“And lucky for us.” He picks up both backpacks, handing one to me. It’s lighter than I expected.
I slip the straps over my shoulders, adjusting the weight.
“Here.” He presents me with a hunting knife in a leather sheath. “Got this for you.”
I take it, testing the weight in my hand. The handle fits my grip comfortably, the blade gleaming in the morning light. “You found this here?”
“Gun cabinet, a few houses away. Locked, but not well.” He pats his waistband where his own knife sits alongside the machete. “Always better to have a backup. Keep it in easy reach. Not buried in your bag.”
“Thanks.” I attach the sheath to my belt, and something about having it there makes me stand straighter.
He nods, eyes lingering on me for a moment before turning toward the door. “We should move. Fifty miles is doable if we leave now, but we might need to find shelter for another night depending on road conditions.”
“And zombies. Don’t forget those.”
His mouth quirks again. “Hard to forget.”
We do a final sweep of the house, checking for anything useful we might have missed, and I leave a little thank-you note just in case.
At the front door, Julien pauses, hand on the knob. “Ready?”
“Ready,” I say, and I almost believe it.
The morning air greets us as we step outside, cool and fresh compared to the staleness inside. He leads the way across the lawn to a house three doors down, where a blue sedan sits in the driveway and motions for me to wait.
He circles the vehicle, peering through the windows and checking underneath before waving me over. “All clear.”
I join him in the car, hopping into the passenger seat while he adjusts the driver’s side.
“Next stop.” He turns the key, and the engine coughs, then purrs to life. “Pine Lake Lodge.”
I nod, leaning back against the headrest.
In another life, it might have been real—waking up in a man’s arms, breakfast waiting downstairs.
A simple sweet fantasy.
But this isn’t that life. And Julien isn’t that man.
I glance over as he navigates the streets.
Either way, since this nightmare began, I feel like I might actually survive it.
EIGHTEEN
DAKOTA
The car jolts over another pothole, and I curl my fingers around the edge of my seat, not because he’s a bad driver, but because each time a spike of pain shoots through my still-tender skull.
Julien drives on the backroads with singular focus—hands at ten and two, eyes constantly scanning the road ahead and the trees to our sides in the rearview mirror.
Checking, always checking. For the dead. For the living. For anything that might want to kill us.
We don’t use the main roads, which costs us a lot of time, but it’s better than walking. We’ve been lucky so far. No abandoned cars blocking our path, no hordes of zombies shambling across the road, no desperate survivors trying to flag us down. Just miles of empty asphalt gradually giving way to dirt and gravel.
But good luck never lasts this long.
Not in my experience.
