We got back in the cars. Mercury drove following the others. Ours was last again.

The life layer split as we passed through it like a coat of blue air parting around the vehicle. Then closing behind us.

We were officially on the plain. Infected everywhere. Standing in the dark like furniture nobody had put away, paused in the specific stillness of something that had simply stopped. Level one and two. I knew the difference by how they held themselves.

My first thought was Harmione.

Zombies aren’t real, she had said, with the easy confidence of someone who had grown up somewhere safe enough to doubt the things outside it.

Now you see them for yourself, I thought.

"Wow," May breathed from the front seat, pressing closer to the window. "These things aren’t as dangerous as Bagins’ practicals made them seem."

Sherry looked at me and let out a quiet laugh, the sound warm in the confined space.

"They’re actually dangerous," I said. "Depends on the level and the time."

The convoy moved slowly, picking through the gaps, engines engineered to silence. The front car, the one carrying the forty Guardians, was making way for the rest of us. We hadn’t knocked a single one yet.

"We were informed they don’t attack at night," Mercury said, glancing at me through the rearview mirror. Her glasses reflected the dim dashboard lights.

"Also depends on the level."

We all laughed. This was still fun. The infected were just standing there looking like props and nobody had been in real danger yet and the car was warm.

Give it time, I thought.

"So this is the real apocalypse," Sherry said softly, staring out into the darkness.

"Yes it is," Mercury answered, her voice quieter now.

As the density of infected thinned, Mercury picked up speed. May twisted in her seat to look back at us. Sherry had already shifted, curling comfortably and resting her head in my lap. Within minutes her breathing slowed into deep, even sleep. I brushed a strand of hair from her face.

She was right to rest now.

"Could you show me your home?" May asked suddenly, looking at me.

Mercury laughed. We were in a wasteland, flat and dark in every direction. I didn’t grow up from this part of the plain anyway. I grew up the other side, and we were getting closer to it.

"Does anyone here drive?" Mercury asked.

I had never touched a steering wheel in my life. I stayed silent.

"I’ve never driven before," May said cheerfully, "but I can drive."

Mercury laughed. She was a kind that found everything slightly funnier than it probably was, which was either a personality or a coping mechanism and I wasn’t going to examine which.

Sherry settled deeper into sleep on my lap. Her breathing slow and steady.

"Do you know that me and this dude fuck?" May said, to Mercury, completely out of nowhere.

Mercury’s eyes flicked to the rearview mirror, catching mine with amused surprise.

"Seriously," May pressed, grinning at me. "Isn’t it so, Bram?"

I genuinely could not identify what had possessed her to introduce this topic in the middle of the plain on the way to a dangerous mission. I said nothing.

"You guys are young," Mercury said, hands on the wheel. "You’re free to do whatever you want." She paused. "You see— fuck."

The car jolted slightly as it bumped over something soft. The first infected we’d hit tonight.

"What was that?" May asked.

"Nothing much," Mercury replied, composure snapping back instantly. "I was still saying. Do whatever you want when you’re young."

May swung her legs up onto the dashboard, the short skirt riding dangerously high. "Sounds like you missed a lot when you were our age." She tilted her head. "Do you have kids?"

Here we go, I thought. How does enjoying life connect to kids. I’m about to find out.

"No," Mercury said.

"What’s your body count?" May asked without hesitation.

Mercury barked a laugh. "Girl, come on.".

"Nobody here is judging you," May insisted. "Tell us."

Sherry was in deep sleep.

"That’s where I grew up," I said, pointing at the stretch of plain ahead where houses sat spaced apart in the dark. A town. I said it because it was true and because I wanted to drift the conversation for one minute.

"Wow," May said, looking at it briefly. Then immediately back to Mercury. "You were still telling us your body count."

She says us. As if I’m involved in this investigation.

"Okay. No details. Thirty nine," Mercury said. "Yours?"

"Thirty what?" May replied. Mercury laughed. "Mine is two. And the quiet one in the back is the most recent one."

They both found that extremely funny. My count was six, all inside the walls, and I was deeply grateful nobody had thought to ask me directly.

Sinn’s voice came through the car speakers.

"If you need to relieve yourselves, do it now. Fast."

Mercury pulled over with the others.

"Does anyone—"

"I need to wee," May said, already yanking the door open.

She hopped out. Students from the other vehicles spilled into the night too, stretching, chatting, relieving themselves behind crumbled walls and wrecked cars with the nervous energy of people trying to act casual in hostile territory.

Me and Sherry stayed in the car. Sherry because she was asleep. Me because my eyes had found something.

Speed stood behind a half-collapsed building, back partially turned, taking a piss. Normal enough.

Except just beside him, on the ground, a zombie. Female. Frozen in the specific mid-motion stillness of something that had simply stopped. Her torn clothes barely covered what was left of her body.

I watched him.

The instinct arrived before the thought. Something in his posture. The way his attention had shifted. The specific quality of interest that had nothing to do with peeing anymore.

"Mercury," I said quietly.

She followed my gaze.

Speed’s hand was drifting downward—slow, deliberate—toward the zombie’s chest.

"Don’t you fucking do that," I said, the words out before I decided to say them, the glass between us making them completely useless.

He touched her anyway.