Tom quickly crossed the street and stood where he felt he’d be most visible. Placing his carry-on between his feet, he surveyed his surroundings.

He’d been abroad before, for pleasure as well as business, but he was always struck by the age of the rest of the world and America’s relative youth. The country he was now standing in had existed, in one form or another, for more than 700 years, and some of these buildings were perhaps as old as the country itself.

Yet Switzerland was the leader of nothing and had always been, while the United States, half a millennium younger, had been the leader of the free world for more than fifty years.

Tom, who loved his country, felt this was something to be proud of, yet it also inspired perspective. Not far to the south was Italy, a country that had once ruled the modern world and had given it so much. Today it was a theme-park version of its former self and in precipitous decline. What would the United States be like in fifty or a hundred years? Would it still be admired for what it was, or best remembered for what it had been?

There was a commotion near the train station entrance, the people who’d been loitering there suddenly scattering. A man wearing only a hospital gown stumbled into view, his skin an icy green, the front of his gown spattered with what looked like blood.

Instinctively, Tom slipped a hand into his jacket. But he’d left his gun behind.

“Tom Bishop!” a thin, accented voice exclaimed. “I certainly hope you aren’t armed.”

A short, rotund man had appeared in front of Tom, smiling up at him through a goatee that provided his round face with its only definition. By all appearances, the man was less than harmless, yet Reto Barandun was one of Europe’s cleverest law enforcers, a man whose instincts and intellect had led him to quickly ascend the ranks of the EJPD — the Swiss Federal Department of Justice and Police.

“Hello, Reto,” Tom said, shaking the other man’s hand as he picked up his carry-on. “Good to see you.”

“You too. Although of course, the circumstances…”

As Reto’s voice trailed off, Tom nodded then asked, “What’s going on over there?”

The man in the hospital gown had been apprehended but he was far from subdued, continuing to bite and scratch at the men who were holding him. Luckily just then two police vehicles pulled up to the sidewalk, while at the same time a security team rushed out of the station.

“I don’t know,” Reto said with a shrug that indicated he didn’t care either. “I’m sure the city police will take care of it. Shall we go to my office?”

A howl of pain drew Tom’s attention back to the station entrance. The man in the hospital gown had fresh blood on his mouth, and one of his would-be apprehenders had fallen away.

“Did he just bite that man?” Tom asked.

“Perhaps,” Reto said. “We have crazy people in Switzerland, too!”

He took Tom by the arm.

“Come,” he said. “We have some things to talk about, you and I.”

***

High-ceilinged, with walls of solid masonry and tall windows with paned glass, Reto Barandun’s office had been a government office for a hundred years. Yet providing government employees with space and comfort, not to mention ample benefits and a generous salary, was hardly a thing of the past. In many countries, working for the government was a thankless dead end. Not Switzerland.

“Please, sit,” Reto said, pointing to an upholstered chair in front of his desk. “You want something to drink? Coffee, water?”

“I’m fine,” Tom assured him. “Thank you.”

Reto moved behind his desk and glanced at his monitor. Tom thought he saw an open inbox on the screen but couldn’t be sure. In any event, Reto seemed to see nothing of interest there.

“Okay,” Reto said, lowering himself into a high-backed leather chair. “I had a call from Carol Shaw yesterday.”

“She knows I’m here,” Tom guessed.

Reto scrunched up his nose and bobbed his head from side to side, his eyes pointed upward.

“I don’t think she knows, no,” he said. “The passport you used to fly here, I think she’s not aware of that one, so they have no record of Tom Bishop leaving the country. But she knows that the man you’re looking for is here. And apparently there were some phone calls, one from Zurich airport to your phone. And of course , one from your phone to here.”

Reto laughed.

“A call to my office!” he exclaimed, as if all of it was so silly and harmless. A prank badly pulled; a white lie revealed.

Tom knew Reto well enough to know that his tone meant nothing, nor his choice of words. You often only knew where he was going once he got there.

“What does she want you to do?” Tom asked.

“She wants me to arrest you, of course,” Reto said, suddenly serious. “I think I was able to convince her that we didn’t speak. It was a short call, after all. Maybe you just spoke to my secretary. But she seems sure that you will try to reach me again.”

“So,” Tom said, “am I under arrest?”

Reto laughed again.

“Does this seem like arrest?” he asked. “We Swiss are perhaps too kind to our criminals, but I have never invited one to my office and offered him coffee. No, you are not under arrest.”

Reto again glanced at his monitor — a casual, seemingly harmless act, but who knew? Maybe Tom had made a mistake. He’d expected Reto to help him, but that expectation had been driven by hope and desperation. Maybe he’d walked into a trap. Maybe this is where his pursuit of Walker Sheffield would end.

“As I mentioned,” Reto went on, “the man you are looking for is here. We have surveillance video of him in Zurich, as well as here in Bern. Unfortunately, here is where we lost track of him. But I am optimistic that he is not far away and that he can be found.”

Tom looked out through one of the tall windows. The sky was blue, cloudless. A dark, urgency was building up inside him. Was Walker somewhere nearby, underneath the same sky?

“Can I see the videos?” he asked.

“Please, Tom, you’re getting ahead of things.”

“Is he still with his wife and son?”

“Please, Tom–”

“Can you at least tell me when they were here, in Bern?”

Reto placed his hands in his lap and leaned back.

“If I may,” he said.

Tom nodded but didn’t relax.

“I know that you are done at the F.B.I.,” Reto announced. “From Carol that much is clear. We cooperated in the past, you and I, as peers, but today you sit before me as a private citizen — one who entered the country using a false passport, I might add.”

At this Reto smiled, again as if this were a minor transgression, as if he were scolding a child.

“So there can be no quid pro quo,” he continued. “If I helped you, it would be out kindness, not professional courtesy.”

“I understand,” Tom said.

He’d thought about this himself. He’d reached out to Reto because there’d been no one else, but he’d known that the man owed him nothing and that he’d never be able to pay him back.

“Furthermore,” Reto went on, “Carol is not an idiot. If I helped you, she would know it or she would assume it. No matter what, there would be consequences for me and my relationship with her. And she’s an influential woman, so these consequences would be far-reaching, I think. It could become impossible for me to work with your organization at all.”

Catching himself, Reto nodded apologetically and pursed his lips.

“Your former organization, I mean.”

Tom Bishop stood.

“Where are you going?” Reto asked, looking legitimately confused.

“You have no reason to help me,” Tom said, “and if you did it would have a negative impact on you professionally. I understand. Am I free to go?”

“Of course you are free to go,” Reto said, with a dismissive wave at the door. “But I think you should wait until I’ve made myself clear.”

“You can’t help me,” Tom said.

“You’re wrong,” Reto said. “I shouldn’t, but I can. And I’m going to. But not for any of the reasons you might’ve expected, which is my point.”

Tom hesitated, then lowered himself back into his chair.

“You maybe don’t know how often you talked about Michelle,” Reto said.

He let a moment slip by, waiting for Tom to react if he wanted to. But there was nothing.

“You’re not an emotional man,” Reto continued. “You don’t reveal much. But I learned one thing about you. Every time we spoke, you talked about her. Every time. You probably would have liked to have concealed your feelings about her, but you couldn’t. You loved her too much for that.”

“Every man loves his children.”

“Do they?” Reto asked. “We’ve spoken many times over the last ten or fifteen years. How many children do I have? What are their names? How old are they?”

Tom put his hands together, looked at the floor, tried to remember. The truth was, he had no idea.

“I’m sorry, Reto–”

“Don’t be, please. I love my children — I have four, by the way, all grown up — but with you and Michelle, I always felt there was something more. In all those years, she was the only thing personal about you that ever slipped through. She’s the only thing I know about you.”

Tom felt his face tighten, his anguish threatening to overwhelm him as he remembered his words to Ryan Sheffield: That child isn’t just my daughter. The way I love her, it’s more than that. She’s one of my best friends.

“I am humbled, and I am inspired,” Reto said, finally arriving where he’d been headed the whole time. “And I am entirely at your disposal.”

Reto stood and extended a hand across his desk. Tom stood and shook it, his emotions back under control.

“I would embrace you,” Reto said, “but you seem like a handshake man to me.”

The phone on Reto’s desk rang.

“Excuse me,” he said as he picked it up.

As Reto spoke — in German, so he knew it wasn’t Carol on the phone — Tom moved to the window. He could hear distant sirens but could see no emergency vehicles below. Everything appeared normal, the sidewalks full of peaceable pedestrians, the cars on the streets moving slowly through the city center.

At that moment, no one could’ve known that a week later the city would be evacuated, or that the army would be under orders to shoot on sight any people it encountered on its patrols. It wasn’t yet the beginning of the end, but it was close.

“That’s interesting,” Reto said, hanging up the phone.

Tom turned away from the window and waited.

“Your friend at the train station,” Reto explained. “As it turns out, he’s too much for the city police to handle. So he’s my problem after all.”

Reto pulled out his SIG Sauer, popped the magazine, checked it.

“So let’s go have a look,” he said.

“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.

He opened the door quietly, not wanting to disturb her, only to find his wife sitting up in bed watching television. He watched her for a moment, not thinking or feeling anything, just giving her the opportunity to let him know if she wanted or needed anything. When she finally looked at him, she didn’t speak, and there was nothing like a question or request in her eyes. Eventually her attention returned to the TV. Tom closed the door and walked away.

After showering and shaving, he put on a pair of pressed black slacks and a crisp white dress shirt. His usual uniform. Standing in front of his bedroom mirror, he put on a black necktie, tying a perfect four-in-hand knot on his first attempt. As usual. Then he grabbed a suit jacket out of the closet and went downstairs.

It was only when he was standing in the kitchen, leaning against the counter and staring into a freshly-brewed cup of coffee, that he realized he had nowhere to go.

The F.B.I. didn’t want him. Carol had placed him on involuntary leave, giving him no indication as to when he might be able to return. He suspected he wouldn’t be asked back until Walker Sheffield was in custody. But what would happen if the trail went cold and Walker was never found? Would they ask Tom back then? Or would having him there to remind them of their failure be too much for them to bear?

He was in the living room, sitting on the sofa with his third cup of coffee, when the phone started to ring. He ignored it until after the fourth ring, then turned and stared at it where it sat on the end table as it rang two more times. On the seventh ring, he picked it up.

“Tom Bishop.”

A recorded voice informed him that he had an international collect call from Ryan Sheffield. He accepted the charges.

“Hello? Hello?”

The connection was strong. The recording had said international, but Ryan could’ve been calling from down the street. Tom sat up and set his cup down, alert in a way that he hadn’t been since he’d received the news.

“Hello, Ryan. This is Tom Bishop.”

There was a pause. Was the connection faltering, or was the boy hesitating? Tom couldn’t be sure.

“Hi. Mr. Bishop. It’s Ryan.”

“Sure, I know.”

“Of course. Right.”

In the background, Tom could hear a collision of noises. Ryan was in a busy place.

“What can I do for you?” Tom Bishop asked.

“I was wondering…” The boy’s voice trailed off. Then he asked, “Is Michelle there? I mean, have they found her? Has she been found?”

“You want to speak with Michelle.”

“Yes. If she’s there.”

“So…”

The boy didn’t know. Walker Sheffield had run off with his family, but they didn’t know — or at least Ryan didn’t know — why they were running.

“So what?” Ryan asked.

“So where are your parents?”

“They’re here.”

Tom could hear that the boy was holding back. He might not have known why they were running, but he knew they were on the run.

“Alright,” said Tom, deciding not to push.

“Can I, uh, talk to Michelle?”

“Sure. She’s been asking about you, you know.”

“She has?”

Ryan sounded so pleased. When he found out the truth, he’d be crushed.

“She showed up the day you disappeared,” Tom said. “She’s been wondering where you went.”

“Really.”

“Yes, really. So, where are you, Ryan? Where’d you go?”

***

Jane had come off the plane drunk and desperate for a smoke. Walker had come off anxious. When they’d passed through passport control, the officer had spent an exceptional amount of time scrutinizing them, and Walker had almost lost it.

“He was waving everybody else through,” Walker said afterward, “hardly looking at their passports. Why bother us?”

Ryan sat on a bench inside the terminal and watched his parents smoke on the sidewalk outside. Jane seemed angry and afraid, gesticulating frantically as she harangued her husband about something. For his part, Walker stood motionless before her, his anxiety showing only in the way that he shot glances at everyone who walked past.

Hours went by while discussed where to go from there. They had lunch there, then went shopping, Walker picking out hiking boots and a rain jacket for Ryan, along with a small backpack. Ryan had run out of books on the flight, so he insisted on visiting the bookstore. Then, finally, Walker let Ryan know what he and Jane had decided. They would be staying in Switzerland.

“What’s going on?” Ryan asked, not for the first time.

“Like I told you, a bit of a misunderstanding,” Walker said, as if a bit of a misunderstanding could cause a family to abruptly fly halfway round the world. As if Ryan would believe that. For the first time he could remember, his father was insulting his intelligence.

“Something Mom needs to clear up at work,” Walker continued. “Until then, we’re just on a little spontaneous vacation.”

When Walker and Jane left Ryan on his own to go speak with someone at the visitor center, Ryan decided to use the opportunity to call Michelle. When he’d left, she’d still been missing, and he hadn’t stopped wondering if she was okay. He had to speak with her — but unfortunately Tom Bishop had answered the phone, and now Ryan was being asked a question he wasn’t sure he could answer.

“So, where are you, Ryan? Where’d you go?”

Ryan was standing at a bank of phones across a wide, busy space from the visitor center, and he could see his parents inside speaking with one of the staff. Jane, still drunk, was again upset about something. Walker, still anxious, was doing his best to calm her down. The woman trying to help them was the epitome of smiling patience.

“I’m not sure I can tell you,” Ryan said.

“Why not?” Tom asked.

He was being friendly. Tom Bishop had never been friendly to Ryan before.

“My parents.” It was an excuse kids used — simply mentioning their parents — for something they couldn’t do. It only worked on other kids.

“Can I talk to your dad?”

“Probably not,” Ryan said, and just then he saw Walker glance in his direction. He was mostly concealed by the phone, but he still wondered if his father had seen him. “I don’t have much time. Can I talk to Michelle?”

“Are you in danger, Ryan?”

Why was he asking that?

“No, of course not,” Ryan insisted.

“Okay,” Tom said. “Then I’ll get Michelle for you. Hang on.”

“Alright.”

Ryan took another peek at the visitor center. Walker was being shown something on a computer monitor and listening to the smiling woman with unfeigned interest. Jane had calmed down. She was sitting now and not speaking, and her eyes were on the floor.

Over a public address system, a German-language announcement began, followed by what Ryan assumed was the same announcement in French. Only when English came around did Ryan realize that departure times and destinations were being given for a train station underneath the airport. He heard Zurich, Geneva and Bern, as well as the names of other cities unfamiliar to him. Then he remembered the phone.

“Mr. Bishop?” Ryan asked urgently. “Are you there?”

“Yes,” Tom answered right away. “I’m here.”

The earlier friendliness was gone, replaced by something so grave it made Ryan shudder.

“Michelle can’t come to the phone right now,” Tom went on. “But I’ll see you soon.”

***

Zurich, Geneva, Bern.

Switzerland.

Tom Bishop hung up without saying goodbye and immediately called Reto Barandun, his contact at the Swiss Federal Department of Justice and Police. After making a few arrangements with Reto, he packed a small bag with some essentials and left his house for what would be the last time.

At the airport, he called Carol Shaw.

“I’m going to be gone for a while,” he told her. “Can you have someone look after Alice?”

“Of course,” Carol said. “But where are you going?”

“I can’t tell you,” he said, “and hopefully you won’t find out.”

“Is there anything I can do to stop you?”

“No.”

“Then will you at least promise to contact me if you need help?”

“No.”

He saw that they were about to close his gate. He disconnected and removed the battery from his phone just before dropping both items into the nearest garbage can. Then he boarded his flight.

The basement was deep, and as silent as a tomb. She was at least three full meters below the restaurant, maybe more, and whatever was happening upstairs she couldn’t hear. Everything down here except the ceiling was built of stone, and it was at least five degrees cooler.

She stood at the end of a long, narrow corridor, lit by bare fluorescent lamps spaced several meters apart, with gloomy gaps of near-darkness between them. She couldn’t see the other end of the corridor, but she was certain it stretched beyond the end of the restaurant above.

She lowered her bound hands until they were behind her thighs, then she sat on the stairs. Facing a short hallway across the corridor that led to a women’s restroom, she lifted her legs, bent her knees and brought her hands around in front of her. Her eyes fixed on the restroom, she freed her hands using the knife she’d picked up in the kitchen. Tossing the binds aside and rubbing her wrists, she realized that she couldn’t continue down the corridor without first making sure that the restroom was clear. She took a deep breath and stood. Knife in hand, she advanced into the short hallway.

She pushed open the restroom door and took a step inside, the knife out in front of her. A clump of thick, dark hair flopped down in front of one eye. With a twitch of her head, she swung the clump away and surveyed the room.

To her right were three sinks, filthy white porcelain grimly lit by flickering florescents. Across from the sinks were three stalls, their doors closed, their interiors concealed. She would have to check them out. With a sigh, she moved swiftly to the first stall and kicked it open. Nothing but a toilet. She stepped to the next stall and kicked it open too. Just another toilet.

She moved to the final stall, and in the moment that she kicked its door, a noise from upstairs drew her attention sideways. Had something crashed against the door at the top of the stairs? Was the wild-haired man trying to get in? Or was it the zombies? She waited, her eyes focused on the restroom entrance, but the air was once again silent and still.

Then a rustling sound drew her attention back to the stall. Seeing what was inside, she gasped and dropped the knife and stumbled backwards onto the floor. Her scuttering feet pushed her away from the stall and under the sink, where she stopped abruptly with her back against the wall.

The thing in the stall had once been a young man. Now it was a zombie. It didn’t advance on her, but it was eyeing her hungrily and reaching out for her with both hands. Its fingers were grey and bony, and its nails were cracked and caked with dried blood.

Hélène was about to stand and flee when she realized that the zombie was stuck. Not only was it hanging by the neck from a pipe up inside the suspended ceiling, it had no legs and no midsection. It was only a head, two arms and a trunk dangling a meter and a half off the ground. The floor below it was covered in thick gore, much of which had oozed out of the stall. Hélène might’ve noticed the gore before had it not been for the poor light and her impatience.

She stood. This zombie was no threat. It was a vicious dog at the end of a leash, wanting to tear her apart but unable to reach her. She picked up her knife and took a step toward it. One of these things had killed her mother and Harry’s wife, and by now one had likely killed Nic and the American. Yet this was all they were: mindless eating machines, inhabited by some force that made use of them to satisfy its hunger for as long as their brains were intact.

Hélène took another step forward and raised the knife. It would be too easy, perhaps even cruel, but she would end this one. She would drive the tip of her knife straight into its forehead.

“Er het aube hie gschaffet,” someone said.

Hélène turned. The wild-haired man was standing in the doorway. The sound she’d heard before had been the door upstairs opening and then crashing closed. She’d taken the key but apparently he’d had a franc.

“Er het probiert sich ds Läbe znäh,” the man went on, “aber sie hei ihn scho gfunde gha. I ha ihm no wöue häufe, aber I ha nid chönne. Auso hani ihn haut eifach dert la si.”

Hélène didn’t understand a word, but she knew she was in trouble. She was trapped between the zombie in the stall and the man she’d left behind to fend for himself. As if relieved that the man had arrived, she smiled innocently — and concealed the knife behind her.

***

Walker sprinted across the field, completely unnoticed by the creatures he passed. What was it? Was he too fast for their deadened vision? Or was it that their focus was elsewhere?

A group of creatures had gathered by the windows of the building that Walker now saw was a restaurant, and they were being joined by others. There was the sound of breaking glass, of nails being pulled out of wood and heavy planks clattering to the floor inside. The creatures were getting in.

To his right, between the restaurant and a smaller building, there was a wide gap. There were no creatures there, just a bike shelter with a low wall running along the restaurant side, so Walker sprinted to it and ducked down inside the shelter behind the wall. If any of the creatures had noticed, he was ready for them. The gun he’d used to kill Adrian and his son was in hand and poised.

A full minute passed before Walker felt confident that none of the creatures had seen him break away. It was time to move. On his hands and knees, he made his way through the shelter, inching past the metal racks, carefully avoiding the few bikes parked there for fear of disturbing them. When he reached the end of the wall, he found himself in the dead center of the gap and unsure about his next move.

The door to the restaurant, like the windows, was boarded up, and Walker was starting to wonder if he’d guessed right about Hélène being inside. If she’d been taken there by whomever had knocked him out, how had they gotten in? Maybe this was just the last stand of a group of survivors that’d been holed up inside since the beginning. Maybe Hélène wasn’t in there at all.

Walker put his free hand down and felt cold metal where he’d been expecting stone. It was too dark to clearly see what he was touching, so he moved his hand around until he found the metal’s edge and traced it in the dim light. Eventually his vision adjusted, and he discerned a square slightly darker than the stone that surrounded it.

Walker looked at the smaller building, which appeared to be an adjunct to the restaurant. Its interior was tiny but it had a large terrace, and Walker guessed it was used mainly during the summer. Walker smiled. An elevator.  Supplies for the restaurant and its cousin must’ve been delivered here and brought down to a cellar that the two buildings shared, a cellar that could be accessed from either side.

Walker stood and walked unconcealed to the terrace beside the smaller building. Before him stood a wall of glass doors, and he saw himself reflected in them: a rifle strapped to his back, a gun in his hand, a look of fearless determination on his face. This situation, although horrifying on the surface, was bringing out the best in him.

He glanced toward the restaurant. He couldn’t see the broken window from that angle, but he could see the crowd of creatures. More and more were joining them, and their efforts to enter the building were intensifying. They were so focused and making so much noise themselves, Walker was sure they wouldn’t notice any noise he made. So he picked up one of the terrace’s metal chairs and threw it through the glass door in front of him.

***

Hélène had never cut a man before. And so of course, when the time came, she did it badly.

Still wearing an innocent smile, she stepped away from the hanging half-zombie and toward the wild-haired man. When the latter opened his arms as if to envelope her, she brought the knife around from behind her back and tried to drive it into his stomach. But the move wasn’t quick enough — her arm arced out in what felt like slow motion — and the man had time to cross his arms and bring them down in front of him. In the end, all she succeeded in doing was slashing his forearm, and the shock caused her to immediately drop the knife.

She didn’t wait to see how the man would react. She slipped past him, sprinted down the short hallway and ran up the stairs. Better back up to the restaurant she knew than down the long, mysterious corridor. But at the glass door at the top, she stopped short. Through the reinforced glass, she could see that several zombies had made it inside and were milling around, and more and more were climbing in through the broken window behind them.

One zombie spotted her and threw himself at the door, slamming into it with ferocious force. Horrified, Hélène stumbled backward just as two other zombies joined the first. Each time they slammed into the door, the bolt held, but the glass was giving way, as was the door’s steel frame. Hélène ran back down to the basement.

At the bottom of the stairs, she found the wild-haired man in the restroom doorway, staring dumbstruck at his wounded arm. The cut was bleeding heavily, and a puddle of blood was forming at his feet. He looked up, anger in his watery eyes, and when his lips parted there were strings of saliva between his teeth. She thought he might speak — or scream — but she heard only the beginnings of some guttural growl.

He wasn’t angry: he was furious. And he had Hélène’s knife in his hand. He took a lurching step in her direction. Meanwhile the zombies upstairs were noisily making progress. Her choices were being made for her. She turned and ran down the corridor as fast as she could.

The first couple of turns she arrived at she didn’t take. The poor light in the corridor provided only the dimmest of views into their murk. When she finally did take a chance on one of these offshoots, she ran straight into a wall, then into a locked door. Returning to the corridor, she saw that the wild-haired man had made good progress in her direction. He was in a frenzy, swinging the knife wildly, his wounded arm apparently forgotten.

“Sie hei d’Tür ufbroche!” he howled. “Gang! Gang schnäu!!”

Behind him, the first of the zombies had reached the corridor, and the shadows of the ones coming down behind it were dancing on the stairwell wall.

So much had changed over the last few days. Her world kept getting smaller and smaller. Had it all been leading to this?

No. If she was going to die, after having been stripped of everyone she loved and everything that was important to her, it was going to be on a mountaintop somewhere, not here in this fucking basement.

She ran.

Suddenly she remembered the ceiling. The man in the stall had hanged himself from a pipe inside a suspended ceiling. Which meant that above her there was a space in which she could hide, if only she could reach it.

As she ran she looked up, and just then the floor went wet and she started to slip. Her feet shot out in front of her and she fell, her hands flailing. She hit the floor hard and slid, her head tapping the stone tiles several times as she went. The pain shut her eyes, and when they opened again, she had stopped sliding and she was on her side looking at the face of a dead man.

She sat up quickly. Her hands touched the floor and she quickly pulled them back. The area around her was slick with blood, and the body next to her wasn’t the only one nearby. In a wide alcove off the corridor, at least a dozen bodies had been dumped haphazardly. Some were dressed in similar white shirts and black pants. Maybe they’d once worked at the restaurant. The rest wore regular street clothes. Former customers, perhaps. Two, she saw, were children.

Standing, struggling to keep her footing, she looked behind her. The wild-haired man on his way, and the corridor behind him was quickly filling up with zombies. Time was running out. She looked up at the panels of the suspended ceiling and made a quick decision.

Choking back her horror and disgust, she grabbed a body and dragged it through the alcove, placing it on top of a body near the wall. Then she took hold of another body and again looked up at the ceiling, judging the distance. She was making a pile to reach it. A third would make it possible, but a fourth would make it sure. But did she have time?

In the corridor, the din of the wild-haired man and the undead was escalating.

***

The corridor ended at a staircase that led up to the smaller building. Walker came down off the bottom step into a pool of darkness, his handgun leading the way, his eyes wide and alert.

At the far end of the corridor, perhaps a hundred yards away, he could make out an indistinct number of lumbering figures. Creatures. They’d made it into the restaurant and down to the cellar and were headed in his direction.

At first he felt disappointment. Lost was his opportunity to avenge himself against the man who’d knocked him out and taken Hélène. If Hélène had been in the restaurant, she’d been overrun, and there was no chance of saving her now.

Then it occurred to him: maybe she’d made it down to the cellar ahead of the pack. Maybe she was here somewhere between him and the creatures and desperately in need of his help.

He swung the rifle around to his free hand and slipped his finger in front of the trigger. He wasn’t sure he could fire it this way, but it felt good having two weapons out in front of him. He checked the creatures’ progress. It was steady, but slow. Then he advanced.

He found her in a small alcove filled with the rotting dead. He couldn’t see her face — her upper body was hidden up inside the ceiling — but he recognized the rest of her, her jeans and black sneakers. A man in a suit with a head of unruly grey hair was standing on a pile of bodies trying to pull her down, and she was kicking at him wildly.

“Hey!” Walker barked.

The man released Hélène and stepped back.

Hélène dropped out of the ceiling and onto the pile, horror in her eyes as she tumbled back onto the floor, shaking off blood and gore.

The man stepped forward, his hands raised. His lips were moving like he wanted to say something but he’d forgotten how to speak.

Walker shot him twice in the face.

Hélène stood. Walker smiled.

“Let’s go,” he said.

***

Nic moved along the edge of the field in a crouch run, his eye against the scope of his rifle, his focus on the creatures gathering at one of the restaurant windows. Jane and Ryan were several meters behind him, struggling to keep up as they practically crawled through the grass, but Nic was not about to slow down for them.

He was known as a brave and selfless man — back in Bern, it had been his idea, not Harry’s, to help the Sheffields — but this was about Hélène, not them. He had loved Hélène’s mother, and he had let her down. The zombies had gotten to her because, he believed, he had failed to protect her. And although Hélène would always hate him as the man who’d shot her mother — never mind that she’d been a zombie — his love and devotion had transferred from mother to daughter, and he was determined to keep her alive. Hélène’s survival would be his redemption.

Two gunshots came in quick succession, and Nic pivoted toward the small building near the restaurant. The shots had come from there. Leaving Jane and Ryan behind, he broke into a run, approaching the side of the building opposite the restaurant to provide himself cover. He leapt up onto the terrace and immediately saw the broken glass door. Just as he was about to move to it, Hélène appeared.

She was covered in dirt and what could only have been blood, although she appeared to be unharmed. Her face was twisted into a startling combination of strength, determination and terror. She rushed through the broken door and out onto the terrace and would’ve run right past Nic had he not reached out and grabbed her. He held her tight and closed his eyes, the fear and tension he’d been immersed in now replaced by passionate relief.

“Je suis soulagé de voir que tu est en securité,” he told her.

Hélène violently threw his arms off her and took several steps back, glaring at him with pure loathing. Nic opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. If words hadn’t worked before, they certainly wouldn’t work now. She seemed to hate him more than ever.

Walker stepped out onto the terrace, and Hélène ran to him, throwing her arms around him, pressing her face against his chest, closing her eyes. Walker placed his free hand — the other was holding a gun — on Hélène’s back and gave it a reassuring stroke.

Nic didn’t understand, and it must’ve shown on his face because, watching him, Walker smiled and shrugged. Then Nic knew. He hadn’t saved Hélène. Walker had. And now she was indebted to him.

Jane and Ryan appeared at Nic’s side and stared at Walker with a mixture of relief and disbelief.

“It’s okay,” Walker said, then he squeezed Hélène’s shoulders. “We’re okay.”

He’d been out in the fields late in the evening, tending to the cows and goats. When he returned to the farmhouse, he was wide-eyed and white as a ghost and bleeding from a large wound on his shoulder. He claimed a man had emerged from the darkness and attacked him. He’d fought back and was afraid he’d killed the man, but he couldn’t be sure. Early the next morning, they were still trying to figure out what they should do when Kaspar died.

Sandra and her husband Bruno wrapped him in a blanket and loaded him into the back of their Subaru Outback. Then they put their two younger children, Luca and Paula, in the back seat and started driving down the hill. They’d been underway for just a few minutes when Paula let out a piercing scream. When Sandra turned around, she discovered Kaspar inexplicably sitting up and twisting Luca’s head as if he wanted to rip it off. The twelve-year-old boy was clawing in vain at his brother’s wrists and making an awful gurgling sound. Just as Sandra called out for her husband to do something, the boy’s neck snapped.

When Bruno turned and saw what was happening, he immediately drove the car off the road and into a ditch. Unfazed by the crash, he grabbed a hammer from the glove compartment and leapt out of the car. When he flung open the back door, Paula spilled out onto the ground, and he struck Kaspar several times in the head, killing their older son for the second time. After a moment of frozen perplexity, Bruno picked up Luca’s limp body and started walking back to the farmhouse. Sandra helped Paula to her feet and together they walked after them.

Their farmhouse had just appeared in the distance when Bruno suddenly dropped to his knees and tumbled off the road, still clutching Luca’s body. Sandra and Paula broke into a run, and when they reached them they saw that Luca had somehow revived and his teeth were sunk deep into his father’s forearm. Below his broken neck, the boy’s body was still limp. Only his head was moving, and Bruno was struggling to release the grip of the boy’s jaw, howling as Luca’s teeth burrowed into the meat of his arm.

Sandra could not explain why Luca, so clearly dead just moments ago, was now attacking her husband. Yet she was certain that the thing in Luca’s body was no longer her son, just as she was certain that the thing that had attacked Luca had no longer been her Kaspar. Determined to save her husband, she snatched up a heavy stone from the roadside and dropped it on Luca’s head. The boy’s mouth snapped open and Bruno quickly stood, cradling his injured arm. Leaving Luca behind — just as they’d left Kaspar behind — the three of them returned to the farmhouse.

Paula had been silent since they’d left the car, and once inside the house she moved away to the dining room they used for guests — the tourists, foreign and domestic, who hiked through the alps enjoying rustic accommodations. Paula sat in the furthest corner of the room, facing the door, her hands in her lap, waiting. She seemed to sense that this was not yet over.

Sandra helped Bruno through the kitchen and up the ladder to the loft above the barn. There were beds there, also for tourists, who loved sleeping above livestock, at least for one night. Sandra had decided that Bruno should not enter their apartment, which was at the other end of the house. Her husband, rapidly weakening, had not objected. She left him face down on a thin mattress, staring through a gap in the thick floorboards at the animals gathered below, the light music of their bells filling the air.

In the dining room with Paula, Sandra tried her mobile phone. No signal, although normally they had good coverage up there. So something had happened. Not just there at 1,200 meters, but elsewhere too. Maybe everywhere.

Night fell. A lightning storm rolled in. Eschewing their apartment, Sandra locked the dining room door and joined Paula in her corner. A metal kerosene lamp stood on the nearest of three tables. Sandra extinguished it and wrapped her arms around her daughter. Together they slept.

***

The light of early morning woke them. Noises drew Sandra to the window.

Outside two men were lurching about aimlessly. One she recognized, the son of a farmer whose livestock spent the summer near theirs. The other, a man of perhaps sixty, she didn’t know. Their skin was a lifeless green and their eyes were clouded over. Both had blood on their faces and hands. Maybe one of them was the one who’d bitten Kaspar, or maybe the man who’d bitten Kaspar had bitten these men as well.

Sandra turned to Paula. There was no sign of the shock of the day before or the anxiety that had driven her into the dining room. But Sandra knew it wouldn’t last: eventually it would all come back to her. But for this brief, waking moment, everything was normal.

Paula was big, like her mother. Not fat, but heavy and powerful, like women who worked the mountains often were. She also had her mother’s short hair that clung close to her scalp and blemishes that reminded Sandra of the ones she’d had as a teen, blemishes that had left her round face scarred. So, Paula had her mother’s face and her body. Surely she had her strength. They would get through this.

The handle on the dining room door shook. Paula’s eyes went wide and she sat up; the peaceful waking moment was over. Sandra raised a finger to her lips, shushing her. They watched the door. Again the handle shook.

There were only tables, benches, and chairs in the dining room. No weapons. They could flee through one of the windows, but Sandra didn’t want to do that. Not yet anyway. Better for now to deal with whomever was outside the dining room door.

For a long moment, the handle was still. Sandra wrapped an arm around Paula’s shoulders. In silence, they waited and watched the door.

There was a growl from the other side, guttural and primal. Then something heavy crashed against the door. If that was Bruno out there, he’d forgotten that the door opened the other way. Which meant that while it might’ve been Bruno’s body out there, it wasn’t Bruno’s mind.

Sandra stood and placed a chair on its side on the floor just inside the door. Then she picked up the unlit kerosene lamp and motioned for Paula to stand to one side. The girl obeyed.

Sandra waited, listening. Then she unlatched the door and pushed it open. A figure rushed in and promptly stumbled over the chair, landing flat on its face. Sandra grabbed Paula and quickly led her out. As she closed the door behind them, she caught a glimpse of the figure inside. It wasn’t Bruno. It was a woman, her cloudy eyes searching wildly for the people she’d rushed in looking for.

So one of them had gotten in. Which meant that the front door was open. Where was Bruno?

Sandra slid a wooden chair under the door handle, effectively locking it. She was now in the small room off the kitchen where the family ate their meals. Paula wasn’t there. Moving quickly to the kitchen, Sandra found her daughter standing in the open doorway, bathed in daylight and staring outside.

“Es si so viu,” Paula said.

Sandra joined her and saw four lurchers in the yard, four that she’d been unable to see from the dining room. That made seven. They were lucky that only one of them had wandered in. She recognized one but not the others. None of them was Bruno.

Sandra closed and locked the front door. She hadn’t locked it last night — they rarely did — so anyone could’ve opened it. The lurchers seemed mostly mindless but certainly they could open an unlocked door. The dog had opened the front door before. So had one of the goats. A cow could probably do it if it could make it up the front steps. So maybe it hadn’t been Bruno. Maybe he was still upstairs, still alive and staring through the floorboards. Maybe he was still Bruno.

Or maybe not. Sandra set down the lamp and grabbed a cast iron skillet off the stove. She told Paula to stay in the kitchen and then climbed the ladder to the loft.

There were thirty beds up there, fifteen on each side, placed directly on the floor. The mattresses were thin and so was the bedding, and the air was thick with the stink of the animals below. But after an eight-hour hike, no tourist ever complained.

She moved slowly between the heavy beams that held up the triangular roof, the thick floor planks creaking under her weight. She’d left Bruno halfway down on the left, under the skylight, but he wasn’t there anymore. She checked her grip on the skillet and moved further into the loft.

She found him at the far end, scratching at the locked door that led to their apartment. She said his name. He turned and looked at her, nothing but fixed hunger in his eyes. A thick green fluid was oozing from the bite wound on his arm; the blood on the edges had hardened and turned black. She said his name again. He still didn’t respond, so she brought the skillet down on the front of his skull with a sickening crack. He slumped to the floor and didn’t move again, but she hit him twice more, just to be sure.

She took out her key ring and opened the door Bruno had been trying to get through. Across a narrow landing was the door to their small apartment; to her right down a short staircase was a door that led outside. Both doors were closed, so she assumed they hadn’t been breached. They sat crooked in their frames and could only be closed with intent. If a lurcher had come through here, it would’ve left at least one of the doors open.

Sandra moved to the door at the bottom of the stairs and locked it. Through a small curtained window, she saw that the lurchers she’d seen before had been joined by three more. A few were focused on the front door, but so far none were trying to get through it.

In the distance, two more were lurching through the tall grass in their direction. Something was drawing them to the farmhouse. How many more were in the hills? How many more would be standing in their yard before the day was through?

It was then that Sandra realized what they had to do.

***

From the loft, Sandra could see Paula standing in the doorway that led back to the dining room. The woman they’d locked inside was making a lot of noise, growling and hissing and scratching at the wood.

“Chumm hie ufe,” Sandra said. “Schnäu.”

Paula climbed the ladder to the loft. After a firm embrace, Sandra told her daughter what she needed her to do. If Paula had any reservations, she didn’t express them. She just nodded in silent obedience and then moved away across the loft.

Sandra watched her go. When she arrived at the far end, Paula gave her father’s corpse just the slightest of glances. Then she stepped through the door that led to their apartment.

The sounds of anger and agitation from the dining room grew louder. Sandra left the skillet behind and descended to the kitchen. If they wanted in, then let them in — as many as possible — then lock the door. That was the plan. She’d be doing their neighbors a favor as well as giving themselves an opportunity to flee to the summer barn, a thousand meters further up the alps. It wasn’t well stocked, but they’d get by for a bit. And there were virtually no neighbors up there. No one nearby to catch this sickness, whatever it was.

Sandra found the small bottle of kerosene they used to fill the lamps. She started at the dining room door and moved into the kitchen, covering as much surface area as she could. Then she unlocked and opened the front door — just a few centimeters — picked up the kerosene lamp, and returned to the loft.

After pulling the heavy wooden ladder up behind her, she grabbed the skillet and — lying on her back, still mostly concealed — began violently striking one of the support beams. The sound wasn’t as loud as she’d hoped, but it was loud enough. A minute passed, then she heard the front door open wide and the shuffling of feet and the unholy groaning.

And with that, it was done. They’d given up the house.

She lowered the skillet, waiting, listening. She didn’t chance a look: if they saw her, it would ruin everything. She relied on her ears to let her know when they’d stopped lurching in. And when she felt sure, she set down the skillet, grabbed the lamp, and crawled across the loft.

She found Paula at the top of the stairs, a heavy backpack loaded with supplies in one hand, Bruno’s SG 550 in the other. Sandra handed the lamp to Paula, then pulled on the backpack and slung the rifle over her shoulder. She led her daughter down the stairs and at the bottom looked out through the small, curtained window. The yard was empty, and there were no lurchers in the hills. Hopefully they were all inside, ready and waiting.

Sandra opened the door, and she and Paula stepped out.

A lurcher was standing in their blind spot, just around the corner where the roof hung down at hip level. He’d snagged his shirt — old, worn, flannel, untucked — on the gutter and had been staring at it, stupefied as to how to overcome this mild obstruction. When he saw Sandra and Paula, bewilderment turned to rage, and he reached forward and grabbed Paula by the front of her throat.

When he pulled his hand away, he had a lump of meat in his fist. Paula’s eyes rolled back as a blood erupted from the opening in her throat, and she slumped to the ground. Sandra felt everything at once — the horror, the sadness, the sense of failure — but her survival instinct prevented her from making a sentimental error.

The rifle on her back still had its stock folded. She swung it around and hit the lurcher in the head with the hinge. When he didn’t fall, she struck him again, then again, the third blow being enough to damage whatever part of his brain was vital. His body went slack. As he dropped to the ground, his shirt, still snagged on the gutter, tore away.

Sandra returned the rifle to her back and picked up the lamp. With a trembling hand, she lit the wick and quickly approached the house. A lurcher was standing in the open doorway with his back to her. She raised a foot and pushed him inside. Then she threw the lamp in as hard as she could, listened as its glass chimney cracked, and immediately pulled the kitchen door closed. As she fished for the key in her pocket, a lurcher found the handle and pulled the door open. Sandra quickly pulled it closed again and held the handle in place until she found the key. Then she locked the door and stepped back into the yard.

She could already see fire in every window, and smoke was beginning to slip through the woodwork and roof tiles and into the sky. She had no idea how many were inside, how many of her transformed neighbors were now succumbing to a fiery second death. And she would never wonder. Every step of the way, confronted by this bizarre and unprecedented threat, she had shoved sentiment aside for the sake of survival. And now, with her daughter infected just a few meters away, she would do it again.

A helicopter leapt over a nearby ridge and sloped down in her direction. It was an army helicopter, and for a moment Sandra thought that perhaps it had been dispatched to save her, alerted by the smoke. But no, that couldn’t have been the case. The fire had only just started, and the military base in the valley was in the opposite direction. More likely was that this helicopter had been on its way to the base and, seeing the smoke, had come to investigate.

When she saw the soldier in the open cabin door, his rifle trained on her house, she understood immediately what was happening. Standing there, dumbstruck, arms at her sides, she would appear to be one of them — a lurcher — and he would kill her. Just like she would’ve done in his position. Just like she had done, killing her youngest son and then her husband. Just like she’d been about to do, about to kill Paula.

The helicopter approached, and the soldier’s face was now visible. He was just a boy, younger than Kaspar had been. The soldier had seen her and his rifle was now aimed at her, his eye pressed against the scope. He’d been trained, she wouldn’t even know. He’d squeeze the trigger and she would be dead.

She watched him, the din of the vehicle’s rotors now battering her eardrums. She watched and wondered who would prevent Paula from becoming one of them. Not him, he’d be long gone before Paula revived. And so, long after he’d killed Sandra and left, Paula would stand up, and she’d be one of them.

No. That wasn’t how it was going to be.

Sandra swung the rifle around, flipping it open and placing a finger on the trigger. She pointed the weapon at the helicopter, the safety still on, hoping the soldier would get the message. But before she could gauge his reaction, he was being pulled roughly away from the doorway. A struggle was going on inside. Someone inside had saved her life, someone she’d been unable to see but who’d definitely seen her. It was someone she’d never meet.

Not knowing how long the struggle inside the copter would last — or who would be triumphant — Sandra turned and fled across the field toward the forest, leaving Paula behind. Her daughter’s eyes were wide but lifeless, and the flow of blood from her throat was now a trickle.

It was only after the helicopter turned and arced over the nearest ridge that the faintest spark of consciousness appeared in the girl’s eyes. Then her jaw clamped shut, with her lips open and teeth bared. She turned her head just in time to see her mother disappear into the trees.

Then, almost simultaneously, the front and back doors crashed inward, and two columns of F.B.I. agents surged into the house. Voices were raised, barking out orders, and rifles and handguns were swung and pointed in all directions.

Two groups of agents broke off from the others, one rushing upstairs, the other descending swiftly to the basement. Both groups were quick and thorough. Neither found any sign of life.

It took the agents perhaps half a minute to secure the house and determine that it was empty. The Sheffields had left, and Michelle Bishop wasn’t there.

Carol Shaw met the lead agent at the front door and together they toured the house. This was not the result that they’d been hoping for, but her decision to finally act on Tom Bishop’s conviction had been somewhat vindicated. It was six-thirty in the morning on a Wednesday. Someone should’ve been there. The Sheffields were guilty of something.

Her tour complete, Carol thanked the lead agent for his excellent work. Then she placed him in charge of the scene and let him know that if he needed her, she’d be at the bookstore.

***

Just as the invasion of the Sheffields’ home began, another group of agents breached the front door of Sheffield Books, breaking its lock, shattering its glass front, and ripping it off its hinges. The door flopped to the floor; the agents trampled it as they stormed inside.

While the ground floor was quickly searched and secured, a group split off into the small office and down the stairs to the basement. No one found anything or anyone. The store, like the house, was empty.

Twenty minutes later, Carol Shaw arrived and immediately sought out the lead agent. Learning that no sign of the Sheffields or Michelle had been found, she felt disappointed but reminded herself that the Sheffields had fled. Tom Bishop was on to something.

Carol walked through the store with the lead agent. It had always been her way to examine important scenes personally, so that if it was necessary, she could say that she’d been there and seen for herself what there was to see. This time, given Tom’s enforced absence, it seemed especially important. He would want to know that she had been there.

A forensics team was at work. She put her hands in her pockets and tried to stay out of the way. At the back of the store she admired the tall sectioned-glass windows and looked out at the morning as it gradually bloomed.

She loved spring, and autumn too — how for most of the day the sunlight caught things at angles and made even the ordinary look magical. Winter was too dark and grim, especially in Seattle, with its constant clouds and drizzle. And summer was too harsh and unforgiving, like a single bare bulb hung from the ceiling, blasting every surface with its hard light.

Carol was led behind the counter through the office and down to the basement. There were perhaps five other people there, all but one from forensics. Bookshelves stood filled with old books. A worn oriental rug covered the concrete floor. A burgundy curtain hung across the room’s only window, beneath which stood an antique easy chair and a small table.

It was a cozy setup. Carol would have been envious if it weren’t already clear that Walker Sheffield was a criminal. Perhaps not a child killer — they still didn’t know for sure — but he’d done something.

Carol turned to the lead agent and asked him where the rest of the basement was. From the look on his face, it was clear he didn’t know why she was asking, yet to Carol it was so obvious. The basement was significantly smaller than the store above.

Three of the walls were made of concrete and were part of the building’s foundation. But the wall behind the bookshelves had been added. Carol dropped to her knees and peered beneath the shelves. There were rollers on tracks, and at one end of the shelves there was a gap in which a small dresser had been placed. She ordered the dresser removed, and then with her bare hands — gloves be damned — she grabbed the shelves and pulled them aside.

There was a door, and for an instant they all stood staring at it, united in disbelief. So often in this job, with all the procedures and paperwork and politics, nothing real actually happened. Yet here was something real. A door, carefully hidden. And whatever was behind it was real too.

“Open this door,” Carol said.

***

Within minutes the door was open, and on the other side they found Michelle Bishop, naked and dead. Rigor mortis had set in but maximum stiffness had not yet been achieved, which meant she’d been dead for at least three hours but no more than twelve. Cause of death was dehydration.

In a bathtub at the other end of the hidden room, they found a bundle of nylon rope, a ball gag, and a blanket. At some point, Michelle had freed herself, tumbled out of the tub, and struggled on her hands and knees across the dirt floor. But by then she’d already been close to death. There was nothing to indicate that she had reached the door. If she had cried out, no one had heard her.

***

“I’m sorry, Tom.”

Silence.

“How’s Alice doing?” Carol asked.

“She doesn’t know.”

“She doesn’t know anything?”

“No.”

Carol nodded.

“You found the other girls?” Tom asked.

“In the floor. The four we knew about, plus six others we’re still trying to identify. And an adult male.”

“An adult male?”

“Yes.”

“What’s the connection?”

“Name’s Matthew Pullman. He worked at Klein Faliszek with Jane Sheffield.”

“When was he last seen?”

“Twelve days ago.”

“Twelve days ago?”

“Yes.” Then, “The day Michelle went missing.”

Silence.

“Where did Sheffield go?” Tom asked.

“I can’t tell you that–”

“You can. You’ve already told me more than you told the press.”

Carol hesitated.

“You said you were sorry,” Tom reminded her.

“I am.”

“About what?”

“You lost your daughter–”

“I lost my daughter, yes. What else?”

“What else?”

“What else are you sorry about?”

“I don’t understand.”

“On my own I came up with Walker Sheffield as a suspect. And I didn’t even know that a colleague of his wife’s had gone missing the same day as Michelle.”

“What are you saying?”

“You made a mistake taking me off this case.”

“You assaulted a boy–”

“I didn’t assault anyone.”

Tom held up his wounded hand.

“I know what you said happened,” Carol said. “The boy said something else.”

“You’re not sorry you took me off the case.”

“We needed to clear things up.”

“And now my daughter’s dead, and the man who killed her is free.”

“We did our best.”

“That was your best, putting me on leave?”

“It’s what I needed to do.”

“And you don’t wish you’d done it differently.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Carol took a deep breath, checking her emotions.

“You’ve been here,” she said. “You know how it is. With Phoebe Kantor, and Debbie Gilmore. It’s always there, what you could’ve done, what you might’ve done. But you remind yourself that you did your best, because you did do your best.”

Tom stared at her. His expression was stone.

“Where did Sheffield go?” he asked again.

“He and his family left the country.”

“Where to?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“I’ll find out.”

“How?”

“I’ll find out, and this time I’ll deal with it on my own.”

Carol sighed.

“So then do that,” she said.

“You wouldn’t rather I work with you?”

“I would rather you stay here with Alice. I would rather you take care of your wife, and mourn.”

“I’ll do that — when Walker Sheffield is dead.”

Carol stood.

“Canada,” she said.

“What?”

“He crossed the border at Blaine twenty-four hours ago.”

“Is he in Vancouver?”

“As far as we can tell, no.”

“Where are you looking?”

“We’re working with the RCMP and are focused on the eastbound highways. But of course we haven’t ruled out northern B.C. and the Northwest Territories, although north would pretty much be a dead-end for him.”

Tom nodded.

“So will you work with us?” Carol asked. “I can’t reinstate you, not yet, but will you let us know what you find out?”

“Sure.”

“Great. And I’ll do the same.”

“Alright.”

“Great,” Carol said again. “I’ll be in touch.”

As Carol left, Tom sent up a silent thanks. By trying to mislead him, she had done him a favor. Wherever Walker Sheffield had fled to, it wasn’t Canada.

To her left was a door that led down to a restroom: a sign next to it read ‘WC’; a slot below the sign demanded a franc for entry. Beyond the door was a large island counter topped by shelves loaded with glasses and bottles of liquor. Facing her at the near end was a coffee machine; at the other end, she thought she saw a sink. Opposite the island counter, to her right, was a wall of sectioned glass, six windows that reached the ceiling, now boarded up.

At the far end of the restaurant stood a booth like the one she was sitting in, facing hers, its mirror image. Otherwise it was all long wooden tables and chairs from one end of the restaurant to the other.

Helene’s hands were bound behind her. She had no idea where she was and only a vague idea of how she’d gotten there. It had all happened in darkness, and with a rough, discourteous urgency.

The lights in the restaurant were bright, certainly brighter than they needed to be. The light hurt her eyes, but she wouldn’t close them, or even blink unless absolutely necessary. When something happened, she would be ready.

***

It could’ve gone either way, but Walker got lucky. And ironically it was a creature he had to thank.

In the instant before the creature with its fingers wrapped around his naked calf could take a bite, the creature holding his head gave it a hard twist. The pain brought Walker abruptly to consciousness and with his instincts on full alert. Immediately sensing danger, he spun away in the dirt and leapt to his feet.

Even in the dim moonlight, and despite their icy green skin and dull grey eyes, he recognized the two men standing before him. The one who’d twisted his neck was Adrian; the one that had been at his calf was Adrian’s teenage son. Or at least that’s who they had been, before they’d become creatures.

How had they found their way here? Had they been on their way to rejoin the group? They were creatures now, but perhaps they hadn’t forgotten their mission. Perhaps some spark of what they had been still lived in their undead brains.

Whatever. They were creatures now, that was all that mattered.

Walker stepped forward and ripped the handgun off Adrian’s belt. He pressed the tip against Adrian’s forehead and fired. Adrian went limp and slipped earthward. Walker then turned on Adrian’s son and fired twice into his skull. He collapsed next to his father.

The two creatures now lifeless at his feet, Walker spun around, the handgun out in front of him, his eyes scanning the darkness. He sought out movement but there was none. For the moment he was alone. He lowered the weapon and knelt down to search the bodies.

Adrian’s son still had the rifle that Ryan had picked up in Bern. Walker slung it across his back. The boy also had a flashlight. Walker flicked it on and made another circle, probing the darkness. But there was no one — and nothing — else.

He pointed the beam down the path in front of him. His safety assured, he now looked for signs of whoever had knocked him out and where they’d taken Helene.

He saw drag marks in the dirt. A trail.

He smiled and caressed the gunmetal in his hand.

A hunt, and there were no rules, not anymore.

He just might enjoy this new world.

***

The bright lights, the long room, the distant hum of a generator. The monotony began to settle in and distract Helene.

She’d already given up on Nicolas and the American. Both, she felt certain, were now dead. And this, whatever it was, was hers to deal with alone.

No, not deal with. Because with her hands bound, she was incapable of dealing with anything. She could be brave and confront her fate, but she couldn’t prevent it.

There was a new sound — the clang of metal — and this feeling of acceptance immediately left her. She stood, pushing the table away with her hips. Her hands were trapped behind her, but she would use what she had to save herself, and do whatever it took.

She turned and saw for the first time a door next to the booth. It seemed to lead to an outer hallway, but like the windows it had heavy wooden planks nailed across it. She turned away and rushed to the door that led down to the bathroom. She tried to open it but it was locked.

Again, that sound — clumsy clanging, metal being knocked about — and then from an opening near the island counter, a man emerged. His hair was wild, grey and curly; and from the watery redness in his eyes, she thought he might be drunk. Yet he was dressed in a suit, and he smiled at Helene in a way that seemed benevolent.

She returned the smile and asked him, in French, to unbind her hands. He just frowned and shook his head.

“Tuet mir Leid,” he said. “I cha nid Französisch. Chasch du Dütsch? Hochdeutsch ist auch gut.”

She turned and showed him her bound wrists, peering at him over her shoulder, a clear request in her eyes. They didn’t speak the same language, but it must’ve been obvious.

The sound of breaking glass drew the man’s eyes to the windows, and he rushed to them urgently as if he thought the heavy wooden planks covering them might suddenly give in. She followed him, no longer afraid of him, now just frustrated by the language barrier and his inability to focus.

“I hätt nid use söue,” he said, “aber i ha dä Lärm ghört dusse und ha wöue ga häuffe.”

He was at the window now, peering out between planks.

Helene joined him and looked outside.

The building was surrounded by zombies.

***

“Where is my husband?” Jane asked no one in particular, pacing back and forth in the forest.

Nic sat hunkered down against a tree, distraught. First he had lost Helene’s mother; now he had lost Helene. Harry and Tanja stood together, speechless. There were just five of them left, and now everyone had lost someone.

Or so it seemed. It was clear that Adrian’s girlfriend and daughter had died, but what exactly had happened to Walker and Helene? No one could say for sure.

Jane should’ve felt conflicted. Walker had been unkind to her, even vindictive. But he had fought to keep them all together, and he was the father of her son.

“I’m going to find him,” she said.

“Mom–” Ryan said.

“Stay here with the others,” she told him.

“No,” he said, taking one of her hands. “I’m going with you. And when we find Dad, we’ll all be together again.”

Jane looked at her son. In the world that had ended, he’d been a boy, just twelve years old. But he was already more than five feet tall, as tall as many adults, and the dangers in this new world certainly wouldn’t spare him just because she thought he was a child. He would need to learn to protect himself like an adult, which would mean her treating him like one.

“We need a gun,” she said, “and a flashlight.”

“You can have my flashlight,” Tanja said, handing hers to Ryan.

“And I’ll come with you,” Nic said, rising to his feet.

“Good,” Ryan said, moving toward Nic. “Helene will be happy to see you.”

This sealed it for Jane, her son encouraging Nic, trying to inspire optimism in him. She had barely begun treating him like an adult and here he was already acting like one.

Ryan flipped on the flashlight, and with a collective glance at Harry and Tanja, the three of them moved back through the forest to find Walker and Helene’s trail.

***

Walker moved along the tree line, his eyes on the building on the far end of the field. It was three stories high, with tall windows along the near side. The windows appeared to have been boarded up, although light inside was still visible. Was this where Helene had been taken?

There were creatures in the field, perhaps as many as thirty, all facing away from Walker and moving toward the building. It might’ve just been the light that was drawing them toward it. Or maybe they’d seen Helene and the man who’d taken her enter it. Walker would have to find out.

The creatures in the field were far apart, but there were more creatures than Walker had bullets. If he revealed himself and they converged on him, it was likely they would bring him down. But they were slow, and he could run. And their brains were slow too. There would be a moment before they realized he was there, and then another moment before they reacted.

Walker pulled the strap tight on the rifle across his back. He chambered a round in his handgun and double-checked the safety. It was off. Then, after taking a deep breath, he lowered his head and sprinted across the field.

***

“Stop!” Jane yelled, but it was too late.

Nic, who had been relying on her to light the way for him, reached the end of the bridge and tripped inelegantly over the first of the two bodies that were lying there.

Jane grabbed Ryan by the arm and they rushed forward. They found Nic already back on his feet, his gun pointed at the ground.

“Show me,” he said, desperate for Jane to illuminate what he’d just stumbled over.

Jane swung the light down and showed him the bodies. One face, then the other. Adrian and his son, both dead. They had been shot, but before that they had turned. They had been creatures.

Jane watched Nic for an emotional response to the deaths of his friend and his son, but his first concern proved to be their safety.

“Give me the flashlight,” he said, and Jane quickly obeyed.

With the light pressed against the side of his gun, he started a slow turn, probing the darkness around them. He pivoted toward them, and Jane and Ryan dropped to their knees beside the bodies. As the flashlight beam passed over their heads, the stench of death assaulted them.

This was how it was going to be. Lives would end, and there would be no time for reflection or mourning. In this new world, the living moved on in a hurry.

***

Where the restaurant window had been broken, a shape appeared, and then a pair of hands reached for them through a gap in the planks. They were in no immediate danger — the wild-haired man had not allowed them to get too close — but still Helene took a startled step backwards.

Now she was desperate. They were surrounded and the window was broken. The planks wouldn’t hold forever. Once again she showed the man her bound wrists, this time pleading with him using one of the few German words she knew.

“Bitte, bitte, bitte!”

His focus shifted urgently between her and the broken window. He seemed wobbly and uncertain, and with his wild hair and watery eyes, she wondered again if he’d been drinking. Of course it might’ve simply been fatigue. Who knows how long it’d been since he’d last slept? But he may have just been losing his mind.

Giving up, Helene turned and looked for an escape route. The door at the far end of the restaurant was also boarded up. With the bathroom door locked, all that remained was the opening near the counter through which the wild-haired man had emerged. She ran to it.

The opening led to a small kitchen area — a sink, a stainless-steel counter, a dishwasher, some shelves, a dumbwaiter — which communicated with the other side of the restaurant. Passing through she found more tables and chairs, and more boarded-up windows and doors. How did the man get in and out? Helene considered the dumbwaiter, but even if the man hadn’t been on the heavy side, it was still too small for a full-grown adult.

On the kitchen counter, a partially-diced carrot rested on a cutting board. A pot of water was boiling on a small stove, and a bag of noodles and some canned food stood nearby. Had the man been making them dinner? When had she last eaten? Not since they’d arrived in Bern. Maybe not even since she and Nicolas had left Fribourg. Seeing her mother die — not just once, but twice — had destroyed her appetite.

Her mother, and then Nicolas. Then the American, and now this wild-haired restaurateur. It was as if some invisible force was pushing her bit by bit away from stability and safety toward chaos and certain death. She envisioned herself at the end of it all, dying alone in an unfamiliar place.

Helene picked up the part of the carrot that was still whole and took several hurried bites. Then she grabbed the small knife the man had been using to cut the carrot and moved back into the first part of the restaurant.

The way out had to be the bathroom door, but she didn’t have a franc or a key, so how to get through it? Helene scanned the island counter for a key but there was none. Then she spotted a square piece of plastic, a black box about the size of a tin of mints with a few buttons on its surface. It reminded her of what her mother used to unlock her car. It was a key. An electronic key.

She turned around and snatched up the electronic key with her bound hands. Tuning out the increasing sounds of struggle at the window, she pushed each button in turn, listening for a click. When one finally came, it was from the direction of the bathroom door. She rushed to it and, facing the windows where the wild-haired man was still occupied, she grabbed the doorknob and pulled.

The door opened with a click.

At the windows, one of the planks fell noisily to the floor. There were now three pairs of hands reaching in. The man was in trouble, his face red with desperation. But he had left her tied up, despite her pleas. If he didn’t make it now, it would be his own fault.

Helene stepped through the door and let it close behind her. It was steel-framed and made of glass reinforced with wire mesh. If the zombies made it into the restaurant, it would take time and effort for them to get through it. Of course there was always the possibility they wouldn’t even try, but she didn’t want to count on that.

A stone staircase led downward. With one last glance over her shoulder at the wild-haired man — another plank had fallen, another pair of zombie hands was reaching in — she descended into the unknown.

“Jane Sheffield.”

She sounded like a robot. Good. Better that than the fit she’d thrown when her boyfriend had gone missing.

“It’s me,” he said.

He climbed in behind the wheel and slammed the door. Then, after tossing his cell phone from one hand to the other, he started the car and revved the engine. He didn’t stop to wonder what he looked like — to realize that now he was the one having a fit. In his mind, he was still in control, a man of action. He put the car in drive and pulled away from the curb.

“What do you want?” Jane asked. She didn’t sound pleased that he’d called, but he was sure this was only because he reminded her of how pathetic and loathsome she was.

“The police were just here,” he informed her.

“What?” she yelped, her voice rising sharply. “Why?”

“Why do you think? Your boyfriend is in custody.”

“They told you that?”

“They didn’t have to.”

He was driving too fast and barely made the corner at the bottom of the hill. He tapped on the brake and steadied the vehicle. Getting thrown in jail for reckless driving would be ironic, like Al Capone going to prison for tax evasion.

“So then how do you know?” Jane asked.

“It was obvious. They asked about him. They asked about you. They know everything. They were just trying to find out what I know.”

“Shit!”

“Yes. Please. Yell ‘shit’ in your office. Don’t you think they have it bugged? Come to think of it, I probably shouldn’t even be talking to you on this phone.”

Which was hilarious, and Walker almost burst out laughing. Jane was not under surveillance. The police knew nothing about Matt Pullman. He’d been taken care of before he could tell them anything.

But it was a good point. If Walker really believed that Jane had been exposed, would he have called her on her office phone in the first place? He was good at being proactive, not reactive. He hated having to think on his feet.

“What should I do?” Jane asked.

“We need to go on a little vacation,” Walker told her. “Until things blow over.”

“What? I can’t just–”

“Leave work now, and pick up Ryan from school.”

“It’s the middle of the day.”

“I don’t care.”

“Okay,” Jane said, giving in. “And then what?”

“And then call me on your cell.”

Without saying goodbye, he disconnected.

The road curved to the left, and up ahead, still four blocks away, he could see the front of his store. He hadn’t decided yet what to do about Kyle. Why hadn’t he called to warn Walker that Tom Bishop had been at the store? The disloyal punk deserved killing. And he’d killed Matt, so why not Kyle too?

A wave of nausea swept through him. What was he becoming? A simple murderer, who took lives not for any higher purpose but just to satisfy some sinister urge?

It had all gone wrong with Matt, and again he blamed Jane. As a result of her selfish, thoughtless actions, he was now at risk of being exposed. If he hadn’t known better, he’d have thought she was trying to smoke him out on purpose.

Walker slammed on the brakes, still a block away from his store, and pulled the wheel to the right. The vehicle skidded crookedly into a gap between two parked cars, the right front tire bumping up against the curb. A horn blared as the car that had been behind him shot past, but Walker barely noticed. His mind was focused elsewhere.

Jane’s actions might’ve started it all, but she wasn’t the one trying to smoke him out.

Tom Bishop was.

Walker took a deep breath to calm himself. Now was not the time to fall apart. There were things to be done. Plus someone might’ve been watching. With this in mind, he let out a laugh, as if something amusing had just occurred to him. Then, with this burst of innocent laughter still informing his features, he opened the door and got out.

There was a bar around the corner, Murphy’s, and in the entryway they had a payphone. Walker moved around the front of the car to the sidewalk, his cell phone in his hand. He tapped the phone directory app and typed in her name.

Karen Wyler.

No listing.

Of course this meant nothing. Tom Bishop still might’ve been telling the truth. A lot of single women, especially students, had unlisted numbers. But how to find out for sure if Karen was one of them? Walker could think of only one way.

He entered a new name into the directory.

Ross and Isabel Wyler.

They were listed. Walker smiled.

Walker had never forgotten Ross and Isabel Wyler. They were the reason he’d merely been dismissed and not thrown in jail. One of Karen’s problems — something she had discussed with Walker at great length — had been her parents’ inability to believe a single word that came out of her mouth. And so when Karen had made her accusations against Walker, Ross and Isabel had been more than willing to step forward and insist that their daughter had at best a flexible relationship with the truth.

Walker fed the payphone some change and dialed the Wylers’ number. After three rings, someone picked up.

“Hello?” A woman’s voice. Isabel.

Walker decided to take a chance. A big one.

“Hello, Mrs. Wyler,” he said. “This is Special Agent Tom Bishop from the F.B.I. We spoke earlier.”

“Did we?”

She sounded genuinely perplexed. Walker doubted she would’ve forgotten speaking to someone from the F.B.I.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m misreading my notes. It must’ve been Mr. Wyler. Is he at home?”

“No, he’s not. Can I have him call you?”

“Of course, thank you,” Walker said. “But while I’ve got you on the phone–”

“You say you’re from the F.B.I.?”

“Yes.”

“And you spoke to Ross?”

“Yes.”

“That sounds like something he’d have mentioned,” she said, then added cryptically. “Even Ross.”

Walker resisted the urge to offer possible explanations. Instead he said, “I suppose that’s something you can take up with him.”

“I suppose,” Isabel agreed, although she still sounded a bit unsure.

“Mrs. Wyler, I’m calling about your daughter.”

Silence.

“Mrs. Wyler?”

More silence.

“Mrs. Wyler, are you still there?”

“Yes,” she said finally. “I can’t believe–”

Her voice cut out, upended by an unmistakable gasp.

“Perhaps I should call back,” Walker gambled. He didn’t want to push. It would be better if she pulled.

“No!” Isabel exclaimed, almost in a panic. “You know something, you must know something. And now I understand.”

“Understand what?”

“Why Ross didn’t say anything. You’ve found out about Karen. And it’s bad news.”

She had satisfied her own suspicions, but the way forward still wasn’t clear.

“Again, Mrs. Wyler,” he said, “perhaps I should call back.”

“Please. Ross is always trying to protect me. I was so crushed about Karen. But if you’ve found out something, I need to know.”

Walker took a moment to consider the way forward. Tom Bishop had been bluffing, trying to provoke him. Karen Wyler was not a student at Seattle University, and Tom was not on his way to visit her. But Walker wanted to know more. He’d never stopped thinking about Karen and the moments — later misinterpreted — that they had shared. She was the first of the girls to love and then betray him. What had happened to her?

“We came across Karen indirectly,” Walker began. “A boy she’d known was a person of interest.”

“A boy in Spokane?” Isabel asked.

Spokane.

“No,” Walker said, not wanting to deal with anything known. “This was after she left Spokane.”

Walker might’ve hated thinking on his feet, but he was enjoying this, and he seemed to be doing it well.

“She left Spokane…” Isabel said, with something dreamy in her voice.

“You didn’t know she’d left,” Walker said.

“No. I’d hoped, because from what little I knew things weren’t going well for her there.”

Walker expected Isabel to ask where Karen had ended up, but then when she didn’t, he wasn’t surprised. She thought he had called with bad news, and she wasn’t in any hurry to hear it.

“So, you last heard from Karen when?” he asked.

“Five years ago,” Isabel said.

Five years ago.

Karen had been sixteen, maybe fifteen, so she hadn’t finished school. Instead she’d run off to Spokane for reasons her parents didn’t understand, and things had not gone well. Walker’s conscience was clear. He had tried to help, but he’d been denied.

So where was Karen now? The story was Walker’s to tell. He remembered his debt to the Wylers as well as the future he’d once dreamed of for their daughter. What he said next was what he hoped was true.

“Your daughter’s fine,” he said. “After Spokane, she made her way to Boulder, Colorado, where for a time she lived with a man of interest to the F.B.I. Thanks to her upbringing and perhaps some advice she received along the way — early on, when it mattered — she split up with this man and dedicated herself to a different kind of life. Eventually she met another man, a better man — a teacher, it turned out — who encouraged her to get her G.E.D. and enroll in college. It was tough, but she was strong, and finally the University of Colorado accepted her. She’s enrolled there now, clean and sober and pursuing a degree in English, with an eye toward a law degree later on. Environmental law, she mentioned, is of particular interest. She’s engaged to her mentor, the teacher, who showed her what she could achieve if only she believed in herself. She’s very, very happy.”

Walker peered outside. Tom Bishop was standing propped up against a parking meter, waiting for him. He was wearing sunglasses and chewing gum. He looked confident, but Walker wasn’t worried, not anymore. He only worried when there was doubt and uncertainty. But now his situation was clear. This was all over, and he would have to leave.

“Why haven’t we heard from her?” Isabel asked. “She should call, you should tell her.”

“She will,” Walker assured her. “She will call. Just give her time.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

“You’re very welcome. You’ll let your husband know I called?”

“Of course.”

Walker said goodbye and hung up.

Out on the sidewalk, Walker looked at Tom Bishop and shook his head, as if in disbelief. They were alone on this side street, the busy hum of Vandeveld Avenue several yards away.

“Where is she?” Tom asked.

“Your daughter?” Walker said. “You think I know something. That’s why you’re harassing me.”

“Where is she?” Tom asked again. He was staring at the sky now, gnawing on his gum.

“I don’t know,” Walker said flatly, and then he turned away, showing Tom his back.

“You underestimate me,” Tom said. “Or maybe you overestimate yourself.”

Walker stopped, and in the moment before he turned, he realized that Tom Bishop was alone. This wasn’t the F.B.I. challenging him. This was just a man. A man who happened to be an F.B.I. agent, but still just a man.

“You’re by yourself,” Walker said.

“Yes,” Tom admitted. “But that’s enough.”

“For what?” Walker asked, although his mind was already elsewhere, on his next move.

“Tell me where she is,” Tom said.

Walker laughed. He could take his time now, leave the next day instead of immediately. It had been a mistake to call Jane, to start her panicking. He’d have to call her back right away, calm her down. Of course she and Ryan would have to come with him. Walker wasn’t going to give Tom Bishop the satisfaction of breaking up his family.

“I have no idea where your daughter is,” Walker insisted, and then he turned away and started walking back to his car.

“Tell me where she is,” Tom said, “or I’ll kill you.”

Without stopping, Walker glanced over his shoulder and saw that Tom was holding his gun at his side. Walker shook his head again. Tom was completely losing it.

“How on earth,” Walker asked, “would that solve your problem?”

“This won’t end well for you,” he heard Tom say, the threat in his voice unmistakable.

We’ll see.

***

Back behind the wheel of his car, he called Jane on her cell.

“Hello?”

“Where are you?” he asked.

“Don’t worry, I’m on my way,” she said, anticipating a scolding. “I just got hung up for a minute.”

“Where are you?” he asked again, with a little less patience.

“In the garage. I’m almost at my car.”

“Turn around and go back to work.”

“What?”

He had been able to hear her heels on the concrete floor. Now there was silence. He pictured her standing in the middle of the garage, phone to her ear, waiting for him to explain. He smiled, amused by her confusion. She deserved it after all the trouble she’d caused.

“We don’t need to panic,” he said. “We have some time. So finish your day, let Ryan finish his, and we’ll talk about this some more tonight.”

“Maybe leaving isn’t the right idea–”

“Jane, this is out of your hands now. We’re going to do it my way, and we’re going to stick together.”

“Where are we going to go?”

“I don’t know. Switzerland? They can’t extradite us from there, right?”

“Actually,” Jane said, “that’s a myth. Switzerland signed an extradition treaty with the U.S. twenty years ago–”

“Well maybe we’ll go there anyway,” Walker cut in. “It’s a nice country. Lots of mountains to lose ourselves in until this all blows over.”

But this would never blow over. When they finally found Michelle, she’d be dead — without water, it might only take another day or two – and then they’d dig up the others. Walker knew that they would never stop looking for him.

“Okay,” Jane said, “whatever you say.”

“I’ll see you at home tonight.”

“Walker?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m so sorry.”

“You don’t need to apologize anymore,” he told her. “Let’s just do what we need to do to make things right again.”

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.

His phone rang. It was Carol Shaw, his boss. He sighed and took the call.

“Bishop.”

“Tom, it’s Carol.”

“Nice to hear from you,” he said. “Curious to know how I’m enjoying my involuntary vacation?”

“I’m curious to know why your wife called here looking for you.”

He could picture Carol in her office. She would be standing — she rarely sat — and most likely gazing from her office window at the mountains to the west. Her status as Special Agent in Charge had earned her an office with a view of the Olympics.

“I’m sorry she bothered you,” he said.

“She didn’t bother anybody,” Carol insisted. “But she did leave a few of us wondering. Did you tell her about your time off?”

“No. And I didn’t tell her about Michelle’s disappearance either.”

A moment of pure silence passed. Once upon a time, when people on the phone stopped speaking, there was always still a buzz, or at least an ambient hum. Now? The other end completely dropped away.

“It’s that bad?” Carol finally said.

“It’s that bad.”

Up ahead, a gap in the row of storefronts. The alley.

“So this isn’t the call where you tell me you’ve found Michelle?” he said.

“This isn’t that call.”

It was a bright, cloudless day. The Olympics must’ve looked spectacular.

“You just want to make sure I’m not out causing trouble.”

“I’m just making sure you’re alright.”

From the top of the alley, he could see all the way down to Green Lake. The alley itself was clear. No people, no cars.

“I’m alright,” he said. “Give me a call when you know something. Until then, enjoy your view.”

***

Walker was sitting at the table on his back patio. A lit cigarette hung from between his lips, and John McPhee’s Uncommon Carriers sat open on his lap. When he heard footsteps on the stairs leading up from the alley, he raised his eyes and waited.

A man appeared and, seeing Walker sitting there, attempted a smile. It came off as morose, and Walker decided that this had to be Michelle’s father. Walker relaxed; he was prepared for this.

“Hi,” Walker said. “Can I help you?”

“I hope you don’t mind me coming up the back stairs–”

“Not at all.”

“–it’s just that I parked over there, and it seemed easier to come down the alley–”

“Of course.”

“–than to go around front.”

His excuse offered and accepted, the man didn’t seem to know what to do next. Walker extinguished his cigarette, stood and extended a hand.

“Walker Sheffield,” he said.

“Tom Bishop.”

The two men shook.

“I believe you know my daughter.”

Walker had a reaction ready. He’d used it once before with the police. First he let his expression falter, as if he were struggling to keep it together. But then his expression fell. Such a tragedy, it was impossible not to let it overtake you, even if it wasn’t your child. The capper was a shift of the eyes and a shake of the head. This world they lived in and its many horrors. It was beyond comprehension.

“I’m so glad you came by,” Walker said. “Michelle and Ryan are such good friends. I feel… I won’t say I know how you feel, but…”

He pointed at the chair opposite his.

“Please, sit down.”

Tom Bishop nodded and sat. He wore a simple black suit without a tie and a heavily-starched white dress shirt, and he was clean shaven. The only sign of imperfection was his fingernails: he’d been chewing them and the tips of several fingers were raw.

Walker sat and held out his cigarettes.

“No,” Tom said. “Thank you.”

Walker liked that. Tom didn’t smoke, but he felt no need to announce it and implicitly criticize the other person. Like when you asked someone if they’d seen the last episode of “Mad Men” and they felt compelled to announce, with their nose in the air, “I don’t watch television.”

“Have you heard anything?” Walker asked.

He injected his tone with a touch of discomfort, although not too much and not the wrong kind. He wanted to appear uneasy, but not guilty.

“No,” Tom said.

“How long has it been now?” Walker asked, even though he knew the answer. He always counted the days, comparing each new girl to the ones that had come before. Michelle was holding up well.

“Ten days.”

Walker frowned, and Tom nodded. Ten days was a long time without a ransom note. In the minds of many, she was presumed dead.

“How’s Ryan doing?” Tom asked.

“Not well,” Walker admitted. “He’s been pretty out of it. Not speaking much, not eating. I think he really likes your daughter.”

“I think so too. I gave him a bit of a scare when we met and he didn’t run off. That told me a lot.”

“He’s a good kid.”

“Sure.”

Now something in Tom Bishop shifted. Instinctively Walker braced himself. Perhaps he hadn’t been the only one putting on an act.

“The police came to visit you?” Tom said.

“Yes. A Detective Perry came by.”

“She’s good. We met at the school.”

“At the school?”

“Last Monday. There was a boy there. He’d been harassing Michelle.”

“Do you think…?”

Walker let his voice trail off.

“No,” Tom said, answering the implied question.

So much for Joe Downey taking some of the heat off. Walker took out a cigarette and lit it. It might’ve been a ‘tell’, but he needed it. Exhaling a cloud of smoke, he caught Tom Bishop watching him.

“They asked you about the calls?” Tom said.

“Of course,” Walker said. He couldn’t pretend otherwise. Only lie when you have to. He’d learned that years ago.

“She was looking for Ryan,” Tom said.

“I assume so, yes. It’s too bad he wasn’t home.”

“Do you know where he was?”

Walker had answered this question already. Ryan had still been at school when Michelle had called. There’d been a soccer game that evening, and those were usually recorded by the AV club. Ryan was a member of the club, and he’d hung around to help set up.

“Ryan was at school, for the soccer game.”

The next question came quickly.

“And where were you?”

Another question he’d already answered.

“At my store. I own a bookstore in Vandeveld. Maybe Michelle mentioned it?”

“She did, yes.”

Tom lowered his eyes, pursed his lips, nodded.

Walker stubbed out his cigarette.

“Is there something I can do for you?” he asked.

Tom looked up, back in the moment.

“I spoke to your man,” he said. “Kyle. I had the idea that if Michelle was looking for Ryan, she might try your store. But Kyle tells me she never showed up there. He also tells me that you were there in the afternoon, but that you left at around four-thirty.”

Yes. And by five o’clock Walker had been staking out Klein Faliszek waiting for Matt Pullman to appear. He couldn’t tell Tom Bishop that, but should he tell him anything? He hadn’t actually asked a question.

How would an innocent man react?

“I don’t know what to say.”

Again, the truth.

“Where’d you go after you left the store?” Tom asked.

Walker laughed, an attempt to diffuse the situation. It just made him seem nervous.

“This is starting to feel like an interrogation.”

“I’m just asking questions,” Tom said.

“The police are investigating Michelle’s disappearance.”

“So am I.”

“I understand that you’re upset and frustrated, but what can you do that they’re not doing already?”

“I’m better at it than they are.”

“But it’s their job–”

“It’s my job too.”

The next question was an obvious one, but Walker hesitated before asking it. When he did, he would know just how much trouble he was in. Right now he wanted to savor the tail end of his ignorance.

“You’re a cop?” he said finally.

“No–”

Phew.

“–I’m an F.B.I. agent.”

Holy fuck.

“Really,” Walker said.

Every part of him, body and mind, was in shock and on high alert, struggling not to let it show.

“So you probably are better at this than the police.”

“I’m sorry if it makes me sound superior,” Tom said, “but yes, I am. For example, the police didn’t confirm your alibi with Kyle.”

“I guess I’m not a suspect.”

“Everyone’s a suspect. I’m a suspect, but Detective Perry still doesn’t know where I was that evening.”

“You’re her father. And an F.B.I. agent.”

“Parents kill their children. And F.B.I. agents commit crimes.”

Tom sat back and his jacket fell open, revealing his gun. Walker’s gun — the one no one knew about, which he’d trained to use in secret — was far away in the basement of his store.

Silently Walker cursed Jane, whose selfish indiscretion had set off this whole chain of events. Damn her.

“I’ve learned not to be surprised by what people are capable of,” Tom said. “I’m not a cynic or a misanthrope. I just know that people, all people, are capable of anything.”

Walker lit another cigarette, his third since Tom had arrived. It was rare for him to smoke so much in one sitting, but Tom didn’t know that.

“It must be discouraging,” Walker said. “Working in law enforcement.”

Tom shook his head.

“Bringing a criminal to justice is always a pleasure. When you catch a criminal, there’s nothing else like it. Especially when you know that it was you that made it happen. That it was a thought that you had, your idea, your instincts. That if someone else had been on the job, maybe the criminal would’ve gotten away with it. But you were there and so they didn’t.”

Walker nodded. How strong was Tom? And how well trained? He had a gun strapped to his side, but if Walker was fast enough, and with the element of surprise–

But did Walker have the element of surprise? Tom Bishop was here for a reason, and maybe it was the right one. If Walker leapt at him now, it might be all Tom needed to know.

Tom checked his watch and stood up. Walker still hadn’t answered his question, but he appeared to be leaving.

“I’ve got to get going,” he said. “Got another appointment.”

“Another friend of mine?” Walker asked, an attempt at a joke.

“No, not a friend,” Tom said with a smirk, straightening his jacket.

Walker tried to recall the morose and awkward grieving father who’d appeared on his patio just a few minutes before. He couldn’t. That man was long gone. He’d been played.

“You remember a girl named Karen Wyler?” Tom asked.

It was hard to imagine a question that would’ve caught Walker more off guard, yet somehow he managed not to react. He looked to one side, careful not to answer too quickly. He was an innocent man, searching his memory.

“Karen Wyler…”

There was a girl. She complained.

“I don’t think so,” Walker said. “Why? Who is she?”

I’d moved too quickly. I’d been too sincere.

“She was a student of yours,” Tom said. “I guess ten years ago? I heard you quit your job because of her.”

Everyone was confused, and I was asked to leave.

“I quit teaching to open my store,” Walker insisted.

“Are you saying she wasn’t a student of yours?”

“I’m saying I don’t remember her. I don’t remember a lot of my old students.”

“Well, I’m going have a talk with her. She’s a student up at Seattle U. We’re going to meet for coffee.”

Tom stood there, his jacket now buttoned, his hands in his pockets. He was looking around idly, like he’d completely lost interest in Walker.

“I don’t understand,” Walker said. “I thought you were looking for Michelle.”

“I am looking for Michelle,” Tom said. “And I just found out that her friend’s father was once accused of inappropriate behavior by a girl who at the time was Michelle’s age. And on top of that, when Michelle went missing, no one knows where that friend’s father was.”

“You’re insane.”

“No,” Tom said. “But I’m getting there.”