“I’ll turn this in to the police in the morning. Shouldn’t be any trouble for you two. Looks like a clear-cut case of self-defense. Regardless, it’s not like the other guys are around to tell their side.” He set the papers down. “You ever find the sniper that got Rojas?”

Tyrel said, “Officially? No.”

A slight smile creased LaGrange’s face. “Unofficially?”

“I took care of it.”

“Good.” LaGrange sat back in his desk and rubbed his hands over his tired face. “Damn shame about Rojas. He was a good man. He’ll be missed.” Our platoon leader stood up and stretched and picked up a stack of papers. “I’ll let the rest of the men know what happened. We’ll put together a memorial service. Think there’s any chance of recovering the body?”

“Maybe,” Tyrel said. “If it stays cold and the infected don’t get to him we might be able to send a few guys. If so, I’ll go with them.”

“Me too,” I said.

“I’ll see what I can do. In the meantime, you two go home and get some rest. You look like shit.”

The two of us nodded and stood up to leave. LaGrange began to walk away, then stopped in his tracks and turned around. “Wait, Hicks, I almost forgot.” He opened a drawer and pulled out a letter in a sealed envelope. “This came for you yesterday morning. Courier said it was urgent.”

I took the envelope. “He say anything else?”

“Nope. Try reading the letter.” With that, he left.

I stared at it for a few seconds, brows close together. There was nothing written on the outside, no indication of who it came from. I opened it and took out a small scrap of paper. It read:

Caleb,

Sophia went into labor last night. She’s at the hospital. The doctors said there’s something wrong. Come to the maternity ward as soon as you get this letter. Ask for doctor Caligan.

It was signed by one of Sophia’s old co-workers. I stared at it for several long seconds willing the words to change, hoping if I wished hard enough the letters would rearrange themselves and tell me everything was all right. Tyrel broke the trance by putting a hand on my arm.

“Hey, kid, you all right? What does the letter say?”

I handed it to him and sprinted for the door.

*****

Dr. Caligan was a short red-haired woman in her late forties. She stepped into the waiting room and stood in front of me under fluorescent lights. The hospital was one of the few facilities in the Springs with electricity, powered by fuel brought in from some strategic reserve or another. She introduced herself and asked me to have a seat.

I said, “Where’s Sophia?”

“Sir, please don’t shout.”

I ground my teeth, took a breath, and said, “Please, doctor.”

“Would you take a seat?”

I didn’t move. A grinding sound reached my ears, and I felt a terrible pressure behind my eyes. The doctor looked down, wiped her mouth, and said, “Last night, your wife went into labor. There were complications.”

My legs began to feel weak. “What complications?”

“Sir, you’re shaking. Please sit down.”

This time, I did as ordered. The doctor took a seat beside me, her eyes filled with genuine sympathy. “She was in labor for two hours. She delivered the baby, but suffered severe hemorrhaging in the process. We did everything we could for her, but … Mr. Hicks, I’m afraid she didn’t make it. She lost too much blood and passed away during surgery.”

The floor disappeared beneath my feet.

I knew it was there, but could not feel it. My ears rang, sounds coming to me as from a great distance. I broke out in a cold sweat. My hands went numb. A hot tingling roared around my cheeks and in my chest. I was not hearing this. This was not real. I was not in this hospital, this doctor was not talking to me, and none of this was happening. It was a nightmare, and I would wake up soon. Sophia would be beside me in bed, and Rojas would still be alive, and Lauren, and Dad, and Blake, and the living dead would never have devoured the world and destroyed everything and it just all had to stop.

Closing my eyes, I said, “Where is she now?”

“She’s in the morgue. I’ll need you to identify the body.”

I nodded numbly. “What about the baby?”

Some questions, you ask them and you already know the answer. It is intuition. It is instinct. It is the subtle inferences one can make in the course of conversation that reveal a truth without actually saying it. We convey these truths by tone, by body language, by the prerequisites of human experience, and by the things not said in their correct places. Such as telling a man the mother of his child died in childbirth and not immediately salving the wound by mentioning the child survived. So the next sentence out of her mouth was no surprise.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Hicks.”

The doctor told me Sophia held her before she died. My daughter. Before the end, she had enough time to give her a name.

Lauren.

I leaned my head back against the wall, felt warmth pour down my cheeks, and remembered the picture in the locked chest in that shithole shipping container I lived in, and the beautiful blue-eyed blonde woman holding a wrinkled little baby, and her pale face, her blue lips, the sadness in her smile, and all the years of watching my father try to put himself back together.

My life had finally come full circle.

And now it was over.

FIFTY-NINE

Six weeks later, I woke up in the street.

It was night. I had no idea what time. A howling wind roared through the streets, hurling loose snow and ice like a frozen sandstorm. A hand shook my shoulder, trying to roll me over.

“Hey, mister, wake up. You can’t sleep out here.”

I rolled to my back. The sky above was black, starry, and clear, the streets and buildings around me illuminated by the full moon. I sat up and looked down at myself. My jacket was missing, as were my boots. Whoever robbed me had left my socks, although they weren’t doing me much good. I could not feel my feet.

I looked up at the person who woke me. He was a soldier about my age, maybe eighteen or nineteen, the visible part of his face ruddy and windblown. A scarf covered his mouth and nose.

“Sir, it’s freezing out here. We have to get you some place warm. Can you stand up?”

“I can try.”

The soldier wrinkled his nose as he helped me stand. I managed about four steps on the wooden blocks attached to my legs before the world began to spin and I went down to my knees and was violently sick. Not that there was much in my stomach to throw up. A few minutes of dry heaves later, I staggered up.

“Okay. I think I’m a little better now. Where are we going?”

“There’s a place up the street. You can warm up there for a while.”

“Where are we?”

He told me. I said, “Well, at least I’m not far from home. Must have been on the way there when I passed out.”

The place the soldier mentioned turned out to be a tavern built on the foundation of a building that burned down during the Outbreak. It looked like something out of the mid nineteenth century: plank floors, wooden tables and chairs, dark paneling on the walls, a long polished bar to the left of the door, and a roaring fireplace in a brick chimney on the far side of the dining room. Upstairs, a railed walkway encircled three sides of the tavern, doors spaced every eight feet or so. The soldier helping me eased me down into a chair near the fire.

“Wait here a minute,” he said.

I leaned against the table, laughing to myself. I could not have gone anywhere if I had wanted to. The fire was warm and inviting, and I turned so I could rest my feet on the hearth.

Looking across the room, I saw the soldier talking to the bartender. There were only a few other patrons scattered about, all of them staring at me. The noise was low enough I could hear the conversation.

“The hell you bring him in here for?” the bartender demanded. He was a stout man with thick arms, a shaven head, and a face like a bulldog.