It was Walker who decided they wouldn’t go back for the others. The only way to go was forward, he insisted.

“We know what’s behind us. The army and those creatures,” Walker explained. They stood in a tight circle beside a dirt road that led away from the restaurant and into the hills. “If we go back, we’ll be walking straight into danger, and we know it.”

“What about Harry and Tanja?” Nic asked, talking to Walker but looking at Hélène, who still hadn’t left the other man’s side. “And Markus?”

“Hopefully they’ll make it,” Walker said, “and once we’re safe, we’ll find a place to stop and we’ll wait for them.”

The five of them walked along the road for the next couple of hours, keeping to the edge of the forest. Walker and Hélène were in front, with Jane and Ryan in the middle and Nic bringing up the rear. It was uphill all they way, the quiet air gradually thinning and cooling. When the sun rose, a view of the lake opened up behind them, far below.

“Daylight,” Jane said with a sigh of relief. It had been the longest night of her life. She found Ryan’s hand and squeezed it. “Thank god.”

They took a break inside the forest just a few feet from the road. They pooled the food they had left in their pockets and packs and came up with something like breakfast. They were eating in silence, sitting in a loose group on rocks and stumps, when Ryan noticed the figure stretched nearby out on the forest floor.

“Mom,” he said, pointing. “Look.”

It was a woman, her clothes in tatters, her skin an inhuman green — definitely a creature. She was also definitely alive, insofar as any creature was alive. Yet despite being sentient and in one piece, this creature made no move to attack them. In fact she was hardly moving at all. Her eyes were tracking them slowly, drifting lazily from one to the other, and her jaw was twitching open and closed, a sleepy pantomime of eating. But otherwise, she was still.

“Why isn’t she coming after us?” Ryan asked.

“There’s something wrong with her,” Jane said.

“She’s in better shape than some of the others,” Ryan pointed out.

“Maybe she’s hungry,” Nic offered.

“They’re all hungry, aren’t they?” Walker said, somewhat dismissively.

Nic looked at Hélène. She was no longer right next to Walker, but she was still closer to him than to anyone else.

“I mean,” Nic went on, “maybe she’s starving.”

Before he could elaborate, the sound of a motor drew their attention to the road. They all stood as the sound grew steadily louder. A vehicle was coming up the road.

“The army?” Walker asked.

“I don’t think so,” said Nic.

A banged-up older-model van rolled into view. It was moving slowly, its small engine whining as it struggled to carry the vehicle up the hill. Spotting Markus behind the wheel, Nic quickly ran out into the road waving his arms.

Markus stopped the vehicle and got out. As he and Nic spoke, the van’s sliding side door opened, and Harry and Tanja climbed out. Quickly spotting the others in the forest, they grabbed their packs and joined them.

Watching Tanja approach, Jane felt a relief that surprised her, and she realized that she hadn’t been looking forward to being the only woman in the group. Apparently Tanja had been feeling something similar, because when she arrived where Jane was standing, she embraced her warmly.

“You made it,” Tanja said. “Thank God.”

Harry’s eyes drifted from person to person and pack to pack, assessing the situation.

“What are you eating?” he asked.

“Whatever we have,” Jane said.

“The other packs are in the van,” he told her. “The ones we could find.”

Ryan was standing next to his mother. Harry put his hand on the boy’s shoulder and smiled. Jane doubted that he had yet fully recovered from the death of his wife, but for now he had resumed his role as their caretaker and leader. For that Jane was glad. They needed him.

“Anything of Adrian and his son?” Harry asked next.

“They didn’t make it,” Jane replied.

Harry nodded, taking this in.

“So that’s all of them then,” he said after a moment.

Jane wasn’t sure what he meant until she remembered Adrian’s girlfriend and daughter, crushed by a tree when the army pushed the bus off the freeway. Adrian and everyone he’d brought with him — everyone he’d tried to save — were gone.

Markus appeared and dropped his pack on the ground, acknowledging Jane with a light touch on the arm. It was a casual touch, yet coming from him it struck her as oddly warm. He didn’t seem like the kind who went around touching people.

“Where is it?” he asked.

“Where’s what?” Jane replied.

“He wants to see the zombie,” Nic said, stepping in behind Markus.

“Over there,” Ryan said, pointing.

“Thanks, kid,” Markus said.

Markus approached the creature slowly, her filmy grey eyes following him until he was standing over her. He was just inches away, but she made no attempt to grab him. He ran a hand through his long brown hair, then scratched his unkempt beard, considering the creature with an expression both amazed and confused.

“Nic thinks she’s starving,” Ryan said, still by his mother.

“Starving?” Tanja asked.

“Could be,” Markus said, now bobbing from side to side and watching as the creature’s eyes followed him. “You can be up here for days without seeing another person. Who knows how long she is one of them? This started, what, ten days ago?”

“What do you think, Päpu?” Tanja asked her father.

“We think they eat because they want to,” Harry said, “but maybe they need to. To survive. Just like us.”

“So what do I do?” Markus asked. “Do I kill it?”

Each looked around, waiting for one of the others to respond. Eventually their eyes landed on Harry, their presumed leader.

But it was Walker who spoke up first.

“No,” he said, retaking his seat on the forest floor and picking up the can of beans he’d been eating. “We don’t kill her. If Harry’s right, she’s dying anyway, so she’s not a threat. We only kill when we have to.”

Jane looked at the handgun on the ground next to her husband. She’d asked him once where he’d learned to shoot and had received a dismissive response: I know how to shoot. She wouldn’t challenge him again — to be honest, she was glad he could shoot — but she would continue to wonder what else she didn’t know about her husband.

“What about…” Markus looked at Harry. “Wie seit me ‘Gnad’?”

“Mercy,” Jane said before Harry could answer. She was watching the dying creature, an undead monstrosity that had once been a woman, and wondering what her own fate would be.

Walker was shaking his head.

“Our lives are in danger,” he said, “but don’t forget, so are our souls. When all this is over, it’s going to be hard enough for us to live with the killing we had to do to survive. If you add ‘mercy’ killing to that, I think it’ll be too much some of us to bear.”

Everyone was looking at him — hiking boots planted firmly on the ground, scooping beans out of a can, handgun at his side, rifle on his back, blood-stained bullet wound in his shoulder — when suddenly he smiled.

“Plus, who’s to say what mercy is?” he asked. “I don’t think I want to be on the receiving end one day when someone decides they feel sorry for me.”

***

They should have kept moving. Taken advantage of the daylight and the calm, gotten as far away from the army and the creatures as they could. That much was clear to all of them.

But they didn’t want to. Who knew when they’d experience such peace again? Who knew what dangers were awaiting them up the road? They made up reasons for taking a break, reasons that seemed practical and sound. Yet it was an irrational choice inspired by a simple, human need to stop for an hour or two and just breathe.

Tanja sat down across from Jane and handed her a hand-rolled cigarette.

“It’s a present from my father,” she said. “He told me he promised it to you.”

Jane twirled the cigarette between her fingers, then held it beneath her nose and inhaled. It smelled wonderful.

She looked at Harry, who was sitting with his back to her several yards away. The men had formed a square around them, one stationed at each corner. Harry he was the corner facing down the road.

“Did he send you with a lighter?” Jane asked.

“He told me you probably had one,” Tanja said.

“I did a couple days ago,” Jane said. “We were in a hurry when we left our cabin. I’m surprised I packed anything at all.”

“Here–”

It was Markus, sitting facing up the road, in the direction they’d be heading when they decided to leave this peaceful patch of forest behind. He’d thrown something in their direction. It landed at Jane’s feet: a blue disposable lighter.

“Thanks,” Jane said.

Markus shrugged, keeping his back to her.

“You got any of that vodka left?” Jane asked him.

“That’s a very sad story,” Markus said, shaking his head. “Had to leave all my booze on the train. The army is drinking it now.”

“Lucky army,” Jane said.

“Lucky army today,” Markus said. “Not lucky for long.”

Jane and Tanja exchanged amused smiles, then Jane lit her cigarette and inhaled deeply.

“That’s incredible,” Jane said, expelling a cloud of smoke. “I haven’t had a cigarette in, I guess, um–”

“About fifty-four hours,” Ryan interjected.

Ryan was nearby, eating a sandwich that Harry had given him and staring at the back of his father. Walker was perched atop a tall, thick stump, staring away from the road and into the forest.

“That’s pretty precise,” Jane said.

“I had a hard time sleeping that night,” Ryan said. “But I had a clock to entertain me.”

Jane’s own memories of that night — their last night in the cabin by the lake — were vague at best. But she hadn’t forgotten how terrible she’d felt in the morning, waking up on the sofa cotton-headed and blurry-eyed when that farmer had started knocking on the front door.

She took another drag on her cigarette.

“They’re protecting us again,” Tanja said. “The men.”

“They’ve got the guns,” Jane pointed out. “And they know how to use them. So I guess it makes sense.”

“Sure. For now.”

For a moment neither spoke, and an unasked question hung in the air between them.

But what happens if we’re on our own?

“Do you believe in God?” Tanja asked, breaking the silence.

Jane smiled.

“I was raised Catholic,” she said. “So no, not anymore.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know how it is here, but being raised Catholic in the U.S. doesn’t always lead to a lifelong devotion to God. Just the opposite, actually. It makes you desperate for freedom, and when I left home, I left the Church too.”

“This canton, Bern, is Reformiert. Protestant, I guess you call it. But I’m from Düdingen in Fribourg, a Catholic canton. We’re all supposed to Catholic there, but Harry and I actually are.”

Jane tried to take another drag on her cigarette but it had gone out.

“You have to light it again,” Tanja told her. “No chemicals, you know.”

“Of course,” Jane said. She relit the cigarette and caught Ryan watching her. He didn’t approve. “So,” she said to Tanja, “you believe in God then.”

“I do,” Tanja confirmed. “Which of course means I’m a bit confused by all this.”

“Confused?”

“Trying to fit all this in with what I learned and what I believe.”

“It doesn’t really fit in, does it.”

“No.”

Jane glanced over her shoulder at Nic. He was meant to be watching the forest to the northeast, but his eyes were fixed on Hélène where she sat quietly beside Walker.

“Well,” Jane said, returning to Tanja, “if we happen upon a priest, I’m sure he’ll be able to explain everything to you. There hasn’t been a calamity yet that some holy man couldn’t confidently interpret as part of God’s plan. This is all probably even mentioned in the Bible, if you read it right.”

“You’re a bit of a cynic,” Tanja said, somehow good-naturedly.

“No, not really,” Jane said. “I just don’t believe.”

***

Jane hunkered down next to Nic. In one hand she held a plastic bottle of water; in the other, a washcloth. Noticing her, Nic forced a weak smile. Then, as if realizing it was forced, he relaxed and the smile became warm.

“You doing alright?” Jane asked.

He nodded and said, “Yes.”

“I never thanked you,” she said, “for coming with me and Ryan. So thanks.”

“I came with you,” he said, “to find Hélène.”

“I know. Thanks anyway.” She held up the water and the cloth. “Had these in my bag. Thought maybe you’d want to clean her up?”

They looked at Hélène. She’d made only a perfunctory effort to clean off the blood and dirt she’d picked up in the basement.

“She won’t let me near her,” Nic said.

“Why not? Have you talked to her?”

“She won’t talk to me. But I can guess what’s wrong. She was already upset with me because of her mother. Then we got separated. I let her down. If your husband didn’t save her, I don’t know what would have happened.”

“She needs you,” Jane insisted. “Can’t you try talking to her again?”

“For now, it’s okay. She feels safe with your husband, and I’m still nearby. I won’t let her down again.”

Jane stood and approached Walker and Hélène. They were physically still part of the group, yet emotionally they’d become separate. Since they’d emerged from the basement, Hélène hadn’t been more than a few feet from Walker. And it wasn’t just Nic she was shunning: she wasn’t talking to anyone — not even Walker, although that might’ve been because he didn’t speak French. Meanwhile Walker, who only hours ago had been half-dead and helpless, had transformed himself into perhaps their sturdiest protector.

Jane knelt in front of Hélène and smiled. The girl watched her impassively. Jane showed her the water and the washcloth. It wasn’t clear if she understood.

“You want to clean her up?” Walker asked. Hélène and Jane both turned to look at him.

“Yes,” Jane said. “But I’m not sure she’ll let me.”

Walker looked at Hélène, who immediately — and somewhat urgently, Jane thought — shook her head. Apparently she understood.

Walker slipped the rifle off his back and handed it to Jane.

“I’ll do it,” he said. “You watch the forest.”

***

Jane sat atop Walker’s stump, his rifle across her lap, while next to her her husband slowly cleaned Hélène. Jane was supposed to be on guard, but she couldn’t help but look at them and notice how Hélène’s eyes stayed fixed on Walker as he methodically tracked down every speck of dirt and blood on her face and neck. They’d only known each other for a few hours, and they couldn’t even speak to each other, yet they now seemed bound to each other. Intimately.

Jane looked down at the creature on the ground a few feet in front of her and found it staring right at her. How long, Jane wondered, had she been under its surveillance? Jane searched for something human in the creature’s eyes, some spark of the woman she’d been, but it was difficult to see past the creature she had become. The only thing on its undead mind was likely the hunger that was evidently killing it, and once again Jane wondered what her own fate would be.

Was she too doomed to be found someday rotting on the ground, undead yet still somehow dying? And if so, what kind of mercy could she expect? The kind that left her there to starve to death? Or the kind that brought her to an abrupt end?

***

They had a small lunch and then packed the van. They would head up the road and try to find a safe place to spend the night. They were all inside and Markus had just started the engine when suddenly Jane asked him to wait. She’d forgotten something, she said, and before anyone could ask what, she’d opened the side door and reentered the forest.

Standing over the creature, she checked one more time to make sure the trees were sufficiently obstructing the view from the van. Then she dropped the heavy stone she’d been found onto the creature’s head, flattening it. For the first time since they’d discovered it, the creature moved. A short, sharp death twitch shot through its body as if some invisible hand had grabbed its feet and given them a firm yank. Then, it was still.

It may not have been what Walker thought was right, but it was what Jane would’ve wanted if she’d been in the woman’s place. For her, it was mercy.

Jane picked up Markus’s lighter, which she’d purposely left behind, and returned to the van.