"Brett," the boy answers plainly.

I narrow my eyes at him, "I'm gonna need a little more than that to go by, kid."

"Oh," he looks down, "Well, what do you want to know?"

"How you got here and where you group is for starters."

His eyes widen, but he covers it quickly. Too late. That reaction gave him away. "What makes you think I'm not alone?"

"You're too young for one thing, and-"

"I am not!" he huffs, "And if I am, then what about you? You're not much older than me!"

I scowl at Brett, silencing him at once, "Don't ever interrupt me again." He nods. "Good. As I was saying, you're face also gave you away."

There's another moment of silence before he looks to me again and says, "I'm not telling you that."

Shrugging, I reply, "That's fine," then add, "but that just means that you'll have to find your own way back- alone."

This seems to spark some sense into him. He has no choice but to trust me; he knows that. The alternative means getting left behind with the undead. This is my town. I know how to survive it. And he's just a clueless, lost, little kid.

He stares at me, taking me in. Then he gives a single, slow nod, as if he hardly believes what he's saying, "Alright. I can lead you to them. The others will explain things there."

"Good," I get up so that I'm sitting on my legs, "Then are you ready to go?"

"Are you crazy? Right now!" he exclaims, "Those walkers will get us for sure! We should wait them out!"

"Calm down, kid. I've got more than one escape in this place," as I say this, I reveal the large hole I had created months ago in the crawlspace ceiling and start removing the loose floor boards covering it. I pause in my work as I ask, "Walkers?"

"Yeah, that's what we call them anyway. Biters, walkers, roamers, geeks, creepers...There's a lot of names for them. What do you call them?"

"Typically, by the time I've spotted one," I reply, "dead."

"Oh...nice name."

When the finale floor board is pushed away, I poke out my arm first, wielding my machete, followed by my head. Staying silent for a minute and hearing nothing, I push myself out of the hole and duck before I can hit my head on the dining table above me. Reaching back, I help pull Brett out.

Quieting my voice to a low whisper, I tell him, "Stay down. Those things, those walkers, aren't too smart. They should still be trying to break through the crawl space door, but they won't think to look in here. While they're at it, we can sneak out the window on the other side. After that, you need to keep your mouth shut until we're far enough away. Got it?"

In response, he gets down on his hands and knees to start crawling, letting me lead the way.

We shuffle on the floor for a few minutes, then, finding the window, crawl out. I stop when the boy quits following me, turns his head to look back, and actually goes back inside. Noticing my glare, he mouths, one second. I roll my eyes. Does he really just expect me to wait around for him? I'm not going to wind up some monster's lunch just because he's to chicken to get out here.

Just as quickly as he had gone back inside, he hurries out. Not one moment after, I begin crawling away toward the next house. No point in going around- they'll spot us that way too. Instead we repeat the process of going through the crawlspace and out the other side. In the crawlspace, back out. In the crawlspace, back out. It's agonizingly slow, but as long as we're not seen, it's the best route to take. Once we get so far away, we stand and run.

I don't know how long we keep moving, but we have to practically make a full circle around town. The gunfire and screaming would've drawn most of them- if not all -to our last location, so we only run into a handful of these...walkers. Not like the town's very big anyway and I think over half the population left at the beginning of the outbreak. Brett leads on from there.

When we finally reach our destination, I look up to the old stain-glass windowed church, with plants growing all around the sides of it, and say, "That's it?"

"That's it." He starts walking up the small staircase. I follow, chopping down an approaching walker as I go. "Most of us felt safe here," he adds in a quiet voice.

He knocks to the tune "shave and a haircut, two bits" and steps back. There's the sound of wood being moved- perhaps a plank slid in between the door handles- and one door opens, revealing a small child, a girl, around seven years old. She's in just about as bad shape as Brett is. Her hair is the same shade of deep brown as Brett's, cut just below shoulder length, and her skin is very light, like she hasn't seen the sun in an eternity. The girl wears black sweat pants, tennis shoes, and an oversized pink shirt meant for someone a little older than her. Her face is completely blank as her coffee colored eyes drink in Brett and I.

"Shelby!" someone shouts from inside, another guy by the sound of it. All three of us look in to see a young man rush toward us. He looks like an older version of Brett, only with lighter, longer hair and blue eyes. Small stubble can be seen on his chin. "What have I said about keeping the door shut and staying insi-"

He catches sight of Brett. As soon as he does, he runs at top speed to him. I see both anger and relief in his eyes. "You idiot!" he yells, smacking Brett upside the head, "I told you to stay put! You don't wander off like that, especially without telling us!" Seeing the pained look in Brett's eyes, he gets down and hugs him tightly. "You idiot," he whispers again.

Brett doesn't say anything for a while, but when he does speak, he just says, "I got us food. We needed it. So I left...I'm sorry." Farther back, I see more people enter the main part of the church. None of them besides this new boy seem any older than me.

The new boy looks up, as if finding out that I'm there for the first time. He stands, letting go of Brett, stepping in front of him and Shelby, and placing a hand against the combat knife at his side. His gaze turns to one of suspicion and hate. "I don't know who you are, but I want you out, you hear me? I-"

Before he can say anymore, my machete find a nice place to rest against his throat. I hold his stare, not trusting him anymore than I would the walkers out there. Behind him, the rest of his team point whatever guns they have at me.

Brett steps in between us, "No!" he shouts, "Don't hurt her!"

"We can't trust her! Look at her! She's a threat to all of us!"

"She's not! She saved me." Looking up to the older boy, he repeats, "She saved me."

The former looks my eyes with his again, then replies, "How would you know that she's not with them?" I see him staring at one of my packs. The very one I got from the dead men last night.

"Do you really think that they'd help us?"