There are some situations where speaking is counter-productive, and that was one of them. I stood staring out into the forest as Nick Beauregard, bent over, coughing, and sputtering, tried presumably to pull himself together. It was nice to think that this was causing him some difficulty.

It was awkward, standing there with the fist that had just punched out Beauregard hanging at my side. I bit my lip, thought for a moment, then sat next to Harlan, following his gaze into the horizon. Dawn was breaking. The sky was lighting up pink.

“I might leave,” I said. My gut instinct was unclear at the moment, because it was flip-flopping from one all-important option to the other: leave or stay.

“No one’s stopping you,” said Harlan. I felt dreadful when I heard him. You only had to listen to the guy to get that he was sunk into the deepest sort of depression. It made sense, I guess, one friend had just socked another, and the thing about the zombies and the Nevadas sucked fairly hard too.

“I did what I had to,” I said, struggling to keep from going quiet when I said it.

“Oh. I know,” Harlan said. I noticed then how still he was.

“You shouldn’t go,” came Nick Beauregard’s voice. I turned to stare stonily at him. He was sitting cross-legged in a pile of leavevs, hunched over a little, a little paler than usual, but otherwise unaffected. I wanted to punch him again but I thought one time should be enough. “You know why I told you what I told you-“

“Because you’re a jackass, I know.”

“I told you I worked for the Nevadas because otherwise you wouldn’t get why I know the stuff I do. And I know a good many things,” he pressed one hand to the trunk of a nearby tree and, with a little stumble, lifted himself up. “First of all, they’re not going to stop at La Anarquia. And they’re not going to be content with just poisoning the town water supply. Their experimenting isn’t over.”

“More reason for us to report to the police,” I said.

“Right, maybe, except we’re already zombies in their eyes. Did you know that? They were talking about that in the hospital. They were keeping us there because they had plans to do some experimenting of their own on us.”

I thought immediately of the nurse who’d led me to my warm, dark private room and given me sleeping pills and supper. I didn’t believe Beauregard’s words.

I told him so.

“No, Maggie,” spoke up Harlan, “he’s right. And John Nevada was one of the doctors that was going to be “running tests” on us.”

“He’s in charge of the testing, yeah. And don’t think the other doctors don’t trust him, they do. To them, he seems honest and insanely hard-working. Which, you have to give it to him, he is insanely hard-working.”

“Oh, fuck,” I muttered, my stomach doing a fluttery flip-flop. I’d just narrowly avoided something sickening, that much was obvious. If I’d stayed- well, I’d been a zombie for a short stretch of time, I suppose I could be made into one for good. How easy would it have been for John Nevada to just be all “whoops, couldn’t save this one?” before leaving me to my flesh-hungry, beastly ways? I imagined viewing everything, every bit of my surroundings, through that ugly brown haze that I’d seen when I was in my zombified state.

“And Michelle’s at the hospital, too,” said Harlan. Actually, he mumbled it. He was resting his chin on his knees, watching some scene or other play out in his mind’s eye. “Never underestimate Michelle. She seems like the dumb one in that duo, but god, no, don’t ever think that.” He visibly shivered, one twitchy little shiver.

Nick seemed to be revisiting the same memory Harlan was, but he looked bitterly angry. He shook his head, staring down at the ground and pressing his lips tight together.

I wondered briefly what she’d done to them.

“So, we’re going to stop them before they get started,” Harlan said. “I don’t want to kill anyone, either, and we won’t if we can help it.”

He glanced at Nick, who didn’t look at him.

“We’ll see,” he said.

And then we fell into silence. I tried to untangle some greasy strands of hair using my fingers (not working), Harlan, judging by the slowness of his breathing, was falling asleep, and Nick Beauregard was lost in thought. I realized that whatever issues I had with him, I was stuck with these two, and I was going to have work with them. Not that he and I were going to be buddies. We weren’t. I could at least take some satisfaction in that.

I looked up at Nick. Still standing. I wondered if he was our leader now (since he knew where to go) and if he’d mind if I slept. I realized that if he did mind, it sucked to be him. I shifted away from the root that had been digging into my hipbone, and dragged myself over to a patch of green mole grass.

I’m no bio-organic, earthy type, but at that moment, I was pretty damn pleased to have that patch of soft grass to sleep on. I curled up, closed my eyes, and tried to think of anything but the present.

My dreams strayed fitfully from place to place till finally I was back at home and back in a memory I knew extremely well; one of those random little scenes that somehow pops out at you when you reminisce, or that always worms it’s way into your dreams. This wasn’t the first time I’d dreamed it up.

I was sitting at the dining room table with my mom across from me- the table was as dark a wood as the rest of the room, well furnished, there was more silver in the dream than there had ever been in reality but otherwise it looked much the same. We were picking at the remains of a ruined supper, and in the room with us was Dad, yelling at someone on the phone.

My dream self- who incidentally looked nothing like I had actually looked at seven, for some odd reason I had the super-straightened, highlighted hair of any average teenage girl- was talking to her imaginary friend. Offering the friend bits of food off of her (my) plate.

Finally, though, I ditched my pal, who was, after all, imaginary, and turned back to Mom.

“Who’s Dad talking to?” I asked.

“Business partner,” said Mom, making a face at me to show that this was distasteful.

“Oh,” I said, making a face too, but only so that I could be like Mom, an adult. In reality, I didn’t get what was going on. I never would.

A cold wind suddenly started to blow into the house, and in this instant, I was awake and back in the present, with a breeze blowing over me. It was fully day, but very overcast, and very shadowy from all the trees. Both Nick and Harlan were asleep now, with their backs to me.

I felt empty and sick from the dream.

It’s good now, I tried fitfully to reassure myself. You moved to La Anarquia. You made that move no matter what they had to say about it. You make your own money now.

Except I didn’t, really, anymore. I was outside the law and the place where I used to work turned out to be too full of crazies to bear staying at.

I sat up, stiffly, and stretched myself out. My face was all feverish from lack of sleep and there was a funny taste in my mouth. I felt sick to my stomach. Of course I would- I only ever seem to dream that dream when I’m sick.

I yawned.

Something small fell out of my mouth and into the leaves.

I jumped. What the…

A sour taste mingled with the sickly one in my mouth. I moved my tongue around and realized that there was now an empty space where one of my bottom teeth should have been. There was now only a tender, salty stretch of gums.

My heart started a tense fluttering.

I was past my tooth-losing years and I knew it. My last one came out when I was ten.

I nervously ran my tongue over the bloody little gap. Whatever had caused it, I had definitely just lost a tooth. There was an impossibly soft, squishy little indent bordered by smooth teeth on both sides. I licked at the back of one of them, wondering what could have happened.

The tooth suddenly gave a rough little pop. More rust-flavored blood seeped into my mouth and I sat completely up, my breathing rattling in my ears- what was this? What on earth was this? You don’t just start losing teeth for no reason; once you’re an adult teeth become a sturdy part of you, and they don’t fall out unless you knock them, rot them, or “extract” them, and I had done none of these things. I touched a hand to my cheek, breathing hard. Nervously, painfully hesitant lest for whatever reason I should push out another tooth, I stuck a finger into my mouth.

I gently ran the finger over my raw, toothless stretch of gums, then, heart pounding painfully, I touched it to the next tooth.

Solid. It didn’t move beneath my touch.

Then the next one-

-wiggled back and forth. I jerked my hand out of my mouth, breathing painfully as though I’d been either running or sobbing.

“Harlan,” I said, my head all seized up with panic. I reached over and grabbed Harlan’s shoulder, shaking it hard. “Harlan! Wake-“

“Maggie?” Harlan was awake, and watching me sleepily. “What up Magg-“

“Harlan, my- my teeth,” I babbled, starting to hyperventilate. “They’re falling out. Harlan. I don’t know why they’re- why are they doing that? Why are my teeth falling out?”

Harlan took me by the shoulders, “Maggie, calm down,” he said, but he looked worried, his eyes glancing from right to left and then to my mouth. “How- uh, how many…fell out? I don’t...I don’t know why they’re doing that, did you sleep on a rock or something? Calm down, Maggie.” He rubbed his hands up and down my arms vigorously, like he thought I was cold or something. I kept hyperventilating- you have no idea how hard it is to stop doing that. All I knew at the moment was that I was losing random parts of my body for absolutely no apparent reason.

“Nick,” Harlan let go of me and crawled over to where Nick was sleeping. As Nick’s form began to stir into consciousness I saw Harlan lean over him, muttering, “Maggie’s losing teeth and she has no idea why.”

“What?” Nick said groggily, sitting up and turning to face me, his eyes narrowed in confusion.

I held up the two teeth that had just stopped wiggling and fallen out altogether.

My chest kept heaving painfully, breathlessly.

“Oh, god,” Nick said, getting up and tottering over to me in a way that actually would have been pretty funny had the circumstances not been so freaky. He leaned over me and in his eyes were both horror and fascination. “How many have you lost?”

“Four,” I stammered out, my voice high-pitched from lack of breath.

Nick sat down heavily beside me.

“Maggie,” he said, “back in the garage. Did the Nevadas give you any kind of injection?”

It fell into place. I stared into his eyes, my own widening.

“Maggie. Did they?” he repeated.

“Yeah,” I said. I realized I’d stopped hyperventilating. Dread was replacing confusion.

“Well,” he said. “I’d be surprised if losing teeth is the worst side effect those drugs are going to give you.”

I nodded, looking down.

“You have to stick this out,” he said. “None of us know what’s going to happen to us. We’ve all had this and that done to us by the Nevadas. Eventually, we’re all going to have some pretty ugly side effects to deal with.”

A soft weight touched my arm. I saw it was a hand, and looked up to connect the hand to Nick.

I moved my arm away and wrapped it around my knees. There was another little pop in my mouth and I turned to spit the tooth out.

“They did something to us that can never be reversed,” he said, but I only vaguely heard him. In my head, I was seeing my old roomie, Katie, that girl with filthy blonde dreadlocks and a blindfold tied around her sightless white eyes. Then, I’d seen her as a freak who’d made my stomach lurch and threaten to give out, a sick exception to what humans were supposed to be. But now I realized I was going to be one of her type. If there was a life waiting for me beyond all these horrors, it was going to be a life where people couldn’t stare enough at me; or couldn’t try hard enough to be tactful, both were pretty bad options.

I swallowed spit-diluted blood and looked up, my mind now presenting another image: Michelle and John Nevada, looking up from their work and directly at me with their gray-green dead eyes.

Nick was watching me closely.

“We’re not going to be what we once were,” he said. “Not anymore. I’m not, you’re not, Harlan’s not.”

I nodded.

“The world’s not,” I said hoarsely. I thought of La Anarquia. I thought of my acquaintances from work- what were they doing now? Nothing that my imagination could fit itself around. It began to hit me, the magnitude of what had been done. The city of La Anarquia held all manner of people, just like any other city, all ages, all walks of life, a million different stories and hundreds of thousands of lifelong strings of memories and interactions, just like yours, just like mine, and then one day, they’d all ended. No exceptions.

The lives were being mocked now, because the people who’d used to live them weren’t even capable now of understanding their old memories. I was pretty sure zombies didn’t remember their former selves.

“Now, hopefully, you get it?” Harlan asked me. He smiled, but it was the saddest smile I’ve ever seen. “We’re talking about more cities, maybe even the world, getting ruined. Because of…well, I don’t know, whatever the whacked-out reasons of two inbred nutjobs are supposed to be. That’s what we’re talking about. They can’t keep doing this. Obviously. Nick and I and hopefully you have to do something, we can’t just sit around a hospital waiting. And if we kill them, we lose two lives and save bazillions. You get that now?”

I leaned back against a tree and sucked back another mouthful of blood, feeling as sour as that mouthful.

“I get it,” I said, and I did.