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The next morning I awoke happier than normal, and if Rachel heard anything from the night before, she kept it to herself. We dragged out what little food we hadn't secured inside the cabin and made a farewell feast for breakfast. Everybody seemed in a somewhat cheery mood, maybe the prospect of just moving forward, even into danger, was more comforting than sitting still. Then we each broke out the largest camping packs Rachel had scavenged and began to pack.

We all packed together, and agreed that we each should carry a few basic things in case we were to get separated. We each took a map, some basic tools, a compass, binoculars, food, matches, a basic medical kit (we badly needed to find antibiotics and painkillers in case something serious were to happen), containers for water, cooking utensils and some clothing. I was amazed at how fast such a big bag filled up, and how much it already weighed.

Rachel marked each map with a few locations along the route in case we got separated on the way; we were to wait 48 hours until the whole group was together until we moved on, doing so at every one of the spots until, in her words, "We are sure something happened." She said we needed to remember to keep this up the whole trip because it was easy to get lost, and not so easy to find your way back without a rendezvous point.

Rachel insisted we each find a decent sized blade to use, as well as two pistols, one of the .45 caliber ones, and one of the 9mm ones so that we wouldn't have to rely on just one type of round. She really was a smart girl when you got her thinking, and I got the impression she spent a lot of time thinking.

The exciting part was when we got our pick of the big guns before they too, were locked up for the winter with the remainder of the supplies we couldn't carry. King took one of the assault rifles the military issued; he told me that's what he trained with when he first entered the National Guard, he was used to it, and if Rachel was right about the amount of military prescence in the cities, then ammunition could be easily scavenged.

Rachel balked at his decision, but said nothing more than "suppressing fire doesn't work on walkers" before leaving the issue. King also took a menacing looking sickle-like machete that looked as likely to hurt him as a walker, despite my protests.

I took the same scoped rifle Rachel had taken off me when we first, uhhh...'met'. I figured the range might come in handy, and even the big retail chain stores across the south carried the caliber ammo it used, so again, practicality over flash. Rachel approved of that, as well as King, and I picked what King called a 'K-bar' knife, which again, was military issue so bound to be durable.

Rachel on the other hand took none of the guns, but instead grabbed the compound bow and as many bolts as she could strap to her pack. "We have to be quiet, whether we take down roamers or..." she trailed off for a second before continuing, her gaze distancing for a moment "we just have to be quiet. Noise attracts attention from the living and the dead, and we can't be shooting rounds off all the time. Knives first always, guns only in an emergency, and as a deterrent to anybody that might see us."

"Well a bow isn't gonna deter anything but small game," challenged King, "at least take this." He grabbed the same shotgun Rachel had held us up with in our first encounter. "Shotgun ammo has to be the easiest to find out of all these guns, and the sound of that shell racking in the chamber sure scared the shit outta me."

The coyote opened her mouth to protest, then thought better of it, slinging the bow over her shoulder and taking the shotgun. She was a pragmatist above all else, and although I would say she only tolerated King at the moment, she was not one to argue with sound advice. She grabbed a couple boxes of shells from the closet before she locked it up for good.

All told we must have been carrying 60+ pounds of gear and what little space was left in the packs King and I started filling with as many boxes of ammunition as would fit. When I looked over at Rachel however, the top of her pack didn't have a single extra round in it, but rather a bunch of books. Before I could even say anything on the matter, King strode over to her pack.

"What the hell is this girl thinking? The dead _and_the living are apparently out to kill us, and what's she gonna do? Throw a novel at them? What the hell is all this?" He tossed a couple books on the ground, each kicking up their own cloud of dust as they slapped the earth.

"PUT THAT DOWN!" bellowed the coyote as she came from within the cabin, shocking King into dropping the book currently in his paw onto the ground with the others.

"Well what is all 'that' missy," he screamed back, gesturing towards the books splayed across the ground, "and why aren't you using the last of the space in this pack to carry something that will keep us alive?" shaking the box of cartridges he was currently holding in her direction as an example.

"These," she said, shaking the dirt off the books as she picked them off the ground, "are going to keep us alive just as much as those bullets. You can read can't you?" she sounded off angrily.

"Of course I can read!" protested the lion.

"Then read the covers dumbass! 'General Principles of First Aid', 'Medical Diagnosis and Treatment', 'Edible Plants of North America', 'Basic Wilderness Survival Guide'," she lectured him as she tossed the book after book back into her bag. "Unless you are a physician, an outdoor survivalist, and a surgeon, if one of us gets sick or we need to find food or shelter it would be helpful to have some help instead of standing there with our dick's in our hands, although I know you two would love that too," she finished, throwing a searing glare in my direction as well.

"Hey," I protested softly, "I actually think that's really smart," dampening the angry look on coyote's muzzle, and placing a look of total resentment from King.

As Rachel finished putting her pack back into place, King walked over to me, lips tight and brows low in anger. Before he could say anything I cut him off, "Sorry love but the girl has brains," I said quietly as I leaned next to him to tie up the rest of my pack, "we ought to make use of them." The lion huffed in response but made no further argument, and in no time we were all packed and ready for the road.

After a wave back at the cabin we started back to the trail King and I had been on weeks ago, apparently we were at least on the right track when it came to looking for civilization. Despite the weeks of outdoor labor, the packs proved heavy, and we had to take frequent breaks. King lightened up after a while despite the strenuous hike, and I was just happy to be moving forward. But over time, I noticed Rachel get quieter and quieter. Her ears stayed perked constantly, and she watched the woods like something was waiting to jump out at us all the time. In a way something was always waiting for us, but we were still in the woods, and my ears and nose always picked up the roamers before they got anywhere close. Something was up with her, but I couldn't pin it down at the moment, maybe it was just nerves from leaving what was her home for months and months.

As we got used to the weight, found our pace, and in a few days of repetitive walking, camping, sleeping, waking, and then walking again, we reached the outskirts of a small town called Mellville, pop. 5483 - at least when the whole town was alive. Rachel's only remark as we started down the small two-lane road into the town was that this town was the furthest south she had ventured from the cabin, and to pay attention. Although she always told us to pay attention.

Even here in this little town I could see what Rachel was talking about the other night. Cars were haphazardly left everywhere, crashed onto sidewalks, and some even smashed into buildings. The road we walked led right down the town's main street of small, quaint businesses. Here and there a random roamer could be seen, but they were slow, and as long as we kept walking quickly we could pretty easily put some distance between us and them. The coyote led the way with King in the rear, and here my anxiety began to rise. You never noticed how many little gaps and alleyways were between the houses and businesses in a town, until you had to check each one as you walked past for the undead.

We continued to the end of the main street to find the charred remains of the pharmacy, dashing our hopes of finding any medicine of value at least in this town. Now we had to keep moving fast to stay ahead of the ever increasing number of walkers we encountered. Though they only shuffled at a relatively slow gait, if you didn't keep moving through open spaces quickly they got too close for comfort fast, and they never stopped following once they saw you. A sickly parade soon gathered behind us, and we all began moving a step quicker.

Rachel and King took a few down as we moved out of the center of the small town, and I even got one of my own with my knife, which added to my confidence but didn't do much to reduce the fear I felt at the sight of each and every one of them. We raided a few shops for food as quickly as we could to munch on, because we were attempting to keep the food we packed as back-up for as long as we could. But even thirty seconds inside the gas station we came across reduced the distance between us and the horde behind us considerably. If this was just a small town, I was not looking forward to the metropolis that was Queen City.There was still quite a bit of useful supplies lying around we could have used, but Rachel, and the dead, kept us at a brisk pace and constantly encouraged us to keep up the pace.

Here, even in this small town the reality of what the initial few days must have been like really hit me. King and I were isolated; we knew the outbreak happened and left with everybody else, and I doubt anyone in the small resort we were at was even infected when we fled. Now I saw what everyone else had to deal with. Here and there remains of little camps could be seen on the road or the steps and porches of houses as the more realistic folks came to the realization that they weren't going anywhere. My guess is that most had hoped to reach the interstate, but that it had turned into a quagmire fast and trapped the town. Maybe that explained the number of walkers, maybe not, but we had no time for discussions right now, the day was starting to wane and we needed a safe place to stop for the long night ahead.

"Check the cars as we move along, both for supplies and for a possible spot to sleep tonight if we find the right vehicle, but don't waste too much time," Rachel said, speaking for the first time in what seemed like hours. "Roamers love to hide just about anywhere and one bite..." she didn't need to finish the thought, we all knew the price you paid for getting bitten. "A lot got left in the cars as they got abandoned, and they don't take as much time to search as a building, or offer as many places for zeds to hide." By now even King offered no remonstrations, as the day had gone by Rachel had proven time and again a good resource for surviving 'out there' as she put it. We both remained vigilant but we mostly let the coyote call the shots.

We wandered out towards the edge of town in the haze of the late day sun, still searching for a spot to hole up in for the night. Most of the houses that seemed like obvious places to camp in Rachel explained were quite the opposite; houses had lots of windows and doors, all of which were hard to block off, and lots of roamers lurked inside - the owners cursed to forever guard a home they no longer had a memory of.

Finally, as we had almost reached the exit more the main interstate, we found a mechanic's shop with a fire escape ladder that looked like it led either to a second story, or a storage space above. Ladders were always safe because roamers couldn't get up them, stairs not so much. So after we checked around the building, one by one we climbed the rusty rungs up to the small landing that sat alongside the door. Of course it was locked, but thankfully just with a padlock which we just smashed off with a small sledgehammer and we were in.

"I'll cover you Cash, don't be afraid," Rachel said almost mockingly, sensing my hesitation as I stood closest to the door. I only snorted in reply, and wrenched the rusty door open. As the waning sunlight streamed into the dark room, motes of dirt and dust floated lazily in the air.

As soon as I stepped inside I knew something had gone wrong here; I smelled the rusty odor of blood, faint traces of powder from bullets. King confirmed this when he kicked a few empty cartridges away from me, rattling into the darkness ahead.

"Somebody else thought this was a good place to stay too," King said to no one in particular, although I knew he meant it for the coyote.

"I don't know about this one either Rachel..." I began to protest, but she only shoved me in the back so she could get inside herself, and started shining her flashlight around the corners. We all had fairly good eyes in the dark, it was just the adjustment from the bright sunshine outside to the unlit interior of the buildings that gave us all trouble initially. The flashlight helped until our low-light vision could come into focus.

And what did come into focus was not encouraging. Empty shell casings littered the floor, blood splattered the floor and the musty cardboard boxes that lined the right side of the walkway. It seemed to be a separate storage area that overhung the main floor of the garage below us, and thankfully I didn't hear any roamers below us. It was what lay ahead that frightened me.

A singular wooden door was at the end of the walkway, and it was littered with bloody pawprints and peppered with bullet holes. A large dark stain of dried blood was pooled around it.

"I don't like this place Rachel," King said, echoing my earlier fears, let's just keep looking."

"Listen you two," she said sternly, "every fucking place basically looks more or less like this now, so sack up and pay attention. If we abandon every place with blood and bullets in it, we're never going to find a place to sleep."

The coyote took the lead, but paused at the doorway. "Remember, knives first, guns if we have to," she reminded us, "back up through the doorway if we bite off more than we can chew and need an escape."

King and I only nodded nervously in agreement, and she pushed the door open with a soft creek. Eyes adjusted to the darkness, blades at the ready, I realized the upstairs of this shop was a massive area for storing parts. I didn't know shit about cars, but it looked like if you needed it, this place had it. I filed that away in my memory banks for later on, when we might have the luxury to drive instead of walk. Places like these would have parts, oil, equipment and gas we would have a hard time finding anywhere else.

We wandered slowly into the large room, unable to see much through the clutter on the shelves. Rachel motioned for us to separate a little, whispering quietly, "Leave no spot unchecked, this place looks pretty good but check every inch."

As Rachel went forward King stayed next to me, and we inched our way down the rows of rusting metal shelves. Reaching the end of the walkway I looked back unable to see Rachel anymore. King and I reached a T-junction at the end of the rows of shelves, and I could see a hallway ran around the corner of each side and out of view.

"Just go to the corner and peek around, then come right back," King said to me, his pistol out now instead of his knife. "Come right back," he repeated nervously.

I cautiously began to creep down the hallway towards the corner, a little bit of light visible at the end. Maybe an emergency exit back outside? If so that could mean stairs ran down to the bottom of the shop and this second story wasn't isolated, I made a note to mention that to Rachel.

Just then the coyote called softly from the direction of the door we entered, but my adrenaline was pumping in my ears and I couldn't make out what she said. As I turned to listen for her again, a cold paw suddenly grabbed my wrist.

"What.." I began to say, but as I turned, I saw only the rotting, peeled face of the undead lunging towards me. "FUCK!" I yelled, slashing at it by pure reflex, managing to plunge my blade into it's skull, but getting the blade stuck in the process. As I fell back, the now-dead roamer fell atop me, pinning me, and I stared wide-eyed in horror as more and more shapes began to emerge from around the corner, moaning towards their next meal.

The quiet nervousness that we entered the room with was shattered in an instant as the first round went off with a deafening bang. Rachel dropped the walker closest to me in one shot, and screamed something at me, but I couldn't make it out over the ringing in my ears. I paw grabbed my shoulder, and I went to stab at it with the knife I no longer had. Thankfully it was still lodged in the walker's skull atop me, because it was King's paw trying to free me.

Still frozen with fear, King stepped over me, kicking the body off me and yanking me to my feet, firing off rounds of his own as he shoved me back down the hallway and towards the door outside. We rounded the corner quickly and I saw walkers streaming in from the other hallway as well. Rachel was guarding the exit door, waving frantically towards us, and for the first time I saw a look of pure fear on her face. Roamers now began to emerge from between the shelves, and I could feel the horde behind us closing in. We just needed to get back through the door we had just entered, but I couldn't fathom how that was going to happen.

Dozens of shuffling bodies were moving towards us out of every corner, blocking our path. My hearing still dulled from the initial gunfire, all I could see was King slowly turning around to let loose round after round towards the horde at our backs. Looking towards Rachel, she moved to one side of the door, her own pistol out. She dared not fire into the roamers in front of us however, lest a bullet strike King or I. "START SHOOTING!", she roared over the commotion, and finally over the initial shock, I finally pulled the pistol from my waist and started firing, careful to stay clear of where Rachel was at.

Only two or three roamers blocked the way to the exit by the time I started shooting, but it became apparent very quickly that headshots were harder than they looked. Although slow, the walkers ambled and swayed uneasily, and it was hard to hit them in the head. Thankfully Rachel was a crack shot, and with only a couple shots she dropped the walkers closing in on me.

"GO!" the coyote shouted, waving frantically at the door, but I wasn't running out and leaving King to fend for himself. Luckily he had stayed right on my back, but the sight behind him was truly terrifying. Dozens of rotting bodies were only feet from the lion, who had abandoned his pistol and was now firing wildly into the crowd with his assault rifle, with limited success.

King had almost made it all the way back to the door, and thank goodness he had, because it appeared we were out of time. Rachel, seeing us reach the door, turned and sprinted down the hallway towards the fire escape landing, immediately turning to cover King and I as we did the same.

We hit the metal landing of the fire escape, the sounds of moans behind us, much too close for comfort. Reaching the ladder I holstered my pistol and bent down to climb back down, but Rachel grabbed my shoulder before I could bend over and sling myself through the opening.

"No!" she screamed, her voice barely audible over my still-ringing ears, and the groans fastly approaching us. She pointed to an adjacent ladder that led up, and pointed towards the roof. Climbing faster than I ever had, I felt the ladder shake as Rachel, and finally King started clambering up with me. Looking down over the edge, King barely made it halfway up the ladder before the crowd of undead crashed outside the door. A couple got pushed over the ledged and landed on the pavement with a sickening crunch, the rest just stared up at the roof with hazy, milky eyes, sure their meal was still within reach.

Hitting the top of the ladder I dove over the side of the buildings ledge, landing facedown on the hard scrabble of the rooftop, giving my muzzle a good scrape and immediately tasting blood in my mouth. I crawled forward as Rachel, then King both reached the roof seconds later, and for a few minutes we just sat next to each other breathing heavily, letting the adrenaline slowly wear off, my paws shaking heavily.

Rachel wasted no time when she got onto the roof, and began walking to the far end of the roof, pistol still drawn, checking around the air conditioner units for anything that might have made it up here as well. When she peered over the far side of the building, she just shook her head a few times, punching her forehead lightly in frustration.

My ears finally began to stop ringing as she walked briskly back towards King and I, who were just hugging each other, happy to have made it out.

"That was a complete shitshow, you almost got us all killed you stupid wolf," she said with a bite. The sad part was that I knew she was right, but the worst part was there was nothing I could say that could even begin to make amends for what just happened. I hadn't been paying attention and had been inches away from a bite, I got myself stuck, and almost got us all trapped.

"You said you could shoot, that you would listen, and the second a walker got ahold of you, you froze like a coward," she spat. "You didn't think to just push it off, to just run to the exit? That shit better end now or you both can find your own way from here on out. "

As King opened his mouth to protest she cut him off too. "And you Mr. Military, what kind of shooting was that? Headshots. That's all that matters. You just wasted how many rounds doing fuck all back there, and now we've lost ammo we're not positive we can replace."

We all sat staring into our own little bit of space, not wanting to look at one another, when Rachel broke the silence unexpectedly.

"I'm sorry too," she began, "you both warned me about going in there, and I ignored one of my own rules to always trust my gut." She nodded towards the far side of the roof and continued, "those hallways must lead to staircases that go down to the main shop floor. The horde that was following us caught up faster than I thought, I kept us up there too long and they caught up."

Her words filtered through slowly, and a realization hit me like a freight train.

"So we're stuck up here aren't we?" I asked her.

Her lack of response said more than any words could, and King only answered back with a bitter, "Fuck!"

As if telepathically reading my thoughts, she gestured back towards the ladder. "Look down, I can already hear them out on the fire escape, and that's the only way down."

I didn't move, but King walked over to peer over the ledge, and the blank look on his face told me the coyote was right. "All over the fucking place," was all he said, chucking his rifle down on the ground and kicking at the loose rock that covered the roof, "all over the fucking place."

As the sun set and the sky began to darken, the low groans and moans of the undead filtered up to us on the roof. The more noise the dead made, the more they attracted, and the gunfire would surely only add to that problem.

King stood leaning on the edge, watching the last of the sun sink below the horizon, as the sky began to fade to the slate blue of the early evening. I stood up and walked over to the ledge to stand next to him, putting a paw around his shoulder. We stared in silence at the sinking sun, reflecting little glittering mirrors on the buildings below, a thronging, swirling mass of undead forming below us.

To my surprise, I felt a paw on my shoulder as well, but it wasn't King's. "We will get through this," the coyote sighed, "I know you don't believe me now, but we will."

"How?" was all I could think to ask.

The coyote's paw left my shoulder, and turning my head, I saw her slink back towards her pack, and begin to take out her sleeping bag and our cooking utensils.

"Honestly, I have no idea," she said, beginning to set up the small propane burner underneath the pot, and dig through my bag for some of the food we had brought.

"That's encouraging," King murmured to me, shaking his head as I dropped my head in despair. I rubbed his back but had no more words to offer, no more condolences to give.

"What I can tell you," the coyote half-shouted towards us, "is that you're gonna struggle a long time figuring out whether you want to survive or not, and even months later you might just decide death is easier. I'm not going to tell you one way or the other, or even try to stop you, that's a decision you make for yourself."

She lit the propane and dumped some water in with a couple dried soup packets and some dehydrated veggies, dusted her pants off and walked back towards King and I.

"Me?" she kept on, although no one asked her to keep talking, "I fought with myself a long time figuring out whether I wanted to survive or not. In the end, I figured that all I've been through, everything I've fought for, all I've done, it's gotta be for something. You just gotta keep finding something to live for."

"So what do you live for?" King asked, one of the first times I heard him say something seriously to the coyote without any sarcasm.

"Right now?" she said, glancing at us both as she walked back towards the cooking pot. "Right now I'm living for soup," she called over her shoulder at us, sitting down to adjust the flame on the propane burner.

I looked at King increduously, expecting him to start to rise with anger, but instead he started hacking with laughter, harder than I'd heard him laugh in a long time.

"Sound good to you Cash? Can you live for soup" he queried.

"Sure," I said, smiling faintly, "sure."

So we walked over to where Rachel was sitting to have a meal, the sounds of hundreds of undead echoing around us. Not the best atmosphere I've had for a meal, but at least we could sit down and eat.

And although I agreed with King and smiled on the outside, on the inside I was thinking about what Rachel had said about the struggle, unsure if there was anything I was going to find that was worth surviving for, even King.