"Justin, you know I didn't plan on having to leave you alone like this, but these things sometimes happen."

"You can't leave Mom," he pled, bawling like a baby.

"It's just for a few days, Grandma will be here with you the whole time. Daddy and I will be home by Saturday, I promise. Now, try to be a big boy, your almost an adult after all."

"I don't want you to go, what if you don't come back," he whined.

"You have to be brave Justin. Can you be brave for me?"

He shook his head no, clutching his favorite teddy bear to his chest. "You won't come back, I know it. You're both gonna die!"

"Justin, don't talk back to your Mother like that," his Grandmother's voice said from behind him. He turned to look at her, and his heart stopped. The rotting corpse that stood in front of him, dressed in the rags in what had been his Grandmother's favorite dress couldn't possibly be his Grandma, and that would mean it had already started. "What are you staring at Justin?" the creature demanded in his Grandmother's voice once more. He whimpered, backing away until he backed into his mother.

"Justin! Answer your Grandmother!" his mother said. He spun around and looked at her face, wanting to ask her why she didn't see the same creature he saw. But she was just another rotten corpse, like his Grandmother. "Aw, what's wrong Justin, you look like you've seen a ghost," she said, smiling a ghastly smile. He screamed, bolting for the door into the dining room. But there was all his family, rotting corpses, seated around the table, calling out to him. Even Jesse and Jamie were there.

"Justin. Join us Justin. We're just having a little dinner, hopefully you can be the main course," the corpses all chanted. All except for Jesse and Jamie. Somehow they stood before him, their flesh falling in shreds from their little faces. They spoke together.

"Why did you let us die Justin? You could have saved us. Now, you have to become one of us."

He screamed again as the lights suddenly went out and he could feel dozens of hands tearing at him all over, mouths biting, trying desperately to devour him.

With a start, Justin came awake, looking frantically at his surroundings. The twins were playing around in the cubicles, searching through desk drawers for things to break or play with. As his heart beat slowed, the teenager realized it had all been just a bad dream, probably brought on by the fear of the impending night. He sighed, leaning back against the wall and watching the sunlight come streaming through the windows above him. It was mid-afternoon yet, still plenty hours of daylight left. The others would be back soon from the department store with the flashlights, so he tried to convince himself that there was no reason to fear the coming darkness. He felt ashamed of himself for being afraid, not even the twins seemed frightened, giggling as they found something in a desk drawer that amused them. With his thoughts focused in that direction, he was ill prepared for the voice that spoke from the shadows nearby.

"They don't really care if you and those kids there live or die, you know. To them, you're all expendable."

"What are you talking about?" he asked, startled. He rose to his feet, meeting Richard's eyes as the man came out of the shadows.

"The others, Sean, Aaron, Emily...all the rest of them. They'd leave you all to die if it helped them to survive."

"But..That..That's crazy! Emily, she promised my Mom she'd help me look after the twins," the youth protested.

"Because she would have said anything to a dying woman. People always make promises to the dying, just to ease their own conscious. They rarely mean them."

"You're lying!"

"Are you sure of that?" Richard taunted. "The very lives of you and your little cousins could all depend on whether or not you make the right decisions. Trust the right people."

"And you're supposed to be the 'right people' for me to trust, is that it?" the boy demanded.

"You could do worse."

"Yea, well, all I know is, my Mom was fine until we met up with you. Then you started pushing for us to leave, even though we were safe at the bus station. Next thing we know, those things are swarming and you got your wish, we were on the bus. Just like you wanted. I'd say I have a lot more reason to trust someone who makes promises to my Mom over someone who got her killed."

"I didn't kill your mother Justin, those creatures did. They broke into the bus station, and sooner or later they're going to get in here. They'll kill those two kids and yourself, just like they killed your Mom. Unless we do something about it. We have to make our escape while we can."

"How did those things get in the garage?"

"How should I know? They must have found a weak spot."

"After all those weeks?"

"They haven't impressed me with having much intelligence, I'm sure it was just blind luck on their part."

"Or someone let them in."

"That would have been suicide. Do I look like I want to die?"

"No," the teen admitted gruffly.

"I can be the best friend you've got around here," Richard said cautiously, trying to choose the best words to convince the teen to help him. "I know where there's a safe place, safer than this building, with lots of other people around. People with guns who can keep you and those two kids alive and safe. It's almost like a real city, with all the benefits and almost none of the consequences."

"What do mean? All the benefits and almost none of the consequences?"

"There's a club there with everything a young man like yourself could ever dream of. Booze, women, music, drugs, gambling. Everything. And if you know the right people, with the right connections, there's no law to stop you from enjoying all of it. You'd pretty much have free rein with your life. No more school and teachers. No curfews. You'd be the boss of yourself." He could tell from the boy's body language that he'd made at least a little chink in his armor. If he could keep up the pressure, he was pretty sure he'd be able to sway him.

"What makes you so sure it's safe there?"

"It's protected on three sides by the river, the fourth side, they've got it set up with electric fences, they span all the way across the land, hot enough to fry anything that comes in contact with them."

"What...what about bridges? There's always bridges to places like that."

"Smart lad. There are four bridges that span across to the city, three of them have barricades in place, the other is a drawbridge that's been raised. All of them are impenetrable."

"So how are we supposed to get to this place if the bridges are blocked and there's a fence across the land?" Justin asked skeptically.

"If we can make it to the docks a few blocks from here, my boss will have a boat there to meet us. As long as we can make it there on time."

"On time. As in, 'oops, so sad, you're five minutes late, sorry you have to die now' kind of on time?"

"No, nothing that drastic," Richard scoffed. "There's always a back up plan in place."

"And what would that be?"

"Why should I tell you? You don't believe me that the others are a threat against you and the kids."

"No, I don't. But if you want me to turn my back on them, you're gonna have to be a helluva lot more specific."

Richard was impressed. For a terrified kid who'd been whimpering in his sleep a short time before, he was turning out to be a shrewd little negotiator. It would definitely pay to have someone like that on his side.

"Okay kid. I'll bite. There's another location on the far side of the river where we'll be able to gain access to the safe zone. It's kind of a rally point for people moving around out here in the war zone. There's an access door there to a secure subway tunnel that stretches beneath the river and runs right up to the city. It's the only access spot besides the river."

"Why would you call it a rally point? The only people out here are survivors like us, holed up inside buildings."

"Nah. Being barricaded inside the city isn't without its little hardships. We have to send out raiding parties to get supplies, food, clothing, medicines. Usually in the towns out-skirting the area where the populations are a little more sparse."

"Is that...is that safe ?"

"It's not without risk. But what's life other than one big risk."

"What would I have to do? To go to this safe place," Justin whispered hoarsely.

"Just be ready to do what I tell you to do, when I tell you to do it."

"That's it?"

"That's it. And it goes without saying that none of the others can know what I've told you."

"What about Jesse and Jamie?"

"They'll be fine, just so long as you hold up your end of our bargain. Do we have a deal?" Richard asked, thrusting his hand out towards the teen. Justin just nodded mutely. "It's customary to shake hands when coming to a verbal agreement," the older man chided.

After Richard left the office area, Jesse and Jamie came over to confront their cousin.

"What'd the scary man want?" Jesse asked without preamble. He was the more blunt of the twins.

"Nothing, he was just telling me that the others should be back with the lights soon."

Jamie looked at him inscrutably for a minute, just staring as if she could see right through him and into his mind. "You're lying," she said softly.

"No, I'm...What would make you say I'm lying?" Justin asked, surprised.

"You have a tell. You should probably never play poker, you'd lose all your money. Or your clothes. Depending on what you were betting I guess."

"What! Jamie, where are you getting these ideas?"

"Well, Tara was telling me about how sometimes people will play games like poker for money, but sometimes they'll play it for clothes and the losers actually lose the clothes off their backs..."

"Yea, I get that. Youshouldn't know anything about stuff like that at your age though," Justin insisted, which just earned him a pair of rolled eyes from his little cousin. "And what do you know about tells?"

"Tara told me that sometimes, if you watch people enough, you can tell when they're bluffing. Some people have, like, a nervous twitch or a tic or something. Then other people, they'll do something, like, maybe tug on their ear lobe or run their hand through their hair or something dumb."

"Okay, what's my so-called 'tell?' If I really have one."

"You flare your nostrils," she laughed.

"I do what?"

"You flare your nostrils. Whenever you lie, they just, whoosh. And they're, like, totally huge and it looks like you had a really bad nose job or somethin'. I used to notice it when me and Jess were little and Aunt Vicki would baby-sit us when Mom was workin' nights and we'd stay at your house. You'd come in late all the time and then try to bluff your way past Aunt Vicki and it would never work. You always got busted."

"And she'd sick Dad on me," Justin said softly, smiling sadly at the memory. At the time being grounded, stuck home on the weekends cleaning the garage and working in the yard had seemed like the end of the world to him. Now he'd give just about anything to be able to hear his parents say something like, "This hurts me more than it does you," or "Someday you'll thank us for this."

"Thanks for the walk down memory lane, but you didn't answer my question," Jesse said angrily. "I'm tired of everyone treating us like we're nothin' but a couple of dumb kids. We deserve to know the truth, you don't have to protect us."

Justin was momentarily speechless. It was hard to remember he was talking to a couple of 9-year olds, not with the kind of logic they were spouting at him this afternoon. "Look, I can't say much, not yet. All I can tell you is this, we're gonna be leaving here soon and going someplace safe. I need you to trust me on this."

"What you're planning, does it involve the creep?" Jamie asked.

"Yea, it involves Richard. I don't trust him, but I don't really trust the others either."

"Emily's nice, you can trust her," Jesse said quietly.

"So's Tara," his sister added. "She talks to me like I'm a grown-up."

"Look, I know you like them, but we have to do what's best for us. We can't trust Richard, not 100 percent, but he's the only chance we have of getting out of here and someplace safe. What have the others done?"

"Emily and Tara helped barricade this place up, so it's safe," Jamie said.

"We're also trapped. What will we do when we run out of food and water? We'll slowly die, that's what. And when we die, we'll become those things and try to attack the others. Or they'll die and try to attack us. Either way, we're dead if we stay here."

"I don't want to die Justin."