Outside it was a warm midsummer day. It was that time of the afternoon when the sun flashed off of the leaves and grass and made the whole world glow gold. The softest of breezes touched Bella's hair as she followed Rosalie across the grass to where the SUV was parked behind a stand of twisted oaks, and if she hadn't witnessed the horror herself, she would never have believed that the world had fallen apart.

Rosalie's expression was confident, but as Bella stumbled along behind the blonde she could see the tension in Rosalie's neck and shoulders, in the stiff way that she clutched the machete. There were more scratches, long, deep ones on the back of Rosalie's arms, and Bella wondered what Rosalie's story was, and how she had fallen in with the cryptic bronze-haired man.

When they reached the SUV Rosalie seemed to relax a little. She circled the SUV to make sure that there wasn't anything hiding on the other side of it, and she also crouched down to glance under the car. Once she was certain that they were alone, she opened the back door of the car and gestured for Bella to climb in. Bella gratefully dropped both of the backpacks into the SUV, but hesitated before getting in herself. Rosalie seemed normal enough, if a little cold, but Bella was still reluctant to climb into a vehicle belonging to gun and machete toting strangers.

Rosalie watched her with those stunning eyes and seemed to understand the source of her indecision. "Look at it this way," she said frankly, "what other options do you have?"

They looked at each other for a moment, silently, and they both knew that Bella didn't have any other options. "Thanks," Bella said finally, and climbed in the car.

"Good choice," Rosalie said, getting in the driver's seat. "We have a sort of makeshift camp a few miles from here," she said. "It's good. It's in the middle of a lake. On an island," she clarified when Bella's eyes widened. "It used to be some kind of fishing hotspot or something. There's only one bridge out there, and it's pretty narrow. Easy to defend."

"They can't swim?" Bella asked, ripping open a bag of chips and seizing a handful of them. They both knew who she was referring to.

"Not exactly," Rosalie said, adjusting the rear view mirror so that she could see her own reflection. She touched one of the mosquito bites on her face and frowned. "We've had one or two try to paddle across, but they're not very coordinated, as you've probably noticed. They're bad at walking and even worse at swimming." She combed through her hair with her fingers, but even as she primped with one hand, she gripped the machete with the other.

Bella nodded in response, her mouth full of chips. Glorious, glorious food, she thought, reaching for the chocolate bar and breaking off a big piece. She heard Rosalie make a surprised sound and felt obliged to explain. "I haven't eaten in days," she said, covering her mouth as she spoke so that she didn't accidently spit crumbs across the car. "I don't usually eat like this but I'm starving…" Literally, she thought.

She glanced up to see Rosalie's reaction, but the woman wasn't looking at her. A man was emerging from a stand of trees several yards away, and Rosalie's eyes had gone very wide and were fixed on him. Before Bella could even make out the man's features, she knew from the look on Rosalie's face that he wasn't one of the living.

The chocolate bar slipped from Bella's fingers and fell the floor of the car. "He can't get us in here, right?"

Rosalie hit the lock button on her door, popping down all of the locks in the car. "We're not going to stay here long enough to find out," she said grimly, "can you drive?" She twisted around in her seat to look at Bella and frowned at what she saw. "No, you can't drive," she said, "you look like you're ready to faint. I'll drive; you keep an eye out for Edward. "

"I'm not going to faint," Bella protested, climbing into the front seat, even though that brought her closer to the hideous, limping creature with his mauled face and bloodshot dead eyes. I might throw up though, she thought. "Who's Edward?"

"The man who found you," Rosalie said, starting the car and putting it into reverse. For some reason the name sounded familiar to Bella, but she didn't have a chance to analyze it because suddenly there was a thud and a popping sound from the back of the SUV.

"Oh my God," Rosalie turned around in her seat. "Jesus. I hit one."

"There are more?" Bella turned, but she couldn't see anything through the back windshield but a smear of blood that was dripping down the glass.

"I knocked him over. Hold on," the car jerked forward, and Bella braced herself with a hand on the dashboard as Rosalie quickly turned the steering wheel, narrowly avoiding missing the dead man who was advancing on them from the front. The corpse reached out with one decaying hand, and Bella had a glimpse of bone fingers and gnashing, chipped teeth before they were shooting past the creature. Her stomach lurched and she reflexively reached for her seatbelt. Rosalie was driving like a wild woman, and Bella didn't want to get thrown from the car into the waiting arms of one of those creatures.

"What about the man… Edward?" Bella asked quickly. "Where is he?"

"That way," Rosalie said, pointing to the left as she turned the car to the right.

"We're not leaving him!" Bella protested, with such vehemence that she surprised herself. She'd only just met him, after all.

"No, we're not," Rosalie agreed. "But we're going to have to take the long way to get to him. I'm not risking getting the car stuck in one of those ditches. That would get us all killed."

Bella nodded her agreement reluctantly, but Rosalie hadn't been waiting for permission. She swerved onto a road that was marked "Park Rangers Only" and nearly swiped the sign in her haste.

"Listen for gunshots," Rosalie ordered her, "He'll use his knife unless he's outnumbered, so if we hear shots something is seriously wrong."

"His knife?" Bella couldn't imagine getting close enough to one of the creatures to knife them, but she rolled down her window down a few inches, listening for shots.
"What are you putting your window down for?" Rosalie gasped. "Are you crazy? Roll it up."

"You said to listen for shots," Bella said, "how am I supposed to hear them with the window up? Watch out," she added, as a half clothed woman who had been clawed and bitted clean down to the bone staggered across the road.

Instead of swerving, Rosalie floored it. There was a bang and the woman went flying. "Oh God!" This time Bella did gag. "You hit her!"
"I'm not going to swerve and risk getting in an accident," Rosalie told her. "Do you want to crash, black out and wake up to someone snacking on you?"

Bella was too busy gagging again to answer her.