Fringe & the Dead Chapter 21: Slippage, a fringe fanfic

Chapter 21 - Slippage

-January 2009

The wind died off as abruptly as it had appeared, without warning.

Glaring silence rushed in to fill the vacuum, silence filled by the harsh rasps of Olivia's seesawing breath as she forced her fingers to relax their death grip on the metal ladder rungs. Taking in even gulps of ice cold air, she counted in her head and waited for the radio tower to cease its infernal swaying. Back and forth and side to side, the tower swung and tilted about, flipping her stomach upside down. Only upon nearing the count of thirty did she judge it safe enough to resume the climb. She pulled herself upward again, keeping her eyes locked forward, focused deliberately on the next rung and nothing else. Certainly not on the ground, far, far below, or on Peter's tiny figure standing at the bottom of the deathtrap in which she found herself.

In the background, beyond the ladder and the triangular, fire-engine red latticework, patches of billowing clouds hung like cotton-balls in an otherwise blue sky. To the east, the red smear of the morning sun hung just above the treetops. Its warming rays were soothing on her left side as she climbed higher and higher up the radio tower's claustrophobic access ladder. The ladder itself was enclosed in a circular cage of thin metal bars, presumably to keep a technician from being ripped free by an erratic gust of wind—such as what she had just experienced. Her eyes drifted upward involuntarily. The other end of the safety cage appeared impossibly far away; a minute, blue dot far above her. Combined with the wide open isolation and the intense height, the view was disorienting on multiple levels, and brought to life a plethora of phobias Olivia had never realized she was even subject to until that moment. She quickly pulled her focus back to the ladder rung in front of her.

Why did I insist on doing this again? Peter had warned her it was bad, of course he had. But had she listened? Her stubbornness and intense competitive streak had gotten the best of her.

How bad could it be? she'd thought, stupidly, in hindsight. I must have been out of my fucking mind.

She reached for another rung, forcing herself upward with hands that quivered. The height required to make contact with Cambridge was higher than the first tower Peter had climbed. In an effort to distract herself from the knot of fear rising in her chest, she tried to think of something else, anything else, other than the ground rushing toward her as she fell to her death, or being blown from the ladder and twirling like a leaf in the wind.

Like clockwork, her mind went back to the more pleasant happenings of the prior night, and then again that morning as the stars winked out one by one before the coming sunrise. In spite of the precarious situation she'd gotten herself into, her lips curled into an involuntary grin at the memory, recorded in tantalizing precision. It had been worth the wait, at least a thousand times over. She didn't want to place a tag on what had transpired between Peter and her, but the night had seemed special by any measuring stick. No. It was special, maybe even magical, even with the other not-so-happy revelation concerning herself and Walter. Friends of hers—when she'd still had friends, at least, prior to joining the Bureau—had spoken of having such nights. And Olivia thought she had even experienced them herself, but had it ever been quite like that? She thought not. Ravenous was the only word that came to mind when she thought of the great need for him that had come over her, and him for her, if his reaction was anything to go by. It had been different, and she was no lovestruck, starry-eyed girl.

My name's Peter. Mine's Olivia.

Olivia wondered if he had considered the very real possibility that they had met each other at least once as children, that some variation of her dream had played out in a field of white tulips somewhere outside the military base where she'd lived as a girl. The interaction had left a mark on her younger self, powerful enough for a ghost of him to come through in her drawings, years later, after she'd forgotten—or had been made to forget—everything else. And that somehow, against unimaginable odds, their paths had crossed again, decades after the fact. The sheer luck involved boggled her mind. She might have called it fate, or destiny, if she had ever believed in such things. But she didn't believe in them, which meant that their meeting wasn't fate at all.

Could it have been by design? But whose? She thought of the strange man in the suit. Or what's?

What else had the boy named Peter said in her dream? There had been something else. Something about Walter, about his mother and a lake. What was it? She reached for another ladder rung, concentrating, but the dream remained opaque, a vague impression of a shadowy outline. How much of the dream, if any, was a true memory, and how much her imagination at work? She wished she knew. One thing was certain, however; Walter had much to answer for. Much indeed.

Another burst of frigid wind suddenly sheared across the tower. She hugged the ladder with both arms, closing her eyes and taking in even gasps of air when the entire structure began to sway again, sending her stomach off into a series of uneven somersaults. There was nothing to do but wait it out. Eventually, the tower steadied, and she resumed her climb.

She was pulling herself higher when a different memory floated up to the surface. Not of Peter, but of his father. They were in the lab. Peter had just blown up in her face about signing the standard waiver for handling classified documents, and had stormed out of the room.

And then Walter had said something curious, completely out of nowhere and for her ears only. ...If you've read my file, Agent Dunham, then you know the truth about Peter's medical history... She hadn't had the faintest clue what he was talking about, and had told him so. I was going to ask you to keep it just between the two of us, but...I suppose there's no need, now.

Peter's medical history. What had Walter been hinting at? Whatever it was, it had to have been from when Peter was a boy, or he would have known about it himself. He had mentioned nothing out of the ordinary on his health insurance application, at least, which she had unashamedly looked over. There was a puzzle there, with Peter and herself, along with Walter and William Bell as the main pieces. And she had always been good with puzzles, with finding patterns, and piecing facts together. Could they have given Peter this Cortexiphan also? Could Walter have experimented on his own son? It seemed monstrous, but given what she now knew, what he'd admitted, was anything out of the question with Walter Bishop?

Before she could carry the thought any further, a faint whistle from below caught her ears. Olivia halted in her climb, glancing down at the tiny figure far below moving between her feet. Was he waving? Why? Then she noticed the latticework around her was now painted white. Two other white sections stood out below her, and another red was getting just above, only a few ladder rungs away. She cast Peter a grateful smile. In the midst of her distraction, she had nearly climbed higher than was needed.

Olivia hooked an arm through a ladder rung and pulled the little handheld radio from her coat pocket. Peter had replaced the radio's original antenna with one nearly twice its length, and added a length of thin wire to the antenna's base that she unwound and let dangle loose in the slight breeze. He had explained the concept to her; something about half-waves and dipole antennas. She had just smiled and nodded at his explanation. As long as the radio worked, how it worked didn't concern her. That was his job, though there was something incredibly sexy about him when he went into professor mode. She wondered what he'd been like in his short stint as a university professor. She suspected—with a completely irrational bout of jealousy—that women had thrown themselves at his feet.

Pulling her coat sleeve back, she checked the time on a watch scavenged from a house back in Cambridge. It was just past nine o'clock; Astrid would be waiting.

She thumbed the talk button, lifting the radio to her lips. "Astrid? Come in. Over."

The radio's speaker crackled to life almost at once. "Olivia...?" Astrid's voice was quiet on top of a layer of static, and Olivia raised the volume to compensate.

"It's me," she replied. "Switching channels now. Over." It was possible they were being paranoid, but anyone could be listening to their conversation. In light of that possibility, a simple system had been set up before they'd left Cambridge. It wasn't perfect, but it was certainly better than nothing. She turned the dial to the next agreed upon channel and pressed the talk button once more. "Astrid? Are you there?"

"I'm here," Astrid acknowledged a moment later. "How are you guys doing? What's it like out there? Have you found anyone?"

Olivia hesitated. What was it like? Cold. And desolate. "We're both fine, Astrid," she reported, and considered mentioning Peter's close call with hypothermia, but then decided against it at the last moment. It would only upset Walter. She wondered why she cared. "...and we found people yesterday. Two men in a truck heading west down Route 20."

The radio crackled. "Really? Did they see you? Did you talk to them?"

She quickly gave Astrid a brief outline of the encounter, and of their plan to follow the truck and surveil the refuge the man had spoken of. From a safe distance, of course.

"You guys be careful," Astrid said when she finished her story. "Sounds kind of sketchy if you ask me."

"We will be. How is everything there? Have you seen many more infected around the lab?"

"A few. There were a couple yesterday after I talked to Peter, and I saw three more on my way here this morning. They were just wandering through the streets. I don't know where they came from."

Olivia's mind shrank from the implications. If the infected's numbers were increasing again, it wasn't a good sign at all, especially when she and Peter weren't there to help them. The timing couldn't be worse. "I don't like the sound of that at all, Astrid. Are you sure you guys are okay?"

"We're fine here, Olivia," Astrid insisted. "It was just a few of them. Nothing we can't handle. And we have all kinds of food if we need to hole up for a few days."

Should they head back? The snow might melt in the interim, ruining their chances of ever finding out where the truck had gone. But it was her family, and they were counting on her. If only there were two of her. Surely one more day would be okay. They could follow the truck, then report back to Astrid tomorrow. If conditions in Cambridge appeared to be worsening, then they would head back. It had to be enough. It had to. Her stomach twisted into a hard knot as she made her decision.

"Well... keep a close eye out anyway," she said, swallowing. "And get the truck loaded and ready to go in case things go south. How is everyone doing? Rachel? And Ella? Is she staying out of trouble?"

"They're both fine. Ella's been a sweetheart. She was with me all d—"

Whatever Astrid had been about to say vanished in an icy blast of wind. Olivia gasped, nearly dropping the radio as she scrambled for a better hold on the ladder, hooking her left arm over the nearest rung. The frigid gust—the strongest by far that she had felt yet—whipped the radio tower about like a reed in a tornado. Or that was what it felt like inside her steel cage. The wind grabbed hold of her beanie, ripping it from her head. She saw a black speck go flying far into the forest below as her loose hair slapped her across the face, stinging at her eyes. An invisible fist of air pressed against her chest, shoving her inexorably away from the ladder. The tempest increased to a deafening howl. Pressure increased, and suddenly her feet were no longer on the ladder. She was falling.

A scream tore through her lips. Her boots clanged off the bars of the cage as she scrambled to regain her footing, in vain. Pain bloomed in her shoulder, agony shot through her left arm—still hooked over the ladder rung. Dangling from her elbow, wind yanked at her coat, burned in her eyes. Tears streamed backwards into her hair as she fought to maintain her grip. Then, as abruptly as it had arrived, the gale died out, falling off to a gentle breeze, and then finally frozen stillness.

Olivia's heart pounded out a marathon in her chest. She kicked around for a foothold, then pressed her face against the metal of the ladder, unmindful of its icy sting. Chest heaving, she fought for breath, taking in huge gulps of air.

Breathe, Olivia. Just breathe. You're okay.

"Olivia?" The radio crackled. It was minor miracle that she hadn't lost it, though considering her frozen grip on it, maybe not. "Olivia, are you there? Olivia?"

She pressed the radio to her lips. "I'm here, Astrid...," she said numbly. "Look... I gotta go. We'll talk again tomorrow morning." Or she would talk to Peter, at least. She was done with climbing up radio towers.

"Okay. Astrid out."

Olivia shoved the radio back into her pocket, then gasped when she went to disentangle her arm from the ladder rung. Pain pulsed the length of her left arm, deep into her shoulder and across her back. Had she torn something? For all she knew her shoulder was dislocated, though something told that she would be in much more pain if that was the case. Gingerly, she rotated her shoulder, testing its mobility. It seemed moderately okay, so with a grimace, she pulled her arm free and began her descent.

The going was slow, and painful. Far below, at the bottom of the cage, was a dark spot moving against the snowy background. Peter. He was pacing, she thought, stopping every so often to peer up at her. When the wind threatened, he was her focus, her point of concentration. The dark spot took on a man's shape, and then she could make out the color of his hair, and then his face, and finally his blue eyes as he stared up at her anxiously. When she reached the bottom, her body ached like she'd been put in a blender or had climbed the tallest of mountains, instead of merely going up and down a ladder.

Peter's brow was furrowed when she stepped off, dropping lightly into the snow. "I saw what happened," he said without preamble. "You okay?"

Olivia nodded, swallowed with relief. "Yeah. Mostly. It was a bit more... intense than I thought it'd be. I'll let you handle this from now on," she added, pulling the radio from her pocket and dropping it in his hand. A bone-rattling shiver went through her, emanating from her frozen core. Her arm ached with righteous fury. "And I lost my hat," she said faintly, rubbing at the throb in her elbow. "I loved that hat."

"I saw that, too," he replied, then stepped in close, enfolding her in his arms and pressing his lips against her forehead. "We'll find another hat. Your arm okay?"

She sighed, nodding against his chest. Her eyes fell on the shroud of trees and the drab radio tower facility building behind Peter, back beside the waiting truck. Puffs of condensation rose from its tailpipe. The area had been deserted on their arrival, but was no longer. Two tottering figures wearing rags were pawing at the truck, scratching at its blackened windows. A pair of tracks led out from the trees beside the driveway.

"We've got company," she said, and pulled away from Peter reluctantly.

He gave the infected a single glance, then reached for the crowbar propped against the gate in the chain-link fence surrounding the radio tower base. "What did Astrid say?"

"That everything was fine. No problems," she told him as they advanced on the pair of undead. They had yet to be noticed. "She did mention seeing more infected, though. After she talked to you yesterday, and a few more this morning. I don't like it, Peter."

"I don't like it either." He lifted the crowbar from his shoulder and met her gaze. "Hang back, Olivia. I got these. Don't tell me that arm isn't hurting."

She started to protest, but even reaching for the knife on her left hip was painful. And it was just two. "Fine. Be my guest," she said, resting her hand comfortingly on her pistol's grip, just in case.

Peter approached the nearest of the two infected nonchalantly—a female wearing what have once been a red dress pawing at the passenger door window—and sank the crowbar into the top of its head. He yanked it backward off its feet, ripping the hook free as it fell. The other infected was another woman, with filthy, yellow hair caked across its face as it pawed at a lit headlight. It became aware of him, golden eyes catching the sunlight and face a ruin, then scuffed toward him, bumping along the front end. He met it halfway, lunging forward and greeting it with a mouthful of metal. The infected went limp, sagging to the side against the truck's hood as it collapsed.

"They're gonna be okay, Liv," he said, looking up at her as he wiped the crowbar clean on the infected's shirt.

Olivia stepped over the body in the red dress. "I hope you're right," she said, reaching for the door handle as Peter moved around the truck to the driver's seat. She caught his attention over the hood. "You called me Liv. You've never called me that before." As the words left her mouth, it came to her that that wasn't precisely true. She had heard him shorten her name once before, just that morning. She wasn't sure he'd even been aware of doing so; she herself had barely been cognizant at the time. Her face grew hot at the memory.

Peter stopped opposite her, raising his eyebrows. "Is that a problem?"

Her lips widened into a slow grin, and she shook her head. "Nope."

The dead man moved unevenly, with strange hitches and stops, with arms that hung loose, jerking back and forth and from side to side. Each step seemed unconnected to the one that came before it.

It's like a puppet, Ella thought, watching as it came abreast of the brown van-gate, moving from her right to her left down the street outside the fence. It moved like someone was making it move, like someone had made Kermit and Grover move on Sesame Street. Someone out of sight, below the line of her television screen.

Thick ropes of snow and ice were caked in its hair. Its clothes hung stiff in the wind, frozen. She wondered why the infected weren't all frozen stiff like their clothes, like the hamburgers her Daddy had cooked on his grill in their backyard, before. Weren't they made of meat? She thought about asking Walter, but he had been different ever since Aunt Liv and Peter had left. Three days had passed. He was different. Distracted. And he talked to himself, talked to people that weren't there, muttered arguments under his breath. And sometimes he would get up in the night, long after everyone else had gone to sleep. She had woken once to find his blankets beside the furnace empty, and had snuck down to his storage room where she'd spied him rummaging through his junk and reading old papers by candlelight. Ella wished she knew what was bothering him. Did it have to do with Aunt Liv, and what she'd heard him and Peter talking about? She had watched her aunt closely for any signs of magic, but had seen nothing. Maybe she had imagined it all. But then why was Walter whispering in the dark, reading frantically? He was looking for something, but there was no asking him, not without admitting that she had spied on him and Peter outside her aunt's room. She thought he barely saw her anymore, or any of them.

Ella leaned on one hand, returning her gaze to the street. The dead man had moved on, unaware of her presence. None of the others had noticed her, either. She glanced at the spot where Astrid and the red truck had disappeared earlier, but the road was still empty. Her mother and Sonia didn't like her going alone, but Astrid had insisted that she and Peter had made sure it was safe. To her right, beyond the fort that she and Walter had never finished, was the wall of cars and trucks, buried in a thick layer of snow and ice. Outside the wall, the snow appeared even deeper. Hills had built up, mounds of snow like sand in a desert, and tall enough to mostly bury several cars on the outside row. She imagined falling into one of the hills, and an Ella-shaped hole marking her passage.

The door behind her opened, and she looked back, expecting to see her mother returning from the bathroom. Instead, Mister Broyles stepped out onto the top step. His eyes flicked over the yard and then out to the street before he noticed her sitting there by herself on the top step.

"You out here alone?" His voice was deep like her Daddy's had been, though they certainly sounded nothing alike. Sunlight reflected off his bald head, oddly bright. "Where's your mother, Ella?" he asked.

"She had to go to the bathroom," she replied, peering up at him. The two of them had never talked much since he'd come to the lab, and she had wondered before if he didn't like kids. "I think number one. Hopefully." Going number two was the worst, and she would hold it as long as she could before venturing in the classroom where all the poop buckets were. At least she didn't have to empty them.

Mister Broyles lips curved into what might have been a smile, and then he moved to sit down. His face twisted with pain as he dropped onto the step beside her. Then he straightened his leg out with the bad foot, and Ella couldn't help but stare at the way it bent unnaturally at his ankle. It was sort of scary-looking, like gnarled old tree root.

"Don't feel like playing in the snow?" At his question, Ella tore her eyes from his foot. Had he noticed her staring? He waved a hand at her unfinished fort. "After what we went through over the last week or so, I'd have thought you couldn't wait to get back out here after being stuck inside for so long."

Ella shrugged and stared down at her fort. One of the walls was sagging forward, ready to fall at any moment. The square plastic tub she had used peaked out from beneath a mound of snow, lying where she'd dropped it. It had warmed up for a day after Aunt Liv had left but it was cold again. Not like it had been; when they'd been freezing down in the lab, hungry and thirsty all at once — so cold she was worried she might die — but cold. But it wasn't the cold that stopped her. The truth was that she didn't want to play in the snow, or read any of her books, or do any coloring, or build anything with her legos. The few toys she had down in the lab were old and stale. None of it called out to her anymore. It all seemed small somehow. Dimmer, in some indescribable way. Like a shirt that was too tight or socks that didn't fit. Maybe she was growing up, getting old, like grownups always complained about. She didn't feel any taller or older, though her toes were getting cramped in her shoes. She didn't think that was what it meant.

"I just haven't felt like it," she said shortly, and scuffed the letter X in the thin layer of snow on the step with her heel.

Mister Broyles nodded silently. "My kids used to love playing in the snow," he said after a while. "I used to take them to this park near our house in D.C. Had a big hill. It was perfect for sledding." He shook his head. "Or at least I took them when my job let me."

Ella glanced up at him. From how often Aunt Liv went to work when they had visited, she thought it probably wasn't very often. "How many kids did you have?" she asked.

"I have...had two. A boy and a girl." His voice grew quiet. "Christopher was turning eleven this year. And Melissa was just a couple of years older than you. They lived with their...their mom, back in D.C."

From the way his voice had changed, she thought he and his wife must have gotten divorced. Her mother and father had talked about divorce once, late at night, long after they'd thought she was asleep. They had never talked about it around her, like it was one of the bad words. She had known what it meant. Divorce was when your mom and dad stopped being married, and you never saw one of them again — or at least, that was what she had heard. Some of the girls in her class had parents who were divorced, and could only live with one of them. For weeks after hearing her mom and dad talk about it, she had lived in terror that it might happen to her, that she might never see one of them again. And although nothing had ever happened she had filed the word and its meaning away, hoping to never hear her parents say it again.

Something else occurred to her then. His children were probably dead. And he knew it.

Ella watched as he rubbed at his ankle, hissing through clenched teeth. Did it hurt very bad? From how ugly it looked, at how his face tightened when he touched it, she could only guess that it must. "What happened to your foot, Mister Broyles? If it's okay for me to ask."

He shook his head, running his fingers over the smooth skin above his ears. "It was a stupid accident," he muttered. "I fell off a ladder."

"Does it hurt very much?"

Mister Broyles nodded. "Yeah, it does. Quite a bit, sometimes."

She peered at his foot again, imagining what the lumpy parts of it looked like under his sock. Were the bones sticking out? Did they press against his skin, turning it white like the knuckles on her hand? She shivered at the image. His foot wasn't going to get better—she'd heard Walter say so when he'd looked at it before, not long after Mister Broyles had arrived.

Movement out in the street caught Ella's eye. She lifted her head and saw more dead people, again moving from her right to her left between the rows of cars. Many, many more. Out of habit, she tried to count them but gave up after reaching twenty. They were still streaming into view from behind a group of trees along the sidewalk, infected of all different sizes and shapes, men and women and boys and girls. Some looked even younger than she was. Their clothes were in tatters, all a similar grayish brown from all the dirt and muck, their faces torn, flaps of skin black with rot.

"Stay quiet," Mister Broyles whispered, putting a hand on her leg. "And they should move past us."

Ella nodded, covering her mouth, just in case. Her heart pounded. She held herself still, suddenly terrified to move, or even breathe. Mister Broyles was tense beside her, chest moving in and out slowly. Then he shifted slightly, dropping a hand to the pistol on his belt.

More and more of the infected shuffled into view. They moved slowly. Unsteady footsteps carried them sideways as much as forward. How many more could there possibly be? And where had they all come from? Some of them came near the iron fence, yellow eyes turned their way. Did they know? Could they hear the thump of her heart? Hear the blood moving inside her? Surely they were the loudest sounds she'd ever heard. Every thud was an explosion inside her head. Could they smell her aliveness? What did they want? She wanted to scream it at them, though it would likely mean her death, if Mister Broyles didn't stop her, which he would.

The dead were too far away for her to hear their voices. But she was sure they were there; they must be. She had heard them in the library. And before that, at her aunt's apartment; day and night through the window, where they walked down in the street below. And then she had heard them from behind the door inside the apartment, from inside the room where her father had locked himself. The mumbles and the groans. Whispers without words. Once, she had pressed her ear to the door and listened.

Ella waited for something to happen. A tremor started up in her belly, a quiver that moved up through her chest, and into her shoulders. Her neck tightened, began to ache. She couldn't stop it. The hand on her leg began to squeeze slightly.

"Easy, Ella," Mister Broyles said just loud enough to hear. "Easy now. You're okay."

His deep voice was calm, and made her feel better at once. She closed her eyes and imagined it was her father's voice, that he was sitting beside her. He wouldn't let anything happen to her; that's what he'd told her when the world had started to end. His voice filled the quiet of her mind. She took in a breath, and then another, and her racing heart began to slow. But then something intruded. Something outside herself, out in the street. Her eyes flew open.

There was a steady rumble, coming the direction in which Astrid had disappeared. An engine. She was back. A mass of infected clogged the spot where the truck had been parked.

"Mister Broyles...," Ella squeaked. "I think that's—"

She broke off as the roof of the maroon truck came into view, far down a cross street to their left. The truck slowed, approaching the intersection where it would meet the street that ran outside the lab, then accelerated around the corner, plowing a path over old tracks in the snow.

Why wasn't she stopping? Ella scanned the road ahead of the oncoming truck and saw the answer. There was no clear path; cars and trucks and vans clogged the street. Astrid doesn't see them, she thought distantly letting out a long gasp of fear, and taking a bite out of her lower lip. The stopped vehicles were a maze, like in one of her fun books. The trucks slowed, swerving back and forth, winding its way closer. Her gaze jerked to the right, ahead of the truck, to the infected.

The dead had heard the truck also. Where before they had been moving slowly, without purpose, now they swarmed between the cars and trucks, surging to meet the truck head on.

"Dear God...," Mister Broyles muttered. He straightened slowly, and then staggered to his feet. When he spoke again his voice was different, harder somehow. "Go find your mother, Ella. Go. Now!" Without waiting to see if she obeyed, he leaned hard on the railing to his left, hopping down the steps on one foot to the sidewalk below, and then limped rapidly toward the fence and the van-gate.

She stood up as the maroon truck suddenly skidded to a stop, crunching into something out of sight. The engine whined as Astrid made it go backwards for a moment, and then there was another bang of metal. A gray minivan rocked in its place, tilted up oddly where it and the truck came together. A shadow in the driver's seat moved about as the truck lurched forward, untangling itself from the van with a mighty roar. Then it flew forward, heading straight for the wall of infected. Snow sprayed up from the tires in chunk-filled arcs.

Her eyes bulged as the first body splattered against a bumper and a headlight, leaving a dark smear behind on the silver trim of the front end. A hollow thud echoed across the yard, and then a flurry of them. Infected crumbled beneath the truck, scattering like bowling pins in the basement hallway.

She's going to make it, Ella thought, squeezing her fingers into tight fists inside her mittens. Then the truck reached the thickest part of the horde, and a current of fear raced down her spine as it began to lose some of its former speed. It was an island of red in a roiling sea of grayish, squirming black. The infected were in a frenzy, snarling, teeth flashing in the sunlight. She imagined she could hear their rage; a droning mumble, a bee buzzing inside her ear. Or was she hearing it for real? There was something in the air. A vibration.

Her gaze shifted to Mister Broyles. He was almost at the fence, sloshing awkwardly through the snow, bad foot dragging behind him. Outside the fence, Astrid had almost reached the van-gate. The truck's engine revved higher, yet it moved no faster. Infected pressed in from both sides, front and back, pawing and biting with broken teeth at the doors and windows. It was surrounded by an ocean of undead, growing ever larger. The high arcs of snow turned dark red and wet, and chunky. Her stomach heaved. She saw a tumbling hand clearly for a heartbeat, flashing before her eyes, trailing bits of what looked like string from a distance, but surely were something else. The truck came to a slow stop, then rocked back and forth, engine screaming, spitting up snow and blood and flesh.

"Hey! Over here! Hey!"

Mister Broyles's voice penetrated the stunned paralysis that stopped her legs. She tore her gaze from the disaster out in the street and found him standing at the iron fence, shouting and waving at the infected on the other side. One of them finally noticed him, and moved his way, then another. They reached through the fence, grabbing uselessly at the air.

Suddenly his pistol was in his fist. It seemed small and tiny compared to the mass of undead between him and the truck. The gun cracked as he shot through the fence, directly into the face of the infected on the other side. The dead man's forehead caved in. At the same instant, its brains exploded out the back of its head, splattering the face of the next infected in line. Ella watched, held in thrall by a kind of sick fascination as a reddish mist rained down.

So much blood. The thought came from somewhere far away. Mister Broyles fired again and again. Accompanying each shot were puffs of red that hung in the air, clouds of crimson against the white. Geez.

"Ella!" A panicked jolt went through Ella at the sound of her name. She was just standing there, watching it all happen like some stupid kid. Mister Broyles glanced back over his shoulder as he reloaded his gun. His dark eyes glared. "Get inside," he shouted, lining up another shot. "Find your mother!"

Mom!

Ella snapped out of her trance. She spun around, throwing the door open, then dashed inside. A shadow with her mother's shape was moving toward her through the dimness from the other end of the hall.

"Mom!" Her feet carried toward her mother, running as fast as they were able. "Mom!"

Before Ella's first shout had faded, her mother's shadow was already moving forward at a trot. "Ella?" Mom's voice began to rise. "Is Astrid back? Ella!"

Ella crashed into her mother's legs, throwing her arms about her waist. Behind her, in the background of the building's silence, faint pops could be heard, almost like someone was clapping in the distance. She buried her face in her mother's coat.

"Ella. What is going on? Wait. Are those gunshots?"

Ella pulled away, nodding her head and sniffling. Suddenly her eyes were overflowing. "Mommy, Astrid came back," she started as the tears began to flow. Words poured out of her mouth in an unstoppable flood. "...and the monsters are out there too... and they're around the truck, and Mister Broyles is shooting them and he told me to get you and you have to help them, Mommy!"

"What!" Her mother was suddenly crouching in front of her, eyes wide open in alarm. Or was it fear? "Monsters? Do you mean infected? Ella!

"They're gonna get Astrid!" she wailed. Her vision blurred with a river of tears.

Her mother straightened, glancing toward the front of the building. "Stay here," she ordered, starting forward, but then jerked to a stop after a single step. "Oh crap, I left my gun downstairs." Then said a word Ella had never heard her say before, ever, in all her five years. "Fuck! Ella, stay inside. Do not go out there! I'll be right back."

An instant later her mother was gone, vanished into the basement stairwell. Ella stared into the empty doorway. She was alone. She stood still for a moment, tears running down her face, heart thumping in her ears. The building was silent, except for the occasional pop! from outside. She took a step back toward the entrance, and then one toward the stairwell.

Should she wait? Hide? Could they get through the fence? Into the building? Her mind shifted from one thought to the next. She shivered, taking in panicked breaths. Time crept past. She caught a whiff of furnace smoke from the stairwell, then saw a fat bug scurrying across the floor. It glittered darkly in a shaft of light from an open classroom door. When she stepped on it, she could feel its body crunch through the sole of her shoe.

Then stomping footsteps rose from below. She whirled around in time to see her mother vault out of the stairwell without slowing. In her hands was one of the wicked-looking machine guns Aunt Liv had warned her to never touch. They're loaded, baby girl. You can't touch them, not ever. Loaded. That meant there were bullets in them. That they were ready to kill.

"Stay here, Ella!" Mom said again on her way past. And then she was gone, sprinting for the outside, shoes echoing in the hallway.

Ella watched her mother's outline grow smaller against the windows in the lobby. Her running footsteps grew quieter, then she slammed the door open and disappeared. A gunshot rang out loudly for an instant, cutting short as the door swung shut with a bang. An eerie silence settled over the lab building. In spite of her mother's order to stay put, the muted pops from outside drew her forward. Before she was even aware of moving, her feet carried her back to the lobby, back to the pair of double doors. She cracked one of them open and pressed her face to the gap.

Out in the street, the maroon truck stood silently where she'd seen it last, engine no longer running. A shadow moved in the front seat. The number of infected surrounding it had not lessened, and if anything, there were more of them. Many more. A hundred? At least that many. Counting them was impossible; their filthy clothes, their gray and black sameness blended them together into a solid mass, squirming and writhing like the tiny worms on the dead body she had found outside the lab. Mister Broyles fired shot after shot into the crowd, only stopping to reload. The dead pressed against the fence. All up and down the street, arms reached through, hands opening and closing on hair. Her stomach somersaulted, then plummeted down into her feet. The iron bars were moving! Bending, flexing like they weren't made out of metal. Her mother raced through the snow to the section of fence beside Mister Broyles. Raising the gun to her shoulder, she tried to fire but nothing happened. Mister Broyles shouted something lost in the furor.

"C'mon, Mom," she whispered as her mother fiddled with something on the side of the gun. "Do something."

As if she'd heard, her mother raised the gun again, and a torrent of deafening gunfire erupted. Ella clapped her hands over ears. Bodies dropped in scores outside the fence. One of the truck's windows rolled down and the head of the infected reaching in exploded in a shower of blood. The body collapsed only to be replaced by another, and then another, in an endless stream.

Movement beyond the truck and the black sea of undead suddenly caught her eye. Ella lifted her gaze and saw someone running outside the fence, out in the street. A live person. Then a sinking horror settled over her instant later as recognition came, in the form of a pink stocking hat.

It was Miss Sonia.

Ella gasped, and the air was sucked from her lungs. Somehow she had completely forgotten that her friend was still outside the fence! Lately she had been going outside every morning, alone, to search for more food and supplies. Usually, if it wasn't too cold out, she would come back late in the day, close to dinner time with a full backpack.

She must have heard all the gunshots, came the thought, and come back early to see what was going on. On the heels of that thought was another. There's way too many for one person.

Sonia raced closer, staying low and moving along side the parked cars. She approached the mob of dead people encircling the truck from the rear. None of them seemed aware of her as she crept closer. Finally she was there, only visible by the pink of her hat as she was raising the little axe she and Peter had used to chop off all the furniture, and sank it unto the back of the nearest infected's head. She yanked the axe free and hacked down another.

Ella watched, bouncing on her feet as Sonia's axe rose and fell, killing the monsters one after another. Some distant place inside her noted how her friend was careful to take down those only on the outside of the mob, how she refused to let herself be surrounded.

"They don't know she's there!" she whispered excitedly to herself. "She's gonna do it. She's gonna save her!"

"Save whom?" a voice asked loudly behind her.

Spinning around, she released the door and found Walter staring down at her. The door banged shut, slicing off the commotion outside cleanly. He wore his white lab coat over his winter coat, and was leaning on a long piece of metal, or pipe. She had seen it before, propped up against the wall near the weapon table. The end came to a sharp point.

"What on earth is happening out there, child?" Walter said, then let out a series of deep coughs, the wet and rough kind that her mother always said sounded like her lungs were being coughed up. After he recovered, he wiped his mouth. "Your mother shouted something about infected, that I should grab a weapon and come at once."

"They're...they're here," Ella stuttered, and her eyes began to sting again. She didn't want to cry, not again, but the tears came anyway. Part of her hated being young; hated not being brave like her mom and her aunt; like Miss Sonia and Astrid; hated that she didn't know how to be brave. She looked up Walter. "The infected are here."

Walter frowned, then reached down and lifted her up with one arm. "Let's see, shall we?" he said, pushing open the door and letting a chorus of gunfire. Then, grabbing his spear with his free hand, he carried her outside.

Dead bodies blotted out the snow. Fewer were standing than before, but there still seemed an impossible amount. Most had forgotten about the truck and were pushed up against the fence, reaching for her mother and Mister Broyles. She caught a blur with black hair. Astrid was out of the truck, rushing to help Miss Sonia. The dead had finally noticed her, and she was backing away from a group that had broken off from the others. Ella watched, as the two women vanished obscured by the truck as a crowd of undead closed in around them.

"Oh dear...," she heard Walter murmur as he gently set her down. "This does not bode well. Not well at all."

Over at the fence, she saw her mother thrust the big machine gun at Mister Broyles, who took it and continued firing into the crowd. Then, much to Ella's horror, she pulled a long knife from her belt and stepped within reach of the hands straining through the fence. She lunged forward, stabbing with the knife at a face smashed up against the bars. For an instant, time slowed to a crawl and Ella saw with perfect clarity the knife disappear into the right eye socket of a dead woman. Then her mother yanked the blade free, followed by a river of blood. The dead woman's body sagged against the fence as another reached over its shoulder. Gunfire erupted out in the street, and a moment later Astrid and Sonia came back into view, each blasting away at the infected at point-blank range.

"I must help them," Walter said, placing a hand on top of her head. "And you must stay here, my dear, safely out of danger. Unless they get inside the fence, then you must flee." His voiced changed, began to tremble. "If... if the worst happens, and you happen to see my son and Olivia again, tell them both I'm sorry for what I've done."

Before she could ask what he was talking about, he turned and limped down the steps, holding his homemade spear in both hands. Taking up a place on the other side of the sidewalk from her mother and Mister Broyles, he began thrusting the pointed tip through the bars. The spear's point came away stained black.

Alone now, Ella pressed her back against the door behind her. She shivered uncontrollably, and wished it was all over. Her eyes kept drifting to the wide sections of fence where no one was on guard. The metal was bending, buckling inward under the infected's combined weight. What would happen if it broke open? She envisioned the undead coming through the gap in a flood. They would reach Walter first, overwhelming him quickly, then move on to her mom, and Mister Broyles. And then her. Maybe her own mother would be the one to take the first bite.

It took the rattle of the machine gun falling silent to draw her back from the darkness of her thoughts. She looked for Mister Broyles and found him up close the fence, shoving the barrel through an infected's snapping teeth. Beside him, her mother stumbled backward in the snow and something grabbed Ella's heart and squeezed. A wave of dizziness left her legs weak as she watched her mom scramble about in the snow. She was searching for something. A moment later she came up with her knife, surging to her feet. For an instant, Ella saw her face, twisted in a wordless snarl of rage that looked nothing like her mother, before she lunged for the fence again.

Ella groped for a breath. Her mind shrieked at what was happening. A foul wind that reeked of death stung at her face, turned the tears rolling down her cheeks to ice. It struck her then, as it all came to a head; the certainty that they were all going to die. The monsters were going to eat them, and then they would become monsters, too. When Aunt Liv and Peter came back, they would eat them also.

Abruptly, the chorus of gunfire out in the street fell silent. She searched for Astrid and Sonia among the infected, but they were gone. Her legs chose that moment to give out, and she slowly sank into a crouch, settling back on her rear and hugging her knees.

They're dead, she thought, burying her face in her jeans and squeezing her eyes shut. She held her knees tighter, rocking back and forth. They're dead... they're dead... they're dead... I don't want to die...

Inside her head, she listened to her heart beating, thumping steadily without pause. On the outside, there were rings of metal, grunts and groans and frantic shouts, and then a strange squeal that reminded her of the bathroom door opening back in her old house in Chicago. What had happened? Was it the fence? She dared not look. If she did, and saw the infected pouring in, she thought she might go mad, or just die from fear. A loud thump made her jump, and nearly fall over, but she kept her eyes closed. She focused on an odd swirl of changing colors on the back of her eyelids as the sounds of fighting continued unabated.

Then, finally, after what felt like forever, silence fell over the yard.

Was it over? Had they broken through? Were they coming for her? Holding her breath, she opened her eyes and stared at the blurry fabric of her blue jeans, too terrified to find out. She didn't want to find out. If she didn't look, then there was a chance everything was okay.

Noises intruded on the stillness. Footsteps, made softer by the snow. They were coming closer.

"Ella...?"

At the sudden voice, Ella gasped, and lifted her head. "Mom!"

Her mother's face was painted red with blood. It was in her hair, on her coat, dripping from her fingertips. But it was her mom again. She could see it in her eyes, looking out from beneath all the blood. Behind her, Mister Broyles was leaning on the fence. His face sagged with exhaustion. Walter was doing the same, and for a wonder, his white lab coat was still white. Mostly. Smiling, he met her gaze. Ella's heart swelled as she saw more. There was Sonia also, standing beside the open door of the van-gate. She had lost her pink hat. And Astrid also, climbing out of the van into the yard. Both were drenched in blood, in chunky bits of flesh that clung to their hair. Outside the fence, mounds of dead decorated the street, and even more were pressed up against the fence, eyes frozen in death. The iron fence was warped, bent dangerously inward in several places, but still stood.

Ella pushed to her feet. They're all okay, she thought, bursting with indescribable happiness. We're gonna be okay. She leapt down the steps and rushed across the sidewalk, throwing her arms about her mother's legs. She smelled terrible, but it didn't matter. Peace could be found there, in the comfort of her mother's arms. And safety. And love.

Ella soaked it in.

"Is... is everyone okay?" Astrid asked in a strange voice, utterly unlike her normal self.

Ella peered past her mother, who turned to look also. Astrid's eyes were bulging and shaking, her cheeks ashen and gray, splattered with blood and flesh. Before anyone could reply, she sank slowly to her knees, unmindful of the snow. And then, raising her hands to her face, she began to cry.

Ribs of twisted metal protruded from the featureless snow, like the carcass of some ancient flying beast from a primordial epoch in the ocean of prehistory. Irregular shapes and amorphous mounds dotted the countryside, distributed in a wide arc that extended out of Olivia's view behind a low rise in the snow-covered terrain.

Peter let out a low whistle as the truck glided to a stop. "Holy shit..."

Olivia leaned over the center console to get a better look out his window. The downed plane had come in low from the north, cutting a wide swathe through the vegetation lining either side of the road. Trees were smashed and bent over, or just sheared off cleanly in some instances, and deposited elsewhere. Had the pilot been attempting an emergency landing? How many passengers had been on board? Hundreds? From the size of fuselage's hulking remains, it had not been a small plane, though it was certainly smaller than the ill-fated Flight 627, that had first sent her down the rabbit hole.

"Looks like a seven-sixty-seven," Peter continued, squinting at the scene with a critical eye. "You can tell from the shape of the tail cone, or at least what's left of it. I wonder how it went down."

"Does it really matter?" she said quietly.

The scene was disturbing. From all appearances, no rescue effort of any kind had been mounted. How far we have fallen, she thought sadly. Far across the debris field at the peak of an incline, a lone figure struggled through the snow. A thought struck her, and she glanced at Peter as he pressed the accelerator, leaving the plane crash in their wake.

"You can fly a plane, can't you?" she asked. "I know I read that in your job history. Cargo pilot, wasn't it?"

"For a bit," Peter confirmed with a nod. "Though, to be fair, I was more of a copilot. Didn't stick around long enough to rank up to captain. I guess I got tired of being a glorified delivery man."

"But you do know how to fly a plane, right?"

"Technically. But it's been a while, years since I was last in a pilot's seat." His eyes narrowed. "Why? You want to fly somewhere? Fiji is nice this time of year. And I'm not kidding."

"I don't know," she said, slipping a hand inside her coat and rubbing the ache in her left shoulder. The pain had grown worse since they'd left the radio tower behind. "Just thinking ahead, I guess. Anything's possible."

"In this day and age?" he said with a smirk, eyeing her sideways. "I'll give you that. So what about Fiji? You and me and the rest of us, hopping on a plane and heading south when this is over."

Olivia snorted. When it was over? What made him think it would ever be over? Even if they somehow figured out a way to stop the infection—which according to Walter, sounded like something cosmic in nature, and utterly beyond them—by all accounts, at least ninety-nine percent of the world's population was dead. Nothing would ever be the same. He knew that. And then it came to her; it was Peter's way of dealing with it all. Perhaps believing it might end one day was the only way he could continue to function. The only way to fight off the hopelessness. The despair. She couldn't hold it against him, as she knew that struggle well herself, having fought it nearly every morning when her eyes first opened upon waking.

"We'll see about Fiji," she said, meeting his eyes with a grin, then settled back in her seat.

The truck crunched through the snow, retreading the tire tracks running down the center of Route 20. The tracks had not wavered since leaving Marlborough behind, and Worcester seemed their likely destination. Outside Olivia's window, the dreary countryside slid past slowly. Silence and the low rumble of engine filled the cabin. She felt no urge to talk, which was not to say the silence was empty, or that they weren't communicating.

For they surely were. Entire conversations could pass between them in a single ephemeral look. In a glancing eye contact, the curve of lips into a knowing smile. In the brush of hands coming together on the arm rest, the momentary caress of fingers entwining. It all felt new, and different, and intoxicating. As it was wont to do in her limited experience, sex had changed the nature of their relationship. Oddly enough, Peter's revelation about Walter, and the abuse he'd subjected her to as a child—and it was abuse, a violation in every sense of the word—had not stained their moment, nor tinted it black in any way. That was good.

The two events were entirely separate in her mind. She wondered if Peter had assumed she would be unable to partition off the sins of the father from the son. If so, he should have known better. When she examined her feelings on the matter, she found herself strangely calm about it all, now that her initial rage had diminished. Part of her was still furious, of course, but she had no memory of any of it, not even the slightest hint, or the barest of outlines. And what she had no memory of didn't happen—for her.

Her outrage was clinical, lacking a personal touch. And how could she not remember any of it? What had Walter and William Bell done to make her forget? Some kind of brainwashing? The thought poked and prodded at the anger she'd been holding tightly in check, stoking it to life. She strongly suspected her calm acceptance of what had been done to her would not hold when Walter stood in front of her, trying to explain himself. But he wasn't in front of her now, and raging about it wouldn't accomplish anything.

As the thought died out, another struck that Olivia hadn't considered up until that moment. Walter was with Ella, at that moment. He was likely alone with her; the two of them were fast friends. Ella, who was near the same age she had been back in Jacksonville. They all trusted him—and he was good with her. He had saved her life at great risk to his own. She owed him for that, and she always would. It was a conundrum, a miserable tangle. How could she reconcile that fact with what he and William Bell had done to her? According to Peter, the time spent in the institution had changed his father—greatly, if she were to believe him. And she had no reason not to. Walter had been committed. Judged unfit to stand trial. She thought of their last case before the outbreak, of Roy McComb, who'd heard voices in his head, and been visited by strange compulsions. Another of Walter's victims. He'd been feeble and a confused shell of a man when they'd found him, certain he was on the edge of losing his sanity.

Was that her?

She felt the tenuous brush of Peter's gaze and eyed him askance. He was watching her with narrowed eyes, with a furrowed brow.

"You okay?"

"Sure," she said, smiling weakly. "What makes you ask?"

"You've got that look on your face," he told her. "You do this things with your lips when something's bothering you."

Olivia frowned. She did a thing? What thing? Resisting the urge to pull down the visor and look in the mirror, she tucked a loose lock of hair behind her ear. Outside her window, a blue house set back among the tree caught her eye. The shape of it through the branches reminded her of something that hovered on the edge of recall, but she couldn't quite pinpoint the memory. Something from her childhood? She turned back to Peter.

"I was just thinking," she said, shrugging uncomfortably. "You remember Roy McComb?"

Peter's eyes locked on to her own for an instant before he returned his gaze to the road. His face tightened momentarily. "Yeah, I do," he affirmed, and a hint of wariness entered his voice as he glanced her way again, eyes gleaming. "What about him?"

She lowered her head, killing time by picking at a spot of dirt or blood beneath a fingernail. "I don't know," she replied after an interval. "I was just... thinking about how broken he was when we found him. He was on the verge of losing his mind."

"Olivia...," Peter started, shaking his head flatly. "I know what you're thinking. You're nothing like that guy. Nothing at all."

But what if she was? What if there was something broken inside her, a remnant of what was done to her, just like Roy McComb?

"I've always felt... different, somehow," she admitted. "Ever since I was a girl. It was hard for me to build relationships, or let myself get close to anyone. Like I was waiting for something, but...I didn't know what. And between my stepfather, William Bell, and your father, how much of me is me, and how much is what they made me? You told me Walter said they did what they did because we were supposed to protect our world. Were they trying to make some kind of soldier?"

She paused, as a hard lump developed in the back of her throat. How could her father have allowed it to happen? She shoved her hands back roughly through her hair. "Oh god, Peter... is that why I am the way I am? Am I under some kind of... compulsion, to be like this? Programmed? Emotionless? Driven like some kind of...fucking robot?" All at once, she felt ill, her stomach lined with lead and the taste of acid filled her mouth.

Peter suddenly braked hard, and the seatbelt pressed tight between Olivia's breasts as she jerked forward in her seat. Snow sprayed out in great clumps as the truck skidded to a diagonal stop in the center of Route 20. Just ahead, a dangling traffic light swayed back and forth above an intersection. Letting go of the steering wheel, he twisted in his seat to face her. The engine idled softly in the background as his eyes moved over her face. She waited for him to speak.

"Olivia, listen to me. You're the farthest thing from emotionless that I can think of," he said intently. "If anything you feel too much, for everyone. And no matter what William Bell and my father did to you, you're the way you are 'cause you're a good person. What you're talking about, that kind of mind control—it's not possible. It was all already there, already inside you. They can't have changed you that much, turned you into a different person. It doesn't work that way."

"But how would I even know the difference, Peter?" she asked uselessly. "Somehow they made me forget it all. If they could that, they could probably do any..." She fell silent, exhaling as a voice intruded on her line of thought. A shadowy voice with dreamlike qualities. Or was it a memory? She was still unsure.

He brought me here from somewhere else, a boy named Peter had told her. It's all different here. And then another memory bloomed in her mind. She heard her Peter's voice, the man sitting next to her, from mere weeks ago. I had this intense...feeling one day, that wouldn't go away, that I'd woken up in another world, where everyone I'd known and loved was just a little different. Even my Mom and Walter...

What did that even mean? Surely the Peter in her dream hadn't meant an actual somewhere else, as in, a separate reality. That was insane. If it was a memory, it had to have been warped by her dream. Yet on the other hand, it wasn't completely without precedent. In her mind's eye she could see the golden dome enveloping the city, glistening like fresh drops of honey. The air had smelled stale. Empty. Devoid of life. Another world. Another Boston. She hadn't imagined it, and her accidental journey there with Peter proved it was a real place, different from theirs.

"Olivia, what are you thinking about?" Peter said, putting his hand over hers.

His palm felt hot against her skin. She absently wondered if all men were like that, if they all ran hotter than women. She met his gaze.

"Have you ever considered the possibility that you and I had met before I tracked you down in Iraq?" she asked, watching his face. "That the dream I had about a boy wasn't just a dream, but a kind of memory? Something I was supposed to forget, but maybe it was triggered by what happened in that hotel."

"You mean being attacked by a giant lizard-monster?"

"No. What I did. With the fire." I think I cooled off now. She felt a tremor of fear. Could it be? It felt like puzzle pieces were falling into place, pieces she hadn't even known were missing. "Maybe I'd done it before."

Peter didn't answer right away. Gears turned methodically deep inside his cobalt gaze. "I hadn't really thought about it," he said, choosing his words carefully, "not until you just said it, at least." A hand crept up to a scab on his cheek, and Olivia repressed an urge to yank the hand away. "It would be an incredible set of coincidences," he continued, "for you, and me, and Walter, to all come together again like we did. Almost too incredible to be chance. It would also mean that whatever was done to you to make you forget, was done to me, too." A muscle in his jaw flexed as he turned back to steering wheel and pressed the accelerator. The truck lurched forward, wheels spinning until the tires found their grip in the snow. "Walter has a lot to answer for," he muttered darkly.

"You know he saved Ella's life, Peter," Olivia reminded him.

"Why the hell are you defending him?" he said with a glare. "After what he admitted doing to you?"

"I'm not" she said, looking away from the fury in his eyes. "I'm just... I owe him for that. Maybe more than I can ever repay."

"One right doesn't fix a wrong, Olivia. Or in his case, decades worth of wrongs."

"Do you believe it's all an act then?" she countered hotly, irritated that he was putting her in a position where she had to defend her abuser. "That being institutionalized hasn't changed Walter at all? You told me he was different then when you knew him as a boy." She took a breath, then reached across and put her hand over his, resting on the gearshift. "Peter I'm not defending what he did to me, or to who knows how many other children, and believe me, when I see him again we're going to have a long, hard talk. But what do you want me to do? Kill him in cold blood? Will that solve anything?"

Peter sighed and shook his head, mouth working silently. Olivia turned away from him, content to let him work it out inside his head.

She relaxed in her seat, letting her head fall back on the rest. Outside her window, a string of brown apartment buildings sat near the street, followed by an L-shaped retail plaza, home to a hardwood flooring outlet store and several restaurants, including an Indian takeout that made her stomach rumble in muscle memory. The glass storefronts were shattered, exuding a vacant darkness. Bullet holes riddled the plaster facades. There had been similar signs of looting all along their route, but nothing like the wanton destruction of the military back in the city. A road sign marking the border of the next township approached, and as it receded in her mirror, Peter began to speak.

"My mother," he started roughly, "I told you that she killed herself. But what I didn't tell you was that for as far back as I can remember, she was...haunted by something, some...secret, that was with her every minute of every day. And I was at the center of it. She used to look at me, sometimes, when she didn't know I was watching, and just start crying, for no reason. Like it hurt just to look at me. And then when I got older, and I confronted her about it, she wouldn't say. Swore up and down that there was nothing wrong, that I was imagining things. Even as she poured herself another drink, even as the tears were running down her face. But there was something. I could see it in her eyes, like she was dying inside, every time she looked at me." He shook his head, eyes glassy. "And after Walter got put away, it only got worse. That's why I had to get out of there. I couldn't stand seeing that look in her eyes. I was hurting her, just by being there. So I left."

Olivia pictured a younger Peter, angry and confused. Hurting. Of course he blamed himself for his mother's death. Why wouldn't he? Walter's cryptic comment about Peter's medical records came back to her. Was that part of it? A secret, centered around Peter?

I'd woken up in another world...

"You think it all might be connected, don't you?" she guessed. "What happened to me at this day care center, and this secret your mother was harboring. And Walter knows what it's about."

"It's an explanation," he said, meeting her gaze for an instant.

In that single look, she saw the breadth and width of the raw pain he'd been holding inside. The guilt. It had been pursuing him for years, probably since he'd first walked out his door, leaving his mother first, and then Boston behind. She reached over and squeezed his hand on the steering wheel.

"When the time comes, Peter," she told him gently. "We'll ask Walter together."

Ghoulish faces caked with dried blood pressed up against the iron bars, layers deep. All up and down the fence along Cambridge street it was the same. The fence sagged inward in several places, and where the undead were thickest, stacked atop one another like pancakes. The scene could have been straight out of a B-grade horror flick, albeit one with superb special effects. Those faces at the bottom of the stack were squashed and misshapen not unlike potatoes. Skeletal arms sagged through the bars, fingers curled into knobby claws, nails chipped and blackened, or gone altogether and sprouting grayish bones that made tracks in snow splashed a dark red with spilled blood. A ripe cloud of death rose off the bodies in waves, hovering in the vicinity like the foulest of storm clouds.

It was a vision out of Phillip Broyles's nightmares. Or out of his memories, hearkening back to the early days of the outbreak, when mobs of the newly dead numbering in the tens of thousands had overwhelmed downtown Boston and everywhere else with horrifying ease.

One of the hands near the bottom of the pile to his left twitched. He limped over to it, using the length of metal conduit Walter had lent him as a cane. Which head the hand belonged to was impossible to say, so he jabbed the pointed end of the conduit through each of the heads in the vicinity until the hand fell limp. To his right, further down where the barrier of cars and trucks were perpendicular to the fence, Charlie Francis's widow was crouched in the bloody snow, checking bodies and putting her long-bladed knife to work in similar fashion. Out in the street, Astrid and Dunham's sister were searching carefully among the bodies for any that still lived. It was gruesome work, though neither of the women were complaining. Surprisingly, Rachel Dunham had held her own far better than he'd expected any civilian to, she and Sonia both. He supposed it made sense for the former, at least, considering who her big sister was. As he peered around for any other moving bodies, he caught a glimpse of Walter and the girl, waiting on the top step in front of the Kresge Building's wide entrance. The old scientist's face was creased with worry as he scanned the street outside the fence.

Phillip followed his gaze, but saw nothing out of place other than the smorgasbord of dead bodies turning the snow black. None were moving, nor were any more approaching from either direction. Reaching out, he gave one of the sagging iron bars a tug. The fence still felt solid, but he didn't like the look if it, not one bit. It had been a close thing. Near the end of the attack, right as the M-4 had run out of ammo, he'd been sure it was about to give way, but by some miracle it hadn't. He didn't want to think about what might happen if another similarly sized group decided to pay them a visit.

Sonia straightened, pressing a hand against her lower back and stretching out her shoulders with a tired sigh. "I think I've got all of them over here," she said, sounding exhausted. "How is it out there?"

"I think we're good," Rachel Dunham replied, then shoved her long-bladed knife back in its sheathe. "You and Astrid do good work." She glanced around, shading her eyes from the sun. "Where the hell did they all come from? I thought they'd all left the city."

"Apparently not," Astrid said. She glanced down at the pile of bodies at her feet and shook her head.

Turning on his good foot, Phillip wondered the same thing. They had to have come from somewhere. Were there more on the way?

He limped back to the trampled walkway and up to the building as the women climbed back through the van to join them on the inside. Bone-grinding pain lanced through his ankle, shooting up through his knee to his hip as he struggled up the steps. Some days he could set the pain aside, cordoning it off when he had to. But not then. Adrenaline had pushed him far beyond his limits, and now he was paying the piper. Not that he was complaining. He was alive. After the Federal Building, he'd discovered a part of himself even three wars had not brought forth. Whatever could be endured, would be endured. It was that simple. When he reached the landing, Walter still bore the same worried look. He knew something.

"Mister Broyles, are you okay?"

Phillip glanced down and found Ella staring up at him. Her eyes filled with innocent concern as she waited for an answer. She reminded him vaguely of Melissa at that age; inquisitive, with a knack for mischief. His throat tightened inexorably, as thoughts of his daughter inevitably led to his son, Christopher, and then to Diane, and their old house in D.C. He was never going to see any of them again. Something horribly unimaginable had happened to them, and the knowledge broke his heart on an hourly basis, sometimes minutely, or secondly, if he let himself dwell on it. He could not, and still function.

"You, you do look rather tepid, Agent Broyles," Walter commented with a frown. "Are you ill?"

He mopped a hand across the dome of his forehead and found it drenched with beads of sweat. "I'm all right, both of you," he said, relaxing his jar. "Foot hurts like hell, that's all, but there's nothing to be done for it. It'll pass."

"I'm sorry, you guys," Astrid said as she mounted the steps with Sonia following in her shadow. Spots of dried blood speckled their faces and clothes. "This was all my fault. If I'd been paying attention, I wouldn't have driven into them like that. They might have passed us by altogether."

"It's hardly your fault, Astral," Walter told her. He shook his head and eyed the street again. "If it's anyone's fault, I'm afraid it's mine."

"Yours?" Phillip said. "Explain that, Doctor Bishop."

"You see, Agent Broyles, I've been suspecting something like this might happen for months now, even more so after the weather began to change. I should have said something sooner, but... I didn't want to alarm anyone; I might have been wrong, after all."

"What is it you think you know?" he said, leaning on the railing to take the pressure off his foot. "You have some idea where they came from?"

"Across the river most likely, either the Charles or the Mystic or both. Probably both."

"Across the river...?" Sonia started. "But the bridges were all closed off, or just flat out destroyed so that couldn't happen. I heard them talking about it on the news, right before the news went off the air. How could they..." She fell silent, eyes widening. "The rivers froze over when temperatures plummeted. Oh my god..."

"Didn't you guys say there were a lot of them trapped downtown?" Dunham's sister asked in a tone laced with fear. She pulled her daughter into the circle of her arms, glancing out at the street nervously.

"Thousands of them," Phillip said. "Tens of thousands." He recalled his view from the cafeteria window with the sea of dead filling the plaza below, and how ripples of movement would spread between them, like schools of fish.

"More like hundreds of thousands," Sonia corrected in a soft voice. "You couldn't see the worst of it from the Federal Building, Phillip. They were right there on the river bank. Just standing there. Like they were waiting for something."

Phillip nodded slowly. A moment of hushed silence fell between them. He hadn't seen what she had, but he had seen something even worse, up close and personal. He had seen betrayal. He had seen men he'd known—good men, or they had been, before—stab their fellows in the back over a bottle of water and Snickers bar.

"Well, what did Peter and Aunt Liv say, Astrid?" the girl spoke up suddenly.

Astrid blinked, then clapped her hands to her face. "Olivia! Crap. I forgot all about her. Yesterday she and Peter found people! I don't know how, but they overheard some men talking about some place that had power and running water. They were planning on following them today to see if they could find the place."

"Did she say where she and Peter were?" Phillip asked. His mind raced at the possibilities. Was it government? The military? Or just a gaggle of survivors like themselves? There had been talk of such places on official channels before he'd lost contact with everyone. No one had seemed to know where though.

"Did Agent Dunham mention if there were any baths at our new home?" Walter asked, rubbing his palms together. "I would so dearly love to take a bath again."

"Our new home?" Astrid snorted. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves, Walter. And you can get in line behind me for a shower. As for where they were at, I'm not sure. Somewhere west on Route 20. They'll know more when I talk to them tomorrow."

Phillip gazed out at the street beyond the fence. The truck's wheels were invisible, buried beneath mounds of dead bodies. "We should start getting the truck ready," he suggested, pushing away from the railing and testing out his weight on his bad foot. The pain was barely tolerable, and he went on through gritted teeth. "Just in case we have to leave in a hurry. And we need to clear away those bodies, or we're not going anywhere."

The trio of women exchanged silent glances, seemingly condensing an entire conversation down to a single look. Diane and her sisters had frequently done the same back in the day. He wondered absently if it was a skill all women were born with, or something picked up by their mothers, some sort of secret skill passed down through the ages.

"We'll take care of the truck, Phillip," Sonia said in a suspiciously casual tone. "Why don't you and Walter take Ella down for dinner."

At mention of food, Walter started, jerking like he'd been shocked. "Oh dear...," he muttered. "I had a batch of dough in the oven. It's undoubtedly burned to a cinder by now."

"Maybe it's still good, Walter," Ella said, taking his hand and turning him toward the door.

"Do you think so?" he replied as they disappeared inside. "I like your attitude, my dear."

Phillip let the door close behind them. Considering how frequently Walter charred his bread when he was paying attention to it, he didn't have high hopes that the bread had survived. He met Sonia's gaze. "You won't have any arguments from me. We might want to start getting our gear ready also. I can handle that, at least."

"Sir," Astrid started. "You don't have to—"

"I said I can handle it, Agent Farnsworth," he cut in. "Just... get the truck ready."

His voice might appear unduly harsh, but he wasn't an invalid, and he couldn't allow them to make him one. Not while he was still breathing, and standing on his own two feet. He glanced out at the street, over the barricade of cars at the empty university buildings beyond and felt a wave of unease pass through him. A tension in his gut. With all the snow piled around it, the barricade seemed less imposing than it had. Less of a barricade. It wasn't over. He wasn't sure what it was, but similar feelings had struck him before. Usually when a situation was about to go south.

He eyed all three of the women briefly. "There may be more of them on the way," he added, turning for the door. "So be quick about it."

Dunham's sister raised her eyebrows, lips curling into a wry smile. "There's the man Liv described when she first told me about her promotion," she said with a hint of her sister's bluntness. "I was wondering when I would get to meet him."

Phillip snorted, rolling his eye toward the heavens. "I'll see you all later," he said, giving the area a final once over before heading back inside. A burst of wind washed the yard, blowing Rachel Dunham's long ponytail up in her face while icy daggers pierced the layers of his coat. He didn't envy them their task. "The temperature's dropping again," he added, shivering. "Be careful out there."

The tire tracks merged together in the distance, just before the road passed over an open bridge spanning a wide body of water. The tracks swerved around several stalled trucks blocking the right lane, then continued onward without deviation, straight into the heard of Worcester, just under a mile away, she judged. The city had no skyline to speak of, with only several office buildings that appeared over ten stories tall poking up above the horizon, and none much more than that.

Olivia lowered the binoculars. "They just keep going," she said, passing them to Peter. "Straight over that river into the city."

Peter scanned the road ahead, chewing on the inside of his cheek as he did so. "Straight into the city," he concurred after a moment. "And it's actually a lake, not a river. Lake Quinsigamond."

"Whatever...," she whispered under her breath, and rolling her eyes. Was he aware that he could be an insufferable know-it-all at times? Probably not, she decided. Most men were oblivious to their own nature. Guiltily, she shoved her sudden flare of irritation aside. It was irrational, after all; he'd meant nothing by it, and was probably unaware he'd even spoken aloud. At other times she'd found his seemingly endless fount of knowledge highly attractive. Perhaps being stuck in the truck all day had left her stir crazy. "You think they went straight through?"

Peter dropped the binoculars in his lap. "Since they turned west on the Boston Turnpike, I'd say this is where they've been heading all along. If they were going somewhere else, staying on Route 20 and going around the city would've been way faster, and probably safer, too," he added, squinting out through the windshield.

Olivia nodded, peering at the road ahead, at the sky above. Gray clouds hung low overhead, blotting out the sun. A short while ago, snow had begun to fall. White specks filled the air, flurries that melted on the windshield. The wipers thwacked back and forth slowly, clearing away their remains. On the dashboard, the outside temperature display read seventeen. It had red twenty just under an hour ago. The trend was not at all encouraging.

They had stopped in the middle of what must have once been a busy retail district. Stores and restaurants, connected plazas with tiny shop after shop surrounded them on all sides. To the left, the blue sloped roof of an I-Hop and an auto repair shop. To the right, a brick oven pizza joint and FedEx store; the sort of places one would expect to find in any small town in New England, or anywhere else for that matter.

Something moved in the corner of her eye, and she turned to find several infected wearing summer clothes coming around the side of burned-out McDonald's on her side of the truck. The snow was up to their shins, hindering their lurching footsteps as they advanced slowly toward her window.

"We have visitors," she said, taking in their numbers in a single glance. Only five, and easily taken care of between the two of them.

Peter looked over, furrowing his brow. "We should just leave them," he said with a shrug as she twisted around in her seat for the crowbar. "We'll be long gone before they get here."

Olivia shook her head. "We're not crossing that bridge, Peter. Not yet, at least. Not without doing a little surveillance first. There's no cover at all. And if I was setting up base here, I'd keep an eye out." She curled her lips into a sweet smile and met his gaze as she continued. "So, we can either take care of them now, or later, after they follow us down the street."

"Now, how can I refuse that logic?" he said. For an instant, a hunger burned in his eyes, setting her heart to racing, but then he turned away, pushing open his door.

Taking in a deep breath, she followed him out into the snow, leaving the crisp warmth of the truck behind. A hiss escaped her lips as wind stung her face and ears, and she made a mental note to find a new stocking hat sooner than later. She waited for Peter to join her with the Louisville slugger he'd nabbed from the garage of the house before they'd left that morning, then moved toward the McDonald's with him at her side.

Snow crunched softly beneath their boots. Out of habit, she dropped a hand to her pistol. It shouldn't be necessary, but its presence was still reassuring. Part of her still mourned the loss of the suppressed pistols they'd found in the Federal Building, but she couldn't exactly blame Peter for not attempting to recover them, not in the aftermath of her... explosion. She could picture herself becoming too dependent on them anyway, and as ammo was limited, perhaps it was for the best. But they would have been great for their current situation.

The infected had reached the end of the drive-thru lane, veering toward herself and Peter through a mess of abandoned cars. She caught a waft of their stench ahead of them, sweetly putrescent, like shoving her head in a coffin. From the t-shirts and shorts the bodies were draped in, they had been teenagers once upon a time. She wondered how they came to be grouped together as they were after so much time had passed, but there was no way to know. Their eyes, dully yellow, striated and bloodshot, came alive as they drew near.

Olivia circled around behind the ragtag group as they emerged from the grid of parked cars, approaching them from the rear as Peter held their attention. His baseball bat flashed in a wide arc, followed by a sickening crunch as he buried it in the first infected's forehead. For some reason the sound reminded her of stomping on a sheet of bubble wrap, a favorite activity of hers as a girl. Then there was no more time for thinking. Another dull crunch thudded in front of her, and she was on them.

The infected were oblivious of her presence behind them, and she had two of them down with a pair of quick thrusts through the base of their skulls before they could react. She ripped the crowbar free of a dead girl's head, then hooked a third with a savage overhand swing into a mop of matted black hair. The infected seemed to jerk on its feet before it muscles turned to jelly. She tore the hook free, showering blood and gore across the window of a parked car as it dropped face first on top of its companions.

"There. That wasn't so bad was it?" She lifted her gaze from the pile of bodies, and blinked. Peter was gone. Then she saw his black coat racing away from her, streaking toward the truck. Snow scattered in his wake. What the hell is he doing? she thought with a frown. Then a thought struck. Oh god, was he bitten? Icy fingers clamped around her heart and began to squeeze. "Peter...?" she called after him. "Peter!"

"Olivia!" he shouted hoarsely, throwing a glance over his shoulder. "C'mon!"

The panic in his voice was bewildering. Olivia searched around for its source, and then saw it. Her eyes bulged in surprise. Lumbering toward them through the snow was a battered blue pickup truck. They were caught, out in the open with no place or time to hide. The icy grip around her heart relaxed, but was replaced instantly by a deep dread that settled in the bottom her gut. Putting her fear aside, she leapt over the pile of bodies and charged across the parking lot.

When she reached the truck, Peter was half inside one of the rear doors, reaching for one of the assault rifles sitting across the back seat. She tossed the crowbar in and yanked her sidearm free, eying the approaching truck. Behind the windshield wipers swinging back and forth were a pair of human-shaped silhouettes in the front seat. The truck came closer, moving slowly, almost carefully. She could hear it now, the low rumble of its engine.

"Find some cover, Olivia," Peter said harshly as he emerged from the truck with one of the M-4s, equipped with a short range scope mounted on its rails. "We can't be too careful."

He raised it to his shoulder, taking careful aim. As he did so, the oncoming truck skidded to a stop, pushing an avalanche of snow ahead of it. It came to stop less than block away, close enough for Olivia to make out its rams head hood ornament. The dark shapes inside the cab began to move, with sharp gestures reminiscent of an argument.

Olivia hesitated. There was something odd about the shadows moving inside the other truck. Between the figures in the driver and passenger seat, was something smaller, a dark shape with indistinct lines. The shape moved, turned its head. Three people. She inhaled sharply, cold air filled her lungs. "Lower your gun, Peter," she said softly, letting her pistol fall back into its holster.

"What...?" Peter's brow furrowed in confusion as he glanced between her and the truck. "Olivia we don't know who they are or what they want."

"They have a child with them," she said, capturing his gaze. "A child, Peter. Don't get rid of the gun, just lower it. I don't want to scare them."

"You're worried about us scaring them?" he muttered, but complied with her order, letting the rifle barrel dip toward the ground.

"Just stay ready and cover me if you see anything out of place," she told him, then stepped out into the open, away from the cover of their truck. Raising both hands, she stared in through the windshield, focusing on the silhouette in the driver's seat.

A moment later, the blue truck's passenger door swung open with a groan, and woman stepped out into the snow. She was black, with long straight hair held back in a thick ponytail and wearing a weather-beaten brown coat with a furred hood and blue jeans with a hole in the right knee. Flurries of snow fell between them, obscuring the woman's features. She appeared unarmed, though it was not a certainty. The driver, who remained a blur behind the windshield could have a gun trained on her at that moment. Olivia prayed Peter was faster if it went south. She took a step forward, keeping her hands raised, palms flat and open.

A fierce whisper followed behind her. "Be careful, Olivia."

"Follow my lead," she replied back, keeping her gaze on the other woman.

She took another step forward, and the woman moved also, hesitantly. Olivia noticed a bulge in her coat and revised her opinion. So she wasn't unarmed, after all. Peter's gaze boring into her back was comforting. He would cover her retreat, if necessary. She prayed it wasn't. The woman paused, glancing back at her truck and shaking her head slightly before starting forward again through the snow.

The other woman's face was clear now through the parting snowfall. She was older, perhaps in her late forties or early fifties, that much was clear as the distance between them narrowed. They came to a stop, not quite within arm's reach of each other, puffs of breath rising between them. The stranger's eyes were the color of brown satin. Within them were horrors witnessed, atrocities lived through, and uncertainty. But there was also a kind of strength, of will and character. She was a survivor. The woman's wide nose was pitted with dark spots, flaring in and out as they regarded each other in silence.

Olivia spoke first. "Hi there," she said. "I'm...sorry if we startled you. You can't be too safe these days, you know?"

The black woman stared back silently for a heartbeat, then seemed to relax inside herself, shoulders slumping wearily. "You ain't kidding, honey," she said, and her smile brought her face to life. "Not in these days of revelation, anyway, when creatures of the night walk the earth, dead and alive." Her voice was a trumpet, clear and high-pitched, with more than a hint of southern twang no doubt refined in her youth somewhere in the deep South. The woman squinted over Olivia's shoulder at Peter, who was hopefully not making any threatening moves; he could appear quite menacing when his dander was up. "We saw you puttin' those down that needed killing," she continued, "and would've even offered to help, but it looked like you two had things well in hand. That your man back there?"

Olivia blinked at the directness of the question, and the hint of ownership it implied. She had never thought of him that way, not precisely. She supposed it fit as well as anything. "He is," she replied with a nod, and at the same time wondered with some amusement what Peter would think of the question and her answer. It was probably better he hadn't heard.

"My, did he give us a fright, what with all his runnin' for his rifle. For a second I thought he was about to open fire, but I guess it's like you said; you can't be too safe these days. To be sure, we've certainly encountered our share of trouble."

"I'm sorry about that," Olivia said. "Some of the other survivors we've come across... well, they haven't been too interested in talking." She held out her hand. "I'm Olivia."

The woman's smile widened. "And I'm Charlene." She stepped closer, completing the handshake. Her grip was firm and unwavering. "My mother's name was Olivia, God bless her soul. I choose to take it as a sign."

A sign of what, she didn't elaborate, as the plodding crunch of footsteps announced Peter's arrival on the scene. He stopped beside Olivia, rifle hooked over his forearm, barrel slouched toward the ground and fingers far away from the trigger. The woman named Charlene's gaze shifted toward him, and Olivia grinned faintly at her blatant appraisal.

"Well now," she said, looking Peter up and down. "Aren't you a sight for these eyes?"

Peter flashed her a grin and took the woman's proffered hand. "Peter King," he voiced without hesitation. "Nice to meet a friendly face for once."

"Charlene Watson," Charlene replied, then peered at him curiously. "King, eh? Any relation to the former congressman of New York of the same name?"

Peter snorted, as if he'd heard the question a thousand times. Olivia watched him closely, seeing hints of the other Peter Bishop emerging, the man she'd met in Iraq. He was smooth, a natural at this sort of subterfuge. "No ma'am," he said with an affable shake of his head. "Just an unfortunate coincidence on my end. I tell you, it's been a curse."

Charlene's eye lit up, dancing with mirth. "Oh, I like him already," she said, meeting Olivia's gaze. "He's a funny one, isn't he?"

"He certainly likes to think so," Olivia murmured. She kept her face clean of surprise. King? She hadn't offered her full name, but had seen no reason to hide her identity.

The woman glanced between them. "You two from around here?" she questioned. "Or are you on your way to the sanctuary, too? We've been following the signs down from Peterborough. I tell you, it's good to see God-fearing people again. I was starting to think they might have left this world behind."

Signs? Olivia exchanged an uneasy glance with Peter. "Did you say a... sanctuary?"

Behind the southerner, the blue Dodge's driver's door swung open with a creak of un-oiled hinges. A man in a tan coat climbed out into the cold. He was younger, perhaps in his early twenties, with a head covered in short, spiky black hair. From the shape of his wide nose and tilt around his dark eyes—which were staring at her and Peter with mistrust—he was a close relative to the woman. A son? He turned back to the truck and reached inside for a young girl with black hair curlier than Astrid's. The girl threw her arms about his neck, settling into the protective circle of his arms.

"Christopher!" Charlene whipped her head around, waving her hand. "Come meet our new friends, son."

The young man stomped toward them with the girl, who twisted around in his arms to watch. She took a brief look at them before burying her face in the collar of his coat. Olivia's eyes dipped to an absurdly large revolver hanging low in his hip like an old gunfighter out of the Old West. She wondered if he knew how to use it. He came to a stop beside his mother, and the young girl—near Ella's age, or close enough—leapt into her arms.

"This is my family," Charlene said. "Or what's left of it, at least. This is my boy, Christopher, and the little one is Gina. She's a bit on the shy side these day, though it wasn't always so, was it? Say hi, sugar." The little girl shook her head and refused to look at either Olivia or Peter. "Well, you can't say I didn't try," she sighed.

"Nice to meet you, Christopher." Peter offered his hand. "I'm Peter."

The younger man took the hand grudgingly. "Just Chris," he said in a voice that was still stiff with suspicion.

"And the pretty one's name is Olivia," Charlene told her son. "Just like your Gram's."

"So you're from Peterborough?" Peter asked. "Up in New Hampshire? What's it like up there? Was it just you guys alone?"

The mother and son's faces tightened, eyes filling with remnants of memories best left forgotten. The older woman's shoulder slumped. "We don't talk about it much anymore," she said. Her voice shook as she told her story. "There was a group of us, about twenty in all, holed up on a farm outside of town. It was a nice place, tall fence and big house with plenty of room. And even some commercial greenhouses we could use most of the year... but that's all ended now."

Olivia nodded slowly. "What happened? If...you don't mind my asking."

Charlene sighed. "Few weeks ago, the dead ones came in the night, in numbers. More than I've ever seen. Must've been ten thousand if it wasn't a hundred. They came out of nowhere, and somehow they got inside the fence. All I can think of was that somebody left the gate open."

"The gate was shut, Mom," her son grated. From the fury in his voice, it was an old argument between them. His eyes glistened with anger and tears, and he wiped them away with this sleeve. "I saw it closed from my window, me and Shawna both saw it."

"Well it hardly matters now, does it? Once the dead got inside, it was over. Me and my boy here, and little Gina, we're the only ones that made it out, and just barely at that. We lost a lot of friends, loved ones. Since then we've been heading south."

"Have you met any other people besides us?" Peter said.

The woman's eyes hardened into granite. "None that I want to speak of. Suffice to say you're the first we've come across that weren't animals since we started south."

Olivia sensed there were entire volumes left unsaid in her explanation, but left the subject alone. "Before, you mentioned something about a... a sanctuary? Do you think it's nearby? And how did you hear about it?"

"There was a man. Showed up at our gate about a month and half ago." Charlie replied, shifting her grip on the little girl. "He said he'd heard of a place of sanctuary, of safety. A refuge with power and lights, running water, just like things used to be. That to find it, you had to go south. There would be a sign in the sky. He'd thought it might be our group, I guess, but we didn't have no power or running water or signs shinin' in the sky."

"You got that right," Christopher muttered.

"So after the farm we've been making our way south, the way the fella said we should go, keeping our eyes on the heavens. Two nights ago, we saw it, though we was miles away, and then again last night. Y'all see the light too? That why you're here?"

Olivia spoke up before Peter could, shaking her head. "We haven't seen anything. What kind of light was it?"

"The light of our Lord God, of course," Charlene said firmly and without hesitation. "A pillar of fire by night from the heavens to lead the way to the promised land."

Was she being serious? Olivia blinked at the odd statement, unsure of how to respond.

"The light of...God?" Peter uttered after a heartbeat of silence.

"It wasn't no pillar of fire," Christopher said with a snort and rolled his eyes. "It looked like one them theater spotlights, only way bigger."

"You mean a searchlight?"

"Yeah, a search light. It blinked a few times, then turned off, then come on again. Went on for about an hour. But we saw it. Came from this way."

"Where'd you all come from if you didn't come for the Lord?" Charlene asked, glancing between them. "Just passin' though?"

"We came from back east," Olivia replied cautiously. "Near Boston."

"Near Boston?" Charlene's eyes widened into saucers. "We thought the city was gone, bombed to hell and back and near burned to the ground. We had a guy in our group who made it out. Before everything stopped working, the radio said to stay away from all the big cities, that they were thicker than snot with the dead ones. How close were you?"

"We came from Brighton," she said. Peter shifted beside her, but remained silent.

"Brighton." The woman's eyes pushed together. "That south of the city?"

"More west."

"And it's just you two?"

"There's a few other's in our group," Olivia said vaguely. "We're getting low on food though. That's why Peter and I left, to see what it was like on the outside."

Charlene nodded. "Yeah, I can see that. You both look like you've seen hard times. Hunting's good out this way, even better now that there ain't no people around. I imagine there's not much in the way of God's creatures in close to the city." She shook her head. "You should have left it behind long ago." She glanced at her son, then back to them. "Why don't you two come with us?"

"Oh. We couldn't possibly," Olivia said quickly. "We still have to get back to our people, and...to be honest, I'm not quite ready to join up with another group just yet. But good luck, though."

The woman's eyebrows climbed to her forehead. "You sure? I'm sure you'd be more than welcome, the rest of your group, too. I have a knack for these things, you see. Y'all are good people. I can see that at a glance."

Olivia gave her a noncommittal smile. It wasn't that she didn't trust them; she didn't trust anyone. Not on a rumor, and not after the story they'd told about the fate of their farm, after they'd been visited by a stranger. The story felt off to her, set off alarms in her head.

"We're sure," Peter said, and pulled Olivia in close with an arm about her waist. "You guys go on ahead. Maybe we'll see each other again."

Charlene lifted her shoulders. "Well, I tried. But I can't see there's no convincing you. So suit yourselves then, and we wish y'all the best of luck." Her son gave them both a nod older than his years, then turned and strode back to the truck." Charlene started to follow, then looked back at them with a smile. "It's good to see some things haven't changed. Not many husbands and wives left in this world. You all take care of each other." Without another word, she turned and slogged back to the truck.

"Husband and wife?" Peter whispered as the woman named Charlene handed off the little girl to her waiting son, then climbed in after them. "Why didn't you say something?"

Doors groaned and slammed shut, and a moment later, the truck was on the move. The woman waved and smiled at them through the window as it passed them by. The blue Dodge swerved around the still idling SUV, then continued onward, heading for the bridge over the lake.

"I didn't want to disappoint her. And it seemed easier not to." She glanced at Peter, lifting an eyebrow. "Why? You got a problem with that, Bishop?"

Peter chuckled and grinned crookedly. "Never been married before. How was the proposal?"

"Completely over the top and unoriginal," Olivia deadpanned, matching his grin. "I'm not sure what possessed me to say yes."

The blue truck was nearly over the bridge. At some point during their meeting with the strangers, the flurries had become their larger counterparts, thick and fluffy like cottonballs, and the truck soon disappeared into a swirling vortex of white.

"What did you think of their story?" she asked on the way back to their truck.

"I'd say it was true, or at least she thinks it is. Some of it though...," Peter paused, shaking his head. "A guy shows up out of the blue, and not long after he leaves, their safehouse is overrun. I'm no crack FBI Agent like yourself, but commercial greenhouses? Sounds like a good motive to me."

Olivia pulled open her door and shook the snow out of her hair as Peter tossed the assault rifle in the back seat. "Could be," she said, sliding into the passenger seat and slamming the door closed behind her. "But it's just conjecture, circumstantial at best." She held her fingers up to the vent, relishing the hot stream of air. "Why did you give her an alias?"

Peter shrugged, fingering his beard. "Habit, I guess. Too many people know the name Bishop, and if they do find this place, who knows who they'll be talking too." He gave her a look. "I don't remember seeing any lights in the sky last night. Do you?"

"Lights in the sky?" She met his gaze, lips curling faintly. "No. But then I had other things on my mind last night. Didn't you?"

For an instant, his eyes smoldered in remembrance. "You might say that." He grinned, showing her all his teeth. "Where to, Mrs. Bishop?"

Olivia snorted, then arched an eyebrow. "Bishop? Nope, I kept my name. Made for less paperwork at work."

Peter winced and she laughed out loud at his wounded look, then reached for his hand and gripped it tightly. They would never know what may or may not have happened between them, if not for the apocalypse, if not for John's death. Maybe it would have been nothing, and she would have stayed with John. Or perhaps she might have met someone new, outside of work—though the chances of that seemed slimmer than none—or ended up with no one at all, the possibilities were limitless, but in this here and now, he belonged with her. "So maybe I added a hyphen," she added softly.

Her heart fluttered at the raw emotion burning in his gaze. She longed to pull him into her arms, to taste his lips again, but forced herself to look away before the moment could turn into something more. It wasn't the time or the place. Stay focused, Olivia. There's plenty of time for that later. Taking in a deep breath, she pulled away from him.

Snow fell in thick swirls ahead of them, obscuring the far side of the lake in the distance, and what little there was to see of the Worcester skyline. Her internal clock predicted it would be dark in a few hours. And then they would see what there was to see.

"C'mon. We need a place with a good view of the lake, with cover."

"Another stake out?" Peter said.

Olivia chuckled at the wariness in his voice. "Don't worry, Bishop, I promise there won't be any frozen lakes for you to fall into this time."