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

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

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

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

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

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

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“Do you want to say something?”

She was looking at him, but there was no answer in her grey-blue eyes. And of course she couldn’t speak.

“Should I remove the gag?”

The ball in her mouth was held firmly in place by the leather harness. He’d removed it before to let her eat and drink. But to speak? He didn’t know her well enough yet.

He’d let a couple of the others speak too soon. That Laurelhurst girl, for example. They could’ve confirmed this themselves were they not buried in the dirt basement floor.

He touched the side of her face.

“Does it still hurt?”

Her cheek was purple where he’d punched her, and she had a black eye. But nothing seemed to be broken.

“I’m sorry I had to do that.”

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

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

“How is he?” she asked Harry.

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

“Will he make it?”

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

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Joe Downey took a seat at a desk in the front row of the classroom and waited as Mr. Harrell and the woman he’d come in with pulled up chairs and sat down across from him.

Joe didn’t know why he was there, didn’t know who the woman was, didn’t recognize the man standing apart from them in the corner. He didn’t know what was going on, why he was in trouble this time. But whatever it was, he wanted them to know from the start that he didn’t care. So he crossed his arms and watched them with affected disinterest.

“Joe, this is Detective Perry from the Seattle Police Department,” Mr. Harrell said, indicating the woman at his side. “She needs to ask you a few questions, and I’m here to look after your interests. We can’t seem to reach either of your parents, and we don’t have time to wait for them. It’s a somewhat urgent matter.”

Nothing was said about the man in the corner, a short, slim man dressed in a simple black suit. He didn’t seem to be paying any attention to them; he stood rigid with his small, dark eyes pointed out the window.

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“I’ll stay in the middle with your husband and son,” Harry told Jane as he half-carried, half-dragged Walker into the street. “Nic will watch the rear. I need you in front.”

“Doing what?” Jane asked.

“If you see one of those zombies,” Harry explained, “shoot it. In the head if you can, but just shoot it.”

The sun was now low, the street cast in shadow. Soon it would be dark. Jane should’ve been worried about finding a place where they could spend the night, a place where the creatures couldn’t get to them. But with these men, even standing in the middle of the street fully exposed, she felt safe. Safe, for the first time since they’d left the cabin the day before.

She took a look over her shoulder. Nic was at the rear, walking backwards, pivoting from side to side. In the middle, Harry carried Walker, Ryan at his side.

“Keep watching forward,” Harry told her.

Jane nodded and resumed her watch on the street in front of them as they advanced. There wasn’t a creature in sight. Where had they all gone? Surely others nearby had heard the shots. When would they arrive? Or had the gunfire scared them off?

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At her last school, it had taken months. Months before she’d heard the word. At the school before that, it had taken years. But this time, just four weeks had passed.

Retard.

To Michelle, the word itself was meaningless. She’d never used it, didn’t know when it was meant to be used. If she’d ever tried to use it, she’d just have been guessing.

But she knew where the word led. She knew what it meant to her life. When she heard it, she knew. She knew that it was time to pack.

“Hey, retard.” A boy’s voice. “You got a second for us?”

With her books propped against her hip, she slammed her locker and turned, her eyes searching. Who had said it? Who had said the word? The hall was full of students, a stream of bodies flowing in all directions, but only Joe Downey was looking at her, standing in a group of his friends a short distance away, near an open classroom door. He was grinning that terrible grin, the grin that was a warning. What came after it was never good.

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As they emerged from the passage, a limping six-legged animal trailing blood, harassed from behind by the din of gunfire, bullets sparking off the walls, they found themselves on an uncovered sidewalk.

A short distance to their left was the marketplace. To their right, perhaps a hundred yards away where the street ended, stood a tall metal and glass canopy from which a clock hung, its face a full white moon. They saw no one. No soldiers, no creatures. The street was empty.

The sidewalk on the other side of the street was covered, and they moved to it as quickly as they could. As they stepped into its shelter, back in the passage the pattern of gunfire changed. The gunman was no longer firing wildly in their direction. Now the shots were coming in bursts, with moments of silence between them. He was aiming, then firing, then aiming and firing again. The gunman had come across the creatures that Ryan and his parents had just stumbled past, and now he was clearing the passage. Perhaps this would buy them some time.

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That Saturday morning, Walker found Jane sitting at the table on the back patio, her hands wrapped around a cup of coffee, her eyes down on a newspaper spread out before her. It was late winter but it was sunny, and the stiff wind coming up the hill from Green Lake was kept off the patio by the high wooden fence they’d had built the previous summer.

“Good morning,” he said, setting his own coffee cup down and taking the seat across from her. He lit a cigarette.

She looked up at him and smiled weakly. Her eyes were glassy and ringed with dark circles; her skin was pale and waxy. She had drunk herself to sleep last night, perched in front of the television long after he’d gone to bed.

“What’s the good news?” he asked, nodding at the paper.

“There is no good news,” Jane informed him. “We’re still at war, the economy’s still screwed. They still haven’t found that Laurelhurst girl. And if she’s like the others, I guess they never will. Plus, I’m hungover.”

“Of course you’re hungover,” Walker said, smiling. He spoke to her as if she were a child. As if she’d eaten too much candy and now had a stomach ache. Of course she had a stomach ache. “What time did you come to bed?”

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Even as she ran across the bridge, Jane could feel her desire to flee slipping away.

Her legs didn’t want it, that was for sure. The long walk out of the forest and then through the city had worn down her strength to nearly nothing. If Walker hadn’t been pulling her along, his hand tight on her elbow, practically holding her up, she might’ve just stopped right there.

And her heart didn’t want it either. Ever since she had learned that her poor judgment and selfishness had undermined everything that she had sacrificed for the sake of her family’s prosperity, she had wanted to slide into a drunken hole and die. It had been Walker who had insisted that they flee, Walker who had demanded that the family stay together at all costs. Her shame was of no consequence to him; she would have to live with it, he had said.

She could imagine herself breaking Walker’s grip and sinking to her knees on the stone-paved bridge as he and Ryan continued on. There would be gratitude in her muscles and bones, and resignation in her heart. The creatures, distracted by her sacrifice, would lose sight of her husband and son, and as they fell on her, to beat her to death or tear her to shreds, she would watch as Walker and Ryan disappeared into the heart of Bern. In her last moments of life, she would pray for their safety. She would feel for an instant that she had somehow made up for the mistake that had brought them there.

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Chapter Seven: Six Weeks Ago has been removed. If you would like to receive a copy as a PDF file, please contact the author at fugitivedead [at] gmail [dot] com.