“Pack a bag. Light. I’ll be downstairs.”

Lucy nodded, her eyes still closed.

She thought of the last time she had been awakened and then told to get her bags ready. She shivered at the comparison.

“Are you getting up?” Grant asked her in a parental tone as he stood in the doorway.

She nodded again, but felt her body slink back toward the warmth of her bed.

From outside she heard the sounds of heavy footsteps, her door banging backward, and Darla’s exasperated sigh.

“Please Grant, this is not how you do it,” Darla spat at him. “You’re being too nice.”

Lucy resisted and Darla grabbed her by her hands and pulled her to the floor, her chin hitting the carpeted floor with a thud. Then Darla sat her up and yanked all the remaining covers free.

“Five minutes. Go downstairs, Grant. I got this.”

Grant mumbled a protest, but then retreated.

Alone with Darla, Lucy started to move.

“Not even nearly fast enough sweetheart,” Darla said and pulled her to her feet. “Such a ridiculous life you lead. Bet your mommy got you up every morning with some soft rock and butterfly kisses, right?”

“Hardly,” Lucy replied. Then her thoughts went to her mom.

Her mother was in Nebraska. She knew it, felt it, like she knew that she was going to take another breath or blink. Her mommy was in Nebraska.

“I’m up,” she said and walked to her closet. She knew she had been wearing the same clothes for the past few days and she could smell the stench as she shed them without a hint of self-consciousness. Then Lucy changed into a pair of cargo pants and a black hooded sweatshirt. She grabbed a change of clothes and shoved it into a backpack. The other night in the den, she found her father’s copy of Fahrenheit 451 and for comfort and reading material she packed that too.

Tying on Galen’s hiking boots, which she was pleased to discover fit her quite comfortably, she was ready to leave, but Lucy still felt disoriented.

“You good?” Darla asked and then she retreated.

When she finally made it downstairs, she saw everyone waiting.

Now Lucy could see that Grant had changed too. He was wearing a combination of clothing items from Ethan and her dad, including a weather-resistant jacket with Ethan’s college logo displayed across the back.

Off they marched into the middle of a war and they both just looked like co-eds heading to a rainy football game.

“I’m ready,” Lucy announced.

Grant shimmied into a hiking pack. He nodded toward it as he lifted it up across his shoulders. “The ready-to-eat meals. Flashlight and a blanket.” He leaned down and handed Lucy a pack of matches and a handful of glow-sticks. “These didn’t fit in my pack.”

She shoved them into the front packet, the crinkly packaging echoing loudly in the quiet front room.

“We’ll be heading through unfamiliar neighborhoods,” Darla said. “We stay close. We don’t know who’s alive out there. Grant has proved that much.”

“And there definitely could be zombies,” Grant whispered.

“No zombies.” Lucy rolled her eyes.

“Grant, you’ll have to lead the way,” Darla continued.

Teddy sat on the steps, a found stuffed animal in his hand. He was sucking his thumb and his eyes were heavy with sleep. “Mom,” he asked. “When are you coming back?”

“Later sweetheart. Stay good for Ethan.”

“Mom?”

“Yes, baby boy.”

“Can we go to the park to play when you get home?”

Darla looked at him and smiled softly. “I’ll see. Let’s just say maybe.”

Grant and Darla started toward the side-door, but Lucy hesitated. “Go on, I’ll be right out.” They exited out into the carport and left the two of them alone. She turned to Ethan and walked over to him, kneeling, but careful not to touch his legs. “I don’t know what I should say here,” she mumbled.

“I thought I was the only one,” he replied. “The lone survivor. When I realized there was a chance you were alive too, I’ve never been so happy.”

“I always hoped. I never gave up hope,” Lucy said.

He reached out and grabbed her hand. “I can’t lose you.”

“You won’t. And I can’t lose you.”

“I have no immediate plans to die. Spencer will come through. I’m more worried about you. Be safe, Lucy. Please?”

“I’m doing this for us, Ethan. It feels like I’m abandoning you…but…I want to do this for us. See that and feel it. Believe it.”

“I do.”

“A hot air balloon,” Lucy said and smiled.

“The great and powerful…” Ethan trailed off and then he looked up at her—his blue eyes searching hers. “But you are. You really are. So, it’s fitting, I suppose.”

“There really is no place like home,” she said back, wanting to assure him she understood.

After a long pause, Ethan gave her hand a tight squeeze. “What home?” he asked. Then as she started to pull away he added, “Find them, Lucy. Find them.”

“I will.” She stood up and hugged her brother tightly, avoiding the dark thoughts of impending loss that flooded her and she hugged him until she couldn’t anymore.

The others had generously offered her precious moments to say goodbye.

But now it was time to go.

The Trotter farm was a legitimate farm with a small grove of apple trees and a pasture for grazing horses. Just a mile away from sprawling housing developments, and only a few miles away from the buzzing metropolis of Portland, a more rural part of the city lived and thrived. The streets were empty and vacant, but everywhere they walked, they could not avoid the stench. It reminded them that once upon a time, people were alive. Rot and death wafted in from all angles and it blended with the early morning air, bowling them over.

Only their soft footsteps, sinking in mud or thudding along on the streets, made any sound at all. Occasionally one of them remarked at a sight—a person’s body in the front yard, pajama clad, and left abandoned among the growing grass or a person in the middle of the street, or behind the wheel of a car.

All signs pointed to the fact that many people tried to go about their lives the day the virus claimed them, unwilling to let the disease stop them from going to work, watering their lawn, checking the mail. Everything happened so quickly. One minute they were walking to pick up a newspaper, the next, gone.

“Cut through here,” Grant said and his voice broke up the silence.

They followed him, leaving the developments, cutting through backyards, until they reached a long drive flanked by well-manicured grass.

Grant paused.

“This it?” Darla asked and started to walk forward.

He nodded.

“Let’s go,” she demanded. But Grant refused to step forward. Suddenly tender, Darla went back and took his hand. “We do what you say,” she announced. “Okay?”

“Yeah, okay. Let’s just, um, just go to the barn.”

Darla nodded once. “You got it.”

Lucy took in the sprawling estate with wide-eyed wonder.

Halfway up the drive, Grant walked straight through the yard and spotted a patch of yellow fur nestled among the green. He knelt down and hung his head, and then he stood up more purposeful than before.

“A pet?” Lucy asked.

Grant shook his head. “A stray,” he replied. “But it doesn’t matter. I’m just tired of all of this.”

“Do you want to go inside?” Lucy asked and then immediately regretted it. “Never mind,” she said, backtracking, realizing it was a ridiculous suggestion. “We’ll just get the balloon up.”

“I don’t need to see my dad to know he’s dead,” Grant said with determined nonchalance. “Besides…we weren’t close. And—”

“You don’t have to talk about it now,” Lucy saved him. “We have a balloon ride ahead of us.” Lucy hiked her backpack upward and her foot hit a mound of mush, her boots sinking, but she ignored it and kept following Grant and Darla up the yard toward a large brown building to the left and steering clear of the main house where the blinds and curtains were all shut tight.