We made it through the night. It was daybreak now, with streaks of pale orange light stretching across the sky. The world was quiet. Too quiet. The kind of quiet that makes your skin prickle.

The gas gauge showed a little over half a tank, but the dashboard was blinking: Service Engine Soon. Not exactly reassuring. The last thing we needed was to break down in the middle of nowhere—which, judging by the empty road and endless trees, is exactly where we were.

"Jill, can you check the glove compartment and see if there’s a map?" I asked, squinting at the horizon.

"I’d love to," she said, her voice groggy, "but I’m kind of working the gas pedal right now, remember?"

"Oh. Right."

We decided to pull over. Jill slid out from under the steering wheel, stretching her arms and legs like she hadn’t moved in hours—which, to be fair, she hadn’t. I reached into the glove compartment and pulled out a worn road atlas.

"Well, this is useless," I muttered, flipping through pages. "I have no idea where we are. I really wish the GPS would work."

And then—

Cough. Sputter. Clunk.

The car gave a shudder and then went dead. Smoke curled from under the hood.

"Ugh!" I threw the atlas onto the dashboard. "Darn it! Now we’re stuck for real."

We climbed out and surveyed the area. No zombies in sight, thank goodness. The wind whistled softly through the trees.

"Guess we’re walking," Jill said, slinging her bag over one shoulder.

We walked. For what felt like forever. The road stretched on, winding between tall pines and rolling hills. The car eventually disappeared from view behind us. I looked back once, feeling a tiny pang of loss. It was dumb, but it had been our shelter. Our escape. Now it was just another thing we’d lost.

It might’ve been smart to salvage the gas, but where would we store it? And who would carry it? We had no choice but to keep going.

Jill was trudging along next to me, but she wasn’t in the best mood. She didn’t talk much. Just sighed a lot.

To be honest, I wasn’t doing much better.

If she were still Jack, I thought bitterly, this would be easier. He would’ve been stronger. Less emotional. But that formula… that awful drink George created… had changed both of us.

I muttered a curse under my breath at him. Not that he could hear it.

My chest tightened. I didn’t want to think about George, or my mom, or Jennifer… but I couldn’t help it.

They were gone.

The house. The safety. The normal.

Gone.

Now I was homeless.

And maybe even an orphan.

Just then, a deep, low groan echoed from the trees.

A herd.

Zombies. At least two dozen, maybe more, were stumbling out from the treeline, their twisted limbs dragging across the ground, their mouths slack and dark with dried blood.

"Run!" I shouted, grabbing Jill’s hand. "We have to move!"

Our shoes slapped against the pavement as we tore down the road, the echo of our panicked footsteps almost drowning out the growing chorus of moans behind us. My backpack bounced wildly against my back, and my soaked dress clung to my legs, slowing me down just enough to make me want to scream.

"What do we do?" Jill sobbed beside me. "We have nowhere to go, Natalie. Nowhere!"

Her voice cracked. She was terrified. Tears streamed down her cheeks, and her breathing came in short, shaky bursts. But she kept running. Just following me. Like she couldn’t think. Only move.

"Don’t worry, Jill. We’ll figure something out!" I tried to sound brave. "We have to."

I scanned the road ahead frantically.

"Okay—look to the right!" I yelled. "They’re almost to the road—we need to cut left and move. Fast!"

We veered off the road into a clearing, sprinting toward the sound of rushing water. Just ahead, a wide river glistened in the daylight, its current slow but steady.

We skidded to a stop at the river’s edge, panting.

"I remember in The Walking Dead, there was an episode where a zombie grabbed someone in the water," I said, teeth chattering—not from cold, but fear. "What if that happens to us?"

The thought made my skin crawl.

Suddenly, a loud groan came from behind us.

I whipped around.

One zombie.

It staggered through the trees toward the riverbank, its head lolling to one side. A loner.

"I think we’ve got a roamer," I whispered, grabbing Jill’s arm.

"What’s a roamer?" she asked, eyes wide.

"A walker. A single one. They called them roamers in The Walking Dead."

"Oh no," she whimpered. "Shoot it!"

"I don’t want to waste bullets—not on just one. Guns are loud. We’ll attract the whole herd if we fire. Just get in the water. Now!"

We waded in.

The water was cold, shockingly so. It soaked through my clothes instantly. By the time I was halfway across, it was up to my stomach. My breath came in gasps.

Behind us, the roamer wandered past without even seeing us. It groaned and shuffled the other direction.

I giggled—relief washing over me.

"What a dumb zombie," I muttered.

We made it to the far side, both of us drenched from head to toe. If the river had been any deeper, or the current any stronger, we wouldn’t have made it. But we were safe.

For now.

We collapsed on the bank, shivering, catching our breath.

"Didn’t that zombie look like our gym teacher, Mr. Boring?" Jill asked, brushing wet hair from her face.

"You mean Mr. Bourang?" I tilted my head.

"Yeah, but everyone called him Mr. Boring," she said, cracking a smile.

I laughed. "Yeah. I guess I did too."

"But isn’t he kind of far from school?" Jill asked as we started walking again.

I looked around. Nothing was familiar. No signs, no towns. Just endless woods and broken roads.

"I’m not sure. I don’t know how far we drove. Or where we even are. We could be fifty miles from home, or five hundred."

The sun was beginning to drop lower in the sky.

We kept walking, but our pace slowed. Every step felt heavier.

We needed to find shelter before nightfall.

Fast.

Because whatever was out here during the day… would only get worse after dark.

My stomach twisted as I thought about the car—how much gas we’d had, how suddenly it had died. If we still had that car, we might have found a town, a building, even just a place to hide. But now, we were exposed. Vulnerable. Just two little girls soaked and stranded in the middle of nowhere.

And something told me…

The worst hadn’t even started yet.

Jill was getting tired. I could tell by the way she dragged her feet and kept sighing. Truth be told, I was getting tired too. My legs were shorter, which meant I had to take twice as many steps to keep up.

Still, something about that thought made me giggle.

"What’s so funny?" Jill asked, giving me a side-eye.

"Oh, nothing," I said, smirking.

We kept walking. The woods around us were quiet—almost too quiet. Trees loomed overhead like crooked sentinels, and the shadows between the trunks felt deeper than they should’ve. I kept my gun in my hand, ready. Jill had a knife tucked into her waistband, but she didn’t carry it out like I did. She liked to pretend things were fine.

"Did you notice how zombies are faster when it’s hot outside and slower in the cold, like when we were in air conditioning?" Jill asked, breaking the silence.

"Yeah," I said, perking up. "Maybe we should go somewhere cold. North, maybe."

"How can we even tell which way is north?" she said, stopping to look around.

"Moss," I said confidently. "It always grows on the north side of a tree."

I walked over to an old oak and pointed. "See? Moss. We’re going in the right direction. The farther north we go, the colder it’ll get."

Jill nodded slowly. "Speaking of cold... is there a bathroom nearby? I need to go potty."

I giggled and looked around. "Yeah, you're standing on it."

The expression on her face was priceless.

"Ha-ha, funny," she grumbled. "I know we’re in the woods, but really?"

"No, seriously," I said, trying not to laugh. "Girls do it all the time. Just squat. It’s not that hard. Just find a spot behind a tree or something."

She huffed and stalked behind a thick patch of trees, muttering something I didn’t catch.

While she was gone, I looked around for something fun to do to pass the time. My eyes landed on a small patch of smooth dirt near the base of a pine tree. I dropped to my knees, pulled a stick from my backpack, and started drawing in the dirt like it was a giant sketchpad.

At first, I drew a lopsided smiley face. Then a bunny. Then a really terrible cat. I erased that one with my sleeve and tried again. I added a sun in the corner, little rays beaming out like it wasn’t the middle of a terrifying apocalypse.

For a few moments, I forgot about the zombies. The running. The river. The torn-up house. I was just a kid again.

By the time Jill came back, I had a tiny dirt zoo going.

"What’s all this?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Art," I said, grinning. "Apocalypse-style."

Jill took the stick from my hand like it was a paintbrush and she was some kind of famous artist. She scrunched up her face in concentration and started sketching right next to me.

"What are you drawing?" I asked.

"A unicorn with battle armor," she said seriously. "Because if I had one of those, we wouldn’t need a car."

I giggled again. "Make sure it has glitter missiles. And rainbow hooves that stomp zombies."

She nodded. "Already on it."

For a while, we didn’t talk. We just drew, added leaves to our squirrel furniture, made a tiny fort out of twigs and bark, and even started naming pretend forest creatures that we imagined lived nearby. A rock with moss became "Commander Pebble," the wise old leader of the leaf bunnies. A knot in a tree trunk was "The Eye of the Forest," and we made wishes into it like it was a magic portal.

We pretended we were in a secret woodland hideout, far from zombies, where girls ruled and animals could talk and give advice.

"If this were our clubhouse," I said, laying on my stomach and drawing hearts into the dirt, "what would we call it?"

Jill paused. "Hmm. Something cool. Like... Rainbow Cat Fortress?"

I blinked. "That’s actually amazing. Rainbow Cat Fortress it is."

We giggled again and added a little flag over our dirt drawings, with a tiny pine needle acting as the pole.

For a moment—just a moment—it was like everything was okay. We weren’t running. We weren’t scared. We were just kids. Kids playing pretend and letting our imaginations build a world better than the one we were trapped in.

But deep down, I knew we’d have to get moving again soon.

Just not yet.

Not until we finished decorating Rainbow Cat Fortress with pinecones and drew armor for the bunnies.

Not until the world felt heavy again.

Right now, it could wait.

We rested a little longer in the shade of the trees, laughing softly and brushing dirt off our clothes. The breeze was light, carrying the scent of pine and something sweet—maybe wildflowers we hadn’t noticed. Our stomachs grumbled now and then, but it wasn’t enough to ruin the moment.

I rolled onto my back and stared at the sky. "If we ever find a place to live, we should build a clubhouse just like this," I said. "One with squirrel-sized furniture and talking moss stones."

"And a vending machine that gives out chocolate milk for free," Jill added, lying beside me with her hands behind her head.

We were so caught up in imagining that we almost didn’t hear it.

Wheeeeeooooo.

A low, distant whistle cut through the quiet.

We sat up instantly.

"Did you hear that?" I asked, already on my feet.

Jill nodded. "Yeah... it sounded like a train!"

My heart jumped. "A train! Oh my gosh, I hope it's real!"

We grabbed our bags and ran through the trees, following the sound. The woods thinned as we pushed forward, sticks snapping under our feet. We could hear the wheels now—clack-clack, clack-clack—and the rumble of steel on rails.

Finally, we broke through the trees and stumbled onto a hill overlooking a set of train tracks.

And there it was.

A real train.

It was moving slowly—probably only fifteen miles an hour—and had a handful of boxcars trailing behind its rusty engine.

I grinned at Jill, heart pounding with excitement. "Let’s go! We’ve got to catch that train. It looks like it’s heading north!"

We bolted down the hill, our bags bouncing against our backs. The wind whipped against our faces, and our shoes skidded on the loose gravel as we raced toward the tracks.

"Hurry!" I shouted. "We can catch it if we go faster!"

The train clattered by just ahead, moving slow enough to tempt us but fast enough to be a challenge. Jill reached the tracks first and grabbed a rusty handle on the back of one of the boxcars. She struggled for a moment, then managed to climb up onto the step.

"Natalie! Come on!" she shouted, holding out her hand.

I leapt forward, arms stretching, legs burning. My fingers brushed the cold metal.

For a split second, I didn’t think I could do it. My foot slipped, and my heart dropped—

—but Jill caught my wrist.

"I got you!" she cried, her face strained with effort.

I scrambled up with her help, my knees scraping the edge of the step. We both collapsed against the back of the car, gasping and laughing.

"We did it! We actually did it!" I said between breaths.

The wind roared past us as the train continued north, the woods blurring by.

And then…

We heard something.

A soft thud.

Followed by another.

From inside the boxcar.

Jill and I froze.

We stared at the heavy metal door behind us. Something was moving in there.

Thud.

Scratch.

Thud.

Jill’s smile faded. "Natalie… we’re not alone on this train."