They’d been underway for perhaps ten minutes when Harry appeared and asked Jane if he could speak with her for a moment. After checking to make sure that Ryan was alright being left alone with the others, Jane stood and walked with Harry down the aisle to the other end of the railcar, where a second staircase led down to the car’s rear entrance.

They moved down the stairs and stood together just outside the room where Walker was recuperating. A sliding door separated the room from the entryway, and Jane peered in at him through its tinted glass. He was so still that she couldn’t be sure he was even breathing. A rush of emotion tried to overwhelm her, but she held it back. She had to stay in control.

“How is he?” she asked Harry.

“He’s alive,” he said, “and the bleeding has stopped. But he’s very weak.”

“Will he make it?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I wanted to speak with you.”

Harry moved away from Jane to the other side of the entryway. Apparently the conversation that wasn’t meant for her son wasn’t meant for her husband either. Behind Harry, through the large window in the entrance door, she could see the landscape whipping by in the waning light of dusk. She stepped toward him.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Your husband,” Harry began. “He might survive. He might not. And if he dies, he will come back.”

“What do you mean?” Jane asked.

“He’ll come back as one of them,” Harry said.

“I don’t understand.” Jane remembered what Nic had said earlier. “He hasn’t been bitten or scratched.”

“If you’re bitten or scratched, it’s guaranteed,” Harry explained. “Whatever is causing this, it kills you and turns you into a zombie. But even if you’re not, if you die, however you die, you come back as one of them.”

Jane took a deep breath and looked away, trying to process what she’d just been told. The afterlife was not Heaven or Hell. It wasn’t even rotting in the ground, feeding the trees. The afterlife was stumbling around right here on Earth, a twisted shadow of your former self, attacking the living, driving them into the hills. And if Walker died, he would become one of them.

“What will you do?” Jane asked.

“If he dies and comes back?”

“Yes.”

“We will shoot him in the head and throw his body off the train.”

A sudden sob got caught in Jane’s throat. She covered her mouth and lowered her eyes. When she looked up again, Harry was watching her impassively, waiting.

“Can’t you just–?” Jane started to ask.

“No,” Harry cut in. “We will shoot him in the head and throw his body off the train. This is the only option. And I need to know that you and your son will let us do this.”

“And if we won’t?” Jane asked.

“Then I will ask Adrian to stop the train,” Harry said. “And we will let all three of you out.”

It was a horrifying choice, but not a difficult one. With these men, they were safe. Most importantly, her son was safe. And Jane believed that Walker would never want her to choose him over Ryan. Hadn’t he even been willing to leave her behind for Ryan’s sake? She had resented it at the time, but he’d been right. If she or Walker died, it didn’t matter. Only Ryan mattered, and Ryan should live.

Jane thought of Helene. Certainly her mother’s death had been necessary, but that would never stop her from resenting Nic. Would it be the same with her and Ryan? Would he hate her less because she was his mother? Or would he hate her more?

“I know,” Harry said, interrupting her thoughts. “You’re responsible for Ryan, and you’re responsible for your husband. So you have to make a hard choice.”

“Yes,” Jane said.

“But I’m responsible for all the other people on this train,” he said. “So I have to make hard choices too.”

Outside, the landscape streaked by. Lines which in stillness would’ve been the ragged lines of nature were now pulled straight by fast-forward motion. Jane considered the distance between where she’d been and where she was now. The world in which she’d married Walker and given birth to Ryan seemed like something she’d seen on TV, or someone else’s dream. In the world she lived in now, she was looking up at a Swiss man she’d met less than an hour before and deciding her family’s fate.

“Why in the head?” she asked.

“Because when they’re shot in the head,” Harry explained, “they don’t come back.”

“Why not?” Jane asked.

“I don’t know.”

So many things they didn’t know. So many things they couldn’t even begin to understand.

She looked up at Harry and felt the urge to wrap her arms around him and press her face against his chest. To close her eyes and feel his heavy hands on her back. Not a shred of it was sexual. He was responsible, and she was responsible, that was it.

“Harry,” Jane said.

“Yes?”

Collecting herself, she took a step back.

“We should stay with you,” she said. “Do what you can to keep my husband alive. If he dies and comes back, then do what you have to do. He wouldn’t want to come back as one of those things. He wouldn’t want to be a danger to us.”

Harry nodded.

“You’ll take care of your son?” he asked. “You’ll make sure it’s alright?”

Again she thought of Helene and Nic.

I had to shoot her. She was one of them.

“I’ll take care of Ryan,” she said. “But I don’t know if it’ll ever be alright.”

Jane turned away and moved to the sliding door. Detecting her presence, it slipped sideways, and she moved into the bike room and knelt beside her husband. Following her, Harry took one step inside and stopped.

She placed a hand on Walker’s cheek.

“He’s warm,” she said.

“He might live,” Harry said.

Jane nodded and ran a thumb along one of her husband’s eyebrows. Dried flecks of blood sprung from the hairs and landed on his forehead. She frowned.

“I hope,” Harry said, “that what I had to say didn’t upset you. We are doing this to help people and save lives. But to do that we must also be practical.”

“What is it exactly that you’re doing?”” Jane asked, looking up at Harry.

Harry sighed and lowered himself to the floor, leaning against the wall just above Walker’s head. It was startling how old and weak he appeared when he let himself relax. Before she had thought he was sixty. Now she added five years.

“The four of us met in the army,” he said. “Of course in Switzerland you must go to the army, but we liked it, which is what brought us together. And then we started to see that we each had different strengths.

“Adrian is our tech Profi. Computers, machines, all of that stuff. I told you he set the tracks to Kandersteg. He’d never even seen the system before, but that didn’t matter. He knows how things work.

“Nic is our sharpshooter. We can all shoot, but Nic is the best. If Nic knows how far away you are, how fast the wind is blowing and in what direction, you’d better start weaving. But if he can see you, no matter how far away you are, no matter what you do, then forget about it. You’re already dead.

“Markus is an expert at deep reconnaissance. He seems a little bit crazy, I know, but if you need a man to send ahead to check things out, there’s no one better. He could be standing right next to you and you’d never know. Plus he’s our best medic.”

Here Harry stopped. Jane looked up, waiting for him to talk about himself, but he seemed to have finished.

“And you?” she asked. “What is your strength?”

“I’m the one who keeps it all together,” he said.

“You’re the leader,” Jane suggested.

Harry shrugged, a show of humility that seemed sincere.

“I keep it all together.”

Jane’s hand found Walker throat, felt his blood pumping weakly through his carotid artery.

“Switzerland already has an army,” she asked. “So why form your own?”

“Yes, Switzerland has an army,” he said, “of the Unfreiwilligen. Men who are there because they are of a certain age, not because they want to be there. We thought, what if something really happens? Would we want to be with the men who were on duty at the time? Or would we want to be in a team of our own choosing?”

“Is what the army is doing wrong?” Jane asked. “They’re saving your people, moving them into the hills.”

“It is the plan,” Harry said. “The plan. The one they created to flee an invading army. But there is no invading army. The people are Swiss, the army is Swiss, and so are the zombies. Switzerland is attacking itself.

“We don’t know that what we’re doing is right. No one will know for sure until this is all over. But this situation is one they could never have a plan for, and so decisions need to be made by the people on the ground. The soldiers that shot at your family in Bern did so because they were following orders. They were told to clear the city. My men and I helped you because we weren’t taking those orders. We were thinking for ourselves.”

The hand that had been on Walker’s throat shifted forward and found Harry’s knee, gave it an awkward but affectionate pat. Harry watched her hand with muted curiosity.

Jane took her hand away.

“In a previous life,” she said, “I was a smoker.”

“A previous life?” Harry repeated, eyeing her skeptically.

“I mean two days ago,” she said. “Before I knew about these creatures. Before we were running for our lives.”

“I see.”

“I left my cigarettes behind. You wouldn’t happen to have any, would you?”

“No,” Harry said. Then he smiled. “But I can roll you one. I’ve got papers and tobacco. Would that be alright?”

She glanced at his fingers, thick and roughened by hard work, imagined those fingers rolling a cigarette for her.

“That would be more than alright,” she said.

Abruptly the train began to decelerate. Outside, in the thickening dusk, Jane could see buildings sliding by. Harry stood, concern in his eyes.

“Is this the town?” Jane asked.

“No, this is Thun,” Harry said. “We’re still quite far from Kandersteg.”

At the front of the car, the sliding door opened and Adrian appeared, looking agitated.

“Chumm schnäll cho luege,” he said to Harry. “Es wimmlet vo Soldate.”

“What did he say?” Jane asked.

“I don’t know,” Harry replied and then he was gone, leaving Jane to wonder if he’d understood her question.

She looked out the window. Military vehicles — troop transports and jeeps — were pacing the train, racing down a road that ran between the tracks and a river. They were entering a town, and it appeared that these vehicles wanted to intercept them.

Walker’s body shifted, as if he sensed danger, but his eyes remained closed. Jane stepped away from him, moving forward past the seats through the sliding door into the entryway and up the stairs to the driver’s compartment. Harry and Adrian stood with their eyes focused out the wide front window. Jane stepped between them and saw that the train was entering a station.

Unlike the Bern station, the station in Thun was outdoors, its three platforms lit from above by fluorescent lights that hung from T-shaped shelters. In the hard glow of these lights stood countless soldiers clad in camouflage green, heavy packs on their backs and rifles in their hands. There were so many of them, they seemed to fill the concrete platforms. Each of these men had his eyes fixed on their train.

“Halt nid a,” Harry told Adrian. “Was au immer passiert, halt nid a.”

Jane looked out the side window and watched the vehicles that had been trailing them slip out of view behind the main station building.

“Gib Gas!” Harry said.

“I wott niemerem weh tue,” Adrian said.

“Es passiert nüt, solang mir nid lengsemer wärde. Wemer z’langsam si, probiert sicher eine üs azhalte und verletzt sich derbi.”

Adrian approached the controls. The train began to accelerate. Jane looked down at the soldiers. Their eyes were full of uncertainty. Had they been waiting for a train? Were they only now realizing that this train was not their train? What would they do?

“Harry,” Jane said.

He looked at her as if he had just noticed her presence. His relaxed face was gone. This was again Harry the leader.

“Don’t make me ask obvious questions,” she said sternly, her voice deepening. “Tell me what’s going on.”

“We thought the soldiers were ahead of us,” he said. “We thought the Oberland was evacuated and that they were already in the Simmental.”

“Okay. So now what?”

“Now we must change our plans.”

It was then that Jane realized it. Harry didn’t need a hug or a pat on the knee. He needed someone to help him lead.

“Are they going to try and stop us?” she asked.

“Eventually, yes.”

“What’s ahead? Can we get out somewhere?”

“The next large town is Spiez,” Harry told her. “Just before the station there are some fields and a forest. We could get out there.”

“And if they catch us?” Jane asked. “What would happen then?”

“I did not go to all this trouble just to become part of the army caravan,” Harry said.

“Okay,” Jane said, nodding. “I’ll see if I can revive my husband.”

In the entryway, Jane looked outside. The platforms packed with soldiers had been replaced by darkness: they had left the station. How much time did they have now? How far away was Spiez? She’d forgotten to ask.

As she reentered the bike room, the sliding door at the other end opened and Ryan stepped inside. He looked shocked and disoriented; she moved quickly to him and wrapped her arms around him.

“Mom, did you look outside?” Ryan said, his voice quavering.

“Yes,” she said. “But listen, it’s going to be okay.”

“Did you see him too?”

“I saw the soldiers–”

“No, him. Standing on the platform, over by the station.”

Jane released her son and peered down at him.

“Who are you talking about?” she asked.

“I was hoping you’d seen him too,” Ryan said, “because it sounds so crazy…”

“Who?”

“Michelle’s father.”

“What?”

“Michelle’s father,” Ryan said again. “Tom.”

“Michelle’s father. But–”

“I swear to God, Mom,” Ryan said, a hesitant smile forming on his lips. “It sounds crazy, but I saw Michelle’s father at that train station.”

The sound of choking drew their eyes to Walker, who they discovered sitting up on the floor. He was propping himself up with one hand; the other was clutching his wound. He was looking up at them with wide, watery eyes.

“What did you say?” he growled.

“Tom Bishop,” Ryan said. “He’s here.”

And then, on Walker’s face, a look of unmistakable horror.