got excited when I saw the box of shotgun rounds.”
    “Check again. If I know Frank, he would go…down fighting,” Devin said as he wiped his cheek on his sleeve.
    “Where are we going anyway?” Erica asked as she poked her head out from the back of the front seat.
    “My house. I need to pick up some things. Is that OK? I figured we could lay low for a while.”
    “Nope, no rounds for the .357,” Erica said as she climbed into the front seat, “but I found an orange and a new pack of cigarettes.”
    “Good, I need a cigarette. Light me one. I’m just trying not to get us killed,” Devin said as he was still trying to lower his heart rate.
    Erica pulled out two cigarettes from the red paper pack and lit them with a flick of a lighter. “I don’t want to roll the windows down,” Erica said sinfully.
    “Just crack them a little, enough to let the smoke out, not enough to stick a hand through, in case we come in contact with those fuckers.” Devin and Erica took long drags on their cigarettes as silver smoke came out of the lit end.
    All of a sudden, the cheap, disposable cell phone from Frank’s fake backseat came to life and started buzzing on vibrate. “Is that you?” Devin asked Erica.
    “No, I left all my stuff at the junkyard. Is it you?” Buzz. Buzz. Erica rolled up her window to find the source of the noise. The cell phone began to dance on the armrest. “It’s a text message.”
    “What does it say?”
    Erica began to read the text message aloud. “ Frank, shit has gone bad. Come to the dungeon. Got plenty of munchies. Bring friends. No nibblers. -Phoenix. ” Erica looked to Devin to find a response.
    “Type this. ‘Phoenix, Frank is a nibbler. Friends looking for safety.’”
    Erica finished the text message and stared at it waiting on a reply. “Who do you think this is?” Erica inquired.
    “I don’t know. But it sounds a lot better than here.”
    “A dungeon sounds better?”
    “Yeah. If it is a dungeon, that means it’s solid, defensible, and probably underground. The thing we have to worry about now isn’t the “ nibblers ” as this guy said but what the government will do. If they are still around, I don’t think they would go ahead and risk more lives of their forces to fight on the ground.”
    “What does that mean?”
    “If they are still around, they will end up using nuclear weapons,” Devin said.
    His adrenaline was still high. As a result he began to talk faster. “I don’t believe that!” Erica said as she ashed her cigarette on the ledge of the cracked window.
    “Well, hear me out. If you were the president, would you send troops out on the ground? There are three possibilities to this: One, the troops would be told only to shoot the infected. This means picking their shots, probably using snipers and recon teams. Two, they would give an “open fire” order and kill anything that moves,