“There’s one!” Evajean shouted. “Back! Go back! You missed it.”

Elliot stopped the truck and looked out the back window. Sure enough, a few stores behind on the right was tiny sign that said “GUNS.” It hung in the front of a mom-and-pop sporting goods shop, right in the middle of a large—and unbarred—window.

“Huh,” Elliot said.

“No gun wanting crazies here,” Evajean said.

Smashing the window proved unnecessary, as someone had been kind enough to leave the front door propped open with a rusting coffee can. “Lucky,” Elliot said and Evajean smiled at him.

“It’s a good thing,” she said, “that not all of us are as gloom and doom as you.”

He shrugged. “The world works out in the end, I guess.”

Elliot pushed open the door and was relieved to see that the store was both tiny and, because of the huge window, well lit. If there was any danger inside, they’d be able to see it coming. “Gentlemen first,” he said and stepped inside.

The sign should have been bigger. The store owners, wherever they’d gone, clearly had a thing for firearms. The store had the requisite racks of jerseys, the cage of leather and rubber balls for various sports, and a kiosk packed with fishing poles and little bags of artificial bait, but the main attraction, which took up an entire wall and several shelves along the back, was a collection of guns significant enough to make Elliot feel rather uncomfortable. True, Virginia was a gun loving state, but these people probably adored the things more than their own children.

“What do think we need?” Evajean asked. “I don’t even know what some of this stuff is.”

Elliot shook his head. “Me too. But we should stick to shotguns like we said. Easy to shoot, and we don’t have to aim. If there’s another person like at the Wal-Mart, I don’t want to miss. I think what we want’s right back here.”

He climbed over the counter and opened a cabinet where shotguns were lined up in a long rack, triggers facing out and locked. “Look for the keys,” he told Evajean as he began pulling the guns out and inspecting them. “Maybe they’re by the register,” he said and pointed.

Evajean started rummaging around while Elliot tried to figure out what the difference was between the weapons he had arrayed out on the counter. Some were shorter, some longer, a couple with double barrels. One had a small clip curving out from in front of the trigger guard, but most just had slots along the top to load shells. He set the one with the clip to the side, knowing he should take it for the security of the extra ammo, but hoping they never ended up in a situation where more than a couple of shots were necessary.

He didn’t like the look of the double barrel monstrosity, sure it’d break the arm of whichever one of them was reckless enough to pull the trigger. After a couple minutes, during which Evajean opened drawers, swore, and closed them again, Elliot had it narrowed down to three, including the one with the clip. “Any luck on those keys?” he called over his shoulder.

“No,” she said, “none. Someone must’ve took them—like after they propped the door.”

Elliot looked at a trigger guard, at the loop of metal set deep into the two halves of the lock. “I don’t think we’ll be able to cut these off,” he said.

“I bet that’s the point,” she said, and bent down close to the cash register drawer. “In here, maybe? It’s locked—but I bet they’re in there.”

“Can we smash it? Pry it open?”

“We can try but it’s probably pretty tough to bust open.” She laughed. “I bet that’s the point, too.”

He leaned back against the case and looked at her. “You’ve been in a good mood,” he said.

“Yeah.” She paused. “Yeah, I guess I have. After that woman in the store and getting kind of a rush, it’s like I guess I feel like we’re actually doing this. We’re gonna find that thing and know what it is. And,” she added, “it’s been nice to think about something other than Henry.”

“Uh huh,” he said, realizing that he’d been thinking an awful lot about Clarine and Callie since they’d left. “Well,” he said quickly, “let’s see about that register.”

In the end, they took it with them, unbolting it from the counter top, and loading it into the truck, along the guns and a bit more ammo to supplement what they’d picked up from Wal-mart. If they figured out a way to open it and found the keys inside, they’d unlock the guns and be done with it. But if the keys weren’t in there—or the register proved particularly stubborn—they agreed to keep their eyes open once again for other places to find guns. That issue temporarily dealt with, they headed out of town toward I-70.

The puppy glanced at them sleepily when the truck started, then rolled over and closed its eyes. Elliot hoped it wasn’t sick.

“What do you think that thing was?” Evajean asked, as Elliot drove the truck at a good clip along the highway, always careful not to overdo it and spill their heaps of supplies.

“What thing?”

“That woman. The one who…” She fingered her ear. They’d patched it up as best they could, cleaning the wound with alcohol and Q-tips, and it looked like it’d heal up okay. Evajean was okay, too, and thankfully didn’t need to be concerned about the plague the woman had carried. It’d been figured out by authorities long ago that the disease couldn’t be spread by bodily fluids.

“I don’t know. She was infected, I guess.”

“But they don’t attack like that,” she said. “At least Henry didn’t.”

“One’s I saw didn’t either, but I don’t know, they did all kinds of other strange things.”

“You mean the babbling?” she said, and pantomimed the rapid mouth movements they’d both become so familiar with.

“That, but the eyes also. And the way she moved. It was like Clarine before I— I had to tie her to a chair at the end, did you know that?”

“No,” she said.

“I did. She kept trying to run off. I thought maybe she was so out of it by then, so far gone that maybe she was trying to find Callie, my daughter, and maybe she thought Callie was still alive. That’s what this woman was like.”

“Searching.”

“Not while she was hitting you, but yeah. At the end, yeah. When she was on the ground and talking to us—and dying—it was just like with Clarine,” he said, realizing he was talking fast but liking it. It felt good to get all this out, whatever it was he was trying to say, and to be talking about Clarine and Callie again.

“But why aren’t they all like that? Was Callie that way?”

“No,” he said. “She got sick the way most of them did. Quiet, talking under her breath.”

“And then she died.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s like it was with Henry,” she said.

They rode silently for half an hour after that, Elliot concentrating on the road and Evajean playing with the dog. She still hadn’t told him what name she had in mind for it and he still couldn’t think of one himself.