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  On any other day there were enough people in the room to create a buffer between Cal and I, but it was just the two of us.

  Apparently, not even the threat of infection and death could suppress his sadistic impulses.

  “Hey dork.” He grinned as he produced a chocolate milk grenade and pretended to bite an invisible pin from the top of the container. “Incoming!”

  I abandoned the school’s guitar and took off a split second before he threw it overhand, digging my feet into the carpeting and sprinting for the back exit to the soundtrack of his cackling laughter. The warm milk exploded against my hip, splashing me from shoulders to knees in sugary, sticky mess.

  I ran hard across the grassy quad and toward the girls’ locker room, not looking back.

  “Attention students and staff,” a voice boomed over the loudspeaker. I slid to a stop next to a soda machine and spun, but Cal hadn’t chased me. “You are ordered by the county Sheriff’s department to go directly home at this time and stay there.” A pause. “A 6:00 p.m. curfew will be strictly enforced.” Another pause. “God bless us all.”

  The emergency alarm screamed through the halls and pulsed from every classroom.

  I hurried for the parking lot, joining the crowd of people headed the same way, and pulled my cell. “School’s canceled,” I texted my dad. “On my way home.”

  He didn’t reply right away, but he kept his phone in his office, so if he was busy in the lab it might be a while.

  The streets were congested and it took twice as long to get home. I steered my Honda with both hands fisted on the wheel. Twice, I narrowly avoided collisions with cars zigzagging through traffic.

  My phone beeped. “Busy,” Dad texted. “Move garage gear into panic room. See you tonight.” I was too worried about dying on the road to stop and answer him.

  The work trucks were gone from my driveway when I pulled up.

  “Maya!” Mrs. Kinley came off her front porch with Freckles in a carrier. “Is your dad coming to get you?”

  “He’s in Raleigh,” I said, “but he’s been texting. He’ll be home tonight.”

  “Okay.” She popped the carrier into the backseat of her car. “I’m going to meet my parents in Nashville. You can come with me if you want. I’d love the company and 212R isn’t as bad in the country as it is in the cities.”

  “I have to wait for my dad,” I said. “He’s really close to finding a cure.”

  She smiled wistfully. “Wouldn’t that be wonderful.”

  “Be careful out there,” I said and bolted myself inside my house.

  I did what I’d been doing the last two weeks or so after school, as part of my dad’s safety checklist. I stripped to my underwear in the laundry room and immediately took a hot shower in the hall bathroom. Only then did I change into comfy pants and a tank top and inspected our new panic room.

  The crew had done a good job. It looked solid. Impenetrable, even. Our old pantry was now a metal cell with a heavy swinging door that sealed from the inside with a wheel crank. I crossed the square of extra soft carpeting and decided I could live there for a few days. As long as my dad was with me.

  Speaking of, I texted him again. “Panic room is done. Looks sturdy.”

  While I waited for him to reply I made myself a sandwich and turned on the TV.

  More bad news. Most of New York City was black and offline.

  “The president has declared the entire city of New York a disaster zone,” the reporter said. “The National Guard is on the ground as we speak doing all they can to quarantine plague sufferers and evacuate survivors.” A video flashed on of a giant tank driving down a street choked with cars and people.

  I didn’t feel particularly optimistic about the military response. The threat to the city was a microscopic virus, not anything that could be shot or detained.

  Done with my snack I followed my dad’s directions. He’d been busy the last few weeks, even busier than I realized. Locked in our garage lay cases of drinking water and canned food, a first-aid kit, a tub of survival gear, and two narrow cots. I spent the afternoon sweeping up after the workers and moving and organizing the supplies into the old pantry.

  “If you have a fever,” the news anchor announced, “go immediately to the nearest emergency room.”

  I pressed the back of my hand to my forehead. So far so good.

  “The best hope we have is to contain the virus,” the reporter continued. “Once infected, though, you can spot a ‘Red,’ as some folks are calling them, by the red color of their eyes. We now have Dr. LaVay from the CDC to tell us more about why and how 212R affects the color of our irises. Doctor?”

  I turned off the TV and texted Dad, “Lasagna for dinner? I’ll start at 5.”

  While I waited to hear from him I collected my guitar from my room and strummed a song I had written the year before called “Red Shoelaces.”

  When the tray of frozen vegetable lasagna was hot and ready at six I served myself and ate in front of the television. Every five minutes or so I checked my cell to see if my dad texted anything and I had missed the beep, but nothing came in.

  “Many of the services we take for granted,” the reporter said, “will no longer be available as early as tomorrow morning along the entire eastern seaboard. 212R has spread so quickly, incapacitating so many people, there may not be enough qualified people to run power, water, and sanitation services.”

  I set my dinner in the trash and double-checked that all the doors and windows were locked tight and then turned on my phone. No new messages.

  “We here at the news desk will keep reporting,” she added, “as long as we can to get you the information you need to stay safe. If the power in your area goes out, don’t panic. Scrolling on the screen right now are the radio channels broadcasting emergency information in your area. So, if you have a battery powered radio in your survival kit get it out and test the batteries.”

  Something that sounded like a firecracker popped outside the front door. Then twice more.

  Gunfire? I couldn’t be around gunfire. It reminded me of Mason and my mom and the horrible, awful thing that happened two years ago.

  I ran to the window, but the street was deserted.

  My cell screen was blank. No new messages, no new texts, no missed calls.

  “Dad,” I whispered at my phone. “Where are you?”

  The power blinked off, draping the house in quiet, purplish dusk.

  “Lights went out,” I texted Dad. “What do I do?”

  Somebody outside screamed. The living room window shattered. Someone or something in the yard growled like a pissed off panther.

  I snatched my guitar, my song diary, and my iPad.

  The front door crashed open, and I ran for it, slamming the bunker’s door closed with a resounding clank.

  Chapter Two

  Two weeks later

  My last and final water bottle sat on the floor completely unrepentant about what it was forcing me to do. Because it was the last amount of drinking water inside the panic room I was leaving the confines of my metal safety pen and venturing out into the world to find more.

  In the weeks since I’d locked myself inside, the power had stayed off and no one had texted or called or come to find me.

  I carefully packed a bag with what I considered the necessities. Fig cookies. My iPad, which I would never leave behind. It had too many precious images and files on it. My song diary and a pen. Unfortunately, I had to leave my guitar behind. I didn’t know how far I’d have to walk to find water and it would slow me down.

  I steadied myself and turned the crank in extreme slow motion, my ears pricked for the faintest sound.

  Silence.

  Through a narrow crack I surveyed the kitchen. All I sensed was a sour stench. Hopefully from the trash.

  No movement. No sound beyond my own breathing.

  It had been just as quiet for the last fourteen days as I’d checked off nights in the back of my song diary. Fourteen days of
silence, the only light coming from a battery-powered lantern. Fourteen days of nothing but sad songs on my guitar, jumping jacks to stave off atrophy, and canned food full of preservatives.

  I swung the bunker’s door wider and wider until I was certain no red-eyed infected person was going to leap at me. Though the front door stood open and a light breeze ruffled the living room curtains, the house was empty.

  Wincing, I stepped around the kitchen trashcan crawling with maggots and peered into the front yard.

  Two cars sat abandoned in the middle of our cul-de-sac and random pieces of trash littered the ground and built up along fences, but otherwise it was a ghost town on my street.

  More importantly, my Honda was the only vehicle parked in our driveway. My dad hadn’t answered my texts and he hadn’t driven home.

  My insides felt as wiggly and unsettled as the contents of the kitchen trashcan.

  Where was he?

  Before I left the house, though, I had to find a weapon. The problem was, neither my dad nor I were violent types. There were no guns in the house. Not even a baseball bat or a golf club.

  Then I remembered. It wasn’t exactly a medieval mace, but my dad was a die-hard Lord of the Rings nerd. Hanging in his home office among hundreds of pieces of merchandise and memorabilia was a fully functional replica of the sword Sting. It was the closest thing to an actual weapon we possessed, not counting steak knives and blunt objects. I took it down off the wall and tucked it into a belt loop.

  There. Ready.

  I poked my head out the front door. No sign of either infecteds or survivors, so I eased across the front lawn and headed down Cherry Blossom Court and out of our cul-de-sac.

  Were there people locked inside these homes? Some had their doors smashed open like mine. A lot of windows were broken. The house on the corner had a minivan inside its living room.

  I crossed into a part of the subdivision I hadn’t spent much time in. The third house down, the one with the pink door and cherry trees in the yard, wasn’t too intimidating. I marched across the driveway and swung open the door, but the knob slipped from my hand and banged into the wall.

  I froze as the sound reverberated through the house, and then something moved in the kitchen. Not one. Not two. Three red-eyed zombies stepped into the foyer.

  I didn’t wait to see if they would strike first, but spun and sprinted for the street. By the shuffling and grunting behind me, they followed me. And these weren’t slow-moving zombies. They weren’t zombies at all, technically, and they ran almost as fast as I did.

  There was nowhere to hide. None of the houses had second floors to hide in, and the three predators on my tail weren’t giving me enough time to barricade myself anywhere. My breath whistling in my ears, I searched for a place to hide.

  The curtains in a house on my right parted and a pale face appeared. No red eyes. Another survivor. I swerved closer. But the woman shook her head sharply at me and closed the curtains tight.

  I ran on, passing her house, and racing down Cherry Blossom Court toward home even as my lungs burned and my sneakers flapped a staccato rhythm on the asphalt. Thump, thump, thump, thump. An awesome beat tailor-made for a simple three-chord melody. No lyrics yet, though.

  I forced myself to ignore the high intensity song taking shape in my mind because I wasn’t home free.

  Three Reds counted as a whole pack.

  That’s what they were. Not groups, not clubs, not teams. Packs. Like so many violent, soulless carnivores.

  My house was straight ahead.

  The muscles up and down my legs tensed like metal bands as I pushed myself into a full sprint and left the zombies in the dust. I couldn’t let them see where I lived or catch me before I swung the panic room door shut.

  But the pack behind me wasn’t my only problem. The entire street had been overrun since I’d left home. A lot had changed while I’d been searching for provisions. Zombies loitered in my yard, my Honda had a writhing infected in the backseat, and a hunch-backed Red stood in my open front door.

  Just like that, everything I had built and gathered and protected was lost.

  That home was the last one my dad had ever lived in. Its address had been on all our letters and bills and catalogs. Inside it was the hall closet where I kept school photos of my twin brother Mason, my mother’s diaries, and the clay handprint I’d made in first grade.

  Poof. Gone.

  Worst of all, my guitar was in there. It and the song diary in the pack on my back were all I had left in the world that brought me any kind of pleasure.

  Bile in my throat, I veered right. My pack pinched my shoulders, and the hilt of my short sword dug into my right flank, but I didn’t let either slow me down. I had to get to higher ground.

  So I scrambled up the lattice on the side of Mrs. Kinley’s house, digging my shoes into window framing and scraping my arms on the roof shingles so bad they bled.

  On her roof I would be safe to take a few minutes to calm my racing heart and construct a plan. Because I really didn’t want to leave my home. There was nowhere else to go.

  A scream for help sounded behind me, and I flinched, my pulse exploding into overdrive. I craned my neck. Reds moaned sometimes, but I’d been secluded for so many days that the sound of someone else’s terror captured my attention one hundred percent.

  Where had they come from?

  Was it possible they’d been living nearby and as well hidden as I’d been? Were there uninfected people holed up in their own mini fortresses all over town? All over the world? Because after six weeks of complete isolation I’d come to believe I was the last human on earth.

  It was both exciting and alarming to realize I wasn’t.

  Behind me, in the path of the pack that had swollen to six Reds, a flush-faced woman dragged a young girl by the hand. The lady stumbled before righting herself. She was no runner. And neither was the little girl. She struggled to keep up.

  I didn’t call out.

  I’d been alone a long time. Even before the infection my dad had worked long hours and, added with his daily commute, I’d spent a lot of time by myself listening to music and writing songs on my guitar. It was the main reason I’d avoided contamination.

  Unless the two girls found a hiding spot pronto they would soon be overtaken by the pack. I rooted for them, even though I didn’t reveal my position. Maybe my pale neighbor hiding behind her curtains had the right idea. Like a nervous tick, my fingers spelled out h-i-d-e, a holdover from a childhood spent signing with my deaf twin brother.

  But the woman spotted me on my neighbor’s roof anyway, even as quiet and low as I was, and she honed in on me as if I was the answer to her prayers.

  My skin got all prickly and hot. I wasn’t anyone’s saving grace.

  The exhausted woman turned on her inner boosters and made it to Mrs. Kinley’s house seconds before the pack. Like some kind of superhero she grabbed the little girl by the waist and tossed her up at me.

  Without thinking, I caught the child’s hands. I pulled her onto the roof beside me, and then reached for the woman. She planted one foot on the wall and grabbed both my hands.

  The pack, a tidal wave of writhing arms and teeth and elbows, slammed into her. She was yanked out of my grasp, and I nearly tumbled after her into the cluster of growling and grunting Reds but caught myself at the last second. This was the closest I’d ever been to zombies, and they were scarier and fiercer than I’d ever imagined.

  “Get her out of here!” the woman shouted.

  Then it got real quiet except for the wet sounds of feeding.

  I scrambled away from the edge, and the little girl collapsed onto my lap in a gasping, sobbing heap. Her arms locked around my waist like a metal vice, squeezing until it hurt and leaving no room for escape. Little girls with messy blonde curls didn’t normally frighten me, but my chest tightened and breathing became more difficult.

  “Don’t shake hands,” my dad had said about a thousand times.

 
And there I was in a bear hug with a stranger.

  It took a few seconds to assure myself I wasn’t going to catch 212R from this little girl.

  Tapping her arm, I whispered, “I can’t breathe.”

  She sniffed and pulled away, but kept the entire right side of her body, from shoulder to thigh, plastered to mine. I hadn’t been touched in so long it didn’t feel reassuring. It felt uncomfortable. I tried to stand, but she allowed me no personal space. She embraced me around the middle again, tucking her blonde head into my belly.

  “It’s okay.” I awkwardly patted her ear, not sure how to soothe her. I’d never had a little sister. My twin brother Mason had never needed comforting. He was too tough for hugs, even when we were little.

  “Was she your mom?” A bad taste flooded my mouth. I knew all about losing a mother.

  The girl thumped her head against my midsection in a back and forth motion. “Willa took care of me.”

  “Was it just the two of you?” If she came from a group, I could deliver her back to them and be gone.

  “Yes.”

  Great. Which meant it was now just the two of us. Because no matter how much safer it was on my own, I couldn’t abandon a child to the Reds. Not that she’d let me, anyway. Her arms remained looped above my hips.

  I wracked my brain for a new game plan.

  My house was overrun with zombies, now exiting the front door to investigate the pack feeding beneath us. If there hadn’t been so many, I might have tried to take back my house, but I’d never make it inside. Even as fast as I was.

  Who knew how many Reds hid, unseen, inside my home.

  I had to leave it all behind. Everything I owned and loved. Stockpiles of food and toiletries. Clothes. My bed. Photos. My guitar. All I had left was the pack on my back and my dad’s replica sword on my hip. A pang of grief, fresh and raw, pinged through my chest.

  The little girl sniffled. “Is she dead?”

  I didn’t have to look to answer definitively. “Yes. What’s your name?”

  “Hunny Green.” She wiped at her face without letting go of me, streaking her cheeks with dirt. “What’s yours?”