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The one he’d thrown at me was too tight around the shoulders. The next one fit better. It was a shame the bulky jacket didn’t include a hood. It smelled distinctly musty, but I’d long since given up on turning down decent clothing because of the way it smelled. The only clothes I owned were the ones on my back, and several new holes had appeared in them recently. So, a jacket with no holes was a gift.

Once Tobias had completed his search, we moved on. The next room was a small kitchen, Tobias searching through every cupboard and drawer until he had a pile of stuff next to him he deemed useful, mostly comprising metal cutlery. I assumed there was a market for it, either for its original purpose or melted down.

Watching him scavenge for stuff made me realize that since being kicked out of the army, I hadn’t been that smart. In the army, taking stuff had been against the rules in case we fought over it. I needed to get it into my head that I was no longer bound by their expectations. Maybe then I’d have a chance at being something other than destitute.

We moved on again. A block of toilets. Nothing useful, so we didn’t dally in there. A flight of stairs led up, both Tobias and I exhibiting more caution as we traversed them. Not that biters couldn’t do stairs. They could. But they no longer had the same control someone not infected did, so avoidant behavior could have some lurking at the top.

I breathed a sigh of relief when the upstairs also proved clear. The furniture in the first room we came to mostly comprised plastic chairs gathered around a focal point of a huge whiteboard.

“Still works,” Tobias said, with the first hint of pleasure I’d seen from him. I turned to find him with a pen in his hand. He demonstrated its use by drawing a line on the whiteboard. Then he drew a large cock and balls with a smile on his face. “For the next people who come here.” He added some curly pubes as a finishing touch and then signed it with my name.

“Dick!” I said.

He waggled his eyebrows. “It is.” He put the lid of the pen back on and placed it back on the stand at the front of the whiteboard.

“You’re not taking it,” I asked.

Tobias shook his head. “Nope! Someone else can have the same pleasure I did by discovering they made pens good enough not to dry out in seventy-six years.”

The next room housed the best discovery: a bunk containing four single beds. There were no windows, which left the door as the only access point. Apart from being inside a community, that was about as safe as it got. The sheets and blankets weren’t in great condition, moths having had a field day, but once we stripped them, there was nothing wrong with the mattresses. We lay on adjacent beds to test them out.

“That settles it then,” Tobias said, his fingers linked behind his neck in a relaxed pose. “We’re staying here tonight.”

He wouldn’t get any argument from me. Not when the alternative would involve sleeping in shifts to make sure we weren’t attacked in the night. “And then in the morning, you take me to the suppressants,” I reiterated.

“First light,” Tobias said again. He turned his head in my direction. “Why have you got such a hard-on for them, anyway?”

“I have somewhere I need to go. Far enough that avoiding the rain is going to be difficult. I don’t want to turn before I get there.”

Tobias chewed on that fact for a few seconds. “You make it sound like you don’t care if you turn once you’ve reached that place.”

I shrugged. There was no point in denying it when that’s exactly how I felt. “So that’s why I need the suppressants,” I said. “I stumbled across you at exactly the right time.”

Tobias levered himself off the bed and headed for the door without a word. He was a strange one. He’d brought the subject up. Now that it hadn’t gone the way he wanted, he refused to continue. To be fair, I’d known him less than twenty-four hours, so maybe that was a harsh judgment. But when he didn’t come back, curiosity got the better of me, and I went to look for him.

He’d found another door and gone through it. I went back for my crossbow before following, because only idiots entered an unknown room with no weapons. On my return, I barged the door open with my shoulder. “Tobias?” No reaction, even though only a few meters separated us. Perhaps people usually shortened his name? “Toby?” Still nothing.

A few more seconds passed before Tobias jerked his head up. “Sorry. My mind was elsewhere. Come here. I’ve got something to show you.”

Not lost in thought. Tobias wasn’t his name.

I didn’t know how I knew it, but I did, some sixth-sense screaming it loud and clear. Enough to bet everything I owned on it. Granted, that wasn’t much, but I’d still wager it.

So who exactly had I found myself in an abandoned building in the middle of nowhere with? Someone dangerous? But then who wasn’t dangerous these days? You were dangerous, a biter, or dead.

Curiosity had me wanting to call him out on it, to demand he tell me why he was pretending to be someone he wasn’t. But something told me to keep my newfound knowledge to myself, and pretend I had noticed nothing amiss.

“Are you coming?”

I nodded. If Tobias—or whoever the fuck he was—had noticed my moment of quiet introspection, it didn’t show on his face. Did a name matter that much? Maybe. Maybe not. There had to be a reason for using a false one, though, and until I found out what it was, I’d treat him with a heavy dose of caution.

The room turned out to be the same room we’d started in, but at a higher level. Tobias stood on a rectangular platform, closer inspection showing a circle cut out of the concrete, with a pole leading down from it to the ground level. Our preoccupation with the door meant we hadn’t gotten as far as venturing into that corner.

“Fireman’s pole,” Tobias commented in a way that said the words were supposed to mean something to me. He rolled his eyes at the blank look on my face. “What do you do when you’re in bed and the alarm goes off to say there’s a fire you need to attend?” I shook my head, most of my brainpower still focused on not giving away my suspicions about him. He waved a hand at the vehicle below. “You need to get to your fire engine. Do you take the stairs?”

“Yes?”

“No! Too slow. You go down the pole. It’s an emergency. You’ve got lives to save.”