At her last school, it had taken months. Months before she’d heard the word. At the school before that, it had taken years. But this time, just four weeks had passed.

Retard.

To Michelle, the word itself was meaningless. She’d never used it, didn’t know when it was meant to be used. If she’d ever tried to use it, she’d just have been guessing.

But she knew where the word led. She knew what it meant to her life. When she heard it, she knew. She knew that it was time to pack.

“Hey, retard.” A boy’s voice. “You got a second for us?”

With her books propped against her hip, she slammed her locker and turned, her eyes searching. Who had said it? Who had said the word? The hall was full of students, a stream of bodies flowing in all directions, but only Joe Downey was looking at her, standing in a group of his friends a short distance away, near an open classroom door. He was grinning that terrible grin, the grin that was a warning. What came after it was never good.

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As they emerged from the passage, a limping six-legged animal trailing blood, harassed from behind by the din of gunfire, bullets sparking off the walls, they found themselves on an uncovered sidewalk.

A short distance to their left was the marketplace. To their right, perhaps a hundred yards away where the street ended, stood a tall metal and glass canopy from which a clock hung, its face a full white moon. They saw no one. No soldiers, no creatures. The street was empty.

The sidewalk on the other side of the street was covered, and they moved to it as quickly as they could. As they stepped into its shelter, back in the passage the pattern of gunfire changed. The gunman was no longer firing wildly in their direction. Now the shots were coming in bursts, with moments of silence between them. He was aiming, then firing, then aiming and firing again. The gunman had come across the creatures that Ryan and his parents had just stumbled past, and now he was clearing the passage. Perhaps this would buy them some time.

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That Saturday morning, Walker found Jane sitting at the table on the back patio, her hands wrapped around a cup of coffee, her eyes down on a newspaper spread out before her. It was late winter but it was sunny, and the stiff wind coming up the hill from Green Lake was kept off the patio by the high wooden fence they’d had built the previous summer.

“Good morning,” he said, setting his own coffee cup down and taking the seat across from her. He lit a cigarette.

She looked up at him and smiled weakly. Her eyes were glassy and ringed with dark circles; her skin was pale and waxy. She had drunk herself to sleep last night, perched in front of the television long after he’d gone to bed.

“What’s the good news?” he asked, nodding at the paper.

“There is no good news,” Jane informed him. “We’re still at war, the economy’s still screwed. They still haven’t found that Laurelhurst girl. And if she’s like the others, I guess they never will. Plus, I’m hungover.”

“Of course you’re hungover,” Walker said, smiling. He spoke to her as if she were a child. As if she’d eaten too much candy and now had a stomach ache. Of course she had a stomach ache. “What time did you come to bed?”

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Even as she ran across the bridge, Jane could feel her desire to flee slipping away.

Her legs didn’t want it, that was for sure. The long walk out of the forest and then through the city had worn down her strength to nearly nothing. If Walker hadn’t been pulling her along, his hand tight on her elbow, practically holding her up, she might’ve just stopped right there.

And her heart didn’t want it either. Ever since she had learned that her poor judgment and selfishness had undermined everything that she had sacrificed for the sake of her family’s prosperity, she had wanted to slide into a drunken hole and die. It had been Walker who had insisted that they flee, Walker who had demanded that the family stay together at all costs. Her shame was of no consequence to him; she would have to live with it, he had said.

She could imagine herself breaking Walker’s grip and sinking to her knees on the stone-paved bridge as he and Ryan continued on. There would be gratitude in her muscles and bones, and resignation in her heart. The creatures, distracted by her sacrifice, would lose sight of her husband and son, and as they fell on her, to beat her to death or tear her to shreds, she would watch as Walker and Ryan disappeared into the heart of Bern. In her last moments of life, she would pray for their safety. She would feel for an instant that she had somehow made up for the mistake that had brought them there.

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“Come,” Michelle said, framed in the doorway, a hand outstretched, beckoning. “Come in.”

Ryan stood on the front steps, hesitating. Two weeks had passed, and for the first time since they’d met, he was on the verge of entering Michelle’s house.

He’d seen it before, having walked her home a dozen times, a two-story house perched on the hill just off the ridge, where it provided an unobstructed view of the small lake below. Beyond that, Ryan could see Vandeveld, where his father had his store, and in the distance the tall buildings of the university district, slightly obscured by a smoggy haze.

But he’d never been inside, never met her parents, never seen where she slept and ate and watched TV. It was, he felt, a major step, especially now, since he knew that her parents were not at home. If he went inside — and he still wasn’t certain he would, even though he knew not doing so would leave him looking foolish — they would be alone together. They would have the entire house to themselves; they would be hidden away from the world, free to do as they pleased.

Finally Michelle turned away from him and slipped inside, leaving the front door open, and he felt his free will melt away. Now he would have to go in, at least for a moment, to explain why he couldn’t stay.

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Where the trail straightened out again, a heavy-set man stood, his arms at his sides, his fists clenched. His mouth hung open; his lips formed a dark purple oval. Again the icy green skin; again the grey, dull eyes. Like the others, he had once been human but wasn’t anymore. He raised his arms and his fingers uncoiled, and he lurched hungrily toward Walker.

Walker heard his wife’s voice: “Run!”

Then again: “Run!!”

He wanted to turn and see what was happening behind him, but fear kept him focused on the heavy-set man. Each time the man took a step forward, Walker took a step back. The man’s hands hung in the air just inches from Walker’s face, fingers grasping. Walker tried to see a way around the man, but there was none: the trail was too narrow. To escape they would have to either go into the forest or go back. Or, Walker realized, they could fight.

Yes, Walker decided, adrenaline pumping through his veins, the pace of his breathing increasing. Now was the time to fight.

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Walker Sheffield’s bookstore was a cramped space, but he’d done everything he could to make it inviting and comfortable for the diminishing number of people still willing to buy books at shops like his.

First and foremost were the books. Nearly every inch of cream-colored wall space was covered with sturdy oak shelves, stretching from the floor to just a yard shy of the ceiling. Additional shelves were spaced out on the carpeted floor, standing back to back, not as high as the shelves on the wall, but high enough to ensure that the aisles they created were as intimate and isolated as they could be. Then there were the tables, two of them, heavy and wide, nearly filling the space just inside the entrance, weighted down with stacks of the latest trade paperbacks.

Books, nearly everywhere they looked, meant that people entering Sheffield Books might not feel discouraged. It seemed possible, even likely, that even though it wasn’t a Barnes & Noble, the book they were looking for was there. Increasing the odds was the fact that after ten years in business, Walker knew the Vandeveld neighborhood well, knew what its residents liked and what they didn’t. He’d developed a skill for knowing which books to stock and which to pass on, to anticipate his customers’ wants.

For comfort, he’d installed two plush overstuffed easy chairs at the rear of the store, tucked under opposite ends of the large window that took up the back wall. He’d bought the chairs used, not caring that they were worn and needed patching. In fact, he preferred them that way. New and sturdy chairs belonged in a different store catering to different customers. Quickly it had proven to be another wise choice. Even on especially slow days, the chairs were rarely unoccupied.

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The heavy-set man stood and immediately started moving, slowly but determinedly, toward Ryan. Now there was one in front of Ryan in the trees, and one on his right in the road. He glanced over his shoulder into the woods behind him, a dim, overgrown, canopied mystery. Were there more in there?

If he chose to flee, how many more of these creatures would he find? In both directions, the road turned and became obscured by trees. In the direction from which they’d come, he knew there were dozens of these things. Down the valley, meanwhile, was a complete unknown. Perhaps it was safe. Or perhaps civilization had fallen as well.

He decided that for the moment it was better to stay where he was. Here, now, there were two. He could deal with two.

A heavy stick was laying along the side of the road. Ryan picked it up and took several steps toward the man, who was now just a few feet away, his arms outstretched, his fingers grasping. Ryan was almost ready to strike, almost ready to commit — for the first time — an act of violence against another human being. Or what appeared to be another human being.

But first, he would give diplomacy a try.

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Walker steered the rowboat into the center of the lake, and then for several minutes the three of them watched the creatures they’d left behind.

Most of the dozens now collected there stopped at the water’s edge, but some moved into the lake in pursuit, their eyes focused on Walker and his family. Only a few of these engaged in anything resembling swimming, looking as if their arms vaguely remembered something that the rest of their body had forgotten. But they too, like all of the ones who’d entered the lake, eventually slipped under the surface and did not reemerge.

“What’s going on?” Ryan asked.

This was not Walker’s son, the boy who knew everything, or who could at least make up a passable answer. This boy was that boy’s shell.

“I don’t know,” Walker said. It was an admission of ignorance, but in a tone that said that whatever was going on, he would deal with it. He wanted his son to believe that the situation, while seemingly out of control, was still in Walker’s grasp.

Walker looked across the lake at the creatures still standing on the shore, the ones who’d refused to enter the water. What were they thinking? What had kept them out of the water? Was it ‘thinking’ it all? Or just pure instinct?

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Later he would tell his father that it had all been because of the new girl. And Dad, Ryan knew, would understand. It was Mom who never got it.

“What are you doing, Ryan?” Mrs. McGirk asked, with the stupid look on her face that would cause children to abhor her for ages.

“I’m drawing a picture,” he replied.

Mrs. McGirk was new — just two years teaching pre-algebra — but Ryan already knew how she’d be judged by history. Reducing equations in search of the ever-elusive ‘x’, all the while with that stupid look on her face, like she was handing out the keys to the universe, and the ones who didn’t get it would rue the day.

“Is your picture in some way related to algebra?” Mrs. McGirk asked with a smirk, because of course she knew it wasn’t. Because that’s exactly how clever she was.

The new girl’s name was Michelle. She had arrived that morning and had immediately attracted everyone’s attention, for one reason and one reason only: she was beautiful.

The boys were in love with her and the girls already hated her, but it wouldn’t be that way for long. Eventually the only boys still in love with her would be the ones she hadn’t turned down, and the only girls who still hated her would be ones outside her circle of friends. But at the moment they were all anonymous, thirty-five thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds, none more interesting than the other. But Ryan was about to change that.

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