Not long after it left Thun, the double-decker train glided to a stop on a stretch of unlit track. The next town, Spiez, was several minutes ahead and still out of sight.

East of the tracks, across a narrow, winding road, the land fell away, plummeting to the ink-black surface of the Lake of Thun. To the west, down a short, gentle slope, stood a field of tall grass, beyond which was a forest.

There was a pneumatic whoosh, and the doors on the west side of the train popped out and slid open. It was time to disembark.

First came Harry out of the foremost door, his heavy army pack on his back, his rifle in his hands. He helped his wife and daughter out of the train, and together they moved down to the field.

Seconds later, Nic emerged from the rear door. With him were Helene plus Adrian’s girlfriend and daughter. They moved quickly down the slope and joined Harry’s group.

Following Nic out the rear were Jane, Walker and Ryan. Walker was moving under his own steam, but slowly. Jane stayed at his side with a hand on his waist, just in case.

Markus dropped out of the train right behind them. As he followed the Sheffields down the slope, he kept his rifle aimed at the forest, his eyes exploring its shadows and murky depths.

Standing together in the field, the eleven survivors stared up at the railcar looming over them. Each person bore a backpack. Some were heavy, like the army packs; others were small, like the ones carried by Ryan and Helene. Most were normal hiking packs. Each of the army men — the group’s three guardians — held a rifle and had a handgun strapped to his belt. The rest carried flashlights.

In the train’s front doorway stood Adrian, his teenage son at his side holding the rifle that Ryan had retrieved back in Bern. Jane had reluctantly agreed to hand it over to them.

Adrian waved, looking somber, and then he and his son climbed the stairs to the driver’s compartment. They would move the train further up the tracks and then disembark, so that the army wouldn’t know exactly where the bulk of the group had gotten off.

There were two beeps, and then the doors closed. The train began to move, picking up speed as it slid out of view.

Silence enveloped the group. Jane sighed, and her body shook. There was a chill in the night air, but that wasn’t it. They were on foot again, and out in the open. Certainly this was a mistake.

Harry said something to Nic in French. Jane looked at him, waiting for him to translate, but he had his back to her. He and his family started moving across the field toward the forest, their flashlight beams probing the darkness.

Nic looked at Jane and smiled, a smile meant to be reassuring but that came off as apologetic. Turning away, he quickly led his group ahead to join the others.

To Jane, it felt like they were being left behind.

“We will bring up the rear,” Markus said, watching as the others disappeared into the forest. “They will clear a path.”

Jane understood. Priorities had shifted back to what they had been before. Harry and his men would do what they could for Jane and her family — but their own families would come first. Markus, with no one of his own to protect, could stay behind with them. For that, Jane was grateful.

“Thank you,” she said.

Markus shrugged and smiled. His eyes were small and red. Clearly he was drunk, but Jane didn’t mind. He struck her as the type of man who could hold his drink. And even if he couldn’t, a drunk Markus was better than no Markus at all.

A flashlight materialized in Markus’s hand. He flipped it on and led them across the field as fast as Walker could move, which wasn’t very fast. They entered the forest several minutes after the others.

The quiet among the trees was unnerving, and almost complete. All Jane could hear was the sound their legs made as they shuffled slowly through the underbrush. She couldn’t hear the others at all, and all she could see was what little of the forest got caught in the beam of Markus’s flashlight.

Then, up ahead, a scream.

Then gunfire. Several bursts, followed by yelling.

They hit the ground as if they had been dropped. Markus lowered his flashlight and the forest went dark. They searched the gloom wide-eyed for some sign of what was happening.

After a panicked moment, Markus stood and rushed ahead. Jane stood too, knowing that she couldn’t let him get away.

“Help your father,” Jane told Ryan.

Chasing after Markus with her hands out in front of her, Jane braced herself for the root that would trip her up or the branch that would knock her down. Yet somehow, despite the darkness and all the obstacles, she managed to stay on her feet, and eventually she emerged from the trees.

The moon was nearly full, and although it was partly obscured by clouds, she could still see quite some distance ahead. Markus was standing at the top of a steep grass-covered rise, at the bottom of which was another forest. Dancing among the trees were flashlight beams, frantic, whipping in every direction. Then there was another shot, and the trees lit up all at once.

In the middle distance, a light appeared moving toward them. It was Harry, and he was alone. Markus advanced to meet him, and after they exchanged a few words, Markus sprinted ahead.

Harry approached Jane, his flashlight pointed at the ground. Even in the dim moonlight, she could see the fear in his eyes.

“I need Markus,” he said. “You and your family stay here.”

Ryan and Walker stepped out of the trees in time to see Harry enter the forest below. Jane lowered them slowly into the tall grass. They huddled together, drawing comfort from each other’s weight and heat. They were still alive, all three of them. They had come this far; they could go further.

Her ears picked up a faint rustle in the trees behind them. It was probably nothing, but the less uncertainty the better. She remembered the flashlight in Walker’s pack and pulled it out. She turned it on, and its beam shot upward like a beacon.

She looked at Ryan just as a gust of wind swept across the rise, tousling his hair and bringing with it a sickly sweet smell. She gagged. It was the smell of death.

Jane stood and pointed her light at the trees behind them. Three creatures were lurching toward them through the grass, perhaps just five feet away.

Ryan rose at her side, pulling his father up with him.

“Mom–”

She put a hand on Ryan’s shoulder, silencing him so she could think.

In the forest below, the gunfire was intensifying, the flashlight beams swirling more frantically. Clearly the others were in trouble too. But Jane had no weapon and therefore no hope of dealing with these three creatures on her own.

“Let’s go,” she said.

They ran down the rise and stopped just as they entered the forest. At their feet was a deep dip which rose abruptly on the other side. To the right, a gradual incline ended in a thick gloom of trees. On the left was a steep, sudden bank.

Nic was at the bottom of the incline, Helene clutching his hip as he fired at a horde of advancing creatures. Adrian’s girlfriend stood nearby with his daughter, aiming a flashlight at the creatures, helping Nic find his targets.

Markus was atop the bank, taking precision shots at a second group of creatures trying to reach the top. He held his flashlight against the stock of his rifle, illuminating each ghastly face just before splitting it open with a bullet.

In the middle of the dip stood Harry. His rifle was slung across his back, and with both hands he was struggling with a creature that had his wife pinned to the ground. The creature’s grip was strong, but Harry eventually succeeded in pulling it off.

Yet to Jane’s horror, she saw that the creature had a wad of skin and sinew clenched between its teeth. Harry’s daughter shrieked as blood erupted from a massive wound in her mother’s throat. The artery was wide open.

Harry pulled a handgun off his belt and, as the creature gnawed on its fleshy prize, he shot it twice in the face.

The creature collapsed. It had once been a young man, his tattered clothing all that remained of what had once been an expensive suit. Part of his cheek and throat had been torn away, wounds that must’ve been fatal. What had just happened to Harry’s wife had not too long ago happened to him.

Harry’s wife was moaning, and her eyes were closed. Her hands were at her sides, not even attempting to stop the thick flow of blood from her wound. Harry said something to his daughter, who turned away and collapsed.

In the midst of all the noise and chaos, Harry looked up and found Jane. He had sought her out, as if only she would understand what he was about to do. The difficult and the necessary. The unforgivable.

Harry’s wife went still. Blood stopped flowing from her wound. Her eyes closed, and a final breath slipped through her lips.

Then her eyes snapped open, and Jane saw that in the seconds that had passed, her skin had gone green. She was one of them now, and as Jane waited for Harry to react, time seemed to shudder to a stop. The entire scene was frozen.

A once-dead woman, now reborn and consumed by a hunger tinged with fury.

Her screaming daughter on her hands and knees just a few feet away, her fists clenched and full of dirt.

And between them Harry, looking down at this wife, his handgun wavering over her.

Harry took aim and fired twice. Two holes appeared in his wife’s forehead. And for the second time in less than a minute, she went deathly still.

“Mom!”

It was Ryan. Crouched beside her, he was aiming the flashlight up the rise, and Jane saw that the three creatures that had chased them down the hill had been joined by two more. As the flashlight beam illuminated the five grotesque forms moving toward them, Jane rued the moment she’d agreed to give Adrian’s son their rifle.

In the dip, Nic was advancing up the incline, his rifle snapping loudly every time Adrian’s girlfriend found a creature with her flashlight. Markus was pacing energetically atop the bank, his eyes searching the gloom below. And Harry was doing what he could to console his horrified, grieving daughter. They were all busy, but Jane was in trouble.

“I need a gun!” she screamed.

Only Markus looked up. From where he stood, Jane knew that he couldn’t see the creatures on the rise. Yet he seemed to understand. Inside his scraggly beard, his lips shifted into a crooked smile. Then he snatched the handgun off his belt, flipped the safety, and threw it at her. It landed neatly at her feet; she immediately picked it up.

“Steady the light,” she told Ryan. “Show me.”

The flashlight beam landed on a face: green-hued, distorted by death and ungodly rebirth, but still intact. Jane trained her gun on the face and squeezed the trigger. The gun exploded, and a violent shock radiated through her muscles and joints. But the creature, uninjured, continued its advance.

Ryan opened his mouth, but before he could point out the obvious — that she’d missed — she squeezed the trigger again. A hole appeared in the creature’s chest. However, after a startled, standstill moment, it resumed lurching toward them.

So it was clear. Despite having a weapon, Jane was still helpless. She could not save her family.

She was about to call for help again when Walker appeared at her side. He was standing entirely on his own for the first time since he’d been shot. His expression was twisted in a way that made him almost unrecognizable. Was it pain? Or madness? Jane couldn’t be sure.

“Give me the gun,” he said.

Jane hesitated. Five creatures were bearing down on them, now just a few yards away, and her husband wanted her to hand over their only weapon. He’d never fired a gun in his life, while she’d at least recently acquired some impromptu experience. Yet she’d just proven how little that experience was worth. So she gave him the gun.

In the dim light, Walker took a moment to examine the weapon, turning it over in his hand and testing its weight. Then he spoke to Ryan.

“Their faces,” he said. “One at a time.”

Ryan pointed the flashlight at the nearest creature, the one Jane had shot in the chest. This creature had once been a man, thin and long-limbed, with dark, receding hair.

Walker raised the gun, aimed, and fired once. A dark hole opened up in the creature’s large forehead, and it fell to the ground.

“Next,” he said.

The flashlight beam landed on a new creature, this one a young man in an oversized jacket, inexplicably wearing a New York Yankees cap.

Walker fired. The young man’s head jerked back, the cap spun off into the murky distance, and he crumbled earthward.

Walker’s next three shots were just as precise, and in a matter of seconds all five creatures were down. In the ensuing calm, Walker turned to Jane, the gun in an outstretched hand. She took it from him slowly, the mayhem in the dip for the moment forgotten.

“We’re out of bullets,” he said.

“He’s right,” Markus said, suddenly beside her.

Markus took the gun from her and popped the magazine. After showing it to her quickly — apparently it was obvious that it was empty, although she could see little — he tossed the magazine aside and pulled a fresh one out of his pack. He reloaded the gun and handed it back to her.

In the distance, somewhere above the railroad tracks, a red flare shot into the sky. Then another. Then a third. It was like fireworks.

“What’s that?” Jane asked.

“The army,” Markus said.

He turned and pointed his flashlight down the embankment he’d abandoned. Several creatures were visible climbing up it.

“Let’s join the others.”

Markus led them down into the dip to where the others stood. The flow of creatures down the incline had stopped. Harry was still focused on his daughter, who seemed to be calming down. He would not look at Jane or anyone else. Jane sought out Nic, but his eyes remained trained on the trees at the top of the incline.

Suddenly the handgun was ripped away from her. She turned and saw that Walker had it and was pointing it at a pair of creatures atop the bank behind. They were shuffling toward them, making slow but steady progress.

Markus put a hand on Walker’s wrist.

“Don’t,” he said.

Walker looked at Markus as if he were insane.

“They are behind us,” Markus explained. “We need to save the bullets. We shoot only when we’re trapped.”

Walker nodded and lowered the gun.

“Where did you learn how to shoot?” Jane asked him.

Walker seemed stymied by the question, as if he didn’t understand why she was asking it.

“I know how to shoot,” was all he could manage.

Nic was addressing the group in French. Some seemed to understand, but others looked perplexed. Unable to clarify in German, he pointed at Markus, who nodded weakly.

“Im Momänt isch dä Wäg frei,” Markus said, pointing up the incline. “Blibet zäme u pressieret. Ds Militär isch hinger üs und d’Zombies si überall.”

The others began to ascend the incline.

Jane grabbed Markus by the elbow.

“What?” she asked.

“We’re in trouble,” he told her, “and we need to move.”