Assigning rooms is easy. Meaning Annabeth thought out loud, I made some suggestions based on the people I knew and we agreed on a plan. So when she hands everyone over to me, I rattle off room assignments and that's that. Nobody argues.

Between the master suite, the state rooms, and the crew quarters, we could give everyone their own room. But we decided to pack everyone together so it's easier to keep an eye on the newcomers.

Not that I tell them that.

Five minutes for everyone to dump their stuff and then I go looking for Annabeth.

"Hey," I say.

She's sharing a room with Juniper and Calypso of all people. Either she's trying to play nice or she still doesn't trust the new girl.

"What's up," Annabeth asks.

"I just wanted to say thanks, for, you know, earlier," I say.

"It's not a big deal," she says. She brushes past me and heads for the deck.

It occurs to me that this is the second time she'd altered her plan so that we can hunt down a member of my family. I hope this doesn't turn into something I'll regret.

# # #

The trip to Miami is uneventful. I guess zombies don't do so well out on the open sea. Although, we don't get too far from land. Considering the state of things, I want to keep the shore in sight, just in case. I don' t think the Coast Guard will be responding to any distress calls.

It takes five days of constant sailing to get to Florida. Luckily, I'm not the only one who can operate the yacht.

Annabeth has always been the world's quickest learner. Jason's taken the helm of the Trident nearly as often as I have. And despite less than glowing recommendation from Calypso, it turns out that that Leo-kid is handy with anything mechanical. The four of us divide the shifts up quite easily.

I'm alone in the pilothouse right now. We're nearly to Miami and I find the peace an quiet nice. I never realized how quiet my life was until I got stuck on a boat with over a dozen teenagers.

And after this morning's news, I like the opportunity to think.

It never lasts long.

"Hey, Percy."

I turn and give Calypso a nod.

"Have you been thinking about what Nico said?"

Have I? If there is anyone on this boat that hasn't been thinking about the information that Nico was able to dig up, I would like to be them. Even if that's Clarisse.

"Yeah," is what I say.

"What are we going to do?"

Internet is spotty in these post-outbreak days, but Nico has been keeping an eye on wireless signals, radio signals, anything coming over the "wire". What he's been able to piece together does not paint a good picture of the state of the world. He'd come to Annabeth and I last night and told us what he's seen over the last few days.

This morning, we'd gathered everyone and told them that as far as we could tell, the world has gone to hell. An apt description when the dead are literally walking in the streets. Every country with a major airport has been hit. Annabeth thinks the original virus was some sort of injection or aerosol, so who knows how long and how far people got before the virus finished incubating. Based on what she's read since last night, less than 24 hours.

Any hope that maybe this was an Americas only problem is gone. She threw out names like London, Munich, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Cairo, Shanghai, Mumbai and a few other names I recall from World Culture.

I haven't seen much of Annabeth at all today—or for the last five days, really. She's mostly been avoiding me.

"I don't know, Calypso. Maybe we'll get more info once we get to Miami."

Annabeth hoped things might calm down after the initial outbreak

When we sail into the port at Miami, it looks half empty. I drop the anchor quite a ways out. We'll use the motorboat to get to the shore. Less risk for the rest of the party.

"We're here," Annabeth announces as she pokes her head in the door. At least she save d me the trouble of hunting her down.

She's developed this habit of acknowledging Calypso's presence and then completely ignoring her unless direct conversation is necessary.

"I know," I say.

All of us head down to the lowest deck. Jason and Luke are already getting the boat ready with the help of the Stoll brothers. I still have a hard time trusting them. It's not that I think they'd murder me in my sleep, but I wouldn't put it past them to steal my wallet while I slept or cover my bed in shaving cream, if everything on this boat wasn't on a strict ration.

One of the reasons I'm glad I'm not Annabeth right now. I don't think I could function as well as she does with the amount of painkillers she's allowing herself. Her arms aren't covered in gauze anymore, but they still look painful. One wrist, where the stitches were torn by her fall, she still has a thick bandage most of the day. I'm just glad we managed to pick up some antibiotics in Montauk. I don't know what we would have done if anything got infected.

"You ready?" Luke asks.

Annabeth nods.

"Are you sure about this?" Thalia detaches herself from a doorway. She looks about as happy as a thunder cloud. "We haven't been able to get ahold of Tyson's nanny."

Before I can reply, Annabeth is speaking.

"We've got to try." She shoulders her pack and looks at me. Thalia isn't done.

"I still think you should take more back-up."

Annabeth and I both shake our heads.

"We'll be in and out faster with just the two of us," I say. Convincing everyone of that had taken up more time this morning than the news. But Annabeth was right, and if there was anyone that I trusted to get me and my brother out of Miami, it was her. "Give us until dawn. If you haven't heard from us by then, you go." That would give us, roughly sixteen hours. I hop into the boat, holding out my hand to help Annabeth in. If her knee still bothers her, you can't tell from, watching her. And trust, me I've been watching her like a hawk.

"Thalia," she says. "If anything looks like trouble, you guys leave, okay? Percy and I will be able to manage until you get back." Of course, they'd be back in two days at noon. Annabeth thought of everything.

We head inland in silence. I'm tying up the boat at a dock when Annabeth finally speaks.

"What were you and Calypso talking about?"

I turn, expecting a scowl, but she seems open enough. Girls. One minute a subject is taboo and the next, they want all the details.

"Nothing much," I say. "Just discussing where we go from here. You know, in the grand scheme of things."

Annabeth nods. "Oh."

She clambers out of the boat and hands me Riptide. I sling the sheath over my shoulder and tighten the straps. She bends down and grabs her crossbow. The conversation appears over. I hope it's over. Again, I try to avoid pissing Annabeth off when she has a loaded weapon. "Looks clear," she says.

"Guess we should find a car then."

"Gods, Percy, if your father could only see the way I've corrupted you."

I laugh. "Did you see how disappointed the Stoll brothers were that they couldn't come?"

I am rewarded with a grin. It was true. They had been all for a full-on raid of Miami, but Annabeth had wanted to see what the city was like before we let the whole group loose.

Miami is quiet. Not empty, but quiet. With just the two of us, it's easier to escape the zombie's notice. As long as we keep downwind and at a good distance, they don't bother us. They seem to have spread out now that the food sources are depleted.

Which does not bode well for either us or my brother.

The streets are little short on Maseratis at the moment, but we do find a nice Camaro. Annabeth rolls her eyes, but gets in the car anyways.

"You and your cars, Percy Jackson," she says. She picks at the bandage on her wrist. "She likes you, you know."

Our car narrowly misses a light pole.

"What?"

Annabeth won't look at me. I put my eyes back on the road and hit the gas again.

"You mean, Calypso?" I ask. I can feel her eyes on me now, but something keeps me from looking at her. Fear, I think.

"Yes," she says. Her voice is steadier this time.

"What of it?" I mean, seriously, where does Annabeth get off acting like my love life is any of her business? That is just not...true.

"I just thought you should know," she says and she turns away from me. She doesn't talk to me for the rest of ride to my dad's condo. Yeah. My dad is one of those guys. Actually, I think between my dad and my uncles there is Kronos family property in every major city in the country. Because, you know, staying in hotels we don't own would be beneath us.

We turn a few heads as we speed into the nice part of town. All of them undead. But they can't keep up, so I don't play "Bowling for Zombies" as good as hitting something with my car promises to make me feel. I have to focus.

The neighborhood around Conch Properties didn't do as well as the neighborhood around Elysium Heights.

I wonder why.

Did we just have more warning? Did it spread further in Miami before people turned cannibal? There are so many things about this outbreak that we just know. And if that's bugging me, it's got to be killing Annabeth. I bet if they'd put her in a room with all the data they had and a bunch of scientists she could find a cure for this thing, no problem.

"This doesn't look good," I say.

And it doesn't.

The glass doors of the condominium are broken, their edges smeared with blood. Dead bodies are littered across the lobby. Half a body stirs as we step into the room. It was a woman. She starts pulling herself towards us with a mangled hand. Blood oozes in a trail behind her.

I freeze.

A bolt buries itself in her forehead.

"C'mon, Percy," Annabeth says, pulling the arrow out of the woman's skull like she wasn't once a human being. Like she wasn't once...oh gods. Bile rises in my throat, but I push it back down and start searching the bodies on the ground. Looking for tousled blonde hair.

"Percy," Annabeth says. "Percy!"

"That was Tyson's nanny, Annabeth...he could be...he could be..."

Annabeth's fingernails dig into my arm.

"Percy," she says again. "Let's check upstairs first."

"But what if he's..."

She has her hands on both my shoulders now. I think she's the only reason I'm sobbing. You can't look at those eyes and feel helpless. It's ridiculous, but looking at her makes me feel like she could fix everything.

"If he's not there I will help you search every floor until we find him," she says. "Besides, wouldn't he have been with your stepmom?"

I shake my head.

"No, she and dad went out to sea before all of this went down."

They were supposed to be working their problems out, so Tyson had been left behind. Did they even know what was going on? What if they came back to port and had no idea about the zombies? No, they'd have to know. There were too many signs to miss it.

"Let's look upstairs first, Percy."

Following Annabeth, I head upstairs. We're halfway up before I realize that the reason I am following her is that she's holding my hand. I glance over at her. She gives me a small smile and drops my hand.

Just like in New York, my dad has a top floor penthouse. Unlike in New York, he didn't have an older brother to keep him from occupying THE top floor. We have to climb a lot of stairs.

As we climb I try to think about something, anything but the very, very likely fact that my little brother was zombie food. I actually do a reasonable job until we find the door to my dad's apartment open.

"Annabeth..."

And this time I do let her go first.

Annabeth is in my dad's apartment for what seems like hours.

One minute I'm focused on the fact that I needlessly took both of us from the safety of the Trident into the middle of a zombie apocalypse—. The next, I'm beating myself up for not getting here faster. We could have sailed all night. There were enough of us. I could have done it. Let the rest of them take care of the daytime navigating. I could have...

"Percy." She has that exasperated look on her face that says she's probably called my name four times already.

"Come on, I need your help with something."

The condo looks like a scene from a bad zombie movie. Somebody is in bits on the sofa. There's blood smeared on every wall. Anything that was breakable is broken. Even the glass on some of the pictures. There's our family picture from last Christmas

My dad has a hand on my shoulder. Amphitrite is attempting to look pleases, but if you know her, you know that the smile is fake. She's gotten really good at pretending to be happy over the years. Tyson is next to me. He's six in the photo, and he's looking up at me like I'm some sort of superhero.

"Percy, hurry up," Annabeth says.

She grabs, pulling me past all of the blood and gore. I follow. She pulls me in to the kitchen.

"Seriously?" I say. "I'm busy realizing that I'm the worst brother in the world and you're focused on getting supplies?"

"Percy." Annabeth points to the pantry.

Or to where the pantry should be. But it's blocked by one of my dad's heavy bookshelves.

"But why?"

"I don't know, but I think we should find out."

It takes both of us to move the bookshelf. By the time we're done, there's blood spotting the gauze at Annabeth's wrist.

"I'm fine," she says as she twists the handle and opens the door.

I find I can't move. It's like I'm afraid of what might be in there.

"Percy," she says softly.

"Percy?" a tiny voice echoes.

Annabeth jumps out of the way before I can go right through her. I yank the door open and light spills into the pantry where my little brother huddles in a corner surrounded by open jars of peanut butter and empty boxes of Little Debbie snack cakes.

Tyson jumps up, shedding crumbs and clear plastic wrappers. I meet him halfway, dropping to my knees so I can wrap my arms around his little shoulders. He smells like peanut butter and sugar.

"Hey big guy," I say. "Are you okay?"

We don't stay in the pantry long. It stinks. He must have been in there for several days.

Annabeth goes to scrounge around in his room for clothes that don't smell like stale snack cakes and pee, while I try to calm him down. For a long time, he just cries.

"Percy, you wanna help him wash off?" she asks, handing me a stack of clean clothes. That finally gets his attention.

"Who're you?" he asks, looking up at her.

Annabeth smiles and crouches down in front of him.

"I'm Annabeth. Percy's friend. I've been helping him fight off all the bad monsters."

"You fight monsters?" Tyson asks. He looks from Annabeth back up to me.

I nod.

"C'mon, big guy, let's go get you cleaned off. We've got Thalia and Jason and everyone waiting for us."

Tyson looks offended.

"I can take a bath by myself, Percy," he says.

I give his hair a good tousle.

"Okay, but you gotta take a shower, like we do at the pool. We don't have any time to play today."

Tyson nods very seriously. I follow him into the bathroom and make sure the shower isn't too hot. Then he chases me out of the bathroom.

"Okay, but I'm going to be right outside with Annabeth, okay?"

Tyson nods. He closes the door. A second later he's opened it just enough to stick his head through.

"Percy, is Annabeth your girlfriend?" He asks the question in that husky voice that kids use before they quite figure out how to whisper.

"Um, no." I say.

He shuts the door quickly.

"Five minutes, Tyson I say." Then I turn around to see Annabeth standing in Tyson's doorway, a stuffed Transformers back pack slung over her shoulder and an amused smile on her face.

"Do you think we should look in the pantry?" I ask. I'm probably bright red. I feel like I'm at least "slightly sunburnt" on the color spectrum. Possibly glowing neon.

Gods, I wish I knew where I stood with her. Things would be so much easier.

"Probably," she says. "Wanna make it a game. We could try holding our breath and switching off when we need to breathe."

My grin cannot be restrained.

"I'm totally taking you down, Chase."

It only takes one go through to realize that Tyson has cleared out pretty much all of the non-perishables. Some of them are all over the floor. There's a large Tupperware container in a corner that neither of us get to close to. We grab what we can and then I go to check on my brother.

"Time's up, Tyson. Get out of the shower and get dried off."

His clothes are a little wet when he comes out of the bathroom.

"How did you get in the closet," I ask as I help him tie his shoelaces.

"Doris and Mr. Homer put in there and told me to be really quiet. It was really hard, Percy. I heard a lot of screaming. And after a long time, the light went out."

"Yeah, well you did an awesome job," I say. "You were really brave. But you can't be done being brave just yet."

"Okay," Tyson says.

"Okay, we're gonna put your back pack on and then we're going to go downstairs and go join Thalia and Jason." I get down low so I can look Tyson in the eye. "I need you to be really quiet for a little bit longer and listen to everything Annabeth says. Can you do that?"

"Yeah."

I take his hand in mine and we head for the stairs.

We're at the bottom when Annabeth holds her hand up. She places her hand on the pushbar and presses her ear against the door. She's answered by a loud slap. All three of us jump and Tyson shoves his hand over his mouth trying to keep quiet.

"The people in the lobby," Annabeth whispers. She crouches down and peers under the door.

"Can you see anything?"

"A lot of shoes," she says.

"Try the alley."

We head to the service door and Annabeth opens that one slowly. She slams the door shut again.

"Gods, Percy, they're everywhere."

Tyson whimpers.

"It's okay," I say. "It's okay."

"But the monsters are going to get me."

"No. I'm not gonna let them."

I glance up at Annabeth.

"Is the alley or the lobby clearer?" I ask.

"Lobby, maybe?"

If the knotting in my gut had a facial expression, it would look exactly like Annabeth's face looks like right now.

"We can't stay here forever, Percy," she says. "We have to get out-"

"I know." I grab Tyson's arms. "Tyson, this is important. I'm going to go fight the monsters, but I need you to stay with Annabeth. Okay? You wait until she says run and then you run. Okay?" Tyson nods.

"Promise me. Promise me that you'll do everything Annabeth says."

Tyson nods again.

"No!" Annabeth nearly shouts. "I'm not leaving you."

"I've got a plan," I say. "I'll distract them. Then you and Tyson make a run for it."

"But you'll be killed!"

"I'll be fine. Besides, we've got no choice." I grab Annabeth's arm and pull her away from Tyson. "He has a better chance with you. I'm counting on you to keep him safe. Please."

Annabeth glares at me. I'm pretty sure that she's gonna punch me. And then she does something that surprises me even more.

She kisses me.

"Be careful, Seaweed Brain."

I would have stood there all day trying to remember what my name was, but a thud on the alley door jolts me back to reality.

I pull out Riptide. Annabeth is already handing Tyson one of her knives. And I'm really glad that dad taught Tyson how to clean fish last year. At least he knows what to do with a knife now.

I burst through the lobby door. Hacking and cutting my way through the zombies. A zombie takes an arrow to the eye and I glance behind me to see Annabeth standing in the doorway, aiming her crossbow at the zombies. Tyson cowers behind her with wide eyes. Between the two of us, we're able to thin the ranks a little.

I cut down three more zombies and then run out into the street, yelling as loudly as I can.

"Go!" I shout between zombies. I've got them away from the Camaro for now, but I'm not sure how long that'll last. Three more zombies go down before I see Annabeth streak past me, Tyson in her arms.

"Percy," he calls my name. But there's too many of them. I'm the only one standing between them and the zombies.

"Go!" I yell again. "I'll meet you at the dock." How exactly I'm going to do that, I don't know. Tires squeal as Annabeth backs the Camaro away from the curb and shoots past the zombies, taking a few of them out on her way. I do the only smart thing I can think of: I run.

I have until dawn to get away, find another car and get back to the boat.

I hope I can manage.

Alright, guys, I'm still alive. I promise! And I'm still working on this story. I'm just trying to work really hard on my serious projects too. But I've finished draft one of that thing and I'm not allowed to touch it for 30 days.

I have the next couple chapters already written up, it's just a matter editing. I hope to have one more chapter up by the end of today or at the latest by tomorrow afternoon. Enjoy!

P.S. I'm loving all the feedback, I'm glad ya'll are enjoying this. You guys are why I keep writing this stuff. Thank you so, so much!