The blank windows of the silent homes stared at her like dead eyes, and their doors seemed like maws ready to vomit out a stream of infected. She did her best to hold her nerve and stuck close to Tom’s back wheel. Only when they’d cleared the worst of the urban sprawl did she begin to relax a little, at least in terms of her fear of being disassembled atom by bloody atom. There was nothing at all relaxing about the bike ride. Her legs felt like planks of wood after the previous day’s exertions, and the good night’s sleep Tom recommended she enjoy hadn’t materialized. She’d locked her bedroom door but still woke at every creak and rustle. At one point she’d plunged back into her dream of standing in the wasteland. This time, when she stepped on the last other living being, she looked down to see it was a tiny Jack. “How many more people are going to die because of you?” he said with his last breath. She jerked awake in breathless terror to find it had started raining. The patter on her windowpane sounded like hundreds of pounding feet.
