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whittled down. That’s when the walking dead would start leaving the cities to find a meal, but by then<br />
we’d be settled in and well educated in the art of zombicide. We had to survive the next few weeks<br />
first. The ranch would be the best place to do that.<br />
A guy about our age bumped my door and then tripped and fell just out of sight. “Stay away!” I<br />
yelled, leaning forward to try to make eye contact with whoever decided to molest my three-day-old<br />
car.<br />
Another running, screaming passerby knocked his hip against my side mirror. A woman trailed<br />
behind him, but stopped, and then crawled across my hood. I cussed again, shoving the gear into<br />
reverse. “We’ve got to get out of here. They’re going to tear us apart.” Just as I turned to get a handle<br />
on how far I could back up, from the corner of my eye I saw a flesh-colo<strong>red</strong> struggle in the same spot<br />
the first man had fallen.<br />
“Miranda” Bryce said. “He’s . . . he’s got him.”<br />
I pee<strong>red</strong> over my steering wheel, watching the second man trying to pull his arm out of the mouth<br />
of the first. A mixture of screaming and moans rose from their frantic wrestling match.<br />
Bryce put both hands on his forehead just as the first man took a large bite of flesh and pulled<br />
away. Blood sprayed the biter’s face, and meat and tendons trailed from his mouth to the arm of his<br />
prey.<br />
Ashley’s shrill scream filled my ear, and for a moment, a buzzing noise accompanied a fainter<br />
version of what I’d just heard. I looked over at Bryce, and his face paled, his eyes saying everything<br />
he couldn’t find words for.<br />
I slammed my foot against the accelerator, only stopping when I felt the back of the Bug hit the car<br />
behind us. In the next moment, the gearshift was in drive, and I was maneuvering between a semitruck<br />
and a minivan—both empty. The Bug tossed us up and down as it climbed across the asphalt to<br />
the shoulder.<br />
“Don’t stop!” Ashley said. “Keep going!”<br />
We passed more people, unsure of who was running and who was chasing. I saw parents carrying<br />
their young children, and pulling along older ones by the hand. A couple of times people screamed at<br />
me to stop, begged me to help them, but stopping always meant dying in the movies, and I was barely<br />
eighteen. I wasn’t sure how long we could survive, but I knew I wasn’t dying on day one of the<br />
fucking zombie apocalypse.<br />
Scarlet<br />
IT WAS A RISK , TAKING the old two-lane highway, but it was the quickest way to my children besides<br />
the interstate, and that would be suicide. The Jeep was part of a caravan of cars that had managed to<br />
make it out of the city. There were maybe ten or fifteen of us. The silver Toyota Camry in front of me<br />
had a forward-facing car seat in the back, and I hoped there was a child in it.
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