“Kid has a point,” Ros said. “Hungry.”

“Fuck you,” Pete said. “Get back to your drooling.”

I held my hand up, indicating peace, truce, love, we’re in this together, gang.

Truth was, though, Pete was looking mighty tasty. Every time I glanced his way, he turned into a cartoon steak or pork chop.

Don’t hate the player; hate the game.

“The stench in here,” Pete said, rolling down his window. “God! You guys stink.”

Ros put his thumbs in his ears and wiggled his fingers at the back of Pete’s delicious head. Pete took off his green cap and scratched at his scalp. Dead skin flew. I stuck out my tongue, hoping to catch some like snowflakes.

“I’m tired,” Pete said. “I need to sleep. Someplace safe.” He replaced his cap. “And alone,” he added.

I nodded. I longed to touch his shoulder in reassurance but I didn’t dare. Touching leads to grabbing and grabbing leads to biting and biting leads to eating and before you know it, your driver is gone.

Pete exited at the next service area and pulled into a Comfort Inn. He found the keys and the room.

We were in Wisconsin, near Manitowoc. Land of cheese.

“Can she stand guard?” Pete asked, pointing at Annie.

We looked at her. She touched the gun at her hip.

“Just a few hours,” Pete said.

“Sweet dreams!” Ros said.

Pete slammed the bolt into place and moved furniture in front of the door.

“What?” Ros called. “Don’t you trust us?”

The parking lot was full of abandoned cars and melting snow. The frontage road was deserted. The humans had either been eaten to the marrow or fled. And no humans meant no zombies.

“What’s the plan, captain?”

The plan?

Here’s a plan for you: After the bomb drops, live securely in your shelter with enough canned food for a century-but, oops, no can opener! Or be the last man on earth, finally alone with your precious books-and, oops, break your glasses!

This world was an episode of The Twilight Zone.

The plan, my dear Ros, was simple: Walk around in circles, drooling and moaning, until we stumble upon some hapless human to devour.

Or decay until we’re nothing but walking, chattering bones.

Or shoot each other in the brains and end our misery.

The real plan, the ultimate plan, was to wake from this eternal nightmare, cozy in bed with Lucy beside me, and drink a hot cup of coffee while reading the morning paper. After a breakfast of eggs and toast, the plan was to walk to the university and deliver a ninety-minute lecture deconstructing Britney Spears’s new haircut.

Ros, Joan, and I shuffled into the lobby. Ros turned on the radio. “Chin up,” he said. “Soldier on.”

Guts was playing with Isaac in the circular drive outside, tossing the baby up high and catching him. I considered stopping them-what if Guts missed?-but Isaac’s mouth was open as if laughing and besides, we were invincible. Almost.

If ever there was a time for an old-fashioned wooden deus ex machina…

I waited for it to descend from the sky. I looked out the window. Guts threw Isaac up in the air and wandered off, distracted by something. The baby splatted on the ground, rolling like a burrito. A grub worm. Olive Oyl’s Sweet Pea all bundled in his blue blanket.

Ros fiddled with the dial. Nothing. No ghost in that machine. No savior.

We had to save ourselves.

“And then I carried my son upstairs,” a woman’s voice said, bursting out of the radio, “and locked him in his room.”

“How old is he?” asked another woman.

“Ten.”

“Where is he now?”

“He’s still in there. He’s moaning, banging on the door.”

“Here’s what you do, here’s what you have to do.”

The mother sobbed. “I know what I have to do! The problem is I can’t do it.”

“Gwen,” the woman said, “calm down and listen to me…”

“What if they discover a cure? What if he’s alive in there somewhere? He’s my baby. My only son.”

Ros rolled his eyes. “Cry me a river,” he said.

But Joan put her hands over her bosom. The old broad was touched.

“You’re a survivor, Gwen,” the woman on the radio said. “You’ve made it this far. You are strong. You can do this!”

“Kids?” Ros asked Joan.

Joan held up three fingers.

“One of each,” Ros said.

So I’d been wrong about Joan and her spinsterhood, as I’d been wrong about everything so far: Eve. Stein. Our future. Even Stephen King. What other lies had I told myself? What lies do I continue to believe?

“Is there a man about the house?” the woman asked Gwen.

“Not anymore,” Gwen said. “Shit, shooting that bastard was easy. Right between the eyes.”

The women laughed. Ros switched off the radio.

“Things have changed,” he said.

He was right. If there was talk radio…

“Miss my girlfriend,” he said.

And I didn’t even know Ros’s real name.

“We met in high school,” he gurgled. “Drama club. We were doing Grease-Becky played Frenchie. I built sets, moved stuff around. Grunt work. What I’m good at.”

Frenchie. The Beauty School Dropout. I gestured for Ros to go on.

“Becky wasn’t the most beautiful girl in town,” he continued. “But she was mine and I loved her.”

Ros wheezed and pressed his diaphragm. It was the most I’d heard him say at once and it appeared to give him pain.

“Ooorrmmph,” said Joan.

“Wonder where she is now.” Ros rested his chin in his hand. His fingers disappeared into his cheek. “Dead or undead.” His skin was raw, splotched with lesions and pus. “You made me this way,” he said, looking at me.

I shrugged my shoulders. Guilty as charged.

Ros walked over. He opened his arms and embraced me. “I’m glad,” he said. “Brothers. You and me.”

I extended an arm to Joan and she joined us.

“Group hug,” Ros said, resting his metal head on my fortified shoulder. “Feels good.”

IN THE LOBBY, we gave up. We sat around and slobbered, our eyes vacant and weeping yellow. Until we heard a gunshot outside. Then another and another.

“Annie,” Ros said.

It took minutes to get off the couch. Long minutes to walk to the door. More minutes to open it. Isaac was still stuck on the circular drive. We left him there, a caterpillar in his cocoon.

There was a cluster of undead advancing on Annie, zeroing in on Pete’s room. Annie was holding them off, blowing their brains out, but the moans and shots would attract more. Behind the door, I could hear Pete moving furniture.

“Stay in there,” Ros yelled. “Not safe.”

Pete opened the door anyway, armed with the metal towel rack from the bathroom, some straightened wire hangers, and a chair. Clever man looked like a lion tamer.

There were five zombies left, not counting us. Pete raced to the closest, and-wham!-whacked her upside the head with the towel rack. The fixture broke in half-cheap motel shit-and the zombette kept coming. Pete jammed the clothes hanger in her eye, pushing it in and twisting. The eye popped out and she fell.

“Aww,” Ros said. “She looked like a nice girl.”

Annie took care of the remaining undead lickety-split. Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!

Surely she was running out of bullets.

Screaming like a television Indian chief, sneaky Pete lunged for Annie and plunged the coat hanger into her neck, thrusting it up under her helmet and into her head. But he must’ve missed her brain stem, because nothing happened.

Annie rammed the gun into Pete’s stomach. The trigger clicked. Empty.

Out of somewhere, out of nowhere, out of the very ether, Guts raced up, hunched low like a football player, and bit Pete in the ankle.

How I loved that ankle biter, the crumb crusher. Our adorable imp.

Pete collapsed. There was no turning back now. We pounced on our driver, peeling him open like an orange. He screamed like no orange I’ve ever heard.

It was a Sunday family dinner: Joan gripping Pete’s glistening something or other in her hands like a raccoon, blood dripping down her chin; Guts pulling out yards and yards of guts, rolling around in them, biting them; Ros holding Pete’s lungs aloft like Lady Justice; and Annie, sweet young thing, Annie had captured his heart, which looked fake, like an anatomical gummi heart-gelatinous, chewy, and chock-full of high-fructose corn syrup.