??????? ??????? Terrence would lose his shit and scream at the man. Instead, he kept his arms raised and his voice low.

"We were just lookin' for a police officer," said Terrence, backing up some inches from the doorway. The musty floorboards creaked at the steps of his cordovan loafers.

The more Scarlet listened to the creaks, the more she wanted to look away, as if they were only predecessors to a loud shotgun blast, one that would blow Terrence's head clean off and spray blood across the room.

The man coughed some more, the phlegmy sort that normally broke into a thousand disconnected croaks. You knew they were terribly ill when you heard that sound. Scarlet's father had been the same way, but instead of releasing whitish-green globs of mucus, he had unleashed clumps of dark red blood. And that was indeed one of the most frightening experiences a woman like Scarlet could endure. Maybe the most frightening of things. It was one thing to see him die, and it was another to see him dying. "Are you really as stupid as you look?" the man asked. "Do you think we give a hot damn about your issues?"

Scarlet's face fell, her thoughts folding and unfolding like a deck of cards. She looked at her mother expecting a response to the officer, but she kept her mouth shut and returned Scarlet's gaze. Their stare only lasted a couple seconds, which was enough time for Scarlet to come up with a question. She turned round and asked, "Wuh-why are you out here if you don't care about people? Wouldn't you just stay home, mister?" She let out a cough of her own, though nowhere near as vigorous as those of the police officer's.

Terrence looked back at Scarlet with a sort of stifled frustration—that I have it all under control, why did you say something? look.

The man brought himself up to his feet, keeping the shotgun parallel to the floor, aimed directly at Terrence, or maybe at Scarlet; it was difficult to tell. Underneath him was a pool of blood, and Scarlet saw that his leg had been wounded.

"That doesn't concern you," the officer said. "Whatever you're lookin' for, a police officer or someone to answer to your damn problems, you ain't gonna find shit from us. We're all lookin' out for our own asses, for our families, in this goddamn disease-ridden state. My station got overrun by some crazy bastards in hazmat suits just hours ago; they were carrying AK's and told us to get in their truck. They took my daughter, the bastards." He punctuated his sentences with coughs and sniffs. He broke out into tears a few seconds later, not perceptibly but audibly. Scarlet could tell by the way his deep voice quavered and how he slurred some of his words, though that could have easily been because of his sickness. It sure looked like hell under that gas mask, she thought, a place where she wouldn't want to visit.

Rachel stood in front of Scarlet, now alongside Terrence, with her hands also up. The man was looking down at his feet, crying. Scarlet thought Terrence would reach for his gun as he did so. She hoped he wouldn't, but at the rate of things, with the men she'd seen, it seemed like the only valid option. That, or accept a shot to the brain from this grieving man.

"We have a little girl back there who's missin' her mother as well," Rachel said, her voice quaking for something to soothe her butt-parched throat. "That's why we wanted to contact you police, to see if y'all could bring her up to a place called Archer's Creek. We aren't here to cause any trouble, we just ran low on gas and need help getting back on the road. Do you get me?" She took a step towards the man as if to offer a hand, but she kept it above her shoulder where it should have been. "I'm awful sorry about your wife. What's her name?"

Although the man was still crying and his words were still hitching with every sentence he tried to form, he managed to tell her: "Shayla. Shayla Woods. She works with me at the station in Crawfield. She has these stunning green eyes and long red hair, kinda like yours." He pointed at Vanessa. "God, I miss her so much. They took her from because they said she had the virus. Yeah, we tried to stop them from takin' any more people, but Jesus . . . These guys knew how to use a gun. They killed almost everyone there and kept the women alive, brought them in this big black truck or something, and drove off."

"But how did you live?" Vanessa stepped forward, her eyes fluttering and her hands shaking. "Did they let you go?"

The man drew his shotgun away but still held it firmly in his arms, coughed, and said, "That's the hard part for me . . . I played dead with the rest of my men instead of fightin'. I just couldn't imagine a world where I never got to see her again. Truth be told I've always been afraid of death. Always thought that it was just pure blackness, even though it probably isn't. It's still hard, and it's even harder when you're in that moment—where your power as a police officer dwindles away to nothin'. I love her, and I want her back. But . . ." He paused before inspecting his shotgun, slouched over as if an invisible barbell had been resting upon his shoulders. ". . . I don't think I'm gonna last very long out here. I'm infected. I just know I am. It feels awful, like nothing I've ever had before."

Terrence took a couple steps back and said, "Jesus . . ."

There followed a long silence. One that Scarlet took the time to think in: This poor man . . . He's sick and wants his wife back . . . I can almost feel his loneliness, but God, that gun. That gun's gonna drive me in-fucking-sane!

"Listen," said Terrence, his voice low and respectful. He slowly took a few steps towards the man. The officer drew the shotgun back up at an arm's length, pointing it at Terrence. "Oh, easy. I just don't think we should be wavin' a gun round in here. I told you we don't mean any harm. Can you let us be on our way, sir? What is your name, anyway?"

Scarlet's face paled the more everyone spoke. This whole thing just made her feel sick to the stomach and anxious to the bone. Once or twice—maybe three times—she shifted her weight from her left to her right in a desperate attempt to keep herself from fainting, but she wasn't so sure she could hold out much longer. A hand patted her back; it was Vanessa's.

"It's okay, you're fine," her mother whispered, standing a little closer.

Scarlet heard a rustling noise come from Vanessa's pants; she had reached into her pocket and pulled out a pistol, the one from last night. Scarlet's eyes widened in a panic, wanted to scream and shout and tell her to put it away. But she didn't. She held her peace.

Behind Scarlet, a gust of snow swept in from the shattered windows and touched her nape, an icy kiss from winter that let her know death was on its way, that humans weren't built to survive in such conditions, that mother-nature held her own like how a community held its beliefs. It was strong, piercing, and made Scarlet shiver intensely. Even farther behind her, the wind was howling constantly like an aeroplane engine.

The man didn't answer. He kept silent momentarily. Then he reached into his pocket with a free hand, the other gripping the shotgun handle firmly. He pulled out a colour-photo and looked at it for a second before handing it off to Terrence. "Shayla Woods. Remember her name, would you? And if you ever find her—" He let out a phlegmy, disgusting cough. "—tell her I love her. And tell her I died happily knowing she was safe, and that I'm sorry I couldn't be there. Tell her I'm sorry we never had a child, tell her I'll be waiting for her in the clouds, and that I'll be sure to watch over her. Tell her I died of the virus, and that there's nothing I could do. Could you tell her all that, mister?" He coughed again.

Terrence accepted the photo without question and tucked it in his pants. "I sure can," he said. "I can tell her all of that." He nodded diligently.

Rachel dropped her gloved hands down to her sides, tired from the strain holding them up had bestowed upon them. "It was nice to meet you, Officer Woods. And you have our word now that if we ever find Shayla, we'll keep her safe, too. If we can, of course. There's a little girl we have to get back to her mother in Northwood Bay. It's said to be safer up there; a place where she can ward off the disease." She cleared her throat the more she spoke. She told him Abigail was waiting outside in the cold, and the officer listened as intently as he could until he slid back down against the wall and lay on the ground, panting.

The man withdrew his shotgun one last time, turned it over, and handed it to Terrence. And he took it with the same solidarity he'd shown when taking the picture of Shayla Woods. "You can . . . find fuel in my . . . car. Grab my siphon hose and canister in the front seat. And Godspeed, sir . . ." He sounded dreary, speaking in laboured breaths. "Godspeed . . ."

They left the building as slowly as they had entered it, careful not to make a sound—for whatever reason. It just seemed like the right thing to do, to keep one's peace after someone's tragic death—if the officer did indeed die. Scarlet felt terrible about what had happened to him. She thought what would happen if something like that happened to Michael.

To love someone for so long just to have the hands of the Lord rip them away from you: that was the real plague.

She thought about meeting this Shayla Woods, and thought about how she would react if Scarlet delivered the news. (She never was the type of person to give people bad news—but she was the type to tell people things they didn't want to hear. Scarlet became fully aware of this trait of hers when she pissed off her friends in high-school, even though she didn't really understand why. She never did like school, was never really any good at it. She did her best and that was enough.)

When they made it back to the police car, Darla was faintly barking from the inside of the SUV. It was difficult to hear, like some sort of repetitive beeping noise that you weren't sure was still there or not, but you knew it had been. Her voice came as a whisper among the winds, and Scarlet liked that. Her bark sure was annoying. A lot of the noises she made were, but Scarlet still loved her with all the energy she could muster. Though, she wasn't sure if it was normal to hate a dog's bark; all she knew was that loud noises were a big, fat (fucking) no-go!

She watched Terrence reach into the driver's-seat front door, pull out a siphon hose and gas canister, head to the back, and extract the fuel. He brought the canister over to the SUV and filled the fuel-pump up as quickly as he could, whilst Scarlet and the others went inside, reuniting with Abigail, who was devouring Animal Farm page by page (looked to be about halfway done), and Darla.

Terrence came in a minute later and shut the door behind him. He kept the shotgun at his side but made sure to put the safety on. Then he continued the journey north, leaving the little commercial area behind without saying a word. He tried turning on the radio a few times, but all he got was a bunch of fuzz. The speedometer needle returned to an average of twenty miles per hour, sometimes spiking to well above thirty, and boy, could you feel it.

They passed through the Crawfield city some hours later, when the sky had begun losing its brightness and all the clouds had darkened to a shadow. Among the buildings were abandoned vehicles. The shops looked as though they'd been broken into multiple times, and there was a litany of broken fire hydrants around every corner. Were people stealing water from the hydrants now? Was that a thing? Scarlet asked herself these questions as the skylight beamed in through the car windows like an uninvited friend. After a while—after leaving the city of Crawfield behind in its lull—they passed through an almost snowless, macadamized road. This didn't make any sense; the snow was beating down hard, and this road looked as if it had received a regular dusting. There was a sprawl of flakes to go around, but nowhere near as much as the other cities.

In front of the turnpike were four uninhabited vehicles, which Scarlet saw as a sign to head back and find another route (there weren't any) in the hopes that they could avoid potential disaster. But Terrence kept driving, didn't stop the whole way there. When they made it to the turnpike he silently awaited for some men to come out and let him through.

"What's going on here?" Rachel asked, popping a Marlboro into her mouth and setting it alight.

And that was a good question, one that deserved a thoughtful answer. A very thoughtful answer indeed.