“I know.”
“I want my mommy!”
The man squeezed his eyes shut, but the tears found their way out anyway. “I know,” he whispered. “Me too.”
3
Almost the worst thing for Dan was how much he envied the dead.
They were always hungry, sure, same as him and Mason. Hunger was everywhere. But the dead didn’t seem to mind it. They never wept for the want of food. They hunted, sure. That’s all they did. But once Dan and Mason had slept in a church tower, and all day Dan watched the dead ones walk around or stand or sometimes kill and eat. When they feasted, they did it like dogs. Like jackals. They tore people apart and consumed everything as fast as they could. Like they were starving. As Dan and Mason were starving.
But when there was no meat, when there was no one to kill, they just . . . were. They didn’t fall down from hunger. They didn’t scream with the pain of needing food.
They just kept being. . . .
Being what?
What were they?
The newspapers threw a lot of words around before it all went silent. Walkers. Rooters. Flesh-eaters. Ghouls.
Zombies.
Them.
Whatever they were, they never seemed to actually mind being hungry.
Like they never minded the cold. Or the rain. Or the wind.
They just were.
Dan hated the thought of envying them.
He hated himself for feeling that envy.
He hated himself.
He hated.
And he hungered.
4
They’d left the highway four hours ago.
That was the route most of the refugees had used, even though none of the cars worked anymore. Something had happened to them. There had been big explosions, high up and far away, and all the cars died. Cell phones, too. Everything electric.
The two of them had been following a highway for days. The highways were straight routes. The cars offered some protection when the dead found them. You could hide in cars. At least for a while. Some of the dead could pick up rocks and smash the glass. If you were still, if you were quiet, you could wait out the night, and in the stillness of the morning you could steal away.
But then there was a spot where hundreds and hundreds of the dead crowded the road. Everyone ran. Dan tossed Mason over the guardrail into the thick grass, leaped the rail himself with half a second to spare, scooped up his brother, and ran.
And ran.
And ran.
The people who ran down into the valleys didn’t make it. There were rumors about that. It was worse in the lowlands. When the dead weren’t following prey, they followed the path of least resistance. They crowded the lowlands because gravity pulled with subtle insistence on stumbling feet. Fewer of them fought that pull to walk uphill. Not unless there was meat to find. A handful of travelers out scavenging shared this new lore with Dan. When the highways became impossible, Dan took his brother up the slopes, into the foothills of the mountains.
At first there were just as many of the dead. Hungry, tireless. Awful.