Nezumi woke with a start.

It had been a long time since a nightmare had jarred him, but this one had his heart galloping and a fine sheen of sweat beading down his spine.

He hadn't had this particular dream in a long time: It started with the old woman telling him a story by firelight. She had been crotchety as all hell, but Nezumi had been with her for as long as he could remember, and she was as close to family as he had. This dream memory was the last he had of her; it was the last night they had together before she was bitten.

The happy memory always unraveled in the same way. The old woman's voice began to waver, then she couldn't remember what she had been saying, and when Nezumi tried to remind her of her place in the story, she snapped at him. She started sweating and shaking next. She tried to get up, but her legs crumpled beneath her. Nezumi reached out to help, but she crawled away, screaming for him to get back, get away.

"Run, you stupid boy!" she shrieked, her dehydrated skin shrinking and wrinkling and sloughing away beneath her clawing fingers. She screamed until her voice was raw, until the words became a snarl and the fierce black light in her eyes dulled to the greedy gloss of the undead.

The dream had tortured him for unnumbered months from age eleven on. It took years for it to be replaced by less personal terrors. Nezumi stared up at the rotting ceiling and tried to figure out why this dream would come back to haunt him now, after so many years.

The house crackled beneath him. Nezumi laid on the ground, listening, even though he was ninety percent sure it wasn't the sound of a threat. It never hurt to be careful when carelessness killed.

He was holed up on the second floor of a two-story home, only a few hours' walk from West Block. He always stayed on the highest floor of the houses he camped out in. It made for a good vantage point, and was a reliable protection against any zombies that ventured into the homes. Most of the creatures no longer possessed the intelligence to open doors, but occasionally one would stumble upon a way into the less secure homes. Even these, though, wouldn't climb a staircase without due cause. As long as you stayed up high and quiet, you were safe.

The raid for ammunition and supplies had gone off without a hitch. The zombies in the Deadlands were more scattered than they were near the din of town, and Nezumi easily avoided them when he could see them. He kept his knife out as he traveled for those he couldn't circumvent.

His pack stocked full of ammunition, suppressors, and a selection of canned foods lay beside him, the strap peeking out from under the bed like a rough black snake. Nezumi always slept on the floor and never in the beds of the Deadlands' houses. The thought skeeved him out—for both hygienic and personal reasons—and the beds' frames were so rotted they squeaked dangerous promises to whomsoever dared put their weight on them.

Nezumi wasn't beyond taking the pillows, however, or the blankets, if the nights were cold enough to warrant them. He had laid his leather jacket over the pillow he'd pilfered from the bed, but he could still smell the mold and dust on it, and he couldn't escape the suspicion that he also smelled like decay now.

At least I'll fit in with the rest of the Deadland population.

Nezumi sniffed at his lame joke and sat up. The photo on the wall caught his eye again.

He had noticed it last night when he was setting up for bed on the floor. It was a family portrait: Mother, father, and son, all dark-haired and bright-eyed. It appeared to be a holiday keepsake, as they were winter pale and decked out in heavy, knitted sweaters. The son looked about his age, and displayed all the long, messy-haired carelessness of youth.

Looking at his face, Nezumi was immediately reminded of Shion. They looked nothing alike in feature—Shion didn't even have brown hair anymore—but he couldn't shake the feeling of similarity. Maybe it was the devil-may-care smile, or the abominable ugliness of the sweater (which featured reindeer and Nezumi could absolutely imagine Shion wearing it).

The family in the picture looked happy, and it felt surreal to look at them when the world was in shambles, and one-third of the population shambling. Maybe that was it, then; it was the mood of the portrait, not the son, that reminded Nezumi of Shion: Disorientingly cheerful despite the nightmare that had become of the world.

Nezumi realized then why his nightmare had startled him so badly: He hadn't had one in weeks. His nights in recent memory had been dreamless. Sometimes he even dreamed of better times. He hadn't had a nightmare since the beginning of winter.

Since before Shion.

Nezumi's mood blackened. He tore his eyes from the dusty photo, snatched his bag and jacket from the floor, and pushed to his feet. The view out the second-floor windows told him that there were no zombies near to the house, but there were clusters milling around down the road. He would leave the house through the back and loop around the long way.

Nezumi hefted the pack straps over his shoulders and unsheathed his knife before creeping down the stairs.

The air tasted like ice, but the sky only held a smattering of clouds for the moment. Nezumi tiptoed around the house's corner and slunk through the quiet streets as quickly as he could. He hated being in neighborhoods. There was too much, too close together. Too many places where you had to measure your steps and worry about what was around the corner. He couldn't wait till he was back in the open.

A child zombie crawled out of the bushes directly in his path.

"Shit," Nezumi muttered. See, this was exactly why he hated ghost towns.

The zombie turned slowly at his whispered curse and sniffed the air. Apparently, he didn't smell nearly enough like mold and dust to pass the undead test, because it parted its lips and began to rumble.

Nezumi darted forward, the yellowed grass and weeds muffling his rapid footfalls, and jammed his knife up under the creature's chin before it could get off a rasp that might alert others in the area. He twisted and yanked the knife out with practiced quickness and sprung back from the zombie's wheeling arms.

It took a second, but the thing soon realized it had expired and crumpled sideways in a heap of tattered dress skirts and leathery limbs. Nezumi swiped the knife blade across the side of his thigh to clean it of residue and kept moving.

Luckily, he didn't run into any others in the neighborhood and was soon making good time back towards West Block.

It had already been two days since he left Shion, alone, in the underground room, and Nezumi's anxiety grew with each mile closer to home. There was a close by water source and enough meager rations for Shion to live on during his absence, so there should have been no reason for him to venture more than a few hundred feet from the house, and therefore no reason for Nezumi to worry about what he had gotten up to.

But Shion never did what Nezumi wanted him to do—what he needed him to do. And so Nezumi fully expected to come home to something unpleasant and unaccounted for.

He just hoped that something would not be Shion's wandering corpse.

If Shion's dead, I swear to god, I'm gonna kill him.

These vengeful thoughts accompanied Nezumi for four hours of nonstop striding through barren fields and close copses of even more barren woods.

When the toothpick outline of the West Block barricade came into view, Nezumi slowed his gait. He stood on the hillside overlooking the path he had to take back to the underground bunker and counted the black dots weaving outside the perimeter of the fence. Nine in the straightforward path alone. Nezumi pursed his lips. If he went around the long way, it would add another hour to his journey. He just wanted to be home already.

Nezumi slipped his pack off one arm and swung it around to his front. He carefully removed the vial and small container of water from the left side pocket and replaced the backpack. The vial held a small sample of his blood, which he had collected a few days ago in the safety of his own home. He always kept such vials on him when he ventured out into the Deadlands, though the number he packed depended on the length and perceived danger level of the journey.

It was a trick he had learned from another raider many years back: The scent of the blood would attract the zombies, and pull them all in one direction, away from wherever you wanted to travel. If you had to keep the blood for a few days, water was needed to revive the scent and disseminate it.

Nezumi sure footed his way down the hillside and walked perpendicular to the path home until he found a good rock, a far enough distance away. He placed the vial down, uncapped the water, and picked up a mid-sized rock. The vial shattered when he smashed the rock down, the glass shards pricking uselessly at Nezumi's leather-gloved hands. He dashed some water over the rusty remains and sprinted back up the hillside to watch.

The wind was blowing favorably from the north, and it didn't take long for the zombie silhouettes to migrate and congregate around the vial site. Zombies were obnoxious, but at least they were easily led.

Nezumi hurried toward the West Block fence. He pushed aside one of the refrigerators that made up part of the barricade and squeezed himself through the gap before tugging it back into place.

Safe.

The hypervigilance burning in Nezumi's brain uncoiled and settled into the routine buzz of suspicion. At last, he allowed himself to feel the exhausted drag on his muscles from the constant running and hiding and killing. He couldn't wait to get home, take a shower, and sleep for at least ten hours.

He headed for the bunker at a jog, still with his knife in his hand. The likelihood of an attack within the confines of West Block were low, but they weren't nil. Besides, zombies weren't the only things around here known to attack unsuspecting persons; Inukashi had picked fights with Nezumi out in the open plenty of times.

Nezumi slowed as he reached the warehouse district. There was a body lying between him and the entrance to the bunker. He leered at it as he crept closer. It wasn't unusual to stumble upon a body or two in West Block, especially in the thick of winter, but it was rare to find them all the way out here so far from civilization.

The white hair proved what he suspected: He had a neutralized zombie just yards from his home. Nezumi kicked its leg, just to make sure it was down for good, and when it didn't stir, he crouched to inspect it. The corpse was pretty far into decomp, so this wasn't a case of someone contracting the infection and turning within West Block. Either the zombie snuck in through a weakened part of the fence, or some idiot brought it in for fun. There were kids dumb enough to do such a thing, and, sadly, a good number of adults as well.

Whomever put the zombie down had used a gun—twice. There were shots in its shoulder and face. Nezumi pursed his lips and looked toward the warehouse.

He slipped down the stairs to the underground passage as quick and silent as a shadow and tested the door: Locked.

Good.

Nezumi fished his key out of his pocket and slid it into the lock. The door swung open without a sound; although the exterior of the door was rusted to hell, Nezumi had spent painstaking hours oiling the hinges until they didn't so much as whisper.

The room appeared unchanged from when he left it. The bed was neatly made; the same stacks of to-read books lay waiting on the book bench; the dented soup pot perched atop the kerosene heater, ready to be filled with the day's watery soup.

There was just one thing missing from the scene.

Nezumi locked the door behind him and took a step into the room. Three small blurs rocketed out from beneath the bed and raced up Nezumi's pant leg, squeaking up a storm. A small smile tugged at Nezumi's lips. The mice chirped from his shoulder, taking turns rubbing the sides of their faces against his neck.

Nezumi clicked his tongue. "It's not like I haven't gone on trips before. And I didn't leave you alone this time."

As if on cue, Shion came out from between the bookcases.

He had apparently just gotten out of the shower, and was in the middle of toweling off his hair, but he stopped mid-scrub at the sound of Nezumi's voice and tore the towel away from his face to gawk.

His dumbfounded expression was hilarious, and Nezumi was just about to tell him so, but Shion shouted, "You're back!" threw the towel onto the bed, and launched himself at Nezumi.

Nezumi inhaled sharply as Shion hugged him around the waist and buried his head against his unoccupied shoulder. He was warm from the shower and smelled like the lemon soap Nezumi had brought back from his last trip into the Deadlands.

"Welcome home," Shion sighed.

Nezumi held his hands out on either side of him, unsure of what to do with them. "Er, Shion? This is..."

Shion burrowed deeper against his shoulder and the tip of his nose brushed Nezumi's collarbone. Nezumi's pulse jumped.

He grasped Shion's shoulders and eased him back. Thankfully, Shion peeled away from him without a fight, but he smiled and stared at Nezumi with all the bright-eyed affection of a spaniel. His adoring gaze looked even more pathetic with the yellow smear of the healing bruise under his left eye to highlight it.

Nezumi didn't know what to do with this reception or the stupid way it made his chest feel. It had only been two days; he didn't think his return warranted this depth of excitement.

Nezumi cleared his throat. "Don't go throwing yourself all over me. It's dirty—this isn't mud on my pants."

Shion blinked and glanced at the brown smears on Nezumi's clothing. "Oh. Right. Sorry." He took a step back and his smile returned. "I'm glad you're home. I missed you."

Nezumi's eyebrows shot up. "Wow. Right… I forgot what it was like to live with you. Awkward heartfelt declarations out the ears."

He slipped his backpack off, snatched the towel from the floor where Shion had dropped it, and brushed by Shion. "I'm going to take a shower."

Nezumi washed up and stood in the shower until the warm water exhausted itself. He should have known Shion would overreact at his arrival, although he hadn't expected him to leap into his arms like some romantic heroine. Nezumi thought he had drawn the line quite clearly on what friendly interactions he would tolerate, but apparently it only took Shion two days of solitude to forget the no-touching rule. He would have to be reminded.

The showerhead flow began to transition from mild to icy. Nezumi huffed and twisted the knob off. He dressed and gave his short hair a quick fluff with the towel before throwing it blindly in the direction of the bed.

Shion made a startled sound. He had been perched on the edge of the bed, awaiting Nezumi, and had barely reacted in time to dodge the towel inadvertently lobbed at him.

Nezumi arched an eyebrow. "What are you doing just sitting there? I hoped you might have made yourself useful by heating up soup or something, but I guess I expected too much."

"I'll get something," Shion blurted, jumping to his feet. "We don't have soup, but I got…"

He disappeared into the bookcases and scrounged around, the sound of paper crinkling following him wherever he poked. Shion came out and proffered the heel of a bread loaf and a handful of dried meat strips.

"I bought these yesterday. No mold on the bread—I checked—and the meat's of mysterious origin, but it's all we could afford, and I ate it yesterday and didn't get sick, so it seems okay."

Nezumi took the food and tore off a chunk of the bread with his teeth.

"How was your trip? Did you get the ammo you needed?"

"And then some. Stole some canned food, too, so we won't have to eat mystery meat for a few days."

Nezumi indicated the bag he'd dropped by the door. Shion glanced at it with interest, but made no move to investigate. Instead, he hovered by Nezumi's side as if he wanted to be more useful, but didn't know how.

"Anything exciting happen while I was gone?" Nezumi asked, wandering a few steps toward the bookcases.

"Well, I went outside… I know you told me not to unless it was absolutely necessary, but Inukashi needed me to finish the dog washing we started. But they lent me a dog for protection, so it was perfectly safe."

Did they? Curious. It appeared Inukashi had taken a liking to Shion. Nezumi filed the tidbit away.

"And I brought my gun with me, as promised."

"Hm." Nezumi caught sight of Shion's holster, slung over the back of the faded chair. He approached and ran his fingers over the gun's grip. "Did you end up using it?"

Shion didn't answer, and Nezumi twisted around to find him looking ill at ease.

"Once," Shion said at last.

"Corpse outside says twice."

Shion paled. "It's still there?

"Of course it's still there. The dead only rise once. The body will stay there until you move it or pay someone to do it for you."

Shion swallowed and looked aside, towards the book bench where the mice had heaped in a pile for a nap.

Nezumi took a step back from the holster and chewed his bread and meat silently for a moment. "Good job."

Shion turned back to him and furrowed his brow.

"Killing the zombie," Nezumi said, although he thought it was obvious what he meant. "I wasn't totally sure you had it in you, but you pulled through when it counted. That's good."

Shion shifted and balled his fists in his sweater sleeves. His hair was still damp, but already Nezumi could see that it was going to dry in a mess. Shion's hair had a slight natural kink to it that Nezumi's didn't. While Nezumi's hair could be left to air dry and still come out straight and presentable, if Shion didn't comb his, he ended up looking like a freshly hatched cygnet.

"The zombie was chasing two kids," Shion mumbled, "and one of them was hurt. If I didn't step in, it would have gotten them."

Of course.

Of course Shion's first kill had been in the defense of two helpless children. Only the noblest of causes for His Majesty.

Nezumi scowled and stuffed the remaining meat into his mouth before heading to the bed. He was determined to sleep for the remainder of the daylight hours and not talk to Shion anymore if he could help it, but he paused just as he reached to pull the blanket down. Little brown and black hairs peppered the sheets at the foot of the bed, too big for mice and too small for humans.

"Did you," Nezumi asked, plucking a strand of hair from the blanket and inspecting it with an ever-darkening visage, "allow an animal other than the mice onto this bed?"

Shion blinked at him. Color rose, bright and fast, into his cheeks. "I...might have let…Inukashi's dog sleep over last night. With Inukashi's permission, of course."

Nezumi's mouth twitched into a grim smile. "With Inukashi's permission, huh?"

Shion performed a rapid pantomime of shame before finding his resolve and lashing back with, "You weren't here. What was I supposed to do? Mouse you?"

The mice raised their heads and squeaked, as though complaining of being dragged into this fight.

"I'm sorry," Shion muttered. "It was just the one night. I hated sleeping alone; I didn't want to do it again."

Shion stared at the ground. Nezumi refused to acknowledge the heat creeping up the back of his neck and did not comment. He released the hair pinched between his fingers and let it drift to the carpet.

"I'm going to bed. If you wouldn't mind being quiet for the next few hours, that'd be great."

Shion puffed up his cheeks. "I was just about to go out anyway, so you'll have your quiet."

Nezumi stopped halfway through the process of crawling into bed and blurted, "Out? Where?" before his brain reminded him that he didn't care and he contrived to look inconvenienced.

But really. Not half an hour ago Shion was hanging on him and whining about how much he missed him, and now he was leaving? In the forty-eight hours since Nezumi went away, Shion had somehow established a life in which he went out and did things?

Shion perked up.

"I'm going to visit the children next door, the ones I saved from the zombie. The older one is named Karan, just like my mom! Isn't that weird? It's not a common name." Shion grinned and moved towards the bookcases. "I promised I'd read to them today."

Nezumi knew there was a single mother and her children living somewhere nearby, but he hadn't cared to know more than that. But Shion would make friends with them. He had a child's trusting temperament and penchant for easy distraction.

"I just need to pick out a book, and then I'll leave you in peace."

Nezumi scowled. He glanced at the stacks of books on the book bench and seized upon one. "Here," he said as he grabbed it, "bring this one. It's perfect; it's about you."

Shion took it from him and stared down at the title of the children's book: If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. The small smile threatening his lips told Nezumi that Shion understood what he was getting at, but Shion met his eye and asked innocently, "Well, you're the mouse, so does that mean I'm the cookie?"

Nezumi snorted. "Alas, you are the mouse."

"Oh, so I've earned mouse status, have I?" Shion's gaze flitted between the slumbering rodents and Nezumi and his smile grew more pronounced. "I'm honored."

"Not so fast. You're probationary, at best."

A light laugh escaped Shion's lips. "I'll take it. And I'll take this book. I think Karan and Rico will like it. They really enjoyed meeting the mice yesterday."

Nezumi didn't like how that implied Shion had let the neighbor's children into the underground room as well as one of Inukashi's dogs, but he was exhausted and decided to let it go until morning.