She’d only caught a glimpse.
Brett had been tackled with brutal ferocity.
By Superman.
6
Now
Doylestown
The little girl ran, and danced, and skipped, and whirled while a score of the hungry dead followed her. Rags gaped at her. At what was happening.
She was maybe ten years old.
Slender and pretty.
She was dressed in a costume. Black and sleek, with a stylized bat on the chest and a short cape that fluttered as she ran. Masses of curly red hair bobbed behind her.
Rags searched her oldest memories for the name of the character.
Batgirl.
Batgirl?
Rags felt as if the world had suddenly become insane. Or that maybe she had gone crazy. Had the years of isolation, of fear and violence, of constant danger finally pushed her over that delicate edge into genuine madness?
She could build a case for that. It made much more sense than what she was seeing.
A little girl dressed as a superhero, laughing as she led a pack of zombies down the streets of a dead town.
This was something from a fever dream. This was the sort of thing she imagined would happen every day in a mind that had become irreparably fractured. Rags had met several insane people, and it was clear from the looks in their eyes that they were seeing a different world than she was.
However, beside her, Ghoulie growled again.
He was seeing it too.
She hoped.
If he was seeing it, then it was real. As bizarre and unlikely as it was, these events were happening.
That was when Rags felt herself move.
It was nothing planned. One minute she stood gaping in shock, and the next she was in motion, leaping from the porch, racing across the intersection, hearing the clank of Ghoulie’s armor as he ran with her.
“Hey, kid!” she yelled as she ran. “Over here. Over here!”
That made the girl whip around.
And stumble.
The zombies howled as they swarmed toward her.
7
Then
New York City