The next time the forest opened up, they found themselves beside a freeway. An Autobahn, Jane told herself, although who knew what the Swiss called it. Their version of German was a persistent wonder.

Four lanes of pavement spread out before them, littered with various vehicles, many with doors hanging open, all evidently unoccupied. Down the middle of the freeway ran a strip of unpaved earth in which a miserable-looking hedge stood sandwiched between a pair of guardrails. Beyond that was a tour bus, turned sideways across both southbound lanes. Bits of glass, plastic and metal were strewn everywhere. Yet whatever violence had occurred here, all was now cold and quiet. Still and funereal, like an auto scrapyard.

“Now we know where they came from.”

Harry’s daughter was standing nearby, peering out at the wreckage. Back on the train, Jane had guessed that she understood English. Apparently she’d guessed correctly.

“I’m sorry,” Jane said, “but I’ve forgotten your name.”

“Tanja.”

“I’m Jane.”

“I know.”

“I’m sorry,” Jane said again.

“You met a lot of people then,” Tanja said.

Jane was relieved not to have to point this out herself. Of the people she’d met on the train, only Helene’s name had stuck.

“What were you saying?” Jane asked. “About where they came from?”

“The bus,” Tanja said, “and the cars. I was surprised by all the zombies in the forest. But they must have come from here.”

Tanja now appeared calm and steady, nothing like the mourning hysteric she’d been a short time ago.

“Are you okay?” Jane asked.

“No,” Tanja said flatly. “But now is not the time to fall apart.”

The others had begun cautiously crossing the freeway, moving in wide arcs around the vehicles, eyeing them with suspicion and exploring them with their flashlights.

Suddenly Nic appeared in front of them.

“We need to keep moving,” he said.

Jane took Ryan’s hand, and together they stepped out onto the pavement. Walker followed, his newly-acquired pistol trained on the forest from which they’d just emerged. Jane could hardly believe he was walking on his own, much less so alert. But life had long ago stopped making sense.

“This is weird,” Ryan said.

Jane laughed, startling herself. It had been a while since she’d heard laughter, especially her own.

“What?” Ryan asked.

“What part of this is normal?”

Ryan smiled and said, “I mean walking on the freeway. I’ve never walked on the freeway before.”

“Yeah,” Jane agreed, wrapping an arm around Ryan’s shoulders. “That’s weird.”

As they approached the center of the freeway, a sound began to infiltrate the stillness. It was music. Supporting Ryan as he climbed over the guardrails and through the sparse hedge, Jane scanned the vehicles on the other side, searching for the music’s source. It sounded like “Werewolves of London”, a song she hadn’t heard in years. But although the music was the same, something was off.

“Kid Rock,” Ryan said. “‘All Summer Long’. It’s coming from the bus.”

Jane nodded, remembering a period of several months when the song had been unavoidable. Apparently it was unavoidable here too. Cultural imperialism, Walker liked to call it, America forcing its fashion, music, movies and TV on the world. We told the world what to like, and the world paid us for the privilege.

As they approached the bus, the song came to an end. The vehicle was massive, forty or fifty feet from bumper to bumper and at least ten feet high. They could see nothing of what was on the other side, and Jane could feel the tension in the group inspired by this uncertainty. When the song unexpectedly restarted — three short drum rolls, piercing the stillness like gunfire — several of them jumped.

Markus snickered and shook his head, either amused or appalled by their edginess. Then he stepped around the front of the bus and looked down at its bumper.

“Tschechien,” he said, eyes on the front plate.

“Chechnya?” Jane said.

“The Czech Republic,” Tanja told her. “They were Czech tourists.”

So, American cultural imperialism knew no bounds. Jane wondered if Kid Rock could even find the Czech Republic on a map. Then she wondered if Kid Rock was even still alive. How far had this illness — if it was an illness — spread? Most importantly, what was happening to their friends and family back in Seattle?

The group followed Markus around the front of the bus, moving single file between the bumper and the near guardrail. The gap was barely wide enough for a bike to pass through, much less a car. This part of the freeway was effectively blocked.

On the other side of the bus, they were met not by concealed creatures but by Harry and Nic, who had come around the rear. The bus door stood open, and somewhere inside Kid Rock was singing about sipping whiskey out of a bottle and not thinking about tomorrow. There were no other sounds coming from within, and no movement.

How many seats were there? How many people had once been inside? How many of the bus’s former occupants had been among those that had attacked them in the forest? Had one of these Czechs killed Harry’s wife?

“Let’s move,” Harry said, now standing beside her.

Again the order to move. Nic and his group, along with Markus, were already on their way to the edge of the freeway, where another forest began.

Jane tried to read Harry’s face but couldn’t, and for a moment an image of her father shifted into view. He’d also been a large, sharp-featured man, although his own white hair had receded. She saw him slumped in the burgundy overstuffed chair that he’d left less and less often as his dementia had progressed. Inscrutable and unpredictable even when he’d been healthy, in the end he’d been a complete mystery, even to himself.

Ryan’s voice interrupted her brief reverie.

“Why don’t we take the bus?” he asked.

Harry was looking at Ryan with a mix of condescension and compassion. Clearly he thought it was a bad idea, but he didn’t want to hurt the boy’s feelings.

“In the bus,” he said, “we’d be stuck on the roads.”

“On the train we were stuck on the tracks,” Ryan pointed out.

“Yes, but that was when we believed the military was ahead of us. Now we need to stay on foot.”

“Can’t we still go in that direction–” Ryan waved a finger at the forest. “–on a road that the army isn’t on?”

While Harry considered Ryan’s question, Jane watched Walker, who had been following the exchange. He seemed focused and in no obvious pain. Had he really been shot just a few hours before?

“Let’s take a look inside,” Harry said.

It wasn’t clear if he really thought there was something to Ryan’s idea, but he called Markus over and they exchanged a few words. Markus shrugged and nodded, and together he and Harry approached the bus.

With his rifle slung across his back and pistol in hand, Harry climbed the entrance staircase. Markus, whose pistol was still in Walker’s possession, followed with his rifle out in front. At the top of the stairs, Harry moved cautiously down the aisle and out of sight. Markus settled into the driver’s area and examined the controls.

“What are they doing?” Nic wanted to know. He had left Helene with Adrian’s girlfriend and daughter at the side of the freeway.

“They’re checking out the bus.”

“Why?”

Nic had become more edgy and humorless. He clearly didn’t like that their plan had fallen apart. He didn’t like that they were improvising.

Tanja stepped in and spoke to him in French, apparently for the benefit of Helene, who had also joined the group. So this woman could speak three languages too, just like Markus and her father. Jane felt humbled.

Nic nodded, apparently satisfied, and then put a reassuring arm around Helene’s shoulders. The girl cringed, visibly repelled, and when Nic took his arm away, she took a quick step toward Ryan.

When Ryan turned and discovered Helene practically at his side, peering at him defiantly from behind a screen of raven black hair, his eyes widened. In the cool light of the full moon, Jane was sure she saw her son blush.

The sound of Kid Rock abruptly cut off, and a moment later Harry appeared at the top of the staircase holding a special speaker with an MP3 player plugged into its dock.

“Anybody want this?” he asked.

“Sure,” Ryan said. Yet just as he was about to leap up the stairs and snatch the miniature sound system out of Harry’s hands, he turned and looked at Helene. “Unless…”

“It’s not such a prize,” Nic said, seeing the boy’s concern. “You’ll have to carry it, right?”

Ryan nodded and looked again at Helene, who had decided to mask her incomprehension with a scowl. Yet the girl still looked beautiful. Gone were the days when Jane could get away with that. Now, at her age, a scowl was just a scowl.

“What do you think?” Jane asked Harry.

“It’s clear,” he said, indicating the interior of the bus. Then he asked Markus, “Does it still run?”

“I think so,” Markus said. Perched in the driver’s seat, his hands caressing the bus’s large, leather-wrapped steering wheel, he looked like a little boy with an exciting new toy.

“What do you think?” Harry asked Nic.

Looking uncertain, Nic glanced at Adrian’s girlfriend and daughter. They were rooted to the spot, unwilling to join the others. Nic held up a finger to ask for a moment and then moved to the side of the freeway.

“You two get on,” Walker said to his wife and son, extending an arm as if he might sweep them onto the bus.

Jane was still astonished by her husband’s assertiveness. It had to be pure adrenaline. When they were once again out of danger, would he simply collapse?

Jane and Ryan boarded the bus along with Tanja, and together they shrugged off their packs and sat down.

Outside Nic was negotiating with Adrian’s girlfriend and daughter. Helene stood at the bus entrance, watching Nic with a concern in her eyes that normally she would not have allowed herself to show.

Near the hedge divider, Walker paced back and forth, having taken on the role of sentry. He appeared determined to remain on guard until they were all on board and ready to leave.

“What’s that sound?” Ryan asked.

Jane felt it before she heard it, a low rumbling that seemed to emanate up through the bus from the pavement. Then the sound reached her ears, a grinding machine sound, as if beneath their feet a giant drill was boring through the earth.

She couldn’t say where the sound was coming from. But as it grew louder, it became clear that it was headed in their direction.

Walker had stopped pacing and was staring past the front of the bus. Something was coming down the freeway. Jane stood and moved across to the window on the opposite side. Ryan and Tanja quickly joined her.

What they saw first were the lights, heavy beams swiping the trees on either side of the freeway and probing the vehicles that stood idle and abandoned. Then from behind the lights the military vehicles materialized, a convoy of jeeps and troop transports led by a trio of tanks, a wall of heavy machinery thundering down the pavement in their direction.

“We can’t take the bus now.”

It was Nic, standing with Harry at the top of the aisle.

He looked unsteady, even a bit panicked, but it seemed that he was right. If the bus were to suddenly start up and drive off, the army would pursue them and eventually catch them. Maybe not the tanks, but certainly the jeeps.

Tanja and Ryan were already on their feet, pulling on their packs, when Walker appeared on the steps behind Nic.

“What are we doing?” he asked.

“We’re going into the forest,” Nic said, confident that he was speaking for them all. “We need to run.”

“We don’t need to run,” Walker countered. “We just need to hide in the forest and let them pass. Then we can take the bus.”

“No, we need to run–”

Walker stepped past Nic, cutting him off, and spoke directly to Harry.

“When you thought the army was ahead of us,” he said, “we took the train. So let’s let them get ahead of us and take the bus. All we have to do is hide and let them go by.”

The military convoy was still a few minutes away, but the rumbling of the tanks now filled the air. They still had time, but not much.

Harry didn’t think about it for very long.

“Into the forest,” he said.

***

A few yards in, just beyond where the trees began, the forest floor sloped downward. Concealed from view by the ridge, they sprawled out on their backs in the dirt, side by side and motionless, and waited for the military to pass.

Of the ten remaining survivors, it was Walker who feared the military the most. The Swiss were primarily concerned with losing their liberty: if this was the end of the world, Harry and his buddies wanted to decide for themselves how to ride it out. But to Walker the soldiers were as dangerous as the creatures, if not more so. After all, the creatures didn’t have helicopters, guns and tanks.

As the rumble of the army vehicles grew louder, Walker looked to his right. Beyond his wife and son was the man he knew as Markus, and next to him was the older man, Harry, and the woman Walker believed was Harry’s daughter. To Walker’s left were four others whose names he didn’t know: a man, two women, and a girl.

None of them looked back at him. All eyes, other than his, were pointed at the sky. All ears, including his, were focused on the rumbling on the freeway above.

Just as it seemed to be peaking, the rumbling stopped. And in the ensuing silence, it occurred to Walker that they — but mostly he — had made a mistake.

The military convoy was on the lanes headed south, the same lanes the bus was blocking.

How would they get past the bus?

Walker looked at Harry, ostensibly their leader. Surely it had occurred to him as well? But no, the older man was still staring at the sky, listening and waiting.

Above them, Walker heard voices, then footsteps. He recognized the sound of boots climbing the bus staircase. They were checking it out.

Walker turned his head the other way, toward the man, the women, and the girl. Again, nothing. Just listening and waiting.

The boots exited the bus. They now knew that it was clear. So what next? There were more voices, followed by the sound of a single tank gunning its powerful engine.

Still afraid to stand, much less move, for fear of taking another soldier’s bullet, Walker turned his head again and finally found what he’d been looking for. Markus was propped up on one elbow and looking up the hill, and in his eyes Walker saw the same fear that he’d been feeling since the convoy had stopped. Unfortunately Markus’s realization, like Walker’s, had come too late.

Metal crunched, rubber burst, and sparks flew.

How would they get past the bus?

He now knew the answer: they would push it aside with a tank.

The air was aglow with sparks, a fireworks display accompanied by the shrieks and groans of abused steel. Walker imagined the bus’s tires tearing away, bare rims being pushed across asphalt.

Markus stood and Walker joined him, and together they watched as the side of the tour bus pivoted into view. Reaching the edge of the freeway, it toppled over and tumbled toward them, crashing into trees and pulling them up by their roots.

Now they were all on their feet in a panic, eyes on the bus, trying to decide which way was the safe way to flee. Instinctively Walker sought out Jane and Ryan and saw them being led away by Markus. Before he could join them, a tree slammed into the gap between them. He turned the other way just as a second tree fell there, crushing the two women underneath it. Their arms jerked upward spasmodically as they quickly succumbed to death.

Walker sensed the bus bearing down on him but didn’t dare take a moment to look up. Instead he dropped onto his back and slid down the slope. When the ground leveled off, he leapt to his feet and ran left, ducking under the trunk of the tree that had killed the two women.

The girl was standing in his path, hysterical and screaming, the man she’d been with now nowhere in sight. Walker grabbed her by the arm and pulled her along with him. After a startled, stumbling moment, she found her feet and ran.

Behind them, the bus slumped to the earth as it reached the end of its fatal journey. The MP3 player inside had been jolted to life during the bus’s tumble, and the pop song that had been playing when they’d arrived had resumed, its melody fading as Walker and the girl fled.

Walker hoped that he would never hear that song again.

He never would.

A road appeared in front of them, barely discernible in the cloud-obscured moonlight. But it wasn’t a paved road, or even a proper dirt one. Then Walker realized that it wasn’t a road at all, just a well-tended path wide enough to accommodate a vehicle.

Walker paused for a moment, trying to get his bearings. He had the girl’s arm in one hand, the pistol in the other. Neither one of them had a flashlight. They’d been relying on the others, and now they were alone in the dark. Walker shook his head, ashamed of himself. He knew better.

The girl screamed. Walker quickly covered her mouth, then searched the darkness wide-eyed. Two figures were moving down the path in their direction, and although he couldn’t see them clearly, he knew from their lumbering gait that they were creatures.

He didn’t even consider shooting them. The girl’s scream had been enough to reveal their location to the military. Instead he turned away and pushed the girl down the path. His instincts told him they were moving away from the freeway. He hoped they were right.

When they arrived at a bridge, Walker stopped, holding the girl back. If there were only creatures behind them — as there had been when they’d crossed the bridge back in Bern — then they’d be okay. But if creatures were in front of them as well, they would be trapped on the bridge, and Walker would have to use his gun.

He looked at the girl.

“Do you speak English?” he asked.

The girl shook her head and said, “Français.”

Walker was relieved. French was significantly less useless than German, which in his opinion was only of interest to philosophers, opera singers, and racists. He actually knew a bit of French, thanks to two years in high school and a love of French film.

“Je comprends un peu,” he told her. He didn’t want her getting carried away. “Je m’appelle Walker.”

“Je m’appelle Helene.”

She kept looking behind them, still worried about the creatures they’d encountered.

“Ils ne sont pas rapides,” Walker assured her. And then, abandoning French for the time being, he took her hand and said, “Okay, now that we know each other, let’s run.”

The bridge was built of heavy wood and, like the path, was wide enough for a small vehicle. A high roof ran the length of the bridge, supported by thick wood beams. When, after several seconds of running, the other end of the bridge finally came into view, emerging from pitch darkness into moonlit gloom, Walker estimated the bridge’s length at a hundred yards. For a structure meant for hikers and cyclists, it was more than sufficient.

When they reached the other end of the bridge, Walker stopped, stopping Helene with him. She was still casting nervous glances behind them, but he was more concerned about what was ahead. Should they stay on the wide, well-tended path? Or slip into the forest on either side?

Going back to look for Ryan and Jane was not an option. They had either escaped with Markus, or they hadn’t. Either way there was nothing he could do for them, not now.

Helene let out a yelp, a sound of surprise. Then something hard struck Walker’s wrist, knocking the pistol out of his hand. The last thing he saw before he bluntly lost consciousness was the stock of a rifle arcing toward his head. Then, after a painful burst of light, everything went black.