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of that, just that he’s alive. I know I won’t care that he’s changed.
    Larkin.

Part Two
    The Black Riders
One
    The city to the North announces itself with a small green sign. It’s a battered sign, peppered with bullet holes and hanging loose from one steel post along the edge of the highway.
    Entering Raintree.
    I mouth the words to myself. CJ and Terry, the two youngest, say the words out loud like it’s a magical incantation.
    We have reached the outskirts of Raintree after weeks of hard roads and cold floors and no one is thrilled. True to the city’s name, a thin drizzle keeps us damp. We’re hungry and exhausted. The worst thing is that everything looks just the same—the same endless ribbon of blacktop in front of us, the same car dealerships and strip malls along the frontage road to either side. We’ve still got miles to go before we reach the city’s center.
    As long as Larkin was with us, I never really cared if we reached the city or not. It felt right as long as we were together and kept uncovering safe places to stay. I had the same thought over and over. Maybe it won’t happen to him. Maybe Larkin will be spared. Time has passed—maybe the disease has magically worked its way out of his system.
    Without him, I’ve tried to keep our family of foundlings together. Tried to keep them motivated, working toward a common goal.
    Raintree is that goal.
    It will be so much better there, I tell them. We won’t be hungry. We’ll have comfortable beds to lie in, thick secure walls to keep the night creatures out. There will be endless blocks of multi-storied buildings to explore. Sights they’ve never seen, never imagined.
    I have no idea if even a fraction of what I tell them is true.
    Larkin has never tried to contact us. I’m certain that he wasn’t able to. Perhaps he was lying somewhere near us in Oxbow Ferry, in another home or abandoned business, dying and I never knew. We never found him, never saw any sign. But often when a dog’s howl wakes me in the night, I think, he could be out there, alive, making his way north, like we are.
    If Larkin is still out there somewhere, then he is one of the very few survivors of the plague. The closer we’ve come to Raintree, the more I’ve come to believe in the notion of survivors. I think it’s them I’ve heard rooting around near us at night, combing through buildings and cars, looking for something—I’m not sure what. But when the weak winter daylight breaks and we prepare to start trudging down the road again, it’s easy to convince myself that the whole idea of survivors is foolish. They’re just bogeymen, haunting the dreams of children.
    “Where do we go now?” CJ says, looking in every direction. “Where is everybody?”
    Emily eyes me warily. I can see that she’s wondering what I’m going to tell the younger kids now.
    “We’ll find them.” CJ’s nose is running and I take out a shirt from my pack and use it to wipe his face clean. I kneel next to him on the damp asphalt and give him a big hug. His body is so thin it makes me ache inside. I get back up. “Don’t worry, all of you. This is just the beginning. It’s a big, big city and that’s why we’ll find what we need there. Everybody who’s still okay, like we are, must have made their way to this place.”
    I have no idea how convinced they are by this speech but the sign, dangling forlornly amid all the wrecks and abandoned vehicles that litter the interstate, has given them a little hope, a smidgen of courage. It’s a miracle we’ve made it this far. “Now let’s get off the road,” I say. “And find a place for the night.”
Two
    We’ve found a clean room, dry and secure. Another miracle.
    It’s in a two-story motel, exactly like so many we’ve spent a cold night in, wrapped in dirty blankets, huddled on a mildewed sofa. This one was no more or less welcoming than any of the others when we rounded a bend in the highway and saw the shape of it like a large