Mercury looked down the long, empty hallway, chest heaving, then let out a short, breathless, slightly wild laugh.

"These weren’t normal," she said, wiping sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand. "Those things moved completely differently."

She was right. I didn’t have an explanation for it yet but I was filing it. These infected were a different category. Something the books and the briefings and twenty years on the plain hadn’t prepared me for.

"Room two hundred," I said. "That’s what he said, yes?"

"Zero two zero," Mercury corrected, still catching her breath.

I looked at her.

"He said zero two zero," she repeated, with the confidence of someone who was certain.

I let it go. We moved down the long corridor, checking door numbers. Sunlight slashed across the floor in bright, dusty stripes. No zero two zero anywhere. The closest was zero zero two at the far end.

"I told you it was two hundred," I said.

"Jenn," Mercury called back. "What did he say?"

"Two zero zero," Jenn answered calmly from behind us.

"Then why didn’t you say that the first time?" Mercury asked, genuinely offended.

We found room 200 in the middle of the corridor. I knocked. Nothing.

"Hello," I called.

"See," Mercury murmured. "I told you."

The door creaked opened.

The man standing there looked like he had been surviving on personality alone for months. His hair was a wild, unkempt mess that hadn’t seen a comb in far too long. A thick, scraggly beard covered most of his face. Thick, smudged glasses sat crooked on his nose. He wore a faded cabana shirt with clashing tropical colors that had given up trying to coordinate sometime last year, and short jeans that revealed legs far hairier than the situation required.

"Let’s go," I said, skipping any introduction.

"Relax," he replied, completely unfazed, with the calm energy of a man who had been waiting for rescue and was now determined to enjoy the moment on his own terms. "Where exactly are we going?"

We thought about it. No car. No food. No map. Ten minutes later, we were inside his apartment.

***

The air was slightly less oppressive but still heavy with old dust and trapped warmth. The sofa gave slightly under my weight, the fabric warm and slightly worn against my back and thighs.

"Richard Hunt," he said, settling into his sofa and turning to Mercury with the specific energy of a man who had been alone for too long and had opinions about it. "And you, beautiful?"

Mercury smiled. She liked compliments. Always had, from what I had seen.

"Mercury."

He turned to Jenn with the same energy. "You lovely."

"Jenn."

Then he turned to me and his whole register shifted, the way men shift register when they stop performing and start communicating.

"I can see you don’t like me already," he said. "It’s fine. I see it."

He wasn’t wrong. I wasn’t impressed. But I was in his apartment and I was hungry.

"Are you hungry?" he asked, and disappeared into what passed for a kitchen without waiting for the answer.

Richard Hunt’s living space was shockingly well-organized, the careful order of a man who had decided that even in the apocalypse, he would maintain some dignity. Books were neatly stacked. A few faded photographs hung straight on the walls. The furniture, though worn, was arranged with purpose.

He came back carrying two plates. Rice and beans. He handed them to Mercury and Jenn.

"Last of what I had," he said. "Let the beauties eat. We two men are already good."

Richard, I thought, you absolute idiot.

He caught my eyes and grinned. "Joking, bro. Ladies first. Old saying."

He went back and returned with a plate for me. Plain rice, no beans, which told me the beans genuinely were the last of something. I didn’t complain. I cleared the plate before the girls had finished half of theirs.

****

The four of us sat afterward in the dusty afternoon light filtering through the windows.

"Where are you heading?" Richard asked, leaning back in his sofa with the ease of someone about to have a conversation he had been waiting for.

"The Fallen City," Mercury said.

Richard sat up. "The Fallen City." He said it the way people say things they recognize. "I know the route."

Something I had been quietly losing started coming back.

The Fallen City was the only way back to the walls. The walls were my new home. I had people waiting on the other side of them and a mission that was technically still running even if everything about it had gone wrong.

"Problem is we don’t have a car," I said.

Richard laughed. Mercury didn’t laugh with him, which I noted and appreciated.

"This is the Safe City," he said, spreading his arms. "Everything you need is here."

"A car?" Mercury asked.

"Right."

"Food?"

"Right."

"And you know the route?"

"The safest one," he said confidently. "All we need is to get moving."

He packed a large bag with the practiced speed of someone who had been ready to leave for a while and had just been waiting for a reason. We went downstairs together.

The building was quiet. The street outside was clear. A hundred and one dried infected still lay scattered across the square like gray statues of the fallen.

Richard stopped and stared at the carnage.

"You did that?" he asked, voice hushed with something close to awe. 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

"Let’s find the car," I said.

He smiled and led the way. I walked behind him and thought about everything he had just offered, the car, the food, the route, and how it had all arrived in one apartment on the fourth floor of a city we hadn’t planned to stop in.

Too convenient, I thought, as the scorching air and dry grit continued grinding against my skin. Or exactly what the plain does sometimes. Gives you the one thing you need in the last place you expected it.

I couldn’t tell which yet.