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She would be better off away from me.

“I’m sorry, Remy,” I said finally, my voice thick. “We can’t wait for you. I want to, but it’s too dangerous. But maybe we can meet in Canada.”

“Lazlo, what are you doing?” Riva asked, and I glanced back over my shoulder to her standing in the doorway. “Are you making dates with somebody?”

“Something like that,” I muttered and I turned my attention back to the mic.

“That sounds good, Lazlo,” Remy replied. “On my way to Canada, is there anything I should watch out for?”

“Don’t stop moving. If you get a flat tire or get slowed down for anything, you have to keep moving. And … avoid zombies, I guess. Be careful.”

There was another staticky lull in our conversation, and when Remy came back, she said, “Listen, Lazlo, I should get going.”

“Will you have the CB with you?” I asked.

“No, I won’t. I won’t be able to radio anymore. Take care of yourself, okay, Lazlo?”

“I will. And you do the same. You have a date you have to go to in Canada, remember?”

“I won’t forget it,” she promised. “Bye, Lazlo.”

“Bye, Remy.” I took a deep breath. “Over and out.”

I dropped the mic and ran a hand over my face.

“Lazlo, are you okay?” Riva asked from behind me.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said, then quickly amended, “I’ll be fine.”

“Did you learn anything useful?” she asked.

I shook my head. “Not really.”

“I’ll leave you alone then. Let me know if you want to talk later on,” Riva offered.

“Thanks,” I said, but as she started to go, I looked back at her, “Riva. I’m going with you tomorrow morning.”

6

Lazlo

Remy and Harlow were being torn to shreds by zombies, and I could only watch on a staticky TV screen until raised voices roused me from my nightmare. I stumbled out to the kitchen of the compound to find the others arguing.

Bâo and Vân were on the far side of the sparse kitchen, with Bâo more incensed and standing slightly in front of her sister. On the other side was Riva, her arms folded across her chest and her nostrils flared. Between them, Drew and Calvin were leaning back against the counters, looking uncomfortable.

“We are already so far north, and there are still zombies,” Bâo was saying when I came in. “Not to mention that whole situation with the spike strip. Either the zombies are much smarter than any other we’ve encountered, or the humans nearby are especially vicious. We don’t even know what happened in this compound!” She pointed to the bullet holes in the countertops and broken cabinet doors. “How did such a secure base fall? I haven’t seen a trace of green blood. Did zombies even have anything to do with it?”

Riva shook her head. “We can’t ever know what happened here, and that doesn’t even matter because we aren’t staying.”

“What’s going on?” I asked, cautiously entering the conversation. “Does somebody want to stay here?”

“No, we are definitely leaving,” Bâo stated unequivocally. “We just can’t agree on where we’re going.”

“They sent us north from the quarantine zone because they believed that we would be safer,” Riva reasoned. “They have military officials and scientists studying the virus, and they must have a better understanding of it than we do. Why shouldn’t we follow their recommendations?”

Bâo scoffed. “Because they don’t actually know shit. They promised us that the quarantine was safe, where there were hundreds of us, and when they sent us off, they’d only recently discovered that humans will never be safe in groups larger than a dozen.”

“Correlation doesn’t always equal causation,” Vân chimed in, speaking more timidly than her sister. “Maybe there are fewer zombies up north because it’s less densely populated, and it has nothing to do with the temperature at all. If that’s the case, we would be much better off living somewhere warmer, with longer growing seasons and less harsh winters, and we should be fine, as long as we avoid large groups.”