“That’s right.”

“So what do you do now? How do you live?” But I could tell the question he meant to ask was, How the hell did a Zoner like you meet my daughter?

“Special deliveries. I take private packages all across the Zone. I’ve even done some work for you, sir. That’s how I met your daughter.”

He frowned at that.

“Where do you plan to take my daughter, Andrew?”

“Dinner, sir. And dancing. On the Starliner. Out on the lake.”

He looked impressed, though I could tell he didn’t want to be impressed.

“The Starliner’s not cheap,” he said. “Special deliveries must pay pretty good.”

“Business is fine, sir.” I paused, then said, “But that’s not really what you’re asking, is it?”

He raised an eyebrow and waited.

“Listen,” I said. “Heather’s a special girl. That’s not something you have to tell me. I mean I already know it. I recognize a class act when I see one, and I intend to treat her accordingly.”

I’d guessed right. That was exactly what he needed to hear. He knew as well as anybody the dangers waiting for his daughter outside his compound’s walls, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to keep her from them forever. Sooner or later, with or without his permission, she was going to brave that world. Maybe sending her out with me, somebody who had proven their ability to survive, was his way of hedging his bets.

But whatever his thoughts, he gave his consent. He called in his senior security officer, a slender, bowlegged man named Naylor, and Naylor drove us out to the main gate in an air conditioned utility vehicle. He told the guards to give me back my gear and my motorcycle, and while they were doing that, he pulled Heather aside and gave her a little talk.

After that, to me, Naylor said, “She has a portable radio equipped with a GPS tracker. My people will be monitoring it all night. We’ll be close.” Then he fixed me with a meaningful glare and said, “All she has to do is call.”

The message came through loud and clear.

“I’ll try to be on my best behavior,” I said.

Heather jumped on the back of my bike and pressed her breasts into my back. I could feel the hard pebbles of her nipples through our clothes. “You better not be on your best behavior,” she whispered into my ear. “Now drive fast, Andrew. Get me out of here.”

In the days after the Fall, when the necrosis virus emerged from the hurricane-ravaged Texas Gulf Coast and turned the infected into flesh-eating human train wrecks, the old world collapsed, and men like Dave Ashcroft stepped up to fill the power vacuum. They built compounds like the one Heather and I had just left to protect their interests, and everywhere else became a wasteland known as the Zone of Exclusion.

After my parents died, I became one of the fringe people, a Zoner. I was too young to be of any use to the bosses who were just then consolidating their power and building their compounds, and so there weren’t any other options open to me… These days I know the Zone better than most, and what I know I learned the hard way, fighting it out every day with the infected in the ruins of San Antonio.

I survived that way for ten years. Then, right after I turned sixteen, I stole a motorcycle. And before long, I’d worked up a reputation as someone who could get packages delivered anywhere in the Zone.

That’s how I met Heather. About two months before our first date I brought her a package from a dying woman out in the Zone. How that woman got the money to pay me I don’t know, because I don’t come cheap, but she did pay me, in gold, and I made the delivery.

Heather opened the package in front of me and took out a badly worn pink blanket with her name stitched on it. There was a note attached, and she read it four times before she asked me about the woman who sent it.

“She’s not doing so hot,” I said, which was being charitable. The truth was the effort it took her to tell me what she wanted nearly killed her.

Heather nodded quietly, and then the tears came.

She told me her parents divorced when she was little, before the Fall, and when the world turned upside down, her father took her away because he could protect her better than her mom.

She didn’t have many memories of the woman, but from the looks of that blanket, I figured her mom had plenty of memories of her.

Heather gave me a long letter to take back to her mother, and though she could have paid my fee ten times over with what she carried in her pocket, I didn’t charge her.

I took the letter to her mother, and because she couldn’t see well enough to read, I read it for her. She died a few days later, but I think she was happy during those last few days. Happier than she’d been in years.

Heather and I got close after that, though we had to steal the moments we spent together.

At least we did before tonight.

Now, sitting on the back of my bike, she squeezed my waist and put her lips to my ear. “I love the wind on my face,” she said. “Go faster.”

Dinner was the best thing I’d ever tasted, roasted mutton with wasabi mashed potatoes and asparagus. To this day I have no idea what the hell wasabi is, or where you get it, but I sure loved the bite it gave those mashed potatoes.

And the scenery was fantastic. The stars dappled on the surface of Canyon Lake. On the shore, the tops of the hills were silvered with moonlight. There was music, a few older couples dancing on the open air deck, glimpses of a world long gone.

The conversation, on the other hand, lagged. At least at first.

I’d never really talked to a girl. Not like you do on a date, anyway. I didn’t know what I was supposed to say, how I was supposed to act. She knew little about weapons, or the Zone, and that pretty much exhausted what I knew. She was into growing vegetables and had plans for building schools.

But I told her dad I was going to treat her like a class act, and I did. The thing is, deep down inside, I am, and always will be, a Zoner. Life, as I had known it, was short and mean and cheap, and I spent a lot of time wondering if it was really worth the effort I put into it. When you think that way, it can be hard to look at a girl and think the two of you have a chance at romance.

She asked me if there was anything wrong.

“This world seems kind of pointless, don’t you think?” I whispered across the table to Heather as the waiter poured each of us another glass of wine.

“There may not be a point,” she said. “But even still, we’re here. You and me. That’s enough, isn’t it?”

Her answer surprised me, the simple practicality of it. “That’s true,” I said. “Here we are.”

After dinner we danced on the open deck of the Starliner. A cool, late spring breeze was in the air, carrying with it the thick, marshy smell of lake water. I held her body close to mine, the first time I’d ever held a real girl, and lost myself in the warmth of her green eyes and the smell of her skin.

That feeling, that comfort of absolute privacy, the romance of it, was why the Starliner cost so much. The infected were everywhere, and not even the strongest compound was completely safe from them, but when the Starliner was off her moorings and out on the lake, it was its own world, untouchable by the harsh realities of the Zone.

But of course there were other dangers in the Zone besides zombies. As the evening drew to a close, and the Starliner began her slow cruise back to the wet dock, Heather and I stood on the bow and talked about the future, about the stars, about anything and everything except the past. It was our night, and though our bonds had been forged in the heartaches of the past, we wanted our night together to be about the future. We wanted our own happy memories together.

There were no other boats on the lake. At least there hadn’t been during most of our date. But as we rounded a final elbow of land and entered the cove, we saw a large cabin cruiser waiting for us, the vague shapes of men ringing the rails of the deck.