She had been going through the closet when Lazlo and Blue arrived, and clothes were strewn about the room. It sort of looked like a zombie had done it, but none of them were torn or covered in blood.

“I didn’t want to leave you down there with them.” I picked up some of the discarded clothes off the floor.

“Why not?” Harlow crossed her arms over her chest.

“Those are two guys with guns who we just met and you’re a thirteen-year-old girl!”

“Lazlo Durante would never do anything!” Harlow insisted, almost swooning at his name.

“Whatever,” I scoffed. “Don’t do that.”

“What?”

“That.” I waved vaguely to her with an argyle sweater. “Be all… like that. It’s the end of the world. You can’t have school girl crushes during the end of the world.”

“Why not?” Harlow sounded offended. “You got to have a boyfriend.”

“He wasn’t my boyfriend,” I said under my breath.

I went into the walk-in closet so I wouldn’t have to talk about Beck. The sun had almost completely gone down, so I could barely see anything. I pulled at the clothes, hoping to get something I needed. Jeans and underwear were my top priorities.

When I came out of the closet, Harlow had found a box of matches. The room was lined with thick white pillar candles, and she began to light them.

“There’s a pool out back,” she said as she lit the last candle. “It’s a little skuzzy, but maybe tomorrow we could clean it and go swimming. It might be the closest thing we have to a shower for a while.”

“Maybe.”

I still had my messenger bag looped over my shoulder. I pulled it up over my head, along with the gun and set them on the bed. My tennis shoes had been very nice Converse before I wore them all to hell, and I slipped them off. When I sat down on the bed, my feet throbbed painfully.

“I don’t wanna walk tomorrow,” Harlow said. “I don’t think I can do that much again.”

She sat on the bed next to me, and I looked over at her feet for the first time. They were covered in bloody, swollen blisters.

“Holy hell!” I gaped at her wounds.

“I know. When I pulled off my socks, they were full of blood.” She stared down at her feet wearily for a second, and then looked sharply at me. “Don’t worry. It was all my blood. Those are army grade boots, and they don’t have any holes. I double checked.”

“Those boots are killing your feet, though. They’re way too big!” I wanted to get up off the bed and take them from her, so she couldn’t let them mutilate her feet anymore, but I wasn’t ready to move just yet.

“But they’re great for kicking in zombie’s heads.”

“Yeah, but I haven’t seen you kick any zombie’s heads since I met you.” I shook my head. “You can get gangrene and lose your feet. And there’s no way you can go swimming like that.”

“What? Why not?”

“The water is probably contaminated with the virus, and you have open wounds,” I said. “Even if it’s not full of the zombie virus, it’s probably has something that would cause a major infection. In fact, come here.”

“I am here.”

“Come closer. I don’t know why you argue so much. Have I led you wrong yet?”

She sighed and scooted over to me. I put her feet on the bed, setting the argyle sweater underneath them. I reached in my bag and dug out a bottle of alcohol. Beck had told me to always be sure to pack plenty of bandages for wrapping wounds and lots of alcohol. It might not stop the zombie virus, but it would suck to die from tetanus.

“This might sting,” I warned her, and before she could protest, I poured it on her feet. She let out such a shrill scream, I would’ve thought someone cut her leg off. “Harlow! Shh! It’s okay!”

Within a minute, I heard feet pounding up the stairs, and Blue threw open the bedroom door, gun in his hand. I reached for my gun, but I only put my hand on it.

“Is everything okay?” Blue scanned the room.

“Yeah, I was just cleaning her feet.” I pointed to Harlow’s damaged appendages.

“Are there zombies in there?” Lazlo shouted from somewhere down the hall.

“No, it’s all clear,” Blue yelled back at him and lowered his gun.

“You used to be a doctor, right?” Harlow asked him. “She’s killing my feet.”

“Do you want me to check them out?” Blue offered, stepping closer to where we sat. “I mean, I wasn’t board certified, but I can clean a few cuts.”

“Yes, please.” Harlow nodded and glared distrustfully at me.

“Alright, whatever.” I threw my hands up and stood, wincing at the pain in my own feet. “She’s all yours, Doc.”

Blue took my spot on the bed and talked to Harlow, reassuring her that everything would be all right, and examined her feet. After a few minutes of listening to him soothe her, I was convinced that he didn’t have plans to rape and murder us.

I excused myself to get some food. Since I was hydrated and a little rested, my stomach remembered that it was starving.

The downstairs was lit with lots of candles, too. Thank god for Crate & Barrel. Lazlo stood by the patio doors in the living room, but I went into the kitchen without saying anything to him.

He left a can opener out on the counter, and I used it to open a can of salmon. I grabbed a fork, eating it right of the can, and I made my way back to the living room.

“The cat is swimming,” Lazlo nodded to the pool out back. That’s what he’d been staring at. Ripley freaked him out.

“I think lions like water.” I swallowed down the salmon and walked over to watch her. The pool had an algae film to it, but she dog paddled through it.

“So where do you come from that they have lions?” Lazlo gave me a sidelong glance.

“We found her on the way here,” I shrugged and took another bite. I didn’t want to talk about where I came from, or remember the quarantine or Beck or Sommer.

“I was in L.A.,” Lazlo explained, as if I asked. “I lived in a bunker under a house after the virus really started spreading. Then three weeks ago, we ran out of food.”

“So you’ve been living in a bunker throughout this whole thing?” I glared at him, but he was too busy watching Ripley to notice.