Joan ushered us into an REI and Ros, our soldier, helped all of us select waterproof jackets, pants, and caps-anything to slow down the rate of decay. We could be underwater for months.

Guts took off his jeans and T-shirt. His little body was ravaged. Lesions all over like an AIDS patient. Bruised pieces of flesh like old fruit. The duct tape holding in his guts was coming undone; bullet holes dotted his back like stigmata.

“Do I look like that?” Ros asked.

Underneath our clothes, we all looked like that; underneath the patches Joan had sewn over our bullet holes, under my Jason-mask shoulder and Ros’s metal head and Joan’s suede knee and Annie’s patched ass, we were rotting corpses. We could never forget it.

Joan opened her doctor’s bag. Isaac’s head popped out like a whack-a-mole. Thawed, immaculate, and as complete as the day he was born, he wouldn’t need any repairs.

“Help us, Joan,” Ros said, holding out his hands in supplication. The Virgin Mary lawn statuary pose. Joan threaded her needle.

She worked on Annie first and when the teenager was as good as new, I stationed her at the door. The army wasn’t too far behind us and we needed a guard. A few zombies tottered down the sidewalk, bunched together in groups of two or three. I made sure Annie understood she should look out for humans and alert me if any approached. She brought her hand to her forehead in a salute.

I helped Joan with Guts, holding his intestines in place while she stitched his stomach. I considered removing his innards entirely. We could store them in a canopic jar, mummifying them for future archaeologists.

Why not remove all of our vital organs, leaving only brains and bones? Intestines, liver, lungs, stomach, we didn’t need them. Isn’t that how King Tut remained so gloriously intact for centuries? Wouldn’t that preserve us?

I walked like an Egyptian, trying to communicate my idea to Ros and Joan. In the distance, there were gunshots.

“No time for dancing,” Ros said. “Army’s coming.”

I looked over to Annie to see if she could give us a status update. She wasn’t there. I shook Ros’s elbow and pointed to where the teenage zombie had been.

“Annie?” he asked. I shrugged my shoulders and shambled to the door. Outside, there was only the blue of the lake and a smattering of aimless corpses, wandering around like the people you see on television whose homes have been destroyed by tornadoes or hurricanes, standing in what used to be their living rooms, looking for birth certificates or wedding photos, any remains of their past lives.

Ros was right behind me. “Annie!” he said as loudly as he could. He sounded like a goat.

“Where is she?” he asked. I shook my head. “We have to look for her.” I nodded my assent.

Joan and Guts joined us at the door. “Kid,” Ros said to Guts, “you run. Cover ground. Captain, you go north, I’ll go south. Nurse, stay here with the baby. Annie may come back.”

I shook my head.

“It’s a good plan,” Ros gurgled.

I shook my head again, adding my arm and finger to the gesture. Because splitting up would be a mistake. It happens in every disaster movie or thriller, every horror and slasher flick. The core group members go in separate directions to find the missing person or search for an exit or locate the cell phone or radio or a weapon. The killer takes advantage of their solitude, picking each character off at his leisure, going for the weakest ones first.

Divide and conquer. I wouldn’t let it happen to us.

I put my arms around Ros, Joan, and Guts and held them close. Ros tried to squirm away, but I would not let go. We had to stick together.

“You’re the boss,” Ros said.

We walked out of the store and headed north. Isaac was in a carrier on Joan’s back. Joan put her arm around my waist and gave me a squeeze; I held Ros firmly by his jacket, afraid he would try to escape from my grasp.

There were more gunshots, each round louder than the one before.

“Stupid,” Ros said. “They’ll get all of us this way.”

We stumbled forward.

“Kid,” Ros said, shaking Guts’s shoulder. “Run! Find Annie!”

Before I could stop him, Guts was off, racing down the main street, jogging past the high-end stores like a star athlete, putting distance between us and him.

“Our only chance,” Ros said. “Sorry.”

Guts turned a corner and disappeared. I looked behind us. We’d gone a paltry fifty feet.

“He’ll find her,” Ros said. “She’s slow.”

Ros was right. Annie couldn’t have gone far. We crawled back to the REI and waited.

THE AIR BEGAN to hum and buzz, as if someone had flipped a switch and turned on the electricity. Our bite sites tingled. The army couldn’t be too far off. In the street, zombies began walking in the same direction, with determination and purpose, heading straight for the humans. Like rats leaving a sinking ship, they were going to meet their second death halfway.

Not us, though. We stayed hidden in the REI, oozing slime on the trendy camping chairs, trying to ignore the call of the wild.

Ros wandered around the store, adding flippers and a snorkeling mask to his underwater gear.

“Help me breathe,” he joked as he snapped the mask on.

Joan shuffled over to the window and I heaved myself out of my chair. If we waited much longer, we’d either give in and join the herd or be discovered by a reconnaissance unit. Neither option was acceptable. I made a swimming motion with my arms.

“Roger that,” Ros said.

We opened the door. Down the road we could see the zombies of Wisconsin heading south, a giant flock of stinking flightless birds.

“Bye-bye,” Ros said, waving at their backs. “Good luck.”

He pressed on his diaphragm and opened his mouth to give it one last try. “Annie!” he bellowed.

Joan poked his stomach with her elbow, cutting his cry short. She pointed down the street.

The children were walking toward us, Guts skipping and jumping. They waved, big smiles on their adorable faces, greeting us like dead grandparents welcoming their descendants to heaven. Annie twirled in a circle like a music-box ballerina.

Wherever she’d been, I didn’t care. Even though she disobeyed me, I was elated to see her. She was forgiven.

ROS, JOAN, AND I dragged our raggedy asses across the park. Isaac was encased in the waterproof pack on Joan’s back. So snugly wrapped, he was invisible.

It started raining and it must have been cold. Our feet squeaked on the sand.

“You,” Ros said, shaking his fist at Annie when we met them at the lake.

Annie went through a series of pantomimes describing her adventure. From what I could gather, she’d picked up the scent of a human and took off after him, thinking that a meal was in order before our watery sojourn. She’d found him in the Crate and Barrel, but as she drew near, he crossed the line from human to zombie. She wrinkled her nose to express her distaste.

While she acted out the scene, I tied all of us together with nylon rope. I didn’t want to lose anyone again.

“Scared us half to death,” Ros said. “Bad girl!”

I tried to look severe, but I couldn’t. I felt warm and fuzzy inside and I hugged Annie close, pressing her head against my breast.

We heard a barrage of machine-gun fire. There was no more time for sentiment.

Thin sheets of ice floated on top of the lake and a few chunks washed up on shore. Annie bent down, picked up a handful of sand, and let it sift through her fingers. Guts skipped a rock, but the water was too choppy to count the number of times it skimmed the surface. Joan had her eyes fixed on the horizon.

“Baaaahhhhhee,” she said, pointing. I squinted in the direction of her finger but couldn’t see anything.

“Is that a boat?” Ros asked. “Or ship?”

I could see only gray: gray sky, gray lake, gray clouds like great gray brains.