Elliot pushed himself off the steering wheel, moaned, and ran his hand carefully across his forehead. Something didn’t feel right, something more than the warm tackiness his fingers skipped lightly across, something more than the pain even this tender contact radiated between his temples. No, this was an out of place difference, a nagging change in what he had expected after a lifetime of performing just such a gesture. He had encountered no hair. He thought about this a moment, then felt the heavy weight weight of the seat belt across his chest and the heat of blood in his cheeks.

Je was upside down. Hanging, held fast in the the truck’s seat, he could now see loam crushed against the windshield and hear the sounds of the forest coming through the smashed driver’s side window. This was all distant, though, like he was watching it on a television across the room. If he just closed his eyes, maybe, and let a short nap incubate him against the sense of displacement, then he could approach the situation with the clear head necessary to figure out what to do next.

No, Elliot. That’s not right. Going to sleep is, in fact, the worst thing you can do.

He groaned and forced himself to look around. Only his window was broken and, out the back, he could see a line of scattered supplies spread across what looked like the slope of a hill. He swore, thinking of how much time it’d taken him and Evajean to collect all that stuff and get it stowed away in the truck.

Evajean—

She wasn’t there. He looked again at the passenger seat, panic making his face even hotter, but it was empty. Her seat belt was retracted and twisted around the headrest. He didn’t see any blood.

“Evajean!” he tried to call out, but the pressure across his chest was too much and he only croaked an inarticulate vowel sound.

She was gone. And so was the dog. This last hit him harder than Evajean’s absence, actually, and the feeling shamed him. It’s just that the dog was his. He’d found it and not matter how good her idea might be, he’d be the one to name it.

His thoughts were fuzzy. He needed to focus. Where Evajean west was more important than a puppy, he knew that. There wasn’t any blood and no head shaped fracture in the windows, so she was probably uninjured. Maybe she’d gone for help.

He laughed at this. Help had died with the rest of the world.

Elliot reached around and undid the seat belt’s buckle, holding his other arm above his head to brace his fall. This small gesture barely helped—the pain in his skull bloomed again and he lay writhing on the roof of the truck for what seemed a very long time.

When it abated, Elliot dragged himself through the broken window, careful of glass, and stood up. The trees had killed most of the remaining sunlight, which filtered weakly through the canopy. The ground was wet and dark, overgrown with moss and ivy, much of this blanketing decaying logs. He couldn’t see any sign of foot traffic, no discarded clothes or supplies that might give him some idea of where Evajean had gone. He shouted her name again, getting the full volume this time, but received no response. She must be far away, then, and he didn’t know which direction that might be.

Elliot turned around to see about the truck. They certainly wouldn’t be driving it back up the hill. The grill was smashed up against a huge tree stump and the left front tire was bent at a bad angle. Everything they’d carefully backed into the back, the entire haul, had been scattered by the fall in a neat path back up the slope, with a large dump of it where the truck and probably first rolled over. It was to this pile he now ran, remember the swarm of crazies they’d driven through, and thinking his first step, before tracking down Evajean, was to find one of the shotguns.

This minor quest proved successful after a scant five minutes. Wedged between two rocks, sticking up like the sword in the stone, was the gun with the curved clip, the one he’d conveniently loaded after they’d taken it, trying to figure out how the thing worked. Holding it now, though, he swore. He’d forgotten about the trigger lock and, looking around, he couldn’t see the cash register anywhere. Even if he found it, what were the chances of the key being inside? And how would he get it open to check?

He kept the gun, though, as he worked his way back down the hill. Holding it made him feel more secure, even knowing the best he could do would be to club an assailant with the stock.

Armed and ready to set out, he called Evajean’s name again. The sound only echoed back. Where would she have gone? Back up to the road made sense: at least there she’d have a direction to walk and an easy path to follow to get back to the truck, whether she found help or not. She’d be dumb to do it, he thought—a crowd of crazies might be up there, with that boy they’d hit just the advance guard—but Evajean struck him as perfectly practical. Holding fast to the gun, Elliot began climbing the hill.

It wasn’t far to the road. The truck must not have been going fast when it slid off the pavement, because it only took him a few minutes to break through the trees and look out on the empty stretch of asphalt. Both directions were clear, so he chose the one leading further into the mountains. They hadn’t passed any real signs of civilization on the way up and Evajean knew that. She’d press on, hoping to get lucky.

Elliot did the same. For a half an hour he walked, glad for the pleasant chill of fall, but tensely observant for more of the people they’d driven through. He didn’t want to have to try to fight anyone, didn’t trust himself to do it right. The victory at the Wal-mart, if calling it that made sense, was luck and fear and the madness of the moment. Repeating it was unlucky. So he stuck to the edge of the road, by the trees, and kept himself ready to run into the forest at the first sign of pursuit.

None came, however. Eventually, the road bent up in a steep curve, and a the midpoint of the arc he saw a wooden plank nailed to a the trunk of a large pine. Next to this the forest opened and a dirt path, ten feet wide, headed off down a gentle slope. The plank, aged and grey, said, “Nahom. Population 140 or so.”

Elliot tapped his fist against the sign as took the turn, making his way back down again into the forest.