26 days After:

The boy woke up before I did, before even the sun. He was sitting by the door when I woke, staring at the retreating zombies. "They look so... sick," he said uselessly. I wanted to throw things at him.

In the light, he was an all-American boy. Blue eyes, messy blond hair that - contrary to popular belief - did not look good tousled. He needed to shave desperately - he was beginning to look like a homeless guy. "I never got your name," he said as I rolled up my sleeping bag. "I'm Grant."

I breathed out hard and my breasts strained against their bindings. I hadn't gotten a chance to unravel myself last night because he'd come and now my chest was aching from the tightness of the tape. "Indy," I said gruffly. My throat tightened at the sound of his name.

"Like Indy car racing?" he asked, smiling. "My dad used to be obsessed with those."

I swallowed. "No, like Indiana. Like Indiana Jones."

He snorted. "Indiana Jones?"

"My dad was a fan," I said. I'm sure the real Indy never had to explain himself this way - he just had that air about him that you didn't question. I stuffed my sleeping bag into my pack and then took a sip from my water jug. "I'm gonna get going," I said.

"Man," he said, frowning, "Do you mind if I tag along? You seem pretty bad ass with all this zombie shit and I don't even know how I managed to survive at all."

I sighed. "Do you have a bike?"

"No, but-"

"Well, if you can't keep up, you can't come. If you find a bike, sure, but you need to pull your weight when we loot. I can't just have you eating all my food." I sounded like such a dick. Maybe like a real guy. Absently, I ran my hand over the stubble on my head. It was a good thing I'd inherited my father's strong jaw or else this whole pretending to be a guy thing wouldn't have worked out well. I hadn't encountered many people, anyway, since those first few nights. I was getting well into the country.

The first few houses we looted in complete silence and Grant found a bike in the third house's garage. I picked through the medicine cabinets and stuffed the left-over antibiotics and painkillers and aspirins into my bag. Grant took the more obviously practical stuff: canned vegetables, stale candy, a water filter that was molding in the humid fridge. He found himself a backpack, smaller than mine, and by the time we reached the real country roads, we were set.

It was disgustingly easy to survive during the day. Food was plentiful because almost everyone was dead - or undead. Almost every household had a water filter of some type. But when night comes, it's a whole different story. If you don't know how to build the biggest bonfire of your life or you aren't someplace with plenty of locks and bulletproof windows - you're fucked. It's that simple.

Grant was talkative as we rode our bikes. His was missing handlebar grips, so his hands kept slipping off the bars from sweating so much. He smelled like BO, although I'm not sure I smelled much better. He told me about his school, how it hadn't even shut down until two weeks ago, and about his mom, who was a cold-hearted bitch. I said almost nothing, but whether it was from trying not to use my terrible boy-voice or because reminiscing about Before made me sick to my stomach.

Dark was falling when we reached the town on my atlas: Newberry. It had been stupid not to stop and make camp hours ago because we would've at least known there'd be shelter, but I'd ridden on until my legs burned from exertion, wanting the wind to take away Grant's voice. He reminded me too much of Before.

We found another convenience store, but this one had its bullet-proof windows smashed in. It had been completely looted, just like every other building, but Grant managed to jimmy the lock on the courthouse and get us in there.

I was afraid, in the damp darkness. I didn't know who - or what - could be in here. People may've been turned in here and never left, but by the state of the door, it didn't seem likely. Still, I stuck close by the warmth of Grant. We both needed showers, badly, but the smell reminded me of life, of humanness, not of the stench of death that permeated them.

My backpack jangled against my back, weighing me down. It was so fully with things that my shoulder muscles were straining from every minute of holding it. Grant and I climbed the stairs gingerly and found rooms empty of things besides papers until we came upon the actual courtroom. It didn't look like one of those in movies - it had gray carpeting and the seating area had waiting room chairs. The judge's seat was raised and her platform was wooden, but that was the only familiar thing.

Miraculously, we found a break room that hadn't been looted. Before I could do anything, Grant had stripped out of his shirt, covered his hand with it, and punched the glass of the snack machine. It didn't break at first and his hand just bounced off, but a few hard kicks and a broken chair later, we were luxuriating in candy bars and chips.

I locked the snack room door, just in case anything broke in there, and covered the windows so the zombies outside couldn't see the light of the little fire we'd lit in the tin trashcan. I snacked on M&Ms, the first chocolate I'd had in a week, while Grant munched on chips. "You're not very talkative," he said, doing that weird half-smile that guys have perfected.

I didn't answer, just kept eating my candy. It was so strange to be with another person. I'd gotten used to being alone, to not hearing my own voice for days at a time, that it was still jarring to listen to someone else speak, to listen to them breathe quietly next to me. "I'm going to the bathroom," I said, because my chest was aching badly from being bound for so long.

The toilets didn't work, but we were going to be there for such a short amount of time that it didn't matter. I locked the door and flicked my flashlight, just for some warm light, even if I couldn't see anything. I unzipped my jacket and pulled off my t-shirt - and there, in the mirror, skin.

I hadn't looked in a mirror for a few days and my face looked wild and tired. I unwrapped the bindings and shuddered out my first deep breath in two days. My breasts weren't very large, so there wasn't much to hide, but they'd have been noticeable underneath even a baggy t-shirt. But after everything that had happened, I wasn't going to become someone's property because the world had ended. Even if I had to pretend to be a boy, would survive.

There were lines on my skin, marks from the wrappings, and I relished in the ability to breathe fully again, out and out and out, so big that I looked pregnant.

And that's when I heard - their high-pitched, hyena wails. The smashing of windows, downstairs. The pounding of Grant's fists on the door. For the second time since last night, his voice, tinged with fear: "They've broken in downstairs! I can hear them coming up here!"

I pulled my clothes on quicker that I'd thought possible and pushed open the door. "We need to push the fridge in front of the door or else they'll be able to break it down."

I used my flashlight to unplug it and cleared a space in front of the door. The fridge was heavy - it was one of those old ones, with the freezer space on top, and it seemed to weigh a thousand pounds. My feet scrabbled against the floor as I pushed my back against it, trying to budge it out of place.

Another high-pitched wail, this time much, much closer. Maybe from a shot of adrenaline, Grant managed to pull and I managed to push harder, both at the same time, and the fridge slammed against the door.

And then it started.

Their fingernails, broken and bleeding, scratching at the door. The wailing, like the keening of a mother losing a child. Some were higher-pitched and some were more like groans, but they all sounded as painful. My heart was up to my ears, pounding so loud that it almost blotted out the screaming. I just stared at the fridge for a minute, my fingernails biting into my palms. The women all sounded the same - like my mother. The men all sounded the same - like my brothers.

Grant grabbed my arm and shoved me into the corner of the room because I'd been standing in the same position for five straight minutes. He didn't seem to hear the sounds, their deadly music. He just stacked chairs and anything else large he could find around the fridge, his jaw set. By himself, he pushed the snack machine next to the fridge, so there was no way anything could break through the door unless they cut both machines open.

It had been easier, alone. I could cry as I built up my bonfire, listening to their screeches. I could keen and wail with them, just from the loss. And I didn't have time to be mopey - I had to bat at some of them with burning tree branches, I had to wedge knives into their eye sockets, I had to aim and pull the trigger, back when I still had bullets. I had to do anything, just to live. And now there was this boy - this man - with me, and suddenly I was the damsel in distress, I could collapse in this panic, because somebody else could set their jaw and do the dirty work I'd been doing for the past three and a half weeks.

Grant slid down the wall next to me and sat, grabbing a bag of chips from our piles of snacks. "You okay?" he asked, and he was out of breath.

I nodded. It hadn't hit me this hard ever before.

I didn't sleep that night and neither did Grant. We wedged ourselves into the corner of the room and talked loud, over their wails. We ate until our stomachs hurt and I had to run to the bathroom.

And there they were, my forgotten bindings, lying in circles on the ground.