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A hand touched my shoulder. I whipped around, and for one terrible moment, I was doing the thing every firearms instructor screams at their students not to do: I was aiming a loaded gun at an ally, someone I had no intention of shooting. Ben's eyes went wide, but he didn't flinch away. He held his ground, waiting for me to lower my pistol and start breathing again.

The plywood had been removed from the broken door behind him, and it gaped like a toothless mouth, inviting us inside. I motioned for him to stay where he was and stepped past him, into the dark.

The dark didn't last long. The plywood had been nailed over a little alcove—a smoking area, judging by the kicked-over ashtrays near the wall. It was no more than three feet deep, terminating at a pair of sliding glass doors that weren't sliding anymore. Their power source had died long ago. “Ben, come inside and get these doors open,” I said. I didn't want to pry the doors apart with my bloody fingers: the less contamination I was responsible for, the better. “First area's clear.”

Ben's head appeared around the rectangle of light that looked out on the rest of the world. Then he crept inside, moving slowly and cautiously even after I'd given the all clear. He brightened when he saw the closed, undamaged glass doors. If there had been a major battle here, they would have been shattered. Maybe we had managed to find a decent bolt-hole after all.

It took him almost three minutes to pry the glass doors open, finally wedging himself between them and pushing as hard as he could. I itched to help, even as I knew that I couldn't. I didn't dare. Finally, he stepped aside, and I entered the visitor's center.

It was a mostly circular room: The octagonal walls of the exterior had been smoothed down and evened out by tricks of insulation and architecture, creating a pleasing, unbroken expanse of wall. It was surprisingly well lit, thanks to the skylights that made up most of the ceiling; one of them had broken, scattering glass across the tile floor and allowing leaves and other debris to drift in from outside, but as there was no blood in the mess, I guessed it had been a storm or other natural disaster, rather than a zombie raccoon out for a stroll. I paused long enough to drop the bags and Mat's laptop against the wall, adjusted my grip on my pistol, and resumed my slow circuit.

There were no signs of a struggle here. Ancient vending machines were tucked discreetly away near the interior entrance to the restrooms, and they too were intact, even though everything inside them was probably long since spoiled. The water might still be safe to drink, but the sodas and juices would be sour and flat, and the candy and chips would be stale. Even so, their presence was a good sign that this place was secure.

The bathroom doors were shut. I nudged the women's-room door open with my foot, revealing the dark space beyond. The ringing in my ears was still there, but sound hadn't quite come back yet, apart from that. I watched the gloom, waiting for movement. None came. Finally, I pulled my foot away and let the door swing shut again. If there were zombies in here with us, we'd deal with them after we were patched up and capable of rational thought again.

Fear and panic can make zombies of us all. We act without consideration for the consequences. We run, and we don't look back. Which is why it's interesting how much investment this world has in keeping us afraid.

I repeated my check with the men's room before I turned and walked back toward the door. “We're clear,” I said. “I've mostly managed not to bleed on things, but I need medical care, and we're going to need a lot of bleach.”

Ben stepped into the visitor's center, stopping long enough to force the doors shut again before turning to face me. I put my gun carefully down on the shelf that had once been covered in visitor's brochures and maps of the area before I held up my hands, mutely showing him my bloody, shredded palms. They were mostly numb by this point, too angry with my treatment of them to communicate with the rest of the body. That was a bit of a relief. I didn't need to feel them to know that they were damaged.

‘Okay,' mouthed Ben, and went for the bag that held our first aid kit. He made a show of checking it for traces of blood, more to reassure me than anything else. I was grateful. The icy bands around my heart were beginning to crack under the pressure, and I could feel the tears threatening to fall. When they started, I wasn't going to be any good to anyone for quite some time. It was important that we get this taken care of before I turned useless.

Ben pulled out the familiar white box of our first aid kit, motioning for me to take a seat in one of the hard plastic chairs studded around the room. There was something obscurely comforting about settling myself on the cold plastic, feeling it press against the strip of skin between the end of my skirt and the end of the chair, and holding my hands out for Ben to repair. He put on a pair of gloves before he touched me, and that was when I finally started crying. Not out of shame or rejection, but out of relief. If he was wearing gloves, it was because he didn't believe himself to be infected yet. He thought he could still walk away from this, alive and capable of fighting the good fight. That was reassuring beyond words. One of us could still walk away.

I wasn't so sure about myself. My heart hurt. I couldn't stop thinking of the look on Mat's face after I had pulled the trigger—that expression of blank nothingness that all zombies shared. Mat had been my friend, and they hadn't even been able to recognize themself when they died. Sometimes I hated the world that we lived in more fiercely than I would have thought possible.

Pain snapped me back into the moment. I bit my lip and hissed, realizing belatedly that I could
hear
the air whistling through my teeth; the ringing was dying down, and the world was coming back into the place it left behind. That was good. I needed to hear if I was going to keep Ben safe.

Speaking of Ben: He was using a pair of sterile tweezers to dig bits of gravel out of my hand, dropping them, one by one, into a waiting biohazard bag. The chunks were irregular and jagged, and most of all, small; it wasn't worth the time or effort it would take to scrub them clean. Instead, they would go to a waste disposal site and be incinerated, burnt at a temperature high enough that everything—bone, rock, metal—was destroyed. I watched the bits of gravel fall, biting my lip and trying not to think about how much of the natural world we were stripping away, year upon year, in our efforts to stay safe.

“We should move to Australia when this is over,” I said. My voice was starting to return to normal as my ears resumed their normal function. It was nice to hear myself properly, and not just through bone conduction. “We could get a nice place on the beach, watch the zombie whales harass the sharks. Maybe even learn how to surf. They still know how to have fun in Australia. Think they'd let us in?”

“Probably not,” said Ben, and while his voice was distant and thin, I
heard
it. I could have wept with joy, and probably would have, had I not already been weeping with sadness. “You, maybe. They like expatriates. But the immigration process is hard to get started, much less survive, and they don't like Americans very much. They never want to let us in.”

“Who can blame them? You're all dreadful.”

He had finished digging the rocks out of my skin. Ben looked up and flashed me a quick, strained smile before holding up a sterilizing wipe. He was making sure I knew what was about to happen, and I appreciated that, even as I wanted to slap the wipe out of his hand and say that no, I was fine, I was great and dandy, I was anything that kept that stinging shit away from me. I didn't. I just nodded, and ground my teeth together. What came next… I deserved this. Mat had died on my watch. I deserved whatever happened to me, and no matter what it was, I probably deserved ten times worse.

In this case, it was just a caustic antiseptic that removed the blood from my skin and helped to protect me against infection. It could have been formulated to be just this side of painless: We had the technology to do things like that. But most people don't
want
painlessness. Oh, they say they don't enjoy being hurt. They just don't mean it. The prick of a needle during a blood test or the sting of a sterilizing chemical mean the same things to the people who feel them: They mean “you are alive.” They mean “you can feel this, and the dead can't, so you're better than they are. You're still in the percentage of the population that gets to feel pain, that gets to bleed and cry and laugh and live.” Pain is important to the people who never left their rooms to see how bad the world was—or how beautiful.

I didn't need calibrated pain to remind me that I was still alive. The aching in my chest and the bruises on my knees did that better than a little antiseptic ever could. I endured Ben's careful cleaning without pulling away, until he sprayed the pseudoskin over my palms and locked them away from the rest of the world. I raised my hands, flexing them carefully as the skin dried and hardened into place. There was no loss of sensitivity with this brand, but there could be a loss of flexibility if you didn't move fast enough to show the sealant how your fingers were supposed to work. It was better for body wounds than it was for hands. It was what we had, and we were going to make the best of it.

“Any cuts?” I asked, as I reached for the first aid kit with my clean hands and dug out another sterilizing wipe. My knees weren't as bad off as my hands, but they needed attention, and I didn't want Ben interacting with my injuries any longer than absolutely necessary. It's hard for a body to infect itself. Not impossible, but… hard. It was safer for me to see to myself, now that I could.

“Some scrapes, and I tore up my chest a little, but nothing major,” he said. “I was wearing pants, remember?”

“So sorry that my fashion choices are sometimes inconvenient when it comes time to run for our lives,” I said. There was blood down my left shin. I scrubbed it away, switching to a new wipe as soon as my skin was clean. “To be fair, people aren't usually blowing things up behind me and hitting me in the back with concussion waves.”

“We're lucky we made it as far as we did. Any closer, and we might have been hit with shrapnel.”

I managed not to look up from my legs as I said, “Let's go tell Mat how lucky we are, shall we? I'm sure they'd be thrilled to hear it.”

“Dammit, Ash, you know that isn't what I meant.”

“I know. I know.” I dropped my second wipe into the biohazard bag and reached for the sealant. The idea of looking Ben in the eyes was somehow impossible to consider, and so I didn't do it. I just kept working on my legs. “I'm glad we both survived, I really am. I'd be gladder if it had been the two of you. I'm supposed to be the one who keeps you all safe. Isn't that what you have me for? Keep an Irwin nearby to draw fire, and everything will be all right. But I didn't draw fire. I didn't connect the dots quickly enough. Mat is
dead
, and we don't know if anyone's coming for us.”

“Mat knew what they were doing when they took this job,” said Ben. “Aislinn, look at me.”

Raising my head was one of the most difficult things I'd ever forced myself to do. Ben was still sitting on the floor in front of my hard plastic chair, a grim expression on his face.

“You want to start slinging blame around?
I'm
the Newsie.
I'm
the one who should have started digging into where those people came from. I got wrapped up in the nominations process instead, and in documenting the campaign. That seemed more important to me than people who were already dead and gone. You think I'm proud of myself for leaving you to do what should have been
my
job? You're smart, Ash, but you're not a researcher. That isn't what you do.”

It was part of what I did, but I didn't argue with him. This wasn't the time for arguing.

“If I'd realized what you were doing—if I'd listened when you tried to talk to me—we might have figured all this out days ago. We might have been able to get help. Mat… oh, God, Mat might be alive.” His voice broke on the last word. I found myself wishing that my hearing
hadn't
recovered. Maybe then I wouldn't have had to hear him on the verge of shattering. “This isn't just on you. This is on all of us.”

“Then it's on all of us to make this right.” I stood. “I need to change my clothes. This dress is contaminated. We'll have to burn it.” We'd sterilize the things that could be sterilized, and destroy the rest. That was standard protocol out here in the field. “I can change here with you, or I can find out whether the bathrooms are safe. Your call.”

“Change here,” said Ben. “I can handle a little nudity better than I can handle you walking off alone.”

“Cheers,” I said, and moved to start rummaging through my bag.

Keeping most of my wardrobe in the RV's main living space meant I had choices—a word that felt almost self-indulgent, under the circumstances. I didn't deserve choices. None of us did. Mat should have had all the choices, and Mat was dead.

Beating myself up about it wasn't going to bring them back. I considered putting on trousers, and decided against it. If I was going to die out here—and there was a more than good chance that we were both going to die out here, facing one last disaster with whatever grace we could muster—I wanted to do it looking as much like myself as I could manage. Let the last pictures the world saw of me match the image I had worked so long and so hard to create.

Let them choke on it.

The sundress I pulled out was already bleach-damaged, pattered in mermaids with come-hither smiles. I draped it over the nearest chair and pulled my contaminated dress off, avoiding contact with the fabric as much as I possibly could. Which is why I was virtually naked when the sliding glass doors slammed open and three people in full body armor stormed into the room, their assault rifles aimed at my chest and their faces concealed by mirrored visors.